PREVIOUS  : Saboteur INTRO – #1

 

 

 

🔴 The Judge is Our Master Saboteur, the mental torturer that afflicts just about everyone, making us unhappy, reducing our effectiveness, & harming our relationships, along with its accomplices.
By the time we’re adults we no longer need all the saboteurs, but they’re deeply entrenched in our mind, having become soft-encoded in our brain through neural pathways.

Saboteurs & the Sage live in very different regions of the brain. Advances in functional MRI (fMRI) studies, which measures how neural activity changes blood flow, allow scientists & psychologists to pinpoint areas in the brain involved in producing different thoughts or feelings, & so identify the neural functions that activate Saboteurs or the Sage.

🔵 The SURVIVE Regions : Our Inner Saboteurs
Saboteurs are the voices in our head that create pailful emotions when faced with internal buttons &/or life’s challenges. They’re generated by the interactions of the brainstem, limbic system & parts of the left brain.
They produce much of our self-doubting chatter (toxic self-talk) & distressing emotions (anxiety, anger, shame, guilt, frustration…..) which are only “helpful” for a second —-> as they alert us to real or potential dangers. However, staying trapped in these thoughts & feelings prevents us from thinking clearly & choosing the most productive responses to stress.

Saboteur Interceptor “Muscle”
Beside painful emotions, Saboteurs generate constant stress by self-defeating behavior patterns & attitudes such as avoidance, procrastination, insensitivity & discontent.
Because of our damaged upbringing, we automatically & unconsciously make the mistake of trusting & accepting them into our “inner circle”, making them our (false) sense of self & our negative view of the whole world.

♥︎ Saboteurs do the greatest damage if they can convince us they’re our friend, just trying to protect us & only wanting our best!
Each of them has very reasonable-sounding justifications for its ‘truth’- saying why it’s good for you. But their rationalizations are all well-masked lies.
EXP: the Judge, Controller, Hyper-Achiever & Stickler insist that without them you’d turn into a lazy, unambitious, worthless couch potato.

♥︎ While their constant whiplashing (as if we’re a stubborn mule) may seem to have been the only source of our accomplishments in some area of life. And their big lie is that any & all our successes came exclusively by them pushing & pushing.

We know that being able to feel physical pain is useful – teaching us what to avoid. Similarly, painful emotions alert us to danger, but are only helpful for a quick second. However, if we get stuck in self-hating beliefs which lead to constant emotional pain — it’s because the Saboteurs are forcibly holding our mental hand to a hot stove, making us complain that life is so hard!

🟡 The THRIVE Regions : Your Inner Sage
Our Sage lives in an entirely different region of the brain : the middle prefrontal cortex, anterior insular cortex (“empathy circuitry”), & parts of the right brain.
It generates pleasant feelings even when handling life’s challenges, allowing us to calmly take clear-headed laser-focused choices.
❣️ Activating this combination of brain area releases endorphins that counter the negative effects of stress-induced cortisol. It’s wired for artistic ability & big picture awareness of what’s important for the best outcomes.
“Positive” emotions include curiosity, compassion, empathy, gratitude & joy of creativity.

In terms of successes – the Sage is much more creative than the Survivor Brain. By empathizing with ourself, exploring what caused the Saboteurs, & coming up with creative solutions, we get energized to take decisive action, & not waste an ounce of vitality suffering the painful drama of beating ourself up.

Both Saboteurs & the Sage may help achieve goals, but by very different paths. 🔻 Saboteurs push us into actions & accomplishments through anger, anxiety, fear, guilt, obligation, regret, shame ….
🔺 Instead, the Sage pulls us into action through compassion, curiosity, intuition, the joy of self-expression, a desire to contribute to & create meaning, & the excitement of moving forward.
Only the Sage lets us achieve successes without sacrificing happiness & peace of mind. (More in later posts.)
Consistently implementing S.A.G.E. tools can result in :
Increasing the grey matter in the PQ Brain region, where our Sage lives
Decreasing the white matter in the Survivor Brain region, where Saboteurs live

NEXT : Saboteurs, Judge & Type 1