Has Your Ability to Imagine Been Sabotaged?
Consider 3 ways our ability to imagine gets sabotaged and how to get it back!
By Philip K. Hardin, M.A, M.Div. LMFT, LPC
What If? – every circumstance and person in your life NOW is being used by God to live out the plan He designed for you from all eternity? Can you imagine that?
Imagination is simply the ability to visualize the unseeable—to see what God sees!
Imagination helps us to understand our past redemptively and to have hope for our future.
And imagination will bring possibility and hope to our present. We desperately need to be able to imagine.
SELF-SABOTAGE
We all have goals we want to achieve, dreams we want to live, and better versions of ourselves that we want to become. So why do we have such a hard time being and doing those things? The answer: self-sabotage!
Self-sabotage is engaging in behavior that undermines or contradicts our values, intentions, and our ability to imagine.
Sabotaging behavior:
Forgetfulness
Failing to prepare
Procrastination
Avoidance
Resistance
Declining support
Some common signs of self-sabotage include chronic lateness, need for immediate gratification, repeating unhealthy patterns, isolation, substance abuse and other unhealthy coping mechanisms, low self-esteem and negative self-talk, poor time-management skills, perfectionism, defensiveness, not taking risks, and an inability to show up in the present moment.
Do any of those resonate with you?
Self-sabotaging behavior is rooted in unhealthy core beliefs about us and the faulty narratives we tell. We need to understand our story to call these out into the light so they can be redeemed.
MY STORY…is a journey of overcoming self-sabotage.
Years ago, I left my wife and two baby daughters because I could not make sense of my life. I had failed to address the trauma of my own failures and lived in deep, toxic shame. I so wanted to be alone, that I packed my car and drove away from my family. That eventually got me into a mental health facility with a hospital bracelet around my arm. I spent 30 days addressing the trauma, shame, and isolation that was robbing me of my life.
I could not imagine how this season of my life would be used by God to write a new story and give me the purpose of my life. The “what if” story of my life is how God used what seemed to be the darkest time of my life to allow my broken story to be used to help many other men.
What is at the root of our sabotage? Consider 3 Factors:
1. TRAUMA
If you have a history of trauma, or even a series of disruptive or invalidating events in your life, ask yourself what story you are telling about those experiences? Why did they happen? As you answer that why question, examine your response for negative core beliefs about yourself that may reflect low self-esteem or a lack of self confidence.
Did you get labeled in your family based on your response to certain relational dynamics or circumstances? Did you feel like a failure? Unworthy? Inadequate? Abandoned?
Your inner-voice and the things you tell yourself direct your outward behavior.
Check out this earlier blog to see if you had trauma.
2. SHAME
Shame is no joke.
The wounds from your childhood affect your behaviors, relationships, and ability to feel any sort of positive emotion about yourself. Unaddressed shame can keep you from everything you want to do and be. It keeps you in a cycle of criticism and belief that I’m unworthy of love or belonging.
As you might imagine, shame usually comes from traumatic experiences in childhood.
A child perceives everything that happens to them, good or bad as being their fault. Therefore, experiencing abandonment, neglect, or abuse, can leave a child feeling like they've been rejected by the world, and that they don’t deserve love.
It’s not always one significant event that can stain you with shame. It can be thousands of small events. It can be an oppressive environment. It can be some aspect of parenting that gets lost in translation for you as an infant.
A deep shame that goes on for years is called toxic shame.
According to Good Therapy:
Toxic shame is shame that leads to chronic negative emotions, or behavior that harms oneself or others. People who feel chronic shame may think they are unworthy of love. Others may fear connecting to others, convinced that others will eventually see the “real” person and reject them.
This is the veil that shame can cast over your reality and lead you to the final sabotaging behavior: isolation.
3. ISOLATION
When we are alone and isolated, we are left to figure out the meaning of the story shame is telling me, alone.
Hard times make it is easier for us to isolate. We don’t want others around. We don’t want to cry one more tear over the situation. We don’t want to explain our emotions again and again. But the more we pull away, the darker the situation becomes.
God created us for community. He created us so that others around us can encourage us when we are down. He uses people to speak life into us, when we are too tired, or broken, or emotionally weak, to even read His word.
The problem is, when we are really hurting, it can be much easier to isolate than to reach out to others and really address the layers of emotions we’re battling. Therefore, we stay stuck.
For me, seeking out professional help was the first step to come out of a depressive and isolating cycle.
So where is the hope?
God created us to offer beauty to a dying world, not live in a cycle of trauma, shame, and isolation.
We are called to be co-creators and co-authors. That takes imagination!
How do I get there? It begins with honesty and humility. We need to begin facing the story of our life—to own our story—and tell it with imagination—what if?!
God wants to give us life by creating something new and beautiful through our brokenness.
Just Imagine!
Phil Hardin works as a Licensed Professional Counselor and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with Hardin Life Resources practicing in both Jackson, MS and Fairhope, AL. Phil’s heart is for men to personally experience God’s redemptive plan through sharing their story with a community committed to whole, authentic living. Check out Men’s Coaching Weekends to learn more.
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