The Top 3 Unconscious Ways You Protect Yourself From Happiness
All three revolve around your fear of abandonment.
I want to get one thing clear: We don’t “sabotage” our happiness. We protect ourselves from it.
When our inner systems are still living in survival mode, happiness is perceived as a threat. Happiness does not help us survive, after all, and it opens us up to a level of vulnerability that can feel life-threatening.
I can imagine the elders of our ancient hunter-gatherer tribes gathering all the children around the fire. “Do you know why your uncle got eaten by that tiger?”
“He became too happy.”
Too carefree. He felt too safe in the world. And you know what happens when you let yourself feel too safe in this unsafe world? The tigers get you.
This survival narrative is the grandest obstacle to thriving. It presents us with a false dichotomy; either we choose constant alertness and forgo our happiness, or we choose our happiness and get the tiger. It just doesn’t work that way. There are countless examples of humans that are happy and thriving, without their life being in imminent danger.
Indeed, it is our survival mode that keeps us closer to danger than we would be in thriving. When we are brave enough to thrive, we do exchange our constant alertness, but it’s not for the tiger. It’s for clearer, calmer eyes that help us make better decisions.
But even for those of us who can get on board with the idea that we can be happy without putting our physical safety at risk, there is also a deeper emotional threat we’re avoiding.
It’s the emotional version of the tiger — what we perceive as the precursor to death. It feels like death. And in many cases, we would prefer death than to experience it.
Abandonment.
We reject our own happiness to protect ourselves from abandonment, the emotional version of death.
We fear happiness is the catalyst to abandonment in three areas of our life; with ourselves, with all things good, and with others.
The rest of this article explains our fear of abandonment in each of these areas and discusses how to stop protecting ourselves from our own happiness.
Who would you be if you let yourself be that happy?
I have parts of myself locked in far away caves and dark rooms inside of me. They are my exiles — the parts of me who carry the burden of all the pain that has been inflicted upon me.
They are stuck in the past. In the places that hurt. Alone and abandoned. Still carrying so much pain.
I’ve created much of my identity around healing this pain, around what happened to me to cause it, and around all I’ve had to endure in my lifetime.
I’ve made a home for myself in the story of my victimization and in the way I adapted to contain all the pain inside of me. I’ve made a habit of constantly scanning my inner world, identifying what still needs healing — what is still wrong with me. Because maybe if I can make everything right inside of me, maybe then I can show up for my life and be happy.
When happiness knocks on my door in this paradigm, I will reject it every time. Because who would I be if I let myself be happy before I am fixed?
Letting myself be happy would mean abandoning both my exiled parts and my strategy for helping them. It would mean my identity no longer revolves around being a victim. It would mean there is nothing wrong with me that needs to be “fixed.”
If there isn’t anything wrong with me, who am I?
And what happens to my exiled parts? Must I abandon them to be happy?
It’s like happiness is forcing me to choose my own abandonment. It’s like happiness requires me to abandon my old identity for a new one.
For most of us, myself included, this is too great an ask. We choose to cling to the devil we know than to open up to the devil we don’t — no matter how much better we might feel with the new guy.
It’s true, though. Happiness is inviting us into a conversation about abandoning our old identity. Happiness invites us to abandon all of our survival strategies and burdens.
But happiness does not present us with a false dichotomy. It’s not a matter of choosing between the tiger of self-abandonment and happiness. It’s a matter of letting go of what is false and reclaiming what is true.
Here’s what I mean.
Your exiled parts? Those are real. They are real parts of you who have been victimized. They are a sacred part of your story and deserve to be fully redeemed. Happiness invites us to reclaim our exiled parts and reintegrate them back into our system. We aren’t abandoning our exiles when we choose happiness. We are creating an inviting space for them to come back home.
The extreme beliefs about yourself that your exiles carry? Not real. These extreme beliefs are what cause you and your exiles so much additional pain. They are the stories you’ve made up about what is wrong with you. They are the stories you make up about who you have to be in order to be worthy. They are the lies you believe about your capabilities. They are the internalized voices of your oppressors. Happiness invites us to abandon all the lies we’ve believed about ourselves — lies we’ve made a home for ourselves in — so we can instead live from a truer home inside of us.
The survival strategies you’ve adopted as a means to get happiness? Not real. All the ways you try to prove your worth. All the ways you try to fix yourself. All the conditions and prerequisites you place on your own happiness. It’s all you trying to fill the infinite hole inside of you. Proving your worth is an infinite hole. Fixing yourself is an infinite hole. Meeting all of the conditions you have over your own happiness (partner, success, material wealth, etc) is an infinite hole. There is no bottom. You can live your entire life trying to fill it. As long as you are clinging to our survival strategies as prerequisites to happiness, we will never experience happiness.
After all, if you’re always looking for the next way to prove your worth, if you’re always looking for what is still wrong inside of you, if you’re always looking for what you don’t have, how will you ever be able to feel worthy, whole, and happy?
Happiness invites us to abandon all of our infinite holes — holes we’ve built an entire identity around filling — so we can finally focus on living our purpose, enjoying this moment, and truly connecting with those around us.
Now, you’re probably wondering how to set this up for yourself.
The short answer? Internal Family Systems.
An invitation to a longer answer? This is exactly what I help my clients do. I help them reclaim their exiles and completely unburden themselves from the rest so they can embody their worth and live their purpose in profoundly satisfying ways. Schedule a consultation call with me here.
To recap — Happiness invites you into a conversation about:
- What exiled parts of you are longing to come back home?
- What burdens are they carrying that block you from being happy?
- What beliefs about what you need to do in order to let yourself be happy are blocking you from happiness?
- How might you reclaim your exiles and abandon all that is blocking your happiness?
- Are you willing to let go of your survival mode identity so you can become who you really are?
As big and important as reclaiming your exiles and abandoning your false stories and beliefs is to experiencing more happiness, this is only one part of why you are protecting yourself from happiness.
Who would you be if that happiness abandoned you?
“I’m stuck between knowing the difference between when I am legitimately supposed to take a break and when I am numbing out,” I told my coach.
“Actually,” I said as I realized what was going on, “I think I do know. I just don’t want to admit it because I would like to stay stuck in this problem.”
I was on to something.
Whenever we feel stuck, it is our way of protecting ourselves from having to fully face something. In the case of my stuckness around the process of building my business, I was protecting myself from fully facing something big.
Something about Source… Something about not trusting it or being afraid of it… Something about abandonment…
My throat immediately tightened. Yep. It was about abandonment.
I was afraid to fully surrender to the goodness of trusting my natural flow, trusting Source, and letting go of my survival identity to embody more of who I am because what if all that goodness left me again?
What if I was left there, totally naked with no more survival strategies to hide behind, with the promise of all the goodness of Source hiving abandoned me? Who would I be then?
We’re afraid to let our guard down and experience happiness because who would we be if it left us?
“Isn’t it better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all?” asked my coach.
“Intellectually I understand that it is, but the parts of me who are terrified of happiness abandoning me are the parts that are still stuck in the heartbreak of their past abandonment. They say they would rather die than feel this pain ever again.”
We reject surrendering to happiness because we don’t believe we can handle the pain of our exiled parts when happiness leaves us. We fear we’ll be overrun with loneliness, confusion, and regret and it will be far worse than if we’d never of surrendered to happiness at all. We should have stayed stuck in our survival strategies. At least then we wouldn’t feel the loneliness and confusion when happiness breaks our heart.
This is the paradigm we greet happiness with when it first comes knocking. No wonder we reject it.
I’d like to offer you a different paradigm, one I’ve found from my own nitty-gritty, trial-and-error relationship with happiness and abandonment. Let’s call it the “thriving paradigm.”
The first thing I want you to know about the thriving paradigm is that it does not bullshit you. Yes. Happiness will leave you. It will take its promise away from you. But — and this is a big difference — it was always meant to.
In David Whyte’s poem, Santiago, he talks about the inner and outer pilgrimage we all take in our life toward what is true and real. In it, he writes,
“no matter that it sometimes took your promise from you, no matter that it always had to break your heart along the way”
Happiness will take the promise of itself away from you. Not because it is malicious or untrustworthy, but because the only constant in life is change. You will go through cycles of happiness and despair and everything in between on your pilgrimage back home to yourself. And your heart will break with each cycle.
But David Whyte also says, “There is no earnest life without heartbreak.”
No matter that it sometimes took your promise from you. No matter that it always had to break your heart along the way. You have to believe in the promise of happiness so much to surrender yourself to it, but happiness is not the final promise of your fulfillment. As long as you cling to happiness as your salvation, happiness will break your heart every time it leaves you.
And it has to break your heart so it can crack open wider to contain more Love. Happiness was never meant to sustain you all on its own, but it is an invitation to a deeper conversation about what does sustain you.
Happiness is an invitation to converse with trust, hope, love, compassion, and courage — things you can call upon no matter the season you are in.
So who will you be after you’ve surrendered everything and happiness has left you?
You will be someone on your way back to the soul-satisfying truth about who you are. You will be someone beginning a conversation with trust and courage. You will be brokenhearted that the promise of happiness left you, but your broken heart will be a portal into the truth that Love will never abandon you.
And from that truth, you will greet happiness again as an old friend, with no expectations for the amount of time it walks with you. For following the path of truth has become your purpose now, and you recognize happiness as a welcome companion.
Who would abandon you if you let yourself be that happy?
Happiness invites us to embark on an inner adventure as described in the first two sections, but it also invites us on an outer adventure.
When you let go of your burdensome beliefs and survival strategies, you move differently in the world. You moving differently may be seen as a threat to many. Sometimes even to the people you love.
You embodying happiness invites everyone around you to do the same, which can be perceived as a threat to others who are still terrified of truly letting themselves feel happiness. They might try to squash the happiness in you through shame, gaslighting, direct confrontation, or withdrawal — all of which feel like abandonment to you.
Yes, some people in your life and parts of the culture at large will abandon you when you commit to your happiness. It can feel like you must choose between happiness or belonging.
It can feel like it’s either your happiness and being abandoned by the people you belong to, or it’s remaining in survival mode but still belonging.
This smells like another false dichotomy, doesn’t it?
The falseness of this dichotomy lies in the “being abandoned by the people you belong to” part. Because is it really belonging if they abandon you when you become more yourself? Is it really belonging if you have to stay small and struggling to belong?
Hint: No, it’s not.
Happiness invites you to see that the people and things that abandon you when you become happy are too small for you. And that to find true belonging, you must let go of trying to fit yourself into places that are too small for you so you can make space for yourself in places where all parts of you can belong.
Surrendering to happiness takes you on an outer adventure just as much as an inner one. Just as you must let go of all that is blocking you from happiness on the inside, you also must let go of all that is blocking you from embodying happiness on the outside as well.
You must be willing to let all that is too small for you abandon you so you can make space for yourself in the places that fit you.
I wrote an entire article about what it means to let what is too small for us abandon us. It’s called Untaming My Fear of Abandonment and you can check it out here:
I’m not sure if it is helpful to layout for you everything happiness is inviting you to let go of all upfront like this. Because I know in my own journey, if I would have know what would be required of me on the path happiness invited me down, I don’t know if I would have started.
But even from the place I now stand, even still knowing I have so much more to go, I am so grateful I have started. Life feels so much more real. I can connect with others in a more satisfying way. And yes, I have experienced more happiness than I ever thought was possible for me.
Here’s what I will say to those of you overwhelmed by all that happiness requires you to let go of:
- Nothing you let go of is a loss. Most of what you will let go of is the false and limiting stories you believed about yourself and the world. It feels like death, but only the things that were never true to begin with die. It’s never really a loss in the end. It is an unburdening. And if you hang in there and continue to surrender, even more happiness is waiting for you on the other side. Always. You can trust this.
- Nobody lets go all at once. Our little baby inner adventures prompt us to take little baby outer adventures, which then prompt us to take slightly bigger inner adventures. Our inner and outer adventures leapfrog off of each other. And although the conversation of our adventures can sometimes feel like too much, it never has been. It’s always just enough to stretch you into more truth and happiness. It’s always just enough to prompt you to let go of something that is no longer serving you so you can make space for more of what is.
When happiness comes knocking, I hope you invite her in.
I hope you chose to face your fear of abandonment, and take the leap to abandon all that is not real or serving you anymore.
I hope you choose your own evolution.
I hope you choose you.