Dear Dick
articles about wide ranging psychological issues
from "The Local Bulletin" (Brisbane Australia)
by Dick Rigby
©all articles are copyright 2006

November 2003
Isn’t it so frustrating when you have a friend or loved one who is capable of great things and always manages to shoot themselves in the foot. 
Here’s a case in point.  Alex was an inventor.  He had talent oozing out of him.  He came up with great ideas that could really help other people.
Alex could have easily been a millionaire several times over.  His inventions were very good.  But Alex would sabotage his success at a subconscious level.  He was never aware that he was doing it.  He always had a good explanation for why he was not successful.
Take the lawn clipping dispenser for example.  Alex invented this devise for distributing lawn clippings over the surface of the lawn so the lawn looked neat after it had been mown.  He built the prototype and started to look for a manufacturer.  Whoops!  He made a mistake in lodging the patent forms so the patent was not legally registered.  You guessed it.  Someone else patented his idea and made a mint.
Alex explained this situation away by blaming a clerk in the patents office for giving him the wrong information.  We could believe his explanation if it was the only time it occurred.  But this was a repeating pattern of self sabotage.  Because Alex didn’t even acknowledge that he had a problem, nothing was done.
The reason that he sabotaged his success was that he had a deeply held fear of success that he learned in his childhood.  The core belief system that ran this fear was that “If I am successful, people will begin to expect great things of me and I will not be able to meet their expectations.  I will be a disappointment to them and I will be rejected.”
This belief system meant that when he was within a hairs breath of succeeding, his subconscious part would devise some ingenious way of sabotaging the project and making it look like and accident or someone else’s fault.
Alex’s story is still waiting for a happy ending.  Alex is still sabotaging himself and blaming other people and things.  His wife goes along with this and believes that Alex is either careless or unlucky.  She doesn’t see the pattern of self sabotage.
If you know someone like Alex, gently point out to them that they have to take responsibility for their actions.  Oh, and one more thing.  Don’t tell them I told you to do it.

Organized disorganization

April 2002
I would like to tell you about a client that came to see me a year ago.  I have changed some details so that he remains anonymous.  Jack is a 29 year old single male whose problems started at university when he moved out of home.  He was always late for lectures and late handing in assignments.  As a result he only scraped through to become a qualified teacher.
Jack was disorganized.  Not just a bit, but very disorganized.  Everything in his life was in chaos.  His home office was in a mess.  He couldn’t find anything.  His relationships with women were always in crisis.  Nothing was easy.
When it came to money, Jack was always in debt.  Even though he earned good money as a teacher, he managed to spend or lend it so that he was always in debt.  Jack is an intelligent man, so why did he do this?
Every time that the crisis of disorganization got too bad, his parents would come and rescue him.  His mother would put his house in order and his father would give Jack money to cover his debts.  Jack’s father would go crook at Jack and show Jack how to organize his finances so that he didn’t get into debt.  But nothing changed.
You would have guessed already.  The pay off was that Jack was being rescued by his parents. Nobody in the family knew what was going on because it was all operating at a subconscious level. Jack’s state of disorganization was run by a subconscious part.  When things started to settle, this part would do something to sabotage in some way to return things to a state of chaos.
For example, his father noticed a small leak in the bathroom and pointed this out to Jack.  It would have cost $80 to fix at the time.  Jack did nothing.  Three months later, the bill to fix the damage was $350.
Jack’s disorganization was very neatly organized at a subconscious level.  The pattern of being rescued by his parents was set up in his childhood.  Once Jack started to work in therapy, he started to see his pattern at a conscious level.
He realized that he could get his need for support and affection met by other methods.  This freed him up to understand that he no longer needed to be rescued by his parents.
Happy ending.  Jack is now functioning with an appropriate level of organization.