Corin Hinderegger is a trusted guide for conscious entrepreneurs, CEOs, coaches, healers, and change-makers, helping them align with their most authentic, thriving selves. With over 20 years of knowledge and experience, Corin leverages an extensive range of certifications to provide deep, transformative support.
Have you ever wondered why you find yourself facing the same situations repeatedly in your life and business?
You're not alone; this happens to many of us. Often, it reveals that the coping strategies we developed in childhood or during stressful times are still guiding our actions—especially when we’re unaware of them. It's essential not to dwell on this, as that can strengthen the grip of self-sabotaging mechanisms. Instead, I invite you to recognize what’s at play so you can shift your experiences.
These self-sabotaging coping mechanisms often mean well, as they have helped us through some tough times. However, they frequently remain active long after they’re needed. It’s like wearing glasses tinted by past experiences, which skews our perception of current situations, work, and relationships. This can drain our energy and trigger nervous system states that negatively affect our health and wealth, creating a harmful interplay between body, mind, and business.
As these coping strategies become misaligned with who we’ve grown to be, they sabotage our efforts. They are tied to the voices in our heads that generate negative emotions and influence how we navigate everyday challenges. These automated patterns dictate our thoughts, feelings, and responses, leading to stress, anxiety, self-doubt, frustration, restlessness, and unhappiness. Ultimately, they keep us small, undermine our performance and well-being, damage our relationships, and disconnect us from our authentic selves.
The different states of our nervous system primarily affect our physical health and well- being, creating ripples that extend into all areas of our lives, including our finances.
Conversely, our coping strategies and self-sabotaging behaviors are more cognitive and mind-based, significantly influencing how easily we can achieve aligned success, cultivate fulfilling relationships, and attract abundance. These coping strategies and trapped nervous system states go hand in hand, feeding off each other and leading us into a vicious cycle.
So, what’s the solution, you ask? It starts with awareness. By recognizing when our coping strategies and nervous system responses try to take the driver's seat in our lives, we can begin to rewire our experiences and soften their impact. This awareness allows us to reconnect with our authentic selves, creating a harmonious interplay between body, mind, and spirit. When we embrace this interconnectedness, we unlock the magic that happens as life begins to unfold and flow differently.
By embracing these steps, you open the door to profound transformation and growth. Each small change can lead to significant shifts, empowering you to step into your true potential and create the fulfilling life and success you are designed to experience.
While this article focuses on our self-sabotaging coping strategies, I invite you to explore more about the nervous system and how to align health and wealth in your life and business in my other articles or by tuning into my podcast, The Embodied Thriving Self. Listen here.
Exploring the nine most common coping strategies that sabotage success
There are generally nine coping strategies, each influenced by an overarching saboteur known as the Judge. Typically, we may find one to three strategies particularly active in our lives. It can be helpful to focus on recognizing those specific ones rather than trying to identify all of them at once. I invite you to approach this exploration with an open mind. As we go through the various types, see if you can identify any that resonate with your own experiences.
How the avoiding coping strategy impacts your business growth: This involves excessively focusing on the positive and pleasant while avoiding difficult tasks and conflicts.
Understanding the controlling coping strategy: its role in self-sabotage: This stems from an anxiety-based need to take charge and control situations and people, often leading to high anxiety and impatience when that control is challenged.
The hyper-achiever mindset: How over-achievement can undermine your success: Individuals using this strategy depend on constant performance and achievement for self-respect and validation, quickly discounting their latest accomplishments and always seeking more.
Why the hyper-rationalizing coping strategy is limiting your emotional connections: This involves an intense focus on rational processing, sometimes to the detriment of emotional connections, leading others to perceive them as uncaring or intellectually arrogant.
The hyper-vigilant coping strategy: how constant worry sabotages your peace: This strategy is characterized by ongoing anxiety about potential dangers, creating a state of vigilance that can never truly rest.
How the people-pleasing coping strategy leads to burnout and resentment: Here, individuals seek acceptance and affection by helping, pleasing, or rescuing others, often losing sight of their own needs and feeling resentful as a result.
Are you always busy? The restless coping strategy and its impact on fulfillment: Individuals employing this strategy are constantly searching for excitement in new activities or busying themselves, rarely finding peace or contentment in the present moment.
Perfectionism and the stickler coping strategy: how it prevents progress: This manifests as perfectionism and an extreme need for order and organization, leading to anxiety over making everything perfect.
The victimizing coping strategy: how playing the martyr holds you back: This involves expressing emotions in a way that seeks attention and affection, with a heavy focus on internal feelings, often leading to a martyr complex.
Meet the judge: The master saboteur that fuels your inner critic
The Judge is a universal saboteur that affects everyone. It harshly criticizes mistakes, obsessively warns about future risks, and fuels worries that disrupt our peace. This inner critic often activates other saboteurs, significantly contributing to stress and unhappiness.
Sometimes, it’s easy to identify our inner Judge, as we may prefer to judge ourselves, others, or circumstances. Other times, it requires keen observation to recognize its presence. In my case, it took time to catch mine because it resembled some of my personal preferences. Once I noticed the subtle difference, I never mistook my preferences for my inner Judge again.
I first recognized mine in a doctor's office while rushing to an appointment. My nervous system was activated, and as I stepped inside, an inner dialogue began: “How can they have these green chairs in the waiting room that clash with the carpet pattern? Are they blind? How can anyone sit here calmly waiting when these colors clash so badly?”
As I sat down, I took a breath and grounded myself by focusing on my feet and my breath. It dawned on me that this was my inner Judge trying to take control. While I appreciate balance and harmonious color patterns when I’m in my authentic self, I would never judge how others decorate or dress. However, I noticed I do so when my Judge is online, so I named him “Snop.” This way, I can easily call him out whenever I notice him, allowing me to return to my authentic self more quickly.
Shirzad Chamine's research on these dynamics through Positive Intelligence offers valuable insights into how these saboteurs function. While his work highlights the psychological aspects, my approach emphasizes the interconnectedness of our experiences, particularly how our coping strategies relate to our nervous system, energetics, and overall well-being, which intertwine with these saboteurs.
Five proven ways to overcome self-sabotage and thrive in business
How we start our days usually dictates how they unfold. Check in with yourself in the morning and slow down to be intentional. The more present you are in the morning, the easier it is during the day to catch any saboteurs that try to come online and run the show for you.
Coming back to the sensations within your body
Pausing several times a day to check in with the sensations of our body engages regions of our brain that are connected with our authentic selves. The more often we come back to notice our sensations, like rubbing our fingertips against one another and noticing the fingertip ridges or observing our breath and noticing the air temperature when we inhale and
exhale, the more we become present within our experience and the more our sabotaging behaviors lose their grip on us.
Noticing when your Judge comes online and calling them out
As the master saboteur, your Judge is usually the first to come out. Imagine them holding the door open for your other saboteurs to come online. When we set an intention to notice when we judge ourselves, others, or circumstances, we can catch them before they run the show for us. It’s best to name your Judge. When you notice them, you can call them out.
They don’t like it when you catch them in the act; through this awareness, you weaken their grip on you.
Pause before each decision to check your filters
Integrate pauses into your decision-making processes or follow your Human Design strategy. Notice if the decision is based on activation or anxious sensation within your body or is free of attachment. This helps us make decisions that serve us and support our success and well-being.
Notice when you are trying to fix something
Fixing is not a solution. It will only trigger us more and will always attract more of what needs to be fixed. Having a mindset of fixing always signals to our nervous system that we are not safe. It then becomes activated and triggers a slew of processes within our experiences that will bring our saboteurs online.
If you would like to explore more about the interconnection between your nervous system and coping strategies, I invite you to check out my other articles and tune into my podcast, The Embodied Thriving Self Lessons + Musings, for more in-depth tools and awareness-building explorations.
As you discover your coping strategies, you set yourself up to build authentic success and fulfillment. Start small and be gentle with yourself. The more you approach them with curiosity and wonder, the more your nervous system can soften, and the easier it becomes to loosen their grip on you.
To your authentic success.
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Read more from Corin Hinderegger
Corin Hinderegger, Transformative Coach and Mentor for Conscious Entrepreneurs, Leaders, & Change Makers
Corin Hinderegger is a trusted guide for conscious entrepreneurs, CEOs, coaches, healers, and change-makers, helping them align with their most authentic, thriving selves. With over 20 years of knowledge and experience, Corin leverages an extensive range of certifications to provide deep, transformative support. As a popular teacher on Insight Timer and host of The Embodied Thriving Self™ Podcast, she uses her intuitive gift to pinpoint what’s missing, empowering clients to break through limiting beliefs, rewire their experiences, and embody their most aligned and thriving selves—creating success and abundance on their terms.
Having personally overcome mental and physical burnout, Corin deeply understands the journey to wholeness. Her holistic body-mind-soul approach equips clients to trust their intuition, align with their purpose, and become their own medicine—ultimately creating lasting impact, health, and wealth.
