The Frequency of Self-Sabotage: Why Growth Feels Unsafe (and How to Move Through It)

If you’ve ever said you wanted something — a healthier body, more money, deeper love — and then sabotaged it the minute it started working… this episode is for you.

In today’s conversation, Jaclyn unpacks the energetics of self-sabotage and why it’s not a character flaw — it’s a frequency pattern. They explore how old survival programming gets triggered when you begin to outgrow your past identity, and why stepping into your next level often activates fear in your nervous system.

You’ll learn:
Why self-sabotage is really a nervous system response
How to move from survival to expansion without shutting down
How to recognize the moment you're about to repeat an old pattern
Tools to help you shift your frequency in real time

Plus, they share real-life stories, mindset reframes, and a few surprising truths about fear, self-worth, and identity.
✨ Mentioned in this episode:
→ Download The Freq App for Calibrations that rewire your energy on the go

You’re not broken. You’re just outgrowing who you used to be.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Self-Sabotage
• 2:57 Joe Dispenza's Explanation on Self-Sabotage
• 4:52 Why We Self-Sabotage
• 8:07 Personal Story of Sabotaging Success
• 13:18 Survival Mode vs. Thriving Mode
• 21:34 Breaking the Cycle of Self-Sabotage
• 27:17 Identity Work and Frequency Tools
• 29:46 Call to Action and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Jaclyn: 1:00

Hello, Jaclyn Steele Thurmond here. This is a solo episode, and today we're going to be talking about the frequency of self-sabotage and why growth feels unsafe, and how to move through it. So I saw a video several weeks ago. I'm going to play it for you guys, but I thought that it would be good to talk about self-sabotage because it is such a frequency issue, right, and it's something that all of us have struggled with, whether or not we even realize we are self-sabotaging, because sometimes it is so ingrained in us, like being late for important appointments, hello, that's been me before that we don't even realize what we're doing. So I want to talk about why we self-sabotage, the very things that we say that we want, and I'm going to play for you, it's about one minute, and hopefully you can hear it, okay? A video of Joe Dispenza talking about self-sabotage, and this is why I wanted to dive deep, because this made so much sense to me. So here it is.

Jaclyn: 2:12

"When you start to level up, when you stretch beyond your old identity, your nervous system panics. Not because you're broken, but because growth feels unsafe to a body that's used to surviving, not thriving. So what happens? You procrastinate, you ghost opportunities, you attract drama, you fall back into old habits, not because you don't want it, but because your energy is still tethered to the old you. Here's the shift. The next time you catch yourself sabotaging, don't shame yourself, don't spiral, pause, breathe, recognize. This is just old survival energy trying to keep me small and choose differently, even if it feels uncomfortable, because healing isn't about being fearless, it's about moving forward while your body still remembers fear. That's how you rewire your destiny."

Jaclyn: 2:57

In one minute, Joe Dispenza explained so succinctly and so beautifully why we self-sabotage, and it's a frequency issue. It's that the former version of ourself, which is seeking comfort and what is familiar, is very uncomfortable with this new mindset, this new way of living, this new idea, and so those frequencies do not match and the old self is going to do whatever it can to put us in a comfortable state. And what he's saying here and I can sum up the whole podcast now is that moving beyond self-sabotage is not about shaming yourself, but it's about recognizing that we're in a fearful state, that our nervous system is off, and taking action to move forward despite that fear, despite that nervous system dysregulation. So I want to go into this a little bit more and start off by saying if you self-sabotage, you are human. You are not broken. You are just expanding beyond what your body thinks is safe. Right? This is a biological reaction. This is something that humans have done for years and years and years. When we feel unsafe, we self-sabotage or we do whatever we need to do in order to feel safe and regulate ourselves however we've regulated ourselves in the past. But if we are growing, if we are expanding, we have to move beyond those limiting habits, even if they served us for a little while. So I want to go through several different sections in this podcast episode, and the first one I want to discuss is why we self-sabotage.

Jaclyn: 4:52

Okay, and I touched on this, but the subconscious mind is wired to seek the familiar. When we are in an expansive state, whether we're moving, starting a new job, starting a business, entering a new relationship, our subconscious mind is wired to seek what is comfortable. For instance, I have several friends who are single, and some of them are dating, some of them are not. But I've heard all kinds of stories, and in those beginning stages, more often than not, there is so much fear in the new relationship around trust, around follow through, around, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Because the person, and I'm speaking for my friends, their nervous system is not used to being in a relationship. They feel dysregulated. Therefore, they feel fearful, and their subconscious mind tells them Hey, you need to be fearful right now because you're stepping into new territory". And some of those relationships should not be explored, right? But many of them should. But we have to understand are we self-sabotaging right now or are we actually listening to a legitimate red flag, right? And I want to tie in frequency here. So low frequency states, fear, doubt. They are energetically safer for people stuck in survival mode.

Jaclyn: 6:29

So again, going back to a new thing, you're in an expansive state. Are you moving? Are you starting a new business? Are you going to have a child for the first time? Are you dating someone new? Ask yourself, do I feel like I'm in survival mode right now? Am I having a lot of fear and doubt because my nervous system is just so set on this frequency of survival? If that's the case, then moving forward despite that fear is the antidote, okay, and I want to say as an aside, like for the women that I know that are dating new people, and they have these fears and whatnot. Our intuition is absolutely incredible and if there are legitimate red flags, listen to those. But if someone is doing what they're saying they're going to do, they're showing up, their character is in alignment with their words? You know, in general, that's a pretty trustworthy person. So I'm getting a little off topic here, but it's important to recognize what is a legitimate red flag and what is just our nervous system telling us you're unsafe, you're unsafe, you're unsafe because you're in new territory, all right?

Jaclyn: 7:58

So I'm going to share a personal story about when self-sabotage kicked in right as a big shift or a breakthrough was happening. This happened last summer. My husband and I were on the verge of selling Villa Secreta, which was the biggest real estate deal we had done up until this point. We'd worked so hard on it. It was my first giant design job as an interior designer. We had so much money in it. There was so much money tied to it every single month just to pay the mortgage and pay different investors who were part of the deal, and up until the point we signed the papers to sell it. I kept telling myself this sale is going to be amazing. Whoever is going to live here is going to love this home. We poured so much love into this. I just have full faith this house is going to sell, and it's going to be incredible.

Jaclyn: 8:59

The minute we signed the papers but before closing which there was about three to four weeks in between those I started self-sabotaging myself like crazy in between. I went from super high-stress where I was regulating myself and taking really good care of myself and giving myself positive affirmations to those three, four weeks in between where I allowed fear to completely dysregulate me physically and mentally. I felt so nervous that this closing was going to fall through, that we were going to have financial ruin, that we were going to X, Y and Z, you know worst case scenario after worst case scenario and it completely threw me off track. For those three weeks I got a little work done, but it was not the kind of high frequency work I like to be putting out, because I allowed myself to self-sabotage my mindset that I had been working so hard on the months before and what I realized was I was terrified to move, or my subconscious was terrified to move into a state of abundance.

Jaclyn: 10:21

But when we sold Villa Secreta, it was the biggest sale and biggest profit we had ever made. And up until that point, Sam and I have been entrepreneurs for years, we were kind of always in survival mode. Yes, we have had abundance. Yes, we have been able to afford some nice things, but there's always been that mental sacrifice of: How are we going to make it work? What's next? How can I fit this in? What are we to do here? And constant, constant, constant, constant motion and thought and dysregulation in our nervous systems because we've always been cutting it so close. And the sale of Villa Secreta ushered in, or was going to usher in, a totally different way of living. We were gonna be able to pay off our debt, the debt that we had accrued remodeling this house. We were going to be able to pay our investors handsomely for investing with us, and we were going to be able to move forward without the weight of how are we going to pay things next month for a while.

Jaclyn: 11:39

And what I realized was I was scared of that piece. I was scared of that peace. I was scared of that monetary reassurance because I had not experienced that since I was a kid, living with my parents before they got divorced, and so it was a totally different way of living from this survival mode that I was used to. And it took me recognizing that that was the basis of my fear. That was the root of my fear. What am I going to do with all of my time and energy now that it's not being shoved into survival mode, but that I can actually expand and be more creative and add more value and think about higher level things beyond survival? And when I recognized that I was self-sabotaging because I was afraid of this new way of living. It allowed me to calm down a little bit and go. This is just unfamiliar territory, but this is ultimately the best thing. This is what I want. I want to have a peaceful, abundant life where I can show up as the highest version of myself, not in survival mode all the time, and that allowed me to go. Okay, this is unfamiliar territory, but each day I'm going to take one step forward and just see what happens and see how it feels. Okay, next section of this podcast I'm going to call survival mode versus thriving mode.

Jaclyn: 13:18

Our nervous systems resist change, even positive change, because we haven't experienced it before, right? We're going to be a beginner in a new chapter of our lives and, just like a child learning their ABCs for the first time, we don't expect them to understand it and be able to utilize it within 10 minutes. Right, it takes repetition, it takes practice, it takes time. We have to give ourselves the same. We have to allow ourselves the freedom to go. Hey, this feels weird. Why am I feeling this way? Could I think a better thought here? Could I bring in a new affirmation that serves me better in this situation. Because we need to unwire that subconscious mind from seeking the familiar, which is that fearful state or that survival mode, to becoming more open to the positive change, becoming more open to a chapter that includes thriving.

Jaclyn: 14:30

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Jaclyn: 15:34

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Jaclyn: 17:00

I want to talk about, too, how this is especially true for people raised in environments where safety equals control, perfectionism, or self-minimization. And I'm not here to point fingers, I'm not here to blame anyone. We are all products of the people that raised us and they are products of the people that raised them, raised us, and they are products of the people that raised them. So I think abundant grace and forgiveness should be given all the time.

Jaclyn: 17:29

But I grew up in a household that was very much based on performance and perfectionism and very clean-cut, sweet outside persona, right? That's when I felt like I got the most love, I got the most appreciation, I got the most attention. That's when I felt safest. I didn't necessarily feel safe to cry or to break down or to say that I was scared, or to even admit, "hey, I don't know what happens next, and that's not my parents' fault. They can't teach me things that they don't know how to do, right? So I don't have any anger toward them in that respect. But what that ingrained in me from a young age was, I need to be in control, I need to be perfect, I need to perform, and if my feelings are hurt, I'm going to self-minimize that because I don't want anybody to know I'm hurting. And taking those pieces and growing up and creating beliefs based on those things. It caused me to feel a lot of fear around expansion and around belief in myself.

Jaclyn: 18:52

When you're trying a new idea, when you're going to start a business, or I was a full-time musician for a long time. There's a lot of unknown that comes with that. We can't control what happens next when we're in unknown territory. Think about it like explorers coming from Europe to discover the United States. Right, they didn't know what the ocean was going to hold. They didn't know if there was going to be land on the other side. Then, when they got to the land, they didn't know if there was going to be people or animals or what was going to happen. That's how life is. We're not meant to know what's going to happen each step of the way, right? We're just supposed to continue to take the steps, but self-sabotage often stops us in our tracks and prevents us from taking those steps to move forward into our most expanded self or into the next level of expansion for us. And that's why this is so important that we recognize we're self-sabotaging and recognize that it's just a frequency problem, guys.

Jaclyn: 19:56

It's when our nervous systems feel like they're in new territory and they're dysregulated. But we have the power to take our power back and go. Hey, I'm just thinking out of fear right now, or I'm just acting out of fear right now, and I can choose a better thought and I can choose a better action. I want to invite you guys to reflect by asking you a question and I can ask it to myself too. But it's this where am I afraid to feel good because it's unfamiliar For me? The most recent example was with that abundance of money. I felt like holy cow. We've been working for this for so long and now it's here. What now? Am I afraid to feel good about it because it feels so unfamiliar to have this kind of abundance or this kind of blessing.

Jaclyn: 20:51

So where in your life are you afraid to feel good because it's unfamiliar? Is it in a relationship? Is it with your child? Is it in your job? Is it just allowing yourself to simply rest and rejuvenate? Does that give you anxiety to think about taking some time off and allowing yourself to recharge? That's just your nervous system that's dysregulated. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not broken. You need that rest and rejuvenation. You have permission to take it. But if you haven't done it before, it's going to feel unfamiliar and your body and your nervous system is going to want to self-sabotage. Your subconscious is going to want to self-sabotage. So just be aware of it. All right, now I want to talk about how to break the cycle, how to break this cycle of self-sabotage?

Jaclyn: 21:40

Step number one is to pause and recognize. Say to yourself this is just old energy, this is not truth. This is just old energy. This is not truth. feel that sensation in your body. And don't label it as a failure, don't label yourself as being not enough, because you're experiencing it. We're human, we all experience this.

Jaclyn: 22:11

When I am self-sabotaging, I have a tendency to get really controlling. So I want my house to be just so. I want my husband to react to all of my reactions and I get very jittery, like I've had too much coffee, and it's this anxious energy of I'm out of control. I'm out of control. I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know what I'm going to do. That is my sensory feeling of self-sabotage, and that's what I know. It's coming on. So, step one, pause and recognize.

Jaclyn: 22:43

Step two, and this is the most important one, guys. Rewire through action. You may feel fear, you may feel doubt. That's normal. Join the club. But you have a choice to act anyway and to take an aligned step even when fear is present. Repetition is the key to reconditioning. So when you feel like you're about to self-sabotage, take action toward that thing you're working toward. So in my case last summer, when I felt myself self-sabotaging my mindset and spiraling into fear, I would stop and say no, this is just old energy, this is not what is true, and I invite a feeling of peace and security. Yes, it's unfamiliar, this is totally new territory for me to feel peace and financial security, but this is what I want, and I want to feel what it feels like to feel it. And the more you step into that new feeling, the more familiar it becomes, and so the self-sabotage becomes less and less and less and less and less.

Jaclyn: 24:09

If, for instance, going back to the dating relationship example, you are in a relationship where that person their words and their actions are lining up, they're a person of integrity, you see them to be the kind of person that you dreamed of being with, but you're feeling that unfamiliar feeling and you're feeling that sabotage coming up, the action in that instance would be I'm going to go on this next date, you don't have to marry them, you don't have to commit long-term, but you say I'm going to go on this next date, or I'm going to get on the phone call and have a conversation. I am going to take that next step that feels scary, despite the fear. If you are starting a business or acting on an idea you have and you feel the self-sabotage coming up, you feel fear, you feel doubt, take the next right step. Make the phone call. Make a business plan. Ask Chat GPT. Hey, what do I need to do next to expand this idea, to expand this business plan? How can I continue to move forward despite the fear? The antidote to self-sabotage is action, and again, repetition is the key to reconditioning. So every time you take action, despite fear, despite self-sabotage, despite doubt, you are reinforcing to your nervous system this new way of being.

Jaclyn: 24:48

Then three in the how to break the cycle of this podcast is use frequency tools. You can use a tuning fork. You can listen to frequencies online. You can go into our Freq App which has all of it in one place and listen to some calibrations whether they just be frequency music or frequency music combined with Sam’s or my voice. We have so many beautiful calibrations in our library, I’m looking at them right now. You can look at them by frequency, by activity. We’re gonna have a new section for children so that children can experience frequency, just the beauty of it but I’m looking in the frequency section, right now and you can tune to joy, to self-worth, to creativity, to abundance, to passion, to strength, to expansion, to manifestation. There are so many beautiful categories in here and that frequency, the actual tones of the frequency react with the water in our bodies, right? And change how we feel and then the messages combined with that will reinforce new ways of thinking. So frequency tools are great.

Just to reiterate that whole process. Step one is to pause and reflect. Step two is to rewire through action and Step three is to reinforce those things with frequency tools.

Jaclyn: 27:15

Couple more things I wanna talk about before we wrap up is belief in identity work. The identity we hold influences the frequency we emit. If you are living out of old energy, you are living out of an old identity. If you are ushering in a new version of yourself, I encourage you to act like that person now. Start thinking those thoughts now. Start speaking those words now. Start feeling those feelings of abundance and financial security and being in a great relationship and having a thriving business now. Get your nervous system used to it, right?

Jaclyn: 27:57

I also want to discuss how affirmations, visualizations, and embodiment can help create safety in the unfamiliar. It's like preparing for this new expansion. Have visuals of what you want your life to look like. Have affirmations of how you want your life to feel. Have embodiment sessions with yourself where you go through this new version you're becoming and prepare your nervous system for that expansion. That will also decrease the self-sabotage.

Jaclyn: 28:31

Growth isn't about being fearless. It's about moving forward despite the fear, just like Dr. Joe Dispenza said. Here's your high-frequency homework. Next time you catch yourself spiraling, pause and say this is just survival energy, I choose differently. This is just survival energy. I choose differently. And if you're watching on video, I'm putting one hand on my belly and one hand on my heart. All right, your call to action is download the Freq App because it's going to help you so much. It's going to help you rewire your energy and shift your frequency, and I believe in it so much because I created it, because that's what I wanted.

Jaclyn: 29:19

And I want to ask you what would change in your life if you believed your expansion was safe. If you believe that relationship was safe, that business idea was safe, that next level of financial security was safe, how would it change your life if you believed that expansion was safe? All right, thank you so much for listening to this episode on self-sabotage. I want to send each of you such a big, giant hug and so much love, and I want to encourage you to live on purpose and live on frequency. We'll catch you in the next episode. Have an amazing day.

Jaclyn: 30:06

Thank you so much for listening to The Freq Show with Sam Thurmond and me, Jaclyn Steele Thurmond. We would love to connect with you via our website, beckonliving.com, and on social media.

Jaclyn: 30:18

You can find us on Instagram and TikTok @beckonliving and you can join our email list to receive uplifting messages, podcast, and business updates, and discounts on high-frequency products just for our freqy community.

Jaclyn: 30:27

Cheers to high-frequency living!