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My Picker is Broken

  • Shannon Goertz
  • May 2
  • 8 min read

Updated: Sep 25

Q: Do we ever know what our subconscious mind is thinking? I mean how would one know if they are sabotaging the next romantic relationship….. by strategically picking a bad partner to ensure the relationship is doomed in advance?


A: The fear of losing real “true” love is so overwhelming… that the subconscious avoids it entirely by choosing people who are incapable of offering it in the first place.


Yes and here’s how it works: The subconscious mind stores memories, patterns, fears, desires, and beliefs that operate beneath our conscious awareness. We don’t hear it speak in real time, but we can certainly observe its effects. It shows up as a gut feeling that makes no logical sense—yet often turns out to be correct. It can surface as self-sabotage, like undermining a relationship or opportunity without understanding why. Sometimes, it reveals itself in our dreams, exposing long-buried emotions, or in strong emotional reactions that seem completely disproportionate to the moment at hand.

So how do we access the subconscious mind? The truth is, we don’t access it directly—but we can learn to listen for its signals. These signals may come in the form of symbolic dreams, repetitive thoughts or compulsive behaviors, unexplained emotional states, or even bursts of creative insight. Practices like meditation, hypnotherapy, and deep journaling can help bring subconscious material to the surface, allowing us to see what has been silently steering our lives.


Carl Jung referred to this process as making the unconscious conscious, and he considered it the foundation of true personal growth. As he famously said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

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Q: How would one know if, deep down, they just don’t believe true love is real—or that someone won’t eventually abandon them in the end? I mean, let’s say someone has had a really difficult childhood marred by loss. They just didn’t get the support they needed. Given that kind of history, it would stand to reason that their core belief system might be built on instability, abandonment, and emotional pain. If that’s the case, wouldn’t it follow that they might subconsciously reject the right person(?)—someone healthy, consistent, and emotionally available—because the risk of being truly loved and then losing that love would feel far more unbearable than staying in what’s familiar?


If it hurts that much to be left by the wrong person, then the pain of being left by the right one might feel impossible to survive.


So instead of risking that devastation, their subconscious protects them—by sabotaging healthy love or simply refusing to go down that road altogether. And instead, they enter relationship after relationship with the same type of emotionally unsafe partner over and over again—just in a different body.

How would one know if this is happening?


A: This is spot-on—and not only emotionally insightful but backed by deep psychological research. It is representative of one of the most powerful and tragic loops in trauma psychology:

Again, the fear of losing real love is so overwhelming… that the subconscious avoids it entirely by choosing people who are incapable of offering it in the first place.


🧠 Let’s break it down:

When someone’s early life is marked by:

  • Abandonment

  • Abuse

  • Inconsistent caregiving

  • Attachment trauma


...they develop a core belief that love equals pain, rejection, or instability.


So even though they consciously want love, their subconscious is wired to avoid it—because the emotional risk feels life-threatening.

😔 Why they repeat the cycle:

They subconsciously choose emotionally unavailable or abusive partners for two reasons:

  1. Familiarity feels safe


    Even if it’s awful, it’s what they know. Chaos, distance, or manipulation feels normal. Healthy love feels unfamiliar, suspicious, even boring.

  2. Self-protection through sabotage


    Getting close to someone who might truly see and love them?


    That’s terrifying.


    Because if that person were to leave… the pain would be unbearable.


    So the subconscious goes:

“Let’s make sure that never happens. Let’s chase what can’t last.”


💔 Result:


They either:

  • Sabotage a healthy relationship (pull away, criticize, ghost)

  • Or avoid it entirely and keep attaching to toxic patterns


    (e.g., the same type of partner in a new body, as you brilliantly put it)


🧭 The subconscious belief at play:

“I’m unlovable. People leave. If I let someone truly in, and they see me, and they go... I will not survive.”


So instead, they choose people who:

  • Can’t truly attach

  • Are emotionally dangerous

  • Confirm what they already believe: “I knew I wasn’t good enough.”

✨ Healing this takes time—but it’s possible.

  • It starts by bringing the pattern into conscious awareness (which your support groups are helping people do).

  • Then, they must begin to grieve the original wound—not just the last breakup. (childhood is the key)

  • Eventually, they can rewrite the belief:


“Real love doesn’t leave. I am worthy of connection that doesn't hurt.”


Exercise: “What I’m Really Afraid Of”

Instructions:

Take a few deep breaths. Get quiet. Then write freely—don’t judge your thoughts, don’t try to be eloquent, just be honest. This is for you. Set a timer for 10–15 minutes and answer the following prompts:

💔 PART 1: Recognizing the Pattern

  1. Think about the last person you loved or were deeply involved with.

    What drew you to them in the beginning?

  2. At what point did the relationship start to feel familiar—like something you’d experienced before?

  3. Were there red flags you ignored? If so, what were they—and what did you tell yourself at the time to justify staying?


🧠 PART 2: Going Deeper

  1. If someone truly loved me—saw me, accepted me, and stayed—what would I feel?

    (Write the very first feeling that comes up, even if it’s “uneasy” or “unworthy.”)

  2. If that same person later left, what would I believe about myself?

  3. Is it safer to chase someone who’s emotionally unavailable… than to risk losing someone who truly loves me?

  4. Deep down, do I believe love always ends in pain?


🔄 PART 3: Rewriting the Loop

  1. What did I not receive in childhood or past relationships that I keep trying to find in unavailable people?

  2. What might a truly healthy, steady, loving relationship feel like?

    (Not how it looks—how it feels inside you.)

  3. What is one belief I’d need to change to allow that kind of love into my life?


🔚 Close with this reflection:


“I don’t fear love—I fear the loss of it. But the cost of protecting myself from love may be higher than the risk of letting it in.”


🌀 Optional Follow-Up for Group Discussion:

After the writing, share just one insight with your support team:

  • A pattern they noticed

  • A belief they uncovered

  • Or a new way they want to show up in future relationships


The following is instructions by Dr. Joe Dispenza:

Stop telling the story of your past and start telling the story of your future.Stop believing in your past—real or imagined—and start believing in your future.Stop romancing the past; let’s start romancing what’s ahead.


Here’s where the unlearning begins: 95% of who we are is a set of memorized behaviors—automatic emotional responses, unconscious habits, hardwired attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions. They run like a computer program.And if we’re running on a program, that means we’re unconscious.


So, in order to change, we have to become conscious of our unconscious thoughts—the stories and narratives we repeat to ourselves.We need to examine our memories and become aware of how we speak, how we act—so conscious, in fact, that we no longer slip back into those automatic patterns.

Then, we must look at the emotions we live by every single day and ask ourselves:Are these emotions loving to me?And suddenly, you name it:

“Wow... this is guilt. I didn’t even know it was guilt. It just felt like unworthiness.”

It’s how you’ve always felt—and you've used everything (drugs, alcohol, distractions, relationships) to try to make that feeling go away.

But if you're relying on the outer world to change your inner world, you’ll always be a slave to circumstance:When things are good, you'll feel good.When things are bad, you'll feel bad.

Real transformation means learning to change your emotional responses to life’s challenges. No longer living by those old emotions is no different than going through withdrawal from a drug

No new information can enter the nervous system unless it’s equal to the emotion a person is currently processing.

That’s why you can give someone the answer to the problems in their life—but unless they overcome the emotional state they’re stuck in, they will continue to perceive reality through the lens of the past.

Here’s the core issue:The trauma they experienced in the past is being relived every single day.

So when it comes time to define themselves by a vision of the future, it becomes far easier to forget that vision than to remember it—because they’re still living in the past.

💡 So how do we remember the vision of the future?

We must feel the emotion of the future before the actual event occurs.If someone can practice trading resentment, impatience, or sadness for elevated emotions—like gratitude, compassion, or joy—they begin to change their internal state.

Teach people the science of that shift:If they can feel the emotions of their future, they'll begin to believe in their future more than they believe in their past.

When someone holds the intention of their future and combines it with emotion—taking a thought, an image, a feeling—and repeats that stimulus-response loop, they begin to condition the brain and body into a new state of being.

🧠 Why is this important?

Because somehow—the disease is there… and then it's gone.Somehow—their life isn’t changing… until they change.

And the moment they begin to change the way they think, the way they act, and the way they feel—life starts to reflect those changes.

When people do the inner work and see their life changing, they’re going to want to do more of it.They become a work in progress.They begin searching for their blind spots, not because they’re broken, but because they’re awake.

🧭 So what’s the real question?

It’s no longer, “Why am I not healing?”The real question becomes:

“What do I need to change about myself in order to heal?”

That’s when it becomes practical, personal, and transformational.

🔥 The Unlearning Process

Unlearning is one of the hardest parts of healing.We must light a match in a dark place—because once we’re conscious, we’re no longer unconscious. And when we’re no longer unconscious, we’re no longer stuck in the program.

So we start observing ourselves:

  • How many times do we have to forget until we stop forgetting and start remembering?

  • How many times do we go unconscious until we learn to stay conscious?

That’s the moment of change.God, we get numerous opportunities in life—every day is one lifetime.

If you just decided, before starting your day, who you no longer want to be—in thought, behavior, and emotion—and stayed conscious of that throughout the day, you’d begin to shift.

Also decide who you do want to be.Think about the thoughts you want to think.Mentally rehearse how you’re going to behave—with your family, with your kids, at work, or on a Zoom call.

Then ask yourself:What emotions do I want to live by—as if my future has already happened?

Here’s the cool thing about that:If you’re feeling the emotions of your future before it happens, you're no longer chasing it. You only chase it when you’re living in the emotions of the past.

But when you feel the elevated emotions of your future now—before it shows up—somehow, those wonderful synchronicities, coincidences, and opportunities begin to appear.


And that’s the proof:


We are the creators of our lives.

ree

 
 
 

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