Self-sabotage 154 Others don’ t choose high powered, pressured careers, because they want to enjoy life and spend more time with their family or on other projects. Maybe their personality does not cope well with stress – others thrive on it. With good reason creative people will avoid these kinds of jobs because they know that stress tramples creativity. In just the same way, people who want to lose weight might like the idea of being slimmer, just as people like the idea of earning more pay, but when it comes down to it they decide against it. Or, more correctly, their unconscious decides for them. For example, one of the most common reasons people give me for why they want to lose weight is to be more attractive to their partner or to potential partners. This issue is much more problematic than it seems. The reality is that successfully making ourselves more attractive can come with bigger problems. What if becoming more attractive means that your partner might want more sex, or, if you are single, that the opposite sex might become more interested in you sexually? This is a very real success stress. Often I see the success stress affecting the partner. As my client loses weight, their partner gets stressed by their being more attractive to others and starts to buy them chocolates, take them out to dinner or cook them sumptuous( read‘ fattening’) meals. Sabotage by partners can be a real problem if it is not dealt with early on. One of the success stresses that comes with being slimmer is, apparently, being more attractive. Now, what if one of the reasons for your being overweight in the first place was to be less attractive!? Sexual abuse involves one in four girls and one in six boys in the general population. In very obese people lining up for stomach surgery for weight loss, one in three has a history of sexual abuse. Nearly all of my overweight clients who were sexually abused come to realize through psychotherapy that they use their weight as protective armor against would-be abusers. I think you can appreciate how, for these people, unless they deal with this issue, their unconscious mind