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Self-Sabotage: Why You Do It and How to Stop for Good
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Self-sabotage
Self-sabotage can be defined as the action through which you undermine your worth and goals. Even though you want something, you do actions that are contrary to achieving your target. There are mainly two types of self-sabotaging behaviors, as follows:
- conscious self-sabotage: you do the actions that will end up undermining your goals consciously.
- unconscious self-sabotage: you do actions that will end up undermining your goals without being aware of this.
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There are 5 basic steps to doing this:
- Understand the need your self-sabotage fills
- Identify alternative healthy behaviors that fill that need
- Anticipate and plan for obstacles
- Boost your tolerance for uncomfortable feelings
- Clarify your values
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Self-sabotage and its diversity
Self-sabotage can appear in our lives under many shapes:
- procrastination: putting off what we should be doing now
- substance abuse: consuming alcohol and drug often leads to us not reaching our goals
- chronic lateness: this will usually result in you being perceived as a not so trustworthy person
- stress eating: we all know the end of this one- poor diet or even illness
- intimacy and commitment issues: the negative consequence refers to you ending up alone.
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Self-sabotage and its causes
Studies revealed two main causes of self-sabotage:
- modeling: individuals tend to self-sabotage as they grew up seeing this in their parents' behavior
- power: persons may tend to self-sabotage by entering into relationships with people who are, one way or another, inferior to them
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Avoid self-sabotage
In order to stop the self-sabotage, have a look at the below four steps:
- get to know and understand why you feel the need to self-sabotage
- once you have identified that need, check out ways you can fill it without having to involve self-sabotage
- if you have already found the proper alternative, think about ways to identify and overcome possible obstacles
- build up tolerance when dealing with unpleasant feelings
- make sure you really know your values and goals
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Why You Self-Sabotage
For many people, the fear of rejection and the fear of engulfment keep them out of relationships.
These fears are based on false beliefs, such as success or failure defines my worth as...
How You Self-Sabotage
Relationships:
- You keep yourself isolated.
- You make so many demands on your partner that he or she feels smothered and ends the relationship.
- You judge everyone you meet as not being good enough for you.
Work:
- You keep putting off looking for the kind of job you want.
- You are able to work, and say you want to, but keep living off other means.
- You stay in a job that you hate.
- You keep yourself uneducated regarding doing what you really want to do.
Healing Your Self-Sabotaging Behavior
- Notice self-judgments.
- Shift your definition of your worth, from outcomes to effort. Decide that you will define your worth by the loving actions you take for yourself and others.
- Consciously see mistakes and failure as stepping stones to success, rather than as definitions of your worth.
- Learn to be kind and compassionate toward your own feelings.
- Make a decision that you are willing to lose another person rather than lose yourself.
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Key Ideas
Sabotaging yourself
Sabotaging yourself and your relationships create unnecessary pain and self-generated stress.
To stop sabotaging yourself, you must first recognize when you’re getting in your own way....
Know your typical thinking patterns
Our personality and life experiences predispose us to dominant modes of thinking, but these can be biased in ways that are unhelpful in the majority of situations.
Maybe you tend to worry people are angry at you when usually this isn’t the case. Or you tend to hesitate too much in making decisions.
When you thoroughly understand your personal thinking errors, you’ll be able to correct these, and this will become easier and almost automatic with practice.
Prioritize one-time behaviors that reduce stress
Streamline your workflow so you can get simple things done without significant willpower.
For example, instead of having a container for pens and scissors in only one room of the house, have these in three different rooms to ensure better tidying.
Strategies like these save time and, more importantly, help free you up mentally.
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Key Ideas
Self-sabotage
Understand self-sabotage
Self-destructive behaviors can become habits and can continually undermine your success and happiness.
Self-sabotage is when we want something, but somehow we never accomplish it, because somewhere deep in our subconscious we’re fighting against that goal:
- Our disorganization distracts us.
- We’re constantly overthinking all of our decisions.
Recognize self-sabotaging habits
- Procrastination. Start setting deadlines and mini-deadlines to work toward your objective.
- Negative self-talk/negative thinking. Be patient with yourself; be kind to yourself. Work to build yourself up.
- Perfectionism. It is an impossible standard that keeps you from moving forward.