Self-sabotaging is when you exhibit behaviors that hurt yourself or hurt relationships in your life. You may do this by self-harming, procrastination, overeating, pushing people away or putting yourself in situations you know can hurt you like with drugs and alcohol. This includes times when you binge watch the office while eating a box of pizza and acting like you don’t have work that needs to get done. Most times self-sabotaging is a subconscious behavior that people aren’t aware of until someone points it out.
You’ll often notice yourself saying “why did I do that?’ or ” why does this always happen to me?” Self-sabotaging can be hard because it isn’t an outside source doing it to us but rather us doing it to ourselves and we can’t exactly understand why it’s happening.
People may try to prevent good things from happening because they feel they are undeserving. This is also a phenomenon known as impostor syndrome. Impostor syndrome is when you feel a bunch of feelings like inadequacy that keeps happening despite any success.
You may feel like you are a fraud and that you don’t deserve anything that good that happens. These feelings may stem from an abusive childhood where you were taught to feel you were not important or your needs were not important. You may have even been taught that your needs were an inconvenience. Or it may come from such intense negative self-talk where you make sure to remind yourself how inadequate you are.
There are a lot of things we can’t control in life but if there is something we can control, it’s how we react to outside circumstances. And sometimes we react by doing those self-sabotaging behaviors like using drugs, hurting ourselves, overeating, and even under eating. Controlling things when we feel out of control gives us a sense of comfort that we can at least take something in our own hands. It isn’t the best but at least it is something we feel like we can hold on to and make it a more controlled pain than an out of control one.
This is a big leader in self-sabotaging behavior. Fear of failure will cause us to look for reasons to not get things done or avoid things we should be doing just to get away from that anxiety. Fear of abandonment will cause us to make trouble in our relationships or behave in a way that keeps others away so we don’t have to deal with that feeling of rejection or pain. Get them before they get me. Any type of fear could lead to self-sabotaging behavior so we don’t have to experience those negative feelings and face our fears.
I know this one sounds weird but sometimes when people get bored they stir their own pot! Like in reality TV, you ever notice there are some people that will go out of their way to start trouble for themselves? Sometimes it’s because they want to escape that boredom. When it comes to your life, maybe it’s been mundane and you just want something different to happen so you start to notice yourself doing some things that could cause you trouble.
We are used to certain things happening so if something is maybe going too well or seems too good to be true, we’ll do things to prevent it from happening. To us, it feels easier if we stay at a crappy job or be in a bad marriage. That is what we are used to. It feels unnatural for something better to come along and so it is easier to stay in the familiarity of failure.
We as humans work in patterns. You may notice yourself start to act a certain way when a certain situation is about to happen. For instance, let’s say when you start to get close with someone you usually will do things to push that person away out of fear of hurt or abandonment or rejection. Instead of doing what you usually do, start to pay attention and take notice in the unhealthy habits. Even if that means going through past events, and noticing certain things you do when x,y, and z happens. That way in the future it will be easier to recognize.
After you are able to recognize your unhealthy behavior, it is beneficial to replace it with healthier behavior! Some healthy behavior would be to pause before you are about to do something and really consider the outcome before you do that thing. Remember how much it hurts you everytime you do it or what could happen if you continue to do it.
Communicate your feelings with the ones closest to you. If you are getting urges to hurt yourself, replace it by doing an activity that makes you happy or let out your feelings in a healthier way like journaling or therapy. Whatever it is, there are much healthier coping mechanisms to deal with your struggles.
Learning it is the easier part. Actually applying it is where it gets hard. Pay attention to yourself and your feelings. Are you enforcing healthier behaviors you learned into your life? Whenever you are struggling make sure to keep your inner circle in the loop. Let them know if you are scared or feeling like you are having a hard time. Make sure you are always trying to practice healthier behaviors when you get urges to self-sabotage. And even if you do mess up, it isn’t a big deal. Get back up and try again.
As time goes on you will notice yourself practicing less self-sabotaging behaviors and more helpful behaviors towards you and your future. Like most things in life, it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort and isn’t something that happens overnight. So don’t give up on yourself when things seem hard or you feel fearful.
What do you guys think? Do you feel like you self-sabotage? Do you have any tips you can share with anyone else? Leave it all in the comments below!
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[…] you self sabotage, push away others, and/or do things only for others and not yourself. You just give and don’t […]