Self-Sabotage: It’s No Laughing Matter
Have you ever tried making healthier food choices, but veered from your meal plan four different times in a week?
Are you looking for love, but when things get serious in a relationship, you run the other way as fast as you can?
Perhaps you have been putting in overtime, stayed late every night for a month, gone above and beyond, all to be considered for a work promotion and then skip an important meeting with your largest client.
We all know someone (perhaps you?) who genuinely desires something better in life.
However, they always seem to find one way or another mess things up. It almost seems like a cruel joke one plays on themselves. Some call it standing in your own way or being your own worst enemy. In the psychology world we call it self-sabotage. Self-sabotage is no laughing matter. It is a source for unworldly frustration, loss of time and energy.
According to Psychology Today, behavior is said to be self-sabotaging when it interferes with daily functioning and long-standing goals. The most common self-sabotaging behaviors include procrastination, self-medication with drugs or alcohol, comfort eating, and engaging in interpersonal conflict.
Self-sabotage is often an unconscious process driven by fear (fear of rejection, fear of failure, and fear of intimacy), self-hatred driven by false beliefs about the self, low self-worth, past traumas and shame.
Self-sabotaging behaviors get in the way of people creating new healthy patterns, achieving success in goals they set, and overall creating a deep meaningful connection with themselves and the world around them.
So how does one start creating healthier behaviors and stop self-sabotaging behaviors?
1. Practicing willingness. Willingness to look at our behaviors and take responsibility for them without justifying it, blaming others or assuming the victim role.
2. Practice self-acceptance.
a. Try treating yourself like you would a friend. Reminding yourself that all humans make mistakes and that no one is perfect. Mistakes are how we learn and grow.
b. Try using an encouraging personal mantra (short phrase) that you say to yourself on a daily basis.
3. Build self-efficacy by working on creating new habits. Set a goal and then break it down into small objectives with even smaller steps. Try and take one small step each day.
Over time, one’s reflections, consistent effort in use of affirmations and new behavior practices will be rewarded by decreasing the momentum of self-sabotage. Thus, creating a new momentum of thought and behavior patterns moving you to your desired outcome.
By Ashlea Palafox
References: Psychology Today
