Self-Sabotage

Why Do People Self Sabotage?

I wrote this a few years ago. This is not intended to be curative in any way, rather it simply identifies the many ways I have seen people sabotage themselves over the years of my life. Self-awareness is the first step to helping one’s self.

1. A Blind Narrative
-Your narrative is your story of what your life is, and your way of being. It is both conscious and unconscious (you are aware of your behavior, but WHY you are the way you are runs deeper than that).

A narrative that begins to sabotage you, but you cannot see it, I call this the blind narrative, because you are not dealing with people's actions in the singular, but rather their WAY of Being. Its extremely difficult to make a person "see" the problems they are causing themselves, because the preceding consequences/effects of are usually positive. What is causing the issues is also what makes them who they are, and often is responsible for their success.

Self-sabotage by way of the blind narrative is NOT intentional, nor is it direct. This the oldest child who was raised to take care of everybody, and grows up to neglect their personal wellness. This is the Type A high performer whose working obsessions begins to interfere with relationships. This is the people pleaser whose skill at making everyone get along leave them silently resentful but too prideful to be honest with themselves.

This type of self-sabotage can manifest over years, until it creates deeply entrenched problems (consequences have consequences), and it can lead to total blowouts, either by the individual, or from the people they know. These often catch one party off guard, as they may not have known anything was wrong. Additionally, they can also lead to an existential crisis "how did I get here", and "I thought I was doing all the right things".

2. Self limiting beliefs
-This one is the most obvious. You have personal beliefs that handicap your capabilities. I encounter these with clients all the time

"Im not meant to be fit/athletic/strong/be the buff guy/inshape guy/fit girl/athletic girl/strong girl"

Its simply a negative affirmation of what you cannot be, and subsequently carries a subset of beliefs with it of what you cannot do.

Obviously this extends beyond health

You can apply this to relationships, "Im never going to meet X man or woman"

Finances, "I wish I could be rich, but..."

Opportunities "That could never happen for me"

Examples are endless. Self-limiting beliefs arent anything particularly profound. Overcoming them is usually some combo of recognition plus Neuro Linguistic Programming, plus LIVING OUT the new, non limiting belief.

When I tell people to unfuck themselves, self-limiting beliefs are what Im usually referencing

3. You did not really care about the success you had
-Superficial sounding, but this is one runs to the core of a person. I'll speak from experience; when I was fully "in" the fitness industry, and had some degree of popularity, I NEVER TRULY CARED THAT I DID.
I had relationships I had made that I certainly cared about, but the profession itself, it was always a sorry substitute for what I been legitimately passionate about (ballet), and felt true purpose for.

As it was, I never took my reputation with full seriousness, and I always had a degree of snark and acidity on the whole field. I loved working with people, but I the internal side of the fitness industry, and the professional attitudes in it, I had great disdain for.

You do not need to be passionate about something to be successful in. Passion is not a requirement. That said, if you pursue success in something that you, at your core, really do NOT want to be doing, and at the cost of something else (that you really wanted to do),

You can arrive at a place where you success does not mean much to you. And you find yourself acting out in ways that entirely detrimental to it, without clear reason as to why you are doing so.

If you're smart, this would manifest as a conscientious career change. But you're impulsive, you might ruin what you have, and your behavior wont have clear reason, even to you.

4. You didn't want to be "that" person anymore living that life
-This could perhaps be identified as the mid-life crisis if it happens to someone in middle age, but it can happen to younger people. ThIs not so much apathy towards one success, but being sick and tired and being ones self. A person whole way being has become tiresome to them.
This is usually the outcome of living years of one's life according to how others think you should be, but at the cost of your satisfaction as an individual. Your whole existence has a hollowness to it, but you are too invested in the identity of upholding it to do anything about it.

Alternatively (or additionally), the PRESSURE of upholding an identity can start to build, especially if greater responsibility is placed on that identity. You're someone you d'ont want to be, and you in DEEP the more obligations and expectations are placed upon you.

Eventually this starts to manifest as quiet undermining, or impulsive, seemingly out of nowhere aberrant behavioral that breaks with your identity.

Quite often there is no alternative mode of being that the person is after, they simply do not WANT the one they have right now. The life they'd rather be living, or that they wish they had lived, it can be vague, or it may be entirely idealized, and not at all practical.

Regardless, the person wants OUT, and that is not going away.

5. Failure/misery is more familiar to you, and familiarity is comfort
-Also called "you always have to ruin a good thing". People who sabotage in this way to ensure bad outcomes or poisoned situations, it starts in childhood. Thats generalistic and armchair psychologist, but its not something that arises in adults randomly. People that ruin things, repeatedly, they are replaying a childhood drama of some kind (typically a family drama), and that drama always ends tragically.

This plays itself in various motifs

-hurting the ones you love
-lying unnecessarily
-being unable to be honest with anyone
-selective honesty
-pushing people away that you feel get too close
-being unable to handle genuine love or trust
-trusting and loving conditionally
-telling people what they want to hear, at the cost of the truth

For those who are functional and not damaged in this way, the behavior of such people is usually confusing, nonsensible, and they don't need to be acting this way, BUT, for them its normal.

That they repeatedly ruin everything good in their life simply gets folded into their personal narrative that they are fucked up, and good things don't happen for them.

6. The pressures of being a better version of you is too much, the lesser version is easier
-This is folding to the pressure. And this means a lot of different things. Sabotage in this sense is not necessarily intentional, but rather your mental fortitude falters, your control slips, and your management of your life and stresses get away from you.

This might trigger a downward spiral of saying to hell with everything, or it may trigger a crisis where you try to convince yourself you didnt want any of this at all, whatever "this" is.

Or it may be that you simply decide you are always going to slight underperform, and not give your best, because that will take too much out of you.

It may be you NEVER hit the peak then. You always stop yourself right before you'd arrive there. I'd have clients experience this. They are the VPs of Marketing, but the top spot they KNOW they don't quite do enough for, because it just seems like its too much.

2nd place is easier.

And maybe it is, some games are won not by being the winner, but your ranking relative to the number of players playing. You can still come out very much ahead. That said however, when you never take ANYTHING to the edge, and never test yourself, and play with self enforced handicap,

you know. And if it bothers you now that you're not fulfilling potential, it will bother you even more years from now.

-IN a different context, the lesser version of you can be the hedonistic, immature, vice ridden "darkside" of yourself, that Jung would call the shadow, and you never integrate this with your conscious half.

This results in a split-you have a life you might love, but you also have a stronger pull towards the worse parts of yourself that you never reconcile with.

This becomes a tug of war between acting right, and acting how you want. You may even combine them: you'd be amazed at how many highly functional drug addicts, serial philanderers, and general psychos Ive known who are majorly successful.

Fortunately/Unfortunately, this usually ends up unmaking you at some point. At which point everyone wonders "why" you acted this way, and thought it would work out.

7.Pain is more real to you than anything Good
-Another one that starts in childhood. Usually manifests as self-harm, and/or convoluted and complicated relationships with people where they are always getting hurt. For people that grow up in abusive households, they are real victims, but this imprints into making themselves the victim within all future relationships, healthy or not. Pain is internalized constantly, and they are always at the mercy of themselves. Self worth is close to zero, and a stunted martyr personality is often present.

The personality disorder to this one runs deep, as such people can be fully aware they are sabotaging/hurting themselves, but the drama they have in them is entrenched, they feel powerless to stop it.

If this is yourself, you need therapy. Legitimately.

8. Destruction feels more meaningful than production
-These people are my favorites. Not because they are good people (they are terrible), but their is a certain honesty to their behavior. All they know how to do is destroy things. And you can always see this coming, its incredibly predictable. I had a friend like this when I lived in Los Angeles. Men are usually this way more than women (although I had an ex-girlfriend who was this way also. yay me).

Destruction, aggression, antisocial behavior, thats their most powerful mode of interacting, and they react this way almost by default in any stressful scenario. If they are low-IQ, they'll probably end up in prison. If they High-IQ and attractive, they might get away with it their whole life (provided they dont get too violent). They are that person who alternates between being charming, and flying off the handle and breaking everything, (sometimes literally). They'll start fights, be hurtful, trying to take down everything, and then be horribly sorry about when their temper subsides. If you stand up to them fully, (which again, might literally require physically restraining them), they tend to have utter breakdowns like children (which is what they are at heart, hurt kids that used aggression as means of dealing with a cruel reality).

That they self-sabotage is obvious. They don't know any other way to be.

10. It's too hard, and you aren't good enough, and what if you fail?
-This is doubt, that you cannot do it. And fear, that you are an imposter to this and not qualified or capable enough, and terror, that you might fail, and failure you don't know how to handle.

Self-sabotage in this way is not intentional at all. Its your fear that skews your mental state enough where you start bringing it into reality, and then you are in a battle with yourself. This carries its own fear as well, which then amplifies everything else. Fear is a multiplier of itself.

"Man is his own worst enemy".

The great struggle for most people is overcoming this fear in themselves. If you bring this out of you, and defeat it, this fear holds the keys to your personal growth. If it grows inside you though, and you fail to defeat it, it will destroy you.

11. Appeasing other people
-This one is always tragic; someone is succeeding, and their friends, family, spouse does not like it, so they stop. You could call this quitting, but it goes beyond that. Its someone whose choices are always dictated by the opinions of others, and they're unlikely to ever improve themselves, for fear of disproval from whomever's opinion they covet. They'll sometimes stop themselves of their own accord even, because they don't want to make someone else "feel bad" by way of their own success. Or they don't want people to hate them.

This is an enslaved way to live. And you'll die very very bitter.

12. Success Serves Vice Serves Sabotage
-Some people become successful, and they do good things with it. Some people become successful, and then they go and satisfy every hedonistic impulse they have, because they CAN. Not surprisingly, this is a slow slide in degeneracy, as hedonism is never the thing that creates, it only partakes.

Alternatively, some people become successful, and their manner of "handling" it is in numbing themselves to it. Drugs and alcohol WORK for taking you out of your reality, and they work very very well. Unfortunately, they are also addictive, and they tend to be fuel for the fire of bad behavior.

13. Insecurity, and Paranoia
-This one I always find interesting. People that are often high performers, but they never internalize themselves as winners. Their driving motivation is grounded in fear. Nothing is ever enough, good enough, and they can reach very high levels all while feeling like someone might recognize their fear and affirm they don't deserve it/haven't earned it/aren't really meant for it.

The insecurity and paranoia comes out in various ways. Sometimes its minor, other times it dominates the mind, until it eventually starts to color their perceptions, and twists their personality into a fearful narcissist.

This self-sabotage is usually minor, but chronic. Everyone else is always dealing with it, and their mental instability makes them unreliable at times.

14. Catastrophic Thinking (Fear based decision making)
-The is insecurity and paranoia, but taken its extreme end point. When you think of the future, it is hopeful, or filled with disaster? Catastrophic thinking is what I deem the mode of thinking in which a person imagines EVERYTHING that can go wrong, to such an extreme degree that they paralyze themselves with fear. This is a heightened form of anxiety, it goes beyond worrying about the future. When you are imagining things that are completely unrealistic and entertaining fantastical "what if" scenario, you are grinding your future to a halt. People that think that was overanalyze their fears, and they resultantly do very little with their lives as they are simply too scared.

15. Living in the Past
-The past will kill you if you let it. It will be replayed in your mind over and over again, and you will entrain your biology to relive it over and over, and the stress of this will affect every level of your health down to the atomic. You will atomize yourself in a person who cannot move forward with their life, as your whole way of being will be lived for a bygone memory that you keep alive out of fear of the unknown. Pain is real, and people will choose a past that hurts them over a future that they cannot know what is coming, and they are too frightened to create.

if you are living in the past, your are already spiritually dead. Its simply waiting for the physical body to die as well.

Not the way to live.

16. Procrastination
-This probably should have been first. Procrastination, EVERYONE does it. I don't believe there is any human on the planet that has been slow to act in some regard or another. The issue with procrastination is not that you do it, but what it leads to. It creates false promises, gives time for overanalysis and talking yourself out of things, and it cultivates general laziness.

Action is the solution for this, plain and simple. When in doubt, get moving and stay moving.

17. The Comparison Trap (We Covet What We Cannot Be)
-There will always be someone bigger taller richer smarter more educated prettier more beautiful more gifted more athletic more persuasive more interesting more SOMETHING THAN YOU.

ALWAYS.

Comparison is the thief of joy and the killer of gratitude. We are not equal being, never will be, and never should be either. The world is what it is because of the diversity of human thought and individuality. Sameness is death.

We will covet what we see and what we wish we could be, and we will hate others for who they are, and hate ourselves more. Comparison creates a victim mentality, and once you are a victim of yourself, all of reality will work against you.

Do not get into the comparison trap. The envy will poison you from the inside out until everything in your life is toxified and not good enough because somewhere, someone, there is someone that has more/is more than what you are.

18. Selfishness, and Pushing People Away
-Want to ruin yourself? Make yourself your mental origin point, but then take that a step further and assume you should the origin priority of everyone else you know. This is one of the ironies of being selfish. We'd like to believe our actions affect no one but us, but then we want others to be there for us and cater to our needs. Both of these are false ways to live.

Seflishness always leads to alienation.

From another perspective, Selfishness also leads to alienation. You do not want to admit it, that the instinct to drive away those closest to us, its not being a martyr, its disregard for the other person and that relationship. Pushing others away keeps the focus on YOU, your favorite person. And the people who might help you, you've shut them up under the guise of caring about them.

OR, maybe you are that asshole that alienates everyone you ever make a relationship with, because you cannot handle anyone knowing you, and your ability to bond is broken.

Whichever it is, its going to ruin you sooner or later. You will find yourself lonely and with no one, and that will be your fault.

19. Negativity Obsession
-This is not the same as people that desire pain, but rather people that have an unhealthy obsession with things going "wrong", some way, some how. They focus all their energy on the negative, regardless of how pointless. Ironically, they are not necessarily catastrophic thinkers, in their minds, they are being analytical and helpful in constantly pointing out everything that can wrong. They call their cynicism and pessimism being "realistic". The reality is that they are highly discouraging, and they themselves are often deeply insecure people who feel unaccomplished.

20. Drama Addiction
-No one EVER wants to admit to being this person, and the ego attachment to this runs down to core of the soul. At the same time, everyone has likely engaged in gossip and dramatics and preening satisfaction in others misfortune and seeing things go wrong. People that cause "drama"; they want people to talk about them and they dont care how, they want to interfere and cause dissension, they want to be cruel and act blameless and to see others fail. This is a decidedly female trait, although they are men that engage in this (albet in a different, much more Machiavellian way)

This behavior is sabotage not because it necessarily ruins the person outright, but because it distracts them from doing anything else. Some people live to be this way, and it occupies all of their time.

I've seen this happen online with successful people, or simply people who have great potential, they get caught within the drama web of the particular sphere, and they waste their energy shit talking, attacking their fellows, and generally creating discordance where there wasn't any.

Quite plainly, its a massive waste of time.

21. Settling
-You will always know when you accepted less than what you could have had. Or when you stop yourself, short of what you could have done. Life is defined by compromises, we cannot have EVERYTHING that we want. But when you settle, when you willingly and fully resign yourself to a lesser version of yourself, life will get get smaller and smaller with time. Those compromises will be a gradual tightening of the cord around your own neck, until you realize that what you have, you don't want, and what you have, its binded you to a life that you did not want to live, but do. And that is a bitter bitter fruit to digest.

Summary

Hopefully I've given you all something to think about.