Why do some people tend to sabotage themselves?

Many times, fear and doubts make us freeze and avoid us to take action, while disguising themselves as rational arguments.

There are a lot of example of common actions that are self sabotaging for the person like a guy who goes out with a girl he really likes, however moments before the date he is not very well and cancels the date. Or perhaps a girl who has started a new project that can mean a great change and advancement in her life, but she never has time to finish it so she never really starts what could potentially be a life changing event. Perhaps we have all been there sometime.

On numerous occasions people are involved in this type of dynamics. In certain cases the circumstances aren’t really helpful, but in most cases the main obstacle is the person himself, who for fear of future changes becomes a victim to self-sabotage.

What is this sabotage all about?

Self-sabotage is any action that gets in the way of your intent. On a diet? Birthday cake calories at the office obviously don’t count. Need to reach a deadline for an assignment? You’ll focus much better if you finish the next episode in your Netflix queue, right? Thinking about breaking up with your partner? You’ll get right into it after you rearrange the living room furniture first. | Source

Self-sabotage and all the activities and actions that concern it, are unconscious acts that manifest themselves in moments that can be of great change in the lives of people. These behaviors tend to complicate the achievement of goals through unconscious acts that make us waste our valuable time.

The goal of this unconscious sabotage is to keep the person in a comfortable state, where everything is easy or, at least, foreseeable. It is also a type of unconscious defense mechanism in which the person tries to avoid situations that can be somehow painful, or stressful or unknown circumstances that can cause anxiety.

Why does this happen?

There are a lot of possible explanations for people to sabotage themselves. Taking into account the following examples, it will be easier for anyone reading to avoid them and thus more easily to achieve whatever goal must be accomplished. Some examples are:

Having little self control
Having little self-esteem
Having internal conflicts
Having little confidence in oneself
Having problems prioritizing goals
Having a fear of changing and facing difficult situations

All these signs and traces that inhabit the mind of the person appear unexpectedly, gaining control over the person and his actions that results in some jamming in the projects and possibilities of evolution, of self-development.

Sabotaging oneself is an externalization of all those issues the person can not accept from himself, all those beliefs based on fears and that, over time, because of not being confronted, have gained influence and power within him.

Therefore, these harmful ideas and behaviors are only a symptom that there is something deep in the mind that must be examined. Although in many occasions trying to understand these thoughts is not pleasant at all, this self-evaluation can be an opportunity to move forward and to learn to face any future situation that may arise.

We can’t change the past. Yet, as adults, we can identify the self sabotaging thoughts that we’ve internalized and consciously choose to act against them. When we fall victim to our critical inner voice and listen to its directives, we often engage in self limiting or self sabotaging behaviors that hurt us in our daily lives. | Source

How can we tell if we are suffering from this?

There are some key attributes of self-sabotage, although it is important to note that a person who tends to self-sabotage might not do it every time but just in certain conditions. That is, a person who sabotages himself without realizing it when facing a certain aspect or circumstance of his life does not have to do it in all the others aspects of his life.

These behaviors appear above all in moments when there is a great deal of responsibility or when the person must make a decision that implies an important change in his live.

Some commons symptoms in people sabotaging themselves are the following:

Insecurity
A sensation of having no control
Little confidence in oneself
Intense fear

Nevertheless, it is perfectly normal for anyone to have all of these feelings when we are about to undergo some kind of significant change in our life, it is something that everyone experiences to a greater or lesser degree.

The most important difference between people who sabotage themselves and those who do not, is that those who do are driven by fear and by their beliefs that they will not achieve whatever it is they want, while the others (people who don’t sabotage themselves) are able to leave behind the fears they might have and overcome all the thoughts that cause them a feeling of insecurity.

What we need to do when facing any type of important event is not to avoid the fear, but to be aware of it and act accordingly, without letting it invade our mind and much less paralyze us.

When the person becomes aware of both their fears and their own beliefs, in many cases irrational, it is much easier to choose the most appropriate decisions and avoid carrying out actions that sabotage or obstruct their aspirations.

Common ways of self-sabotage

Avoid finishing tasks

In these cases the person begins a considerable number of projects or tasks, but eventually he ends up abandoning them. Usually, the person tends to dedicate numerous hours of work and effort, and then give up when he is about to finish it.

The explanation found for this way of sabotaging is that if the person does not finish any project, they will never have to face the possibility of failing or not knowing how to live up to the subsequent demands that this possible success will bring to their lives.

Excessive procrastination

It consists in the habit of postponing or delaying those duties that the person must necessarily finish up, replacing them with other less significant or simpler and attractive ones.

This habit is one of the most common and probably every person has at least one time delay something without proper justification. The reasons for carrying it out are very varies. Some of these reasons may be that the person does not really like the task that needs to be carried out or, and in the case of professional or personal projects, the fear of not having a good final result is also quite important and might cause some delays as well.

In this way, if the person is delaying the completion of the task and does not invest all the necessary efforts and resources will have a justification if this does not turn out as he expected

Perfectionism

This is the ideal excuse to never finish a task. Using the excuse of perfectionism the person finds a very good reason to avoid finishing the task without appearing to really not know if he wants to achieve what he is working for.

There are two possible excuses in this case. Either the person thinks that since he can not do something perfectly directly, he does not do it, or that by constant checking and rechecking he avoids finishing the project.

Conclusion

As you can imagine, since self-sabotaging is something that mostly happens unconsciously, everyone can do it without even realizing it.

The behavior is so logical and natural to the person engaging in it that he or she often doesn’t know it’s happening. | Source

If you feel you are being less productive or less efficient than normal, there is a little chance you might be sabotaging yourself for some reason. This is why, sometimes if we want to increase the amount of work we want to accomplish but for some reason are unable to do so, the thing we should do is to self analyze us to see what are the implications of doing that task in a wrong way. And if the implications are very ugly, we need to come to terms with the possibility of failing and overcome it, in the end, we all know no one is perfect and making mistakes from time to time is absolutely normal.

Once we are in peace with our possibility of failing, we will probably be able to finish whatever task we are doing, and recover our normal level of productivity o efficiency.