“Why do I keep doing this?” “How can this keep happening to me?”
You may ask yourself these questions if you feel trapped in patterns that are causing problems in your life and keeping you from achieving your goals. Although you try to make a change and break these patterns, somehow you end up in the same place over and over again. If this sounds familiar, you may be self-sabotaging. Self-sabotage refers to behaviors or thought patterns that hold you back and prevent you from doing what you want to do.
What does this look like?
You can sabotage yourself in a number of ways. Some are obvious, but others are a little harder to recognize.
- Blaming others when things go wrong: Sometimes bad things just happen without anyone being to blame. Sure, some mishaps may just be someone else’s fault, but that’s not always the case. If you tend to blame others when things go wrong, it may be worth taking a closer look at the role you played in what happened.
- Choosing to break up when things aren’t going well: There’s nothing wrong with disengaging from situations that aren’t meeting your needs. Sometimes it may even be the best solution. But it’s usually wise to take a step back and ask yourself if you really tried.
- Procrastination: Have you ever found yourself stuck on an important task? You’re far from alone in this. You’ve prepared, researched, and sat down to get started, only to find that you just can’t get started. Your motivation has completely disappeared. So you dodge the task by cleaning out the fridge, cleaning out your junk drawer, or starting a movie marathon. Procrastination can occur for no apparent reason, but it usually has a deeper cause, such as: feeling overwhelmed by what you need to do, having difficulty managing time, doubting your abilities or skills
- Disputes with friends or partners: You can subtly undermine yourself (and harm your relationships) in several ways. You may always be ready to argue, even about things that don’t really matter, like who picked out the last restaurant you went to. Or you may do things to provoke reactions, such as leaving a mess in the kitchen or intentionally “forgetting” important dates. On the other hand, you may be easily offended or take things personally, whether they’re directed at you or not.
- Dating people who aren’t right for you: Self-sabotaging behaviors often occur in relationships. Dating people who aren’t right for you is a common form of relationship self-sabotage. It could be they continue to date similar people even though their relationships keep ending badly. They try to work with a partner who has completely different goals for the future. You stay in a relationship that isn’t working Or you want children, but your partner doesn’t. Everything else works, so you stay in the relationship, secretly hoping he’ll change his mind. By falling into these patterns, you prevent yourself from finding someone who is a better match for you in the long run.
- Difficulty expressing your needs: If you have a hard time standing up for yourself, you’ll also have a hard time getting all of your needs met. This can happen in: family among friends at work in romantic relationships in everyday interactions.
- Putting yourself down: People often set much higher standards for themselves than they do for others. When you fail to meet these standards, you might give yourself some pretty harsh feedback:
- “I can’t do anything right.”
- “I won’t make it, so why should I bother?”
- “Wow, I really messed up. I’m terrible at this.”
Whether you criticize yourself in front of others or have a habit of negative self-talk, the same thing can happen: Your words may eventually be taken as truth. Believing these criticisms can promote an attitude of self-defeat and keep you from wanting to try again. Finally, you might give up before you even begin.
What causes it?
Self-sabotage happens when you do certain things that were adaptive in one context but are no longer necessary. In other words, these behaviors helped you adapt to a previous situation, like a traumatic childhood or toxic relationship, and survive the challenges you faced there. They may have soothed you or defended you. But these methods of coping can cause difficulties when your situation changes.
Patterns learned in childhood
Past relationship dynamics
Fear of failure
A need for control
Tips for overcoming it
- Identify the behaviors: It’s not always easy to examine your actions deeply enough to note patterns of self-sabotage. If you feel comfortable examining your behavior to find patterns, it helps to look at areas of life where things seem to regularly go wrong. Do any common factors stand out? For example, maybe you detach from relationships and begin picking fights once your partner says, “I love you.” Or maybe you have a pattern of quitting jobs right before your annual review.
- Learn what sets you off: Once you figure out how you sabotage yourself, take note of when you do these things. What makes you feel like you have to act out? Maybe an angry tone in your partner’s voice reminds you of being yelled at in childhood. You always shut down, even when the anger isn’t directed at you.
- Practice getting comfortable with failure: It’s normal to feel afraid of rejection, failure, and other emotional pain. To manage this fear, work on accepting the realities of failure and pain. This is a hard task, and it won’t happen overnight. Start small by attempting to view your next failure, whether it’s a relationship gone sour or a missed opportunity at work, as a possibility.
- Talk about it: If you notice certain patterns keep appearing in your relationships, try talking to the people you’re closest to about them. You might try saying this to your partner: “I want our relationship to work, but I’m afraid of it failing. If I seem to shut down or pull away, it’s because I’m afraid of losing you. I’m trying to work through it, but I don’t want you to think I don’t care in the meantime.”
- Identify what you really want: Self-sabotage can happen when you’re looking for a way out. These behaviors help suggest something about your situation isn’t working for you. Getting to know yourself better and exploring what you truly want from life can help prevent this kind of self-sabotage. It isn’t enough to know what you want, though. You also have to respect and support yourself enough to work for it.
It’s not always easy to recognize and stop some self-sabotaging behaviors, especially patterns you’ve followed for years, on your own. If your efforts to try different behaviors and responses haven’t worked, or only work for a while, therapy may be a good option. There’s no shame in needing professional support.
Self-sabotaging behaviors are often deeply ingrained and hard to recognize. And once you do recognize them, noticing how you hold yourself back can be hard to come to terms with. But keep in mind that by recognizing these behaviors, you’ve taken the first step toward changing them. And you don’t have to do it alone. Friends, loved ones, and trained therapists can all offer support. Maybe you doubt you have what it takes to win that art contest. But instead of saying, “Why bother?” and crumpling up that entry form, fill it out and submit your best work. What you learn about yourself could have just as much value as winning.