The Real Reason You Self-Sabotage

Self-sabotage is hard to see in yourself. Even if you don't think you are doing it, you usually are to some degree.

We all have ways in which we try to control our worlds when things start to feel out of control.

Ultimately, we all just want to feel safe.

And self-sabotage is essentially this. It is a short-term protection mechanism that you have developed to make you feel safe.

These maladaptive coping strategies may not result in the best long-term effects, but they work in the short term. It's like a super glue hack for your psychology.

The issue is that when we continue to cope in this way without ever introspecting, we find ourselves unable to break our cycle.

This is why it is crucial to know and name our protection mechanisms, our saboteurs.

There are many ways to name our saboteurs. I like the names that Positive Intelligence has given. Here are the accomplice saboteurs. Try to see if you see yourself in them.

1. Avoider: Focusing on the positive and pleasant in an extreme way. Avoiding difficult and unpleasant tasks and conflicts.
2. Controller: Anxiety-based need to take charge and control situations and people’s actions to one’s own will. High anxiety and impatience when that is not possible.
3. Hyper-achiever: Dependent on constant performance and achievement for self-respect and self-validation. Latest achievement quickly discounted, needing more.
4. Hyper-relational: Intense and exclusive focus on the rational processing of everything, including relationships. Can be perceived as uncaring, unfeeling, or intellectually arrogant.
5. Hyper-vigilant: Continuous intense anxiety about all the dangers and what could go wrong. Vigilance that can never rest.
6. Pleaser: Indirectly tries to gain acceptance and affection by helping, pleasing, rescuing, or flattering others. Loses sight of own needs and becomes resentful as a result.
7. Restless: Restless, constantly in search of greater excitement in the next activity or constant busyness. Rarely at peace or content with the current activity.
8. Stickler: Perfectionism and a need for order and organization taken too far.?Anxious trying to make too many things perfect.
9. Victim: Emotional and temperamental as a way to gain attention and affection. An extreme focus on internal feelings, particularly painful ones. Martyr streak.

You may see yourself in many of these, and that is completely normal. We all have some of these in us, but the ratio is different for everyone.

The key is to understand why you feel you must engage in these protection mechanisms. Why do you feel unsafe?

This understanding will lead you to self-knowledge, which will allow you to choose a wiser form of self-leadership that does not need to rely on protection mechanisms that often evolved in childhood.

Only you can make yourself feel safe. Most of us don't know how to do this for ourselves, but it can be learned.

Learning to make yourself feel safe without a maladaptive coping mechanism or some outside person or substance is one of the most important things you can do for yourself.

I encourage you to take the Postivive Intelligence quiz on self-sabotage. This will help you start recognizing your own tendencies and perhaps interrupt old patterns.

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