Are you sabotaging yourself and don’t even know it?
Are you someone who puts things off and waits till the last minute to get things done?
Maybe you are someone who spends hours working on something to make sure every detail is perfect but no matter how good it is, in your eyes it’s not good enough.
And are you one of those people who you tends to relax with a glass of an alcoholic beverage or your favourite boxes of chocolate and cookies while bingeing on another Netflix show? Let’s just forget about those health goals for now, I’ll start over tomorrow.
If sometimes it feels like you are your own enemy and despite all the efforts and wanting to move forward with your life you simply cannot get yourself out of the current situation, you might be sabotaging yourself.
Self-sabotage could massively hinder your growth and progress in life. But is self-sabotage actually that bad?
WHAT IS SELF-SABOTAGE?
Self-sabotage in simple terms, is incongruence between your goals and actions - incongruence between your Conscious and Unconscious Mind. It’s a pattern of thoughts, behaviour or negative self-talk that could be preventing you from achieving what you desire in life. On the outside, these acts are seen as negative, they block your growth, bring frustration or anger but you might surprise yourself when you look underneath the surface of this problem. Why? Because this self-sabotage could be a way of your body wanting to protect you. It acts as a form of self-preservation, it’s keeping you safe from the perceived danger.
You might’ve learnt this behaviour years ago as a way of coping with difficult situations or negative emotions and because your brain favours what’s familiar, it keeps going back to the same old because that’s how it’s wired. The good thing is that with the help of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Hypnosis and Time Line Therapy®, we can change that, we can rewire your brain so that your automatic patterns are more favourable and supportive of your goals and vision.
HOW DOES SELF-SABOTAGE MANIFEST?
You make a decision to do something, you set yourself a goal i.e. to quit sugar or start an exercise program. A week later, you reach for a chocolate bar and drop a workout. Does it sound familiar?
Self-sabotage could also showcase as:
Perfectionism
Procrastination
Overworking
Poor relationship with food i.e. overeating / binge eating
Binge watching TV/Netflix
Breaking commitments/ notoriously canceling social plans
Being constantly late
Attracting toxic relationships, not keeping boundaries in your current one or when things are going well you think “this is too good to be true” and you start distancing yourself and creating arguments
Obsessive behaviour such as extreme tidiness and a need for order or symmetry
Setting unrealistic expectations only to find yourself getting overwhelmed and getting stuck. This rigid all-or-nothing-approach only numbs your actions and leaves you feeling like failure.
Seeking asylum in alcohol or drugs
Scrolling through social media
Failing your performance review at work because you’re scared of promotion
Emotional neglect - Failing to express emotions and constantly pulling yourself down
Speaking down - do you tend to undervalue yourself when you speak with others?
Speaking overly positively - this could be just as harming as negative self-talk. By keeping this “always positive attitude” you might be masking deeply rooted issues, fooling yourself that everything is fine when it isn’t.
Social distancing - deliberately avoiding social meet ups and occasions and staying in hiding
Playing a victim - blaming everything and everyone for your current situation and not taking responsibility for own actions
These avoiding, self-destructive behaviours can lead to mental and physical pain and burnout, affecting the quality not only of your personal and professional relationships but your life.
WHY DO YOU SABOTAGE YOURSELF?
There are plenty of reasons why you might be sabotaging yourself and it’s important to look at your personal history and experiences to find the best approach to helping you let go of your struggles. What are the potential causes of this behaviour?
CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES AND UNRESOLVED TRAUMA
Maybe as a child you were neglected or abused. Maybe there were disruptions of parental care, you felt abandoned when your mum left you in a buggy while she went to the shop or your parents didn’t express love towards you. For example, having high rigid expectations from your parents, criticism or shaming have been shown to be the driving force of perfectionist’s tendencies (Woodfin et al., 2021).
There is also a strong link between disordered eating and childhood trauma. A systemic review (Rabito-Alcón et al., 2021) showed that childhood trauma could be the mediator between development of eating disorders and can link to anxiety, dissociation, depressive symptomatology, body dissatisfaction, self-criticism, difficulty with emotion regulation, anger, food addiction, and symptoms of post-traumatic stress.
PREVIOUS EXPERIENCES & EMOTIONAL SUPPRESSION
Let’s take an example of relationships. Maybe you were in a relationship where you didn’t feel supported or heard when asking for what you needed. Maybe you had a partner who disregarded your feelings and emotions, never listened when you wanted to talk and you’ve learnt that the best way to deal with it is to keep quiet and suppress the emotions of anger, frustration, rejection. You found your remedy in alcohol, food, porn, gambling or you devoted yourself to your work and career, instead of learning how to express your emotions and advocating for your needs.
LIMITING BELIEFS
The common limiting beliefs I have observed in my work with clients who used to sabotage themselves were lack of self-worth, lack of self-love and not feeling good enough. After a quick intervention we discovered that all of these beliefs were born when they were young and they had carried those beliefs with them for a lifetime! You can only imagine how their lives changed after the intensive breakthrough session of clearing those beliefs with Time Line Therapy®, which made them disappear in minutes and a new set of beliefs of worthiness, self-love and feeling more than good enough appeared in their place.
ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOUR
You learnt it to deal with a certain situation, almost like using a survival first aid kit. The situation is now gone, however, you are still putting the plaster on. Why? Because this behaviour might mean something to you and you’re getting a benefit from executing it, a form of reassurance.
WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF SELF-SABOTAGE?
This is the question you might consider asking yourself next time you reach for that tub of ice cream, skip a workout you said you would do or not submit that piece of work, because it’s not good enough. This behaviour often is there to keep us safe and make us feel like we are in control.
The predominant negative emotion driving sabotage could be fear - fear of failing at work, failing as a partner or a friend and because you don’t want to fail, your Unconscious Mind will do its best to protect you from failure.
On the flip side it could be fear of success, fear of being in the spotlight and people’s judgment that might come with it - what would my neighbour say if I make more money? What if my marriage flourished? Would my divorced parents like to see that? Instead of claiming happiness and success, we run away from it because it’s safer.
HOW DO YOU STOP SABOTAGING YOURSELF?
Become aware of what’s going on.
In many cases people are not aware that they sabotage themselves. What they do seems so normal to them that they don’t recognise how destructive their behaviour is.
Working with a coach or taking a personal development training can be the eye opener you need.Find the root cause
Deal with your symptoms by addressing the very thing that caused them.Change your thoughts
Are you aware of your daily chit-chat that goes on in your head? You could be allowing your inner dialogue to sabotage your actions. Conscious language use, which you can learn by learning NLP, is very powerful as it affects your thoughts, which affect your actions, which affect your results.Change your strategies
There is a strategy for everything we do, including self-sabotage. Knowing how you carry out a specific behaviour allows us to rewrite the step-by-step process on the unconscious level and we can do that with a specific NLP technique that allows us to change your strategy!Build congruence between your Conscious and Unconscious Mind.
The clash between your actions and goals stems from the discord between your Unconscious and Conscious Mind. How do we do that? The most effective tools which I have encountered are Hypnosis, Time Line Therapy® (that releases negative emotions & limiting decisions) and NLP that helps us dissolve the conflict and integrate these two Minds.Take action and ask for help.
We cannot heal what we cannot see. The cause of this sabotage could link to past events or situations you might not even be aware of and having someone who can help you find the root cause and effectively find solutions to your problem, can be the very thing that will change your life for the better. And not seeking help and support could also be a sign of self-sabotage…just saying.
If you are still here, then here is a mini task for you. I would like you to ask yourself now:
What is the purpose of this behaviour?
How am I benefiting from it?
How can I get the same result in some other way?
Alina is a Mind Trainer, Master Coach of Hypnosis and Time Line Therapy® and Nutritional Therapist.
She profoundly cares about helping you master your life by helping you let go of internal blocks & limitations and providing a roadmap to discovering your true potential and living the life you are passionate about!
If you would like to learn more about the cutting edge tools and techniques of NLP, Time Line Therapy® and Hypnosis, I would love to hear from you: hello@alinadabek.com
RESOURCES:
Rabito-Alcón, M., Baile, J. and Vanderlinden, J., 2021. Mediating Factors between Childhood Traumatic Experiences and Eating Disorders Development: A Systematic Review. Children, 8(2), p.114. Available at: <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7915652/>
Woodfin, V., Hjeltnes, A. and Binder, P., 2021. Perfectionistic Individuals' Understanding of How Painful Experiences Have Shaped Their Relationship to Others. Frontiers in Psychology, [online] 12. Available at: <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7905022/>.
