How Self-Sabotage Behavior Works
Adapted from: Break Free from Self-Sabotage Behavior by Troyann Williams

Last time, the concept of self-sabotage was defined and I provided some examples of how it manifests itself in our everyday lives.  Now, in order to better understand how to stop self-sabotage, lets take a look at where it comes from.  

In general, most self-sabotage occurs due to beliefs that were acquired during our childhood.  These beliefs are formed by the people we spent time with and our personal experiences.  For example, if as a child you received lots of love and attention after you failed at something, this may have created a subconscious connection between failure and pleasure.  

Another example - Perhaps as a child you developed an inner belief that rejection is a painful experience.  One way your inner “saboteur" might work to protect you now is to cause you to fear making new relationships. This fear could manifest itself in all sorts of different ways, such as causing you to remain overweight in an attempt to receive less positive attention from others. Or, you may constantly be quick-tempered or rude in order to avoid making friends so that you don’t have to deal with being rejected.  Unfortunately, this inner “saboteur" would not care how badly you wanted to create new relationships. It would only be concerned with motivating you to NOT make new relationships because its job is to protect you from the painful experience of rejection.  

It is important to remember that self-sabotage behaviors are based on subconscious irrational fears. This is why self-sabotage behaviors can be so frustrating and difficult to uncover.  In fact, we may not even recognize that they are occurring.  Instead, we attribute our lack of success to inadequacy.  This, in turn, strengthens the negative messages we feed ourselves, and we get caught in a self-sabotaging cycle that can be very difficult to break. 

Take some time to think about your past experiences and the messages you were given as a child.  How are these messages manifesting themselves in your present life? 

Fortunately, once an internal irrational belief is identified, you can learn to transform it into a healthy, loving belief.  Next time, we will explore ways to do this.

Tara Griffith, MA, MFT
Laparoscopic Associates of San Francisco
WLS Support Services

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