Self-Care, Not Self-Sabotage What Is Self-Sabotage?

Here we are going to talk about the sworn enemy of self-care; self-sabotage. It isn’t that easy to see what is getting us down, preventing us from reaching goals, or even preventing the desire to achieve. We all have areas of our life that are 80% good most of the time. For instance, some of us are comfortable with our work and friendships but don’t really have a dating life. For others, we are really good with friendships and relationships but are afraid to make big moves to start our own business. Self-Sabotage is universal, because everyone has areas of their life they prevent themselves from improving.

What Self-Sabotage Really Is

According to Dr. Jody Hoe, author of “Stop-Self Sabotage”, humans have been either attaining rewards or evading threats since the dawn of civilization. In her perspective, instead of facing physical threats these days such as animal attacks we face more emotional fears such as rejection. We fear not getting the job, not finding a fulfilling partnership, or any number of other threats that are perfectly normal for all people. Self-sabotage makes us focus on avoiding threats to our emotional health rather than attaining rewards, such as financial freedom or better physical fitness.

Self-sabotage will not be obvious, such as knowing when something is bad and doing it anyway. According to Dr. Jody Hoe, self-sabotage is much deeper, showing up in one of four ways: Low self-concept, internalized beliefs, fear of the unknown, excessive need for control, or a combination of those. For myself, I took her quiz and was surprised by the results. I recommend you go to her website to take her quiz.

Recognize the Symptoms of Self-Sabotage

The reason I’m writing this article is to promote that we all have things that get in the way of doing what is best for us. Before even taking that quiz, I knew when I was down spiraling because I start showing the symptoms, which I decided to write in my journal to get them out in the open. My symptoms of self-sabotage are judging myself, judging others, feeling disappointed in my choices, fear of failure, fear of new changes such as moving, need for affirmation from others, and unhealthy actions against my health.

These unhealthy actions reveal that self-sabotage is happening just by manifesting from those symptoms I listed above. Some of these actions include excessively checking social media, email, or work stuff. Other actions I take include refusal to commit to self-care, such as refusing to go outdoors, refill my water bottle, or refusing to eat. I begin to do repetitive tasks that were once fun but become negative, like playing video games until they are no longer fun. On a deeper level I grow resentful toward loved ones, having unhealthy fixations on their choices, even having unhealthy fixations on my choices.

I recommend writing down everything that you do when you are in a “funk” like I am. We all have our things, the “anti self-care” habits that are just symptoms of bigger self-sabotage.

Reset, Re-center, Do What You Dread the Most

When we are our own “saboteur”, we need to be mindful and work toward our achievements anyway. I combat self-sabotage by trying to reset through self-care. Then the time comes to address the bigger picture after the reset. Whether it is school, career, friendships, romantic relationships, or other, it is the time to fight self-sabotage. Everyone has moments where they put themselves down, but I know we can decrease those moments through careful planning of what we need to become centered again.

After that reset, find the thing you most dread doing that will help you. Break it down into bite sized tasks. A daily example is dreading cleaning your bedroom because you are exhausted. If that dread is so bad you are afraid of tackling it, just start by sorting stuff into piles. Don’t clean the whole room, dust it, make it beautiful. Just start small. For the big picture things, if you are dreading applying for a job that could be your favorite job ever, just email the employer, reaching out to see if they are still hiring. If you are dreading starting to date again, just create an online profile. Don’t bother reaching out to a number of people to see if they share your interests and will bear your children. Start small, leave the profile alone for a few days.

Conclusion

Self-sabotage is avoiding threats to emotional health, to the detriment of drive to achieve any number of things. By knowing the root cause, seeing the symptoms, and deciding to plan that first step, we can move away from self-sabotage toward self-care. We can start achieving, rather than living in fear, getting in our own way. This concept is probably more complex than I can address, so consider getting some extra reading in on your own time. Audiobooks and podcasts offer great means of self-education about this topic for those of us who like to do multiple things at once, or just avoid reading physical books.

If you like this, check out my article on “How to Get Through Quarantine: The Self-Care Way”.

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Self-Sabotage Quiz

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