THE MYSTERIES OF SELF SABOTAGING BEHAVIOR
Mallory is an up and coming social media public relations professional. She works hard, is reliable, and receives positive evaluations from her supervisors. She is on the fast track to promotion, yet in her first coaching session, she cried and talked about her exhaustion and confusion about her future. As she continued, Mallory revealed that she feels she cannot say no to projects or requests even though she feels overwhelmed and at her stress limit. She confesses that she strives to please everyone in her professional and personal life. As a result, she sometimes sleeps only 4 hours a night, neglects self-care, and has a strained relationship with her partner. At times, she gets so overwhelmed, she procrastinates then spirals into depression and self-loathing. But because keeping an energetic profile with the company is important, Mallory manages to pull herself together in order to barely manage her ever growing workload.
Clients such as Mallory come to coaching to explore why they continue to engage in behavior that doesn’t serve them. Many times these self-sabotaging behaviors prevent well meaning people from living their desired life of happiness and success. Although clients have evidence that the behaviors are self-defeating, they feel they lack tools, or as many say, “the self-control or discipline” to make a change.
What is self-sabotaging behavior? It is any behavior that is self-defeating, or prevents us from reaching goals or simply being the person we want to be. Common examples include not following one’s dietary or exercise goals, staying in a relationship that we know is not healthy, procrastination, or failure to set boundaries. The list is endless.
Clients are frustrated because they feel they are intelligent and have the self-awareness that a change needs to be made, but…they cannot manage to follow through.
First of all, intelligence has little if anything, to do with self-sabotage. Intellectual intelligence does not equate to self-awareness or emotional intelligence. So, what keeps us engaging in these behaviors? Because everyone is different and there are many self-sabotaging behaviors, there is not one answer to the question. In fact, there are many possibilities, however, I have found that there is one main reason that supersedes all others and it is:
FEAR
is the main reason that people stay in situations that no longer serve them.
Fear of change, fear of others getting angry, fear of the unknown, fear of being out of one’s comfort zone…the list of fears is actually frightening! We may self-sabotage by engaging in behavior that threatens relationships because there is a fear of intimacy. We self sabotage a possible promotion because we lack the confidence that we can succeed in that job. A child might fail a placement exam because she fears that she won’t be able to be successful in Advanced Placement classes. In Mallory’s case, her inability to set boundaries stemmed from a fear that people would reject her if she said no to projects. Her lack of confidence in her ability to be able to succeed was actually sabotaging her happiness and decision making.
Right now, stop reading, take a deep breath and think of areas of your life where you may be self-sabotaging. What is the underlying fear that keeps you from moving forward?
How realistic is that fear?
Where does it stem from?
When is the first time you remember feeling this fear?
What excuses are you making to yourself to keep you from getting what you want or where you want to be?
A second and very common reason that people self-sabotage is procrastination. I see this frequently in the teen and young adult clients in my practice. Procrastination of school work and falling behind is one of the main reasons for referrals to my practice. For many, virtual learning has exacerbated procrastination and students are receiving grades they have not seen before. This is another important topic and we will discuss it in a later newsletter.
What’s the next step?
Take into careful consideration the behaviors you thought about in the prompt above. How are they keeping you from moving ahead? How are they keeping you stuck?
Think about how you can make some small changes to continue to develop your awareness. Don’t worry, it is not unusual to have some confusion around how to proceed. That’s how coaching can help.
