Life is actually going pretty well, but every time it goes "pretty well," you do something that makes it not go well at all again. You can consciously or unconsciously sabotage yourself so that you don't achieve your life goals. Self-sabotage is extremely annoying because it can have a major impact on your relationships or your career. In this blog I will discuss what self-sabotage is and how you can get rid of it.

What is self-sabotage?

Self-sabotage is behavior that causes your life to deteriorate rather than improve. You keep yourself small when you sabotage yourself, and this can cause you to have difficulty maintaining relationships or getting (or staying) employed.

You sabotage, as it were, a good outcome of what you are doing. The annoying thing is, you often do this consciously (and sometimes unconsciously or impulsively). For example, you deliberately don't go to work when you know it's not convenient.

You can also sabotage yourself at work or while studying. Quite unexpectedly, for example, being super-committed is a form of self-sabotage, because it actually makes you behave like a workaholic. Procrastination and perfectionism are also forms of self-sabotage[1].

Difference between self-sabotage and self-mutilation

You may think that self-sabotage and self-mutilation are pretty much the same thing. This is not the case. Someone who practices self-sabotage does not necessarily practice self-mutilation and vice versa.

The difference is mostly in behaviors that make achieving long-term goals more difficult (and sometimes even short-term goals). And behaviors in which you literally hurt yourself, but this need not make your behavior more illogical in addition to that hurt. Although there is often a correlation[2].

Self-sabotage in your career

Self-sabotage is possible on many fronts. For example, this is a major problem among academics who want to make a career out of becoming a professor[3].

Women in the top world also suffer from above-average self-sabotage that causes them to bang against the glass ceiling, when in their particular case it may not need to be there[4].

Artists also sometimes tend to self-sabotage. This may be related to the fear of success. This fear is sometimes quite complex because the fear of success can stem from the relationships you have with your parents as a child[5].

Self-sabotage in your relationship(s)

There are multiple ways you can sabotage your relationships with self-sabotage. For example, many younger people who are still insecure about their relationships and especially when they fear rejection are more likely to keep quiet in a relationship. Shutting your own mouth is then the self-sabotage[6].

Keeping quiet instead of expressing your feelings, especially when you are unhappy about something is very awkward in relationships. This gets in the way of true intimacy in the relationship and over time can lead to heated arguments while the partner can then be completely surprised at what they are doing wrong. Being quiet can be a temporary solution, such as waiting for a good time to bring something up, but you have to bring it up once and not bite your lip for weeks, months or years.

Finding the cause of self-sabotage

To stop self-sabotage, it is important to identify why you are sabotaging yourself. By finding out the cause, you can do something about it that will make you stop sabotaging yourself as a matter of course.

There are some obvious causes of self-sabotage. For example, self-sabotage is a characteristic for people with borderline disorder.

In addition, fear of success is another reason why people self-sabotage. Fear of success, as mentioned earlier, can arise from the bond you have with your parents. Depending on how successful your parents are, they may at some point become concerned about their child becoming more successful than them. This sounds illogical, but this is the case in some families.

Or parents may not be comfortable with a child becoming independent and therefore do not want them to achieve success. That way, they can care for their child longer and do not suffer from empty nest syndrome. Achieving success then becomes something you keep secret because you feel it is forbidden by your parents. This can also cause you to suffer from an obsession about how other people judge you and it also causes you to have a lower self-esteem than necessary.

Low self-esteem can also cause self-sabotage, but in such a way that you can pinpoint external factors for your failure (such as that traffic jam that's there every day) so that it doesn't further reduce your self-esteem.

If these two reasons don't seem familiar to you and you don't actually understand why you are sabotaging yourself, hypnosis can help you figure out why you are doing it anyway. There are several techniques for this, such as Socratic conversation and regression.

Socratic conversation is actually a cognitive behavioral therapy technique, but it can also be conducted under hypnosis. The why question is then repeated several times to get to the core of your beliefs.

In a regression, you go back to the moment when you decided that for some reason you did not deserve your goals or having a good life. This often goes back to your childhood because that is when many beliefs about life and how the world works form. For example, a parent who is not very successful can make it difficult for you to get past that level of success. Very surprising results can come out of such a regression, this is because children often make connections that you no longer find logical at all as an adult.

Stopping self-sabotage

With figuring out the cause for self-sabotaging, you are already a very big step toward stopping self-sabotage. Research shows that reversing negative thoughts can already do a lot to reduce behaviors that get in the way of your success. For example:

Unhealthy Thought:

"I have to make this perfect and I can't turn in my work until it's perfect," he said.

The consequence of this unhealthy thinking is that you take too long on your work, missing your deadline and, for example, not getting that promotion, a shame!

You can turn these kinds of thoughts to:

"Usually something is good enough if it is finished on time, more than 2 times review is not necessary."

Changing beliefs about success

With fear of success, you may suffer from unhealthy beliefs about success. Success might then, according to the unhealthy belief, cause your family to love you less or your friends to turn away from you, for example. Of course, this does not really help you achieve success and also explains why you sabotage yourself.

When you know what beliefs about success create self-sabotage, you can change those beliefs. This can be done, for example, with self-hypnosis in which you repeat hypnotic suggestions that are positive about success. In this way, those get the upper hand in your beliefs and your self-sabotage becomes less. For example, these can be suggestions such as:

"Success gives me more freedom, which is good for strengthening my ties with family and friends."

"Through success, I gain more respect from those around me."

"Through success, I can inspire other people," he said.

"I may be more successful than my parents."

"I get to be independent."

You can repeat these types of hypnotic suggestions yourself during self-hypnosis. Or a hypnosis expert will record them for you on an mp3 and then you can listen to them at home. These are just examples of hypnotic suggestions. Depending on your beliefs about success or why you sabotage yourself, you may get other suggestions.

Visualizing healthy behaviors

The counterpart of self-sabotaging is really helping yourself move forward. By visualizing healthy behaviors at times when you normally sabotage yourself you make it more likely that you will actually carry them out. For example, to talk about staying silent in your relationship while you do need to express frustrations, you can get a visualization on how to handle this. For example, this can be done in the following way.

"You notice during a party that your partner is doing something stupid, but know that this is not the right time to complain about it. You wait until the next day and calmly remind your partner of the incident and tell how you felt at that moment. Then you tell how you would like him/her to handle this type of situation in the future. You remain calm and composed and listen to your partner's side of the story as well. If it is not clear what he/she expects from you in such a situation and if you are not on the same page you try to compromise."

This is just an example of a guided visualization. Depending on the self-sabotaging behaviors you have and want to change, you may get a different guided visualization.

Want to learn more about how hypnosis works and all the techniques you can apply to help yourself and others? Then come to a hypnosis playshop or enroll in a training course at the Hypnosis Institute Netherlands.

[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07294360701658781

[2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/(SICI)1097-4679(199811)54:7%3C973::AID-JCLP11%3E3.0.CO;2-H

[3] https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1003436

[4] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J294v06n03_29

[5] https://www.sciandmed.com/mppa/journalviewer.aspx?issue=1137&article=1381&action=1

[6] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10964-006-9048-3