Self Sabotage
by Mitch Meyerson and Laurie Ashner

Are you standing in your own way to success? Have you ever vowed to update your resume by January 1, but found yourself watching TV talk shows in February, your resume untouched?

Realized that the man you're involved with is the mirror image of the last one: manic, self-absorbed, and commitment phobic?

Sworn that this was going to be the year you write your novel, but spent your nights at the office, sifting through paperwork?

Wondered if you're sabotaging yourself?

"I knew I had the talent," muses Janet, 39, "and I had a great idea for a business. The problem was I didn't have time, or I couldn't manage to save anything for start up costs."

Suddenly one summer, Janet found herself with both time and money. She had four weeks off and a small windfall left to her by her aunt.

What did she do? "Absolutely nothing," she admits. "I watched a lot of Oprah. I got an urge to remodel my kitchen. By the time I was done, I'd spent the entire sum and even owed a thousand more. I went back to my job, to the same trap, with this great idea. Why was I sabotaging myself?"

In therapy Janet realized that she was sabotaging herself for excellent, if not immediately apparent, reasons.

The person who has the ultimate business plan on scraps of paper in his drawer, or the Great Novel in his mind, but never finishes anything exists in the world of endless possibilities. It's a comfortable, kind of eternal youth. Janet had wildly inflated expectations. She had notes on the speech she'd give when she became Entrepreneur of the Year. Put her ideas into action and it would soon be clear whether or not she really had that ultimate plan. With her untapped talent, she was forever protected from knowing her own limits. If she never put herself to the test, she could never fail the test.

Self-sabotaging behavior is sometimes an attempt at a solution to a problem we won't even admit to ourselves. Take Carol, whose resolutions to begin a diet on Sunday become ancient history by Wednesday. Carol has no real voice in her relationships. Ask her what movie she wants to see Saturday night, and she'll ask what you want to see. At 27, she's spent more evenings in places she doesn't want to be than most people do in a lifetime. But that's little consequence compared to the trouble she finds herself in when she allows herself to get close to a man.

The weight Carol never manages to lose is her shield. It says, "Stay away. I don't want to compete. I can't handle being close. I don't know how to say no."

Sometimes self-sabotage becomes a lifestyle. Sean is a man who feels his life hasn't started. Just as he drifted from college to college changing his major each term, he drifts from career to career. He's barely on speaking terms with his parents. They can't understand why a son with so much talent can't manage to get his life together.

Is it laziness? Procrastination? Sean spends more energy avoiding his life than participating in it. His self sabotage is about rebellion. All his life he's had the suspicion that his overly controlling parents are waiting in the wings for him to fulfill them, to actualize their own ambitions and needs. He suffers from what therapists call oppositional enmeshment--he can't emotionally separate from his parents and he uses his failures in life to make an unconscious statement:
"You did this to me; now take care of me. "

What about the garden varieties of self-sabotage: the phone calls we don't make, the night we slept with a blind date, the dining room table we decided we had to have when our credit card balance was already too high?

Whatever your style, if you suffer from self-sabotage, the following tips will help:

1) You are not alone. We all have lists of things we ought to do. Change is an easy thing to decide and a tough thing to do. It's the day to day challenge of it that makes people give up. Don't be too hard on yourself if old ways look good to you at times. Expect this. Worry only if you fall into them too often.

2) Beating yourself up--"I did it again!"--never helps. It only creates a war within your own psyche. You're probably already one of the most self-critical people on the face of this earth. You don't need more gunfire to get you going. How much support do you have in your life? How much reassurance? Where can you get more of what you need?

3) It's easiest to do the things in life that bring us pleasure. If you aren't moving towards your goal, you have to ask yourself, "Do I really want this?"

4) A history of self-sabotage is almost always a key that we have some central conflict with our identity--a problem accepting our personality, our real needs and goals, and working with them, not against them. Our work must begin with building self-esteem. There is no short cut. There is an excellent, if not easily understandable reason why you sabotage yourself. Isn't it time that you found out what it is?


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