Why Do I Self-Sabotage? It’s a Way of Coping

I will be honest… I was not paying full attention to the self-sabotage in my own life until I started reading The Mountain Is You by Brianna Wiest.

It is a whole book about why we get in our own way, when we do it, and how to stop.

The first chapter hit me really hard, so I want to share what I highlighted and what it brought up for me. And honestly, this is just… me sharing my life experiences. This does not mean that I can coach people through this necessarily. These are things that are best worked with a qualified professional.

It is not always obvious

The first thing that stuck with me is that self-sabotage is not always obvious at the start. It is not always a big bad choice. Sometimes it is a fear, a habit, or a thought you have carried so long you stopped hearing it.

Wiest uses Carl Jung as an example. As a boy, he connected fainting with getting out of a class where he was unhappy. The fainting was real, but it was covering a need he had no other way to meet.

That is when it clicked for me. Our fears and habits are often symptoms of something deeper that we do not have a better way to cope with.

It is a coping mechanism

Self-sabotage is a coping mechanism. It is a way to give ourselves what we need without having to face what that need actually is.

And a big reason we do not face it is that we maybe do not feel capable. Seriously, that is a huge one.

I have a tendency to say that our coping mechanisms are Band-Aids over bullet holes.

They only last so long.

Eventually we have to rip that Band-Aid off and triage the wound, because if we do not, we are going to bleed out.

Branches and roots

Picture a tree. We see the branches all the time. But can we see down below the surface to the roots?

Our coping mechanisms are the branches. They are the habits, the worries, the patterns we can see. And when we try to fix the problem at that level, we are really just putting a new Band-Aid on it with another coping mechanism.

So we have to see them as branches and ask: where do these come from?

The things we worry about most are often very unlikely to happen, and that is exactly why they feel safe. We get to feel the anxiety without risking anything real. If we never look at the roots, we keep trying to talk ourselves out of the feeling, and it only gets worse.

In the margin of my book, I wrote: rip off the Band-Aid and get ready to heal, then rebuild. Sometimes you just have to rip it off and figure it out.

Where the roots come from

Your self-concept is something you have spent your whole life building, from what your parents believed, what your peers thought, and what you lived through. And your brain keeps confirming it.

That is why the root thought matters so much. It can come from a single moment or a single belief, or from a pattern you saw, lived through, or were pushed into.

After reading through this… I started to notice these things in myself more or in others around me as we connected and shared things.

Self-Concept Uncertainty

Sometimes we are just not sure who we are yet.

Maybe you doubt you will ever get to your ideal self.

Maybe deep down you do not believe good things happen for YOU… so you let your circumstances tell you how to feel.

Homegrown Beliefs

UGH… overly cautious parents may have taught us that risks are not safe.

Maybe a parent who struggled with dieting or their body may have shown us that trying feels pointless. When it comes to your own body and what you want for it.

Also, there’s a good chance that critical parents/adults may have taught us we are never good enough.

None of that is your fault, but those beliefs still live in us.

Internalized Fears

Your brain is trying to protect you. It rationalizes, it keeps things simple, and it says “if we avoid anything unfamiliar, we are safe.”

One of my friends made a comment to me recently that completely blew my mind with this thought. Some people would rather sit in the furnace because the heat is familiar than realizing that they are burning alive and getting out.

Trying to Take Control

Feeling in control is a biological and psychological need.

But sometimes that need is the exact thing blocking our path.

The thing about control… what we are trying to control can change everything. I love looking at the sphere of control. You can check out my post, Control what you can control, to help a little bit with this understanding too.

Sometimes the familiar is the pain

This is the one that stopped me. Sometimes a limiting belief is just trying to keep us safe.

I thought back to moments in my past. Things that were said. Times I felt unloved, unheard, unseen, unworthy, incapable. And I realized I still go back to those moments in my head, because I know that kind of hurt. I know exactly how it feels and what to expect from it.

Letting it go is scary in a different way. A life without it has new things in it, and new things can mean new dangers and new suffering. I understand this pain. I do not understand that one yet.

So I held onto the one I knew. That is a false coping mechanism, and it is a limiting belief. It just meant I was not ready to adapt yet.

How to Find Your Way Out

Be honest with yourself for a minute.

Maybe you are not where you want to be.

Maybe you are not the person you want to see when you look in the mirror.

Maybe you are just not there yet.

And that is okay.

It is okay to not be there.

But you have to be able to see it, because you cannot start a journey without knowing where you are starting.

Start with a piece of paper

You could try journaling this… it is a little daunting to have to see… write… come back to… but that’s the point.

What do I do?

What do I do that I don’t like?

What do I do that I like but I don’t like the outcome later?

Some of mine… they were in my relationship with my body and food.

• “If I eat that burger, I’m going to gain 5 pounds,”
• “I haven’t eaten all day, so I might as well get a whole pizza.”

I spent over a decade physically and mentally dieting, and those thoughts ran the show. They never felt like thoughts. They felt like the truth.

But they weren’t. I can eat a burger and not gain 5 pounds.

I had to get really real… where did I hear that from? Why did I think that? What was the truth to it?

I heard it from diet mentality spread throughout the industry. Other women repeating things that they may have heard too. To me it almost became…. like I got a sense of belonging from saying it. But it wasn’t true. I didn’t actually gain 5 pounds when I ate a burger.

The burger thought was a branch. The root was wanting to belong.

Go small first

Now I will say this…. in order to break down a list like that and actually start to tackle it

Most times you have to get really real with yourself.

Sick of it.

Knowing that no matter what you just don’t wanna feel that again.

The discomfort of feeling that again becomes bigger than the discomfort you feel about changing it.

And honestly, that’s how my weight loss started… in 2012 I hit a mental, emotional, and spiritual rock bottom.

I dropped to the floor and cried hysterically because I did not want to feel that way ever again.

If you are there, or close to it, you are not behind.

You are at the start.

Be wary of starting too big

This is just my opinion and my application of this here…I think some affirmations can get in the way if you go that route. I tried to when it came to working on like mirror talk and body image,

Starting too big with them…. can turn into a way of talking over the truth.

I have said this about body image before. If you are struggling with your body, you cannot jump straight to “I love my body.” Your brain will not buy it. Start smaller. Look in the mirror and find one thing, like “I really like my eyes.” Start there and build slowly.

The big warm sentences do not stick when part of us knows we are not there yet. We will scoff at them. Reject them. It’s too false.

So start small from what you can really see.

Finally…

I know it’s scary. But isn’t anything new and exciting in life kind of feel like that? Like maybe you feel the excitement of it but you also kind of feel a little bit scared. It’s almost like a detection that you’re on the precipice of something new.

And, I want to leave you with my favorite Brianna Wiest quote…

Your new life is going to cost you your old one.
It’s going to cost you your comfort zone and your sense of direction.
It’s going to cost you relationships and friends.
It’s going to cost you being liked and understood.

– Brianna Wiest

Books

• The Mountain Is You by Brianna Wiest
• The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks

Additional

• Brianna Wiest, Hitting Your Upper Limit? How To Overcome This Common Psychological Hiccup (Forbes)
• Melody Wilding, Are You (Unconsciously) Afraid of Being Happy?
• Marie Forleo, Stop Self-Sabotage With This One Vital Step
• Ali Macy, 3 Signs You Have an Upper Limit Problem (Working Against Gravity)
• Tonya Leigh, Overcoming Upper Limits (School of Self-Image)