We’ve all done it, but what’s it about?

Self-sabotage is destructive or unhealthy behaviour that undermines our goals, efforts, or values. We might not realise it at the time, but self-sabotaging is often rooted in anxiety, anger, or feelings of worthlessness.

How to spot and deal with self sabotage: a cognitive behavioural exercise

Most of us occasionally undermine our best efforts by cheating on a diet or being late for an important meeting. However, for some people, self-sabotage becomes a chronic pattern that leads to significant problems in their life, work, and relationships. Self-sabotage manifests in many ways.

Here are some common examples:

• “Forgetting” deadlines or failing to prepare.
• Chronically tardy, repeatedly arriving late to work or important meetings.
• Abusing alcohol or drugs.
• Procrastinating or putting something off – even though it might be urgent.
• Overeating to deal with stress and anxiety.
• Starting projects but never finishing them.
• Never getting around to doing anything about goals, plans, or dreams.
• Intentionally abandoning or ruining friendships or romantic partnerships.
• Quitting when trying to achieve goals.

1. Understand the need your self-sabotage fills

To eliminate self-sabotaging, you might think being “tough” on yourself is the answer. But that is also a form of self-sabotage because you miss the most important first step: understanding what need self-sabotage fills. Before you get tough on yourself, offer yourself compassion. Your self-sabotage serves a purpose, so suspend judgment and understand what it is doing.

For example, if you overeat to cope with stress, see how stress eating “works” to make you feel better after a challenging day at work. If you constantly procrastinate, see how procrastination helps you avoid your fear of failing. When you understand the need self-sabotage fills, you will be able to find different ways to fill that need. When you meet that need in other ways, you will begin to reduce self-sabotaging behaviour.

2. Plan for obstacles

If you have identified the underlying need and healthier alternative behaviors, there will probably be obstacles. For example, if your alternative to overeating after work is to have a small healthy snack instead of bingeing on junk food in front of the TV, what might get in the way? It is easy to have good intentions when the conditions are right, but if you want to eliminate self-sabotage, you need to plan for when you are stressed, overwhelmed, or upset.

Using the overeating example, here is a way to anticipate obstacles and plan for addressing them: If you want to choose healthy snacks instead of junk food, ensure you always have some healthy snacks at home, and prepare the night before (you can even do this weekly). Using small containers or plastic baggies, portion out snacks you can carry with you in your car, purse, or desk, or have available when you arrive home from work.

3. Tolerate emotional discomfort

The best way to practice building emotional tolerance is to start small:

a) Identify emotion(s) you experience when you stop self-sabotaging habits: for example, irritability, fear, frustration, sadness, etc. List them

b) Next, look for other places in your life where that emotion comes up. For example: you get frustrated when you are waiting in line and the person ahead of you is moving slowly.

c). Find a situation where the feeling is relatively mild and instead of immediately trying to get rid of it or distracting yourself, practice tolerating it. For example: instead of immediately pulling out your phone and checking your email while waiting in line, practice doing nothing and letting yourself feel frustrated for 20 seconds.

d) Over time, you will gradually increase your tolerance for that emotion in different areas of your life. You can then practice doing the same when you choose alternative healthy behaviour over self-sabotaging behaviour.

4. Find and clarify your values

When you clarify the things that matter most to you – and then connect new, healthier behaviours to them – it is much easier for them to grow and replace the old self-sabotaging behaviour. If you want your values to motivate you toward new behaviours, they can’t be general, they will need to really mean something to you to be compelling and specific. For example, if you want to stop over-eating, your own health might not be enough until you think about wanting to be there in the future for your children. The piece of fruit rather than the cake can then be linked to helping them to develop healthy eating.