Even the directors of Hollywood blockbusters do not allow themselves today the expression "your main enemy is you", but because of the hackneyedness it has not become less true for most of us. Few people have never behaved destructively, contrary to common sense and personal interests. Saying obvious nasty things to a loved one, playing a new video game the evening before the exam, forgetting to set the alarm before an important meeting - there are many ways to self-sabotage. Why do we really need it and how to deal with it?
Where does that come from
In 1978, two psychologists at Harvard University, Stephen Berglas and Edward Jones, conducted an experiment. Students were given tests, half of which consisted of questions that could only be answered at random, others were designed so that the final grade completely depended on the students' knowledge.
After passing the test, the participants were announced that they had coped with everything, but the test would have to be repeated. Before that, however, you need to take, at choice, one of the pills: improving or impairing cognitive abilities (both, of course, were a placebo). As a result, the "inhibiting" pill was taken exclusively by men from the group in which the answers had to be given at random. They didn’t know what caused their success the first time, and they didn’t want it to be a personal failure in the event of defeat - it’s much more pleasant to blame it on a pill.
This is what the first self-sabotage study looked like. And the general understanding of this phenomenon has changed little since then. Self-sabotage is a process in which failures are externalized (that is, they are explained by external factors), and successes are internalized (that is, they are considered to be achieved due to personal qualities).
As with most other psychological conditions, most often learn to "sabotage" in childhood. For example, a child who is told that it is “selfish” to ask for toys and sweets stops asking for them - and in childhood his strategy can be considered winning: he adapts to the demands of the people on whom he depends. But, when the same person, already in adulthood, cannot express what he wants, this can become a serious problem.
A significant risk group are children who are accustomed to overprotection, who have learned that even if they do nothing at all (for example, from homework), over time it will be discovered by the controlling parent, and he will take the solution into his own hands. In addition to the behavior "nudging to sabotage", children also easily learn the patterns of adult behavior - and a parent with similar mechanisms for dealing with fears has a good chance of raising a child "saboteur".
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However, self-sabotage can be “infected” even in adulthood. Traumatic experiences tend to cause people to avoid a melee hint of a traumatic situation, even if the objectively current situation is perfectly safe. Various phobias and feelings of inadequacy also become the basis for self-sabotage. The realization of your insignificance can become a reason to "get sick" before an important interview, and accidentally spilling a cup of coffee on yourself is an excellent reason to refuse visiting if you have social anxiety.
And finally, self-sabotage is directly related to a variety of addictions (from smoking and alcoholism to shopaholism and gambling addiction). Typically, they are used to reduce stress levels - and really allow you to distract yourself, in the meantime, preventing you from achieving what you really want. Avoiding achieving one's own goals, it turns out, is not the only negative effect of self-sabotage. According to the research results, the “pay off” for him is also a bad mood, a decrease in subjectively perceived self-competence, a drop in motivation and new addictions.
All the head
A couple of years ago, a group of Japanese scientists decided to find out what changes can be observed in the brains of people who are more prone to self-sabotage than others. About a hundred Japanese students took a questionnaire to test their propensity for this strategy, and then the scientists used voxel-based morphometry, a technique for studying brain anatomy. Their main discovery was that the propensity to self-sabotage is determined by only one area of the brain - the subgenual cingulate gyrus (also called the "Brodmann 25 field") - it is this that is considered an "important depot" for the delivery of serotonin to other areas of the brain, including the hypothalamus and brain stem which control sleep and appetite, the amygdala and insula, which influence anxiety and mood, the hippocampus, which plays an important role in the formation of memory, and some areas of the frontal cortex responsible for self-esteem.
Other studies in this area have demonstrated the relationship between the tendency to self-sabotage and the loss of self-feeling, exposure to outside influences, increased irritability, fatigue and depersonalization (when one's actions are perceived from the outside, but it is impossible to control them, according to feelings). In addition, men are more prone to self-sabotage than women, and women are more likely to “sabotage” after a failure, when the motivation to keep moving towards the goal decreases.
Find and neutralize
- Self-sabotage is not always easy to recognize, it can take many forms. Here are perhaps the most popular ones:
- Perfectionism. If something doesn't work out completely, completely perfect, it is better to quit in the middle and take on something new.
- Care for addiction - overeating, smoking and alcoholism, computer and gambling, etc. is also a convenient way to get away from your own goals.
- Unrealistic assessment of one's own capabilities. Taking on many projects at the same time, some of them can simply be overlooked, or not in time, or, say, “burn out and break down”.
- Causing, knowingly or not, of harm to health: the main thing is to get sick so that it becomes absolutely impossible to fulfill the necessary.
- Excessive self-confidence - refusal from the necessary help, consent to take on something uniquely unbearable - also, in general, effective ways to fail what you really want to fail.
- Procrastination - where without it.
Of course, this list can be expanded: there are a lot of ways not to do something that you really don't want to do. But how can you get to the deliberately chosen goal without sabotaging it? Here is a list of tips from Dr. Margaret Paul, Ph. D, columnist for the Huffington Post:
- Notice your judgments about yourself. They are often the cause of sabotage. Having found the very judgment that slows you down, ask yourself if it really corresponds to reality. Most often, negative assessments of oneself originate in childhood and do not undergo critical revision in adulthood.
- Analyze the way in which you define your own value. Deciding how valuable you are is based on how you take care of yourself and the people you care about, rather than the results of your actions.
- Consciously view mistakes and failures as essential steps on the road to success (not as a method of assessing your own worth). Recognize that sometimes it's okay to be wrong. Gain valuable insight from failures: what else you need to learn and what to learn.
- Be considerate of your feelings and kind to yourself. If you are determined to support yourself in the event of failure rather than condemnation, you will be more likely to be ready to try the next step.
- Be prepared to lose another person rather than yourself. You will not be afraid of rejection or absorption if you are honest with yourself and start doing what is important and necessary for you - even if the important people do not like it.
And, most importantly, it is worth remembering that self-sabotage is not something to be fought against by default. Sometimes it is useful to listen to your unwillingness to do something.