Humans are strange creatures, but of all our curious
quirks, self-sabotage is among the most puzzling.
Referred to by psychologists as ‘self-defeating
behaviour’ or ‘self-handicapping’, behaving in ways
that oppose what you say (and think) you want to is
alarmingly common.
“Every human being has self-defeating patterns of
behaviour, repertoires of behaviour that don’t allow us to
achieve our goals or be the person we want to be,” says
psychotherapist and author of the The Happiness Trap
Pocketbook Dr Russ Harris. The fact that many of us are,
behind the scenes, diligently engineering failure mocks
the appeal of all those Santorini fantasies (and indeed
the whingeing about being stuck in Sydney).
Coined by Edward E. Jones and Steven Berglas in
1978, self-handicapping describes the personal creation
of obstacles to achieving objectives. It is thought to be
a protective response to doubts about our ability, as by
sending ourselves on wild goose chases, we never have to
critique our performance or face the failure we fear.
“The person who procrastinates and fails to prepare
adequately for a sales presentation or who gets drunk the
night before taking the [university] entrance exams is
manipulating in a self-serving way the attributions that
one may draw about the actor’s ability or competency,”
say Jones and Berglas. “Inadequate preparation and
inebriation decrease the likelihood of a successful
sales presentation or a high [exam] score, but they also
protect the belief that one has the ability to do well.”
If you think it’s just you, consider the number of
people who start each spring with the proclaimed goal to
lose weight, get fit or eat better. A study commissioned
by Lorna Jane and conducted by Roy Morgan Research
showed that while 63 per cent of Australians say they
want to lose weight, just 47 per cent did formal exercise
in a three-month period. Go figure.
BRAIN BASEMENT
Self-defeating behaviour is anchored by self-doubt
according to behaviour change specialist Michelle
Landy, who says women are particularly susceptible.
“Women have terrible self-doubt, and we haven’t learnt
to master that inner critic when it appears. It can take
over and tell us we’re useless,” Landy says. “Or we hear
a comment from another person and we take it on so
easily rather than saying to ourselves that we’re going to
stay on track.”
A UK study published in the Archives of Sexual
Behavior found that confidence plays a key role in
women’s ability to perform spatial tasks, even though
previous studies have established that women are slower
and less accurate than men on a range of spatial tasks.
Researchers found that when they made women
feel more confident about themselves, their ability to
perform the task improved. “Our research suggests
that by making a woman feel better about herself, she’ll
become better at spatial tasks – which in the real world
means tasks such as parking the car or reading a map,”
says researcher Dr Zachary Estes.
There is no causal consensus on the psychological
underpinnings of self-sabotage, but social psychology
guru Dr Roy Baumeister attributes it to a perception that
the cost outweighs the gain.
“The person does not want to experience suffering
or harm and instead wants something good,” writes
Baumeister. “Unfortunately the good outcome is linked
to something bad. The tricky thing about self-sabotage
is that it often feels good in the short term, overtaking
longer term vision.”
“We often lose touch with our values – which guide
how you want to behave and what you stand for, what
really matters to you in the bigger picture – and when
we lose touch with our values they don’t really have
much of a role to play in our behaviour. So we get side-
tracked doing things that feel good in the short term,” Dr
Harris says.
People with a high tendency towards ‘experiential
avoidance’ – the intent to avoid or escape emotional
pain or unpleasantness – are more likely to self-sabotage
according to Dr Harris.
“The higher your degree of experiential avoidance,
the more you go through life trying to avoid painful
thoughts and feelings, and the more likely you are to fall
into those self-defeating patterns of behaviour,” he says.
People who spend more time in auto-pilot mode are also
more susceptible – which is what often happens with
mindless, emotional eating. “A lot of that type of eating
is to get rid of emotional pain – you feel sad, stressed,
bored or anxious, so you eat some yummy food and it
pushes your pain away,” says Dr Harris.And once the habit takes hold, it’s hard to break. “A
lot of the time we operate on automatic pilot without
consciously paying attention to what we’re doing,” says
Dr Harris.FOMO FEELS
Ironically, self-sabotage often results from trying to be
everyone’s bestie, whether because of a desire to please“UNFORTUNATELY THE
GOOD OUTCOME IS LINKED
TO SOMETHING BAD.
THE TRICKY THING ABOUT SELF-
SABOTAGE IS THAT IT OFTEN
FEELS GOOD IN THE SHORT TERM,OVERTAKING LONGER TERM VISION.”