Self-sabotage
Self-sabotage - why do you go back to what does not serve you?
"I do this to myself." I hear that sentence very often.
You know what you want. You have a plan. Sometimes you even start really well. And then, at exactly the moment when something begins to work, a movement appears in the opposite direction. You put it off. You withdraw. You start questioning the decision. You return to behaviour that was supposed to be behind you.
The simplest name for it is self-sabotage. Except that this name can lead to a very uncomfortable conclusion: "Apparently some part of me wants me to fail." And that is not where I would start.
What if that reaction is not trying to harm you?
Try looking at it differently. You are offered a new job. Consciously you want to take it. But the new role also means more visibility, more responsibility, the possibility of being judged, the risk of failure.
One part of you sees growth. Another sees a threat. And suddenly you start finding a hundred reasons why "this is probably not the right moment".
From the outside it looks like sabotaging yourself. From the inside it may be an attempt to avoid something your system considers risky.
That is exactly why discipline alone is sometimes not enough
If you treat every difficulty as a problem of motivation, the solution will always be: more control, more planning, more consistency, more pressure.
Sometimes it works. And sometimes it only increases the conflict. Because if one part of you is trying to move forward while another believes danger lies exactly that way, adding pressure does not solve the problem.
Ask a different question
Instead of "why am I doing this to myself again?" try: "what might this reaction be protecting me from?"
That does not mean every decision hides a trauma. Sometimes you put something off simply because you are tired. Sometimes the plan was unrealistic. Sometimes you just do not want to do it. Not everything needs psychologising.
But if exactly the same mechanism appears again and again and stops you each time in a similar place, it is worth looking at it more closely.
Self-sabotage often has a very logical history
Imagine a person who was intensely criticised as a child. As an adult she wants to be visible. She starts a business, publishes, puts ideas forward. And along with the visibility comes tension.
Consciously she wants success. But somewhere alongside it there is an association: visibility = the possibility of attack.
You do not have to "believe" in that. It is enough to notice the reaction. And that is exactly what can be worked with.
Change is not about defeating yourself
This is the approach I like least: "I have to defeat my limitations." No.
If a reaction came into being in order to protect you, fighting it creates one more opponent inside you. It is far more interesting to understand what it is guarding. And then to check whether it still needs to do that in the same way.
Because perhaps the problem is not that you sabotage your own success. Perhaps some old mechanism simply has not yet received the information that today you have more options than you did when it first appeared.
If you recognise this mechanism in yourself, we can look at it together. Book an intake call - 30 minutes, online, free of charge.