A colleague claimed they were self-handicapping in her new job to avoid feelings of inadequacy and I found myself intrigued.
According to Wikipedia.org, self-handicapping refers to a cognitive strategy to avoid effort in the hopes that it keeps potential failure from hurting self-esteem. What could this look like in real time? A student who performs well on a test attributes it to luck, believing it to be a fluke rather than the product of their hard work. A professional procrastinates on a project, thinking they may bomb the presentation the next day, anyway. An athlete skips practice, thinking it won’t matter to the match. A client puts off applying for their dream job because they’re convinced they won’t get an interview. It’s the pessimism mentality of, “I’m going to fail, so why try?”
Self-Sabotage
With fear of failure in common, it’s important to take a closer look at self-sabotage as the more blunt, critical cousin in our analogy. Mark Tyrell, author of Self-Sabotage Behaviour Can Come in Many Forms, identifies four common reasons one may engage in self-sabotage.
· Anticipatory Grief
· Control
· Boredom
· Feeling Unworthy
Anticipatory Grief
For some of us, the familiarity of failure is a painful, somewhat predictable experience. We may go through our world anticipating loss or anticipating when something good is going to change, end, or fail.
Perhaps you can relate to the following thoughts of anticipatory loss or end:
· I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.
· This is too good to be true.
· What’s the catch?
· Nothing good lasts for me, when will this go south?
Because these thoughts have a lot of power, a client may be engaging in a belief that they don’t deserve good things. Or that they are doomed to suffer and that failing is inevitable. Similar to self-fulfilling prophecy, your client may find they are predicting a negative outcome. With these thoughts in mind, your client may also be subscribing to the second reason one can engage in self-sabotage.
Desire for Control
If we truly believe something good is going to end badly, we may want to be in control of the outcome. Have you ever found yourself thinking:
· I’ll just end this relationship now, it’s less painful in this moment than when it ends months or years from now.
· Better to leave this job before I get fired.
· I know they are going to say our friendship is over, so I’ll just stop talking to them and get it over with.
We may convince ourselves that feeling in control of the failure in this moment can hurt less than something that comes on suddenly, out of the blue, or later when our guard is down.
Boredom
The experience of our guard being down and everything feeling predictable can lead to discomfort as well. Predictability can lead to boredom, which can also be a reason to self-sabotage. If we go from feelings of chaos and excitement to monotony and boredom, Mark Tyrell states, as one example, we may find ourselves picking a fight with someone for no reason at all. Perhaps just for the alive feeling we get from adrenaline and excitement.
Do you find yourself engaging in any of the following:
· Picking a fight when you aren’t upset
· Looking for trouble in new environments
· Engaging in substance use
Feeling Unworthy
Self-sabotage can show up due to feelings of low self-worth. Maybe you feel you don’t deserve success or happiness and instead, engage by punishing yourself and setting yourself up to fail. This can represent the cornerstone of self-sabotage in wanting something and doing everything in your power to not achieve it, basically going the opposite direction of success. When explored further, many truly believe they “aren’t worth it” and engage in behaviors that prevent progress due to those negative beliefs.
Self-Handicapping
Based on what we know now, self-handicapping may be a softer, avoidant cousin to self-sabotage. Both are present when we are trying to protect our feelings or self-esteem. Both contribute to how we view ourselves and present ourselves to others. Self-handicapping just goes about it in a softer way, saying we didn’t prepare fully so we can’t be as upset with the potential failure or negative outcome.
How are you self-handicapping?
· Underachievement
· Procrastination
· Underpreparing
· Pessimism
Self-handicapping may be a piece to the larger puzzle of recognizing the connections between our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors as they relate to self-worth and mental health. Therefore, I want to encourage deeper exploration into how self-handicapping may be contributing to our inner critic, self-sabotage, and imposter syndrome related to goal progression, not just for clients, but for ourselves as professionals as well.