Self-Handicapping is the Softer Cousin of Self-Sabotage

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.

Upper Limit Problem: Smashing Through our Self-imposed Glass Ceiling

Remember when we explored if we’d quit something before it could go wrong? How you’ve ended a relationship before you could get hurt? We identified these as examples of self-sabotage, which can strike at any moment when we feel that things are gaining momentum in a positive way.  But what happens when you achieve the success you’ve always wanted and now, instead of joy, you feel doubt and dread, fearing it is too good to last?  Because of this fear, perhaps you desire to remain safe in your career trajectory, creating your own glass ceiling because it pays the bills and supports stability.  You choose comfort rather than taking risks that would allow you to reach your fullest potential.  Gay Hendricks calls putting on the breaks when our success has exceeded what we thought it could as The Upper Limit Problem, described in detail in his book “The Big Leap.”

Signs you have an Upper Limit Problem

It’s understandable that we struggle with success in thinking it’s too good to be true. Awareness of our reactions to success and the resulting negative thoughts and unconscious self-sabotaging behaviors can be considered a first step in recognizing the problem and identifying viable solutions!  Here are some signs that you might be experiencing an Upper Limit Problem:

• You avoid taking risks

• You can’t slow down

• You can’t enjoy your successes due to fear and doubt

• You prevent change in wanting stability

• You love your comfort zone

• You feel uncomfortable with too many successes at once

• You get stressed and sick when experiencing rapid growth

Smashing through your Upper Limit Problem

For many, illness in response to stressors or fear of success in a big part of their Upper Limit Problem. So now that you know what you are experiencing, what can you do about it? Here are some ideas that might help:

• Identify positive affirmations such as “I’m right where I should be.” “I’ve worked hard for this success.” “I deserve good things.”

• Engage your supports. Talk to others you trust about the stress you are feeling in the face of your achievements.

• Practice mindfulness. Engage in mindfulness and meditation practices to reinforce positive vibes and refocus.

• Slow down. Take breaks for self-care and rest up to prevent illness.

By recognizing the signs of your Upper Limit Problem and exploring possible responses, you can remove self-sabotaging behaviors and fully surrender to your success, allowing yourself to enjoy your accomplishments and continue to thrive in the possibilities of your future.

“The goal in life is not to attain some imaginary ideal; it is to find and fully use our own gifts.” Gay Hendricks

Imposter Syndrome: Sabotaging Success

Have you ever quit something before it could go wrong? Ended a relationship before you could get hurt? Stirred things up out of boredom? These are all examples of self-sabotage, which can manifest when we don’t feel we deserve good things or when we fatalistically think all good things must come to an end. With Imposter Syndrome, you may experience all of these thoughts and feelings in response to having an internal battle with yourself and have a fear of success! More specifically, when achieving success, your doubt in yourself may show up as a fear of being exposed as a fraud to others.

Image courtesy of caitlinhudon.com

The image above captures the perception that others know more than us, which can lead to self-sabotaging behaviors or crippling self-doubt, resulting in delayed or stunted progress towards your goals and creating unnecessary anxiety in various areas of our lives. So, what can we do about it? How do we embrace our knowledge base, success, and self-worth?

Discovering Strengths

For many of us, it’s a fine balance between self-confidence and ego.  Our society has taught the youngest generations to not speak too highly of themselves out of concern of being called cocky, egotistical, entitled, or self-centered. When celebrating strengths, it is important to break down some of these barriers and embrace what we do well.  Some ways you can do this include:

1. Asking Family and Friends: By engaging in rewarding conversations with those that know you well, you can listen for language that describes your strengths.

2. Floating Back: Recalling compliments or positive feedback from others in the past, including work situations, can help pinpoint times when you were recognized for your strengths.

3. Take a Test: The popularity of personality tests and other self-assessments continue in helping people find their strengths. Consider the following tests in your self-exploration:

• Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) – looks at how you interact with others, thinking vs. feeling, and more.

• Enneagram – Explores how you relate to others and what you contribute to relationships when balanced or unbalanced. Check out the free EnneaApp quiz in the App store!

• Big Five Factor Personality Test – explores your openness, agreeableness, neuroticism and more.

• Locus of Control – take the self-assessment to explore how you are internally or externally motivated to do things in your life.

• Values Inventory – explore what is most important to you with a values inventory. A free, online version can be found at http://www.lifevaluesinventory.org

Encouraging Growth

Now that you’ve found your language and skills that demonstrate your strengths, it will be important to continue learning about yourself to silence the Imposter Syndrome’s little, nagging voice that states you are a fraud. Perhaps you challenge yourself to grow through additional schooling or training. Or measure your progress through achievement of short-term goals. Or perhaps you identify a professional who can serve as an accountability partner in your quest for confidence. Such professionals include:

• Coaches

• Consultants

• Therapists

Celebrating Successes

By engaging a trusted professional or other support person who know you well, you can also feel encouraged to slow down and celebrate the little successes in life. Maybe you had a goal to feel more comfortable talking about what you do with others and you celebrate attending a network event where you had to describe it to multiple people in a matter of minutes. Perhaps you have a goal of conquering your fear of public speaking and find yourself in front of a community audience talking about a project you are involved in. Whatever the achievement, slowing down to celebrate it with those you love can reduce the experience of Imposter Syndrome, making is less of a barrier and instead, serving as fuel for your fire of drive and purpose!

“Think about all the crazy ways you feel different from everyone else. And now take the judgment out of that. And what you are left with is such a wholly dynamic, inspiring character who could lead an epic story.” Jennifer Lee

Self-Sabotage: Significance and Strategies

“Self-Sabotage is when we say we want something and then we go about making sure it doesn’t happen.” Alyce P. Cornyn-Selby

You may find yourself after the fact, stating you don’t know why you did it.  Why you ended the relationship when nothing was wrong. Why you walked out of the job after only a month. Why you picked a fight and got kicked off the team. These are just a few examples of when someone may have engaged in self-sabotage. And the question is, why?

Under the Iceberg

Identified as the founder of Psychology, Sigmund Freud once described the mind as an iceberg. The tip of the iceberg above water was our conscious or thoughts or feelings we are aware of, and accounts for roughly 20% of our mind. The other 80% under the surface represents unconscious, and represents things we are not yet aware of to better understand our behaviors.

Mark Tyrell, Self Help author of “Self-Sabotage Behaviour can come in many forms,” identifies four common reasons one may engage in self-sabotage.

#1 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, something we enjoy, is going to switch, fall, 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, you may find yourself engaging in a belief that you don’t deserve good things. Or that you are doomed to suffer and that failing is inevitable. Similar to self-fulfilling prophecy, you may find yourself predicting the outcome, and in this case, it’s negative. With these thoughts in mind, you may find yourself also subscribing in the second reason one can engage in self-sabotage.

#2 Control Freak

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 already 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.

#3 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

• Relapsing when no trigger is present

#4 Feeling Unworthy

Relapsing when not triggered can also be 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 other direction from success. When explored further, many truly believe they “aren’t worth it” and engage in behaviors that prevent progress due to those negative beliefs.

#5 I’m Unprepared

One final example of self-sabotage to consider is the feeling of being unprepared. Perhaps you don’t feel ready to end a support program and so you relapse to remain involved with probation or the treatment community. An observation of those in the legal system is that they don’t feel they have resources on the outside, so they find themselves committing a petty crime to be reintroduced into the environment that feels most familiar. You don’t yet feel prepared to do this on your own and so you create a reason to not be on your own.

So where do you go from here? For many, just the awareness of why one engages in self-sabotaging behaviors can be a powerful process in exploring needs and change to more positive behaviors. Being aware that you are not alone in the reasons for self-sabotage and talking about the challenges can be a healing journey towards self-love, acceptance, and success.

For additional ideas of how to manage self-sabotage, you can check out Mark Tyrell’s “Self-Sabotage Behaviour can come in many forms,” at http://www.uncommonhelp.me/articles/stop-self-sabotage-behaviour/  

“In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.” Nikos Kazantzakis