Self-Sabotage > John C. Flanagan - Licensed Clinical Social Worker

Self-Sabotage

People with PTSD often have a problem with self-sabotage. This can be very overt or very subtle or anywhere in between. An example of overt self-sabotage comes from our old friend procrastination. We put off doing something that we want or want results from until it's too late. Another example of self-sabotage is when we say or do something that destroys or decreases our chances of getting what we want. Another form of self-sabotage is not going after what we want. A more subtle or disguised version of this is telling ourselves that we don't really want what we want or that it's not really that important to us or that it wouldn't really be that good if we got it. Or we just keep ourselves very busy so that we don't think about it. This can go on for months or years or our whole life and we end up never getting what we want.

So why do we do this? I don't know about normies, but I suspect that we with PTSD do it out of habit and out of fear. The habit started because of fear and now even though the fear is less, much less or has disappeared all together, the habit persists because of a free-floating anxiety that has taken on a life of its own. Originally we were afraid of bad consequences if we went after what we wanted. We would literally be punished for such behavior. This punishment took various forms for each of us, but it was very real and very much to be avoided if possible. We learned to think of others first. We learned that other people's feeling/moods were more important. We learned to keep our mouth shut, to keep our feelings to ourselves. We learned that children were to be seen and not heard. We learned that if we tried to accomplish something or to better ourselves we got made fun of, ridiculed, put down or shamed for being so presumptuous. We learned that nobody cared. No matter what we did or tried to do nobody noticed. Nobody responded in a positive affirming way.

All of this, any of this ultimately made us feel rotten. It made us feel bad, very bad about ourselves. We felt like we were bad. We felt incompetent. We felt like we could never succeed. We felt like we wanted too much. We felt that we were too needy, that we were desperate and that we looked desperate. It made us feel so bad in fact that we couldn't stand to be in our own skin. So we left. We dissociated to get away from those horrible feelings.

So now when we feel like bettering ourselves, when we feel like going after what we want, we automatically sense danger. We usually don't know what the danger we fear is and we try to pin it on something current. We rationalize that our current fears are realistic. A client recently told me that he keeps a fear journal. On one side of the page he writes down whatever it is that he consciously fears, i.e. a certain negative reaction and or bad consequence. Later, after the event has past, he writes down what actually occurred. Almost never is it as bad or worse than what he feared.

Generally it is a lot better than he anticipated. Often there is actually a positive outcome. It is easy to see that if we let these fears rule the day and stop us from going after what we want, we would be sabotaging ourselves at every turn.

We need to keep in mind that our initial reaction is usually a reaction to something out of our history. Its only connection to the current situation is that something in the current situation triggered this reaction. The current event triggered the reaction, but it did not cause the reaction. The cause is in our history and the automatic reactivity that was set in motion a long time ago. It is as if our reaction stems from a post-hypnotic suggestion. It is a post-trance repetition of the original set of reactions we had at the time of the trauma that caused the trance-state in the first place. The best thing we can do is to constantly question our reactions, not act on them and give ourselves time to rethink our interpretation of the current events. This is one way at least that we can keep our self-sabotage to a minimum.

Desired Outcome:
To reduce the frequency, intensity and duration of our self-sabotaging behaviors.

Discussion Starters: Examining your own life experience, consider the following: