Prepare Ahead: Understanding Self Sabotage
Could you be addicted to misery?
Hey you, and a happy new week to you! I promised to do a couple of articles around cognitive distortions, and today we get to look at a foundational issue in cognitive distortions- self sabotage. In this article we shall look at how cognitive distortion comes about, and the role self sabotage serves in resolving cognitive distortion.
If you are new here, all work written here is to help us Course Correct and become all that we were created to be, everything we possibly can be. We are not course correcting by “doing things” that “revolutionize the world”, No. Instead, our kind of course correction here is focused on changing from the inside out.
My own course correction is a journey of sort of reclaiming my soul. It is like rehabilitating my mind, healing my emotional self, and getting back to a place of an accurate psychological outlook. What I mean by the latter is that, I have found that the biggest hindrance to my growth was not that I did not have things to offer the world. Instead, I have found that my biggest hindrance was having such dehumanizing self beliefs, that I couldn’t rise above the toxic state of my internal environment.
Even when I made progress, I would find myself self sabotaging so badly, that my final state would be worse than when I started the self sabotage cycle. Before I understood self-sabotage, I only knew that I used to hate myself so much after self-destructing, sometimes I would literally write to myself, “I hate you Risper. I hate you so so much, look what you keep doing to me over and over again!”
Thank God for resources such as books and articles like these though.
I came to understand that self-sabotage is a coping mechanism, where one attempts to get back to the “baseline” or “normal” internal state. Thus, for someone who self sabotages, you would find that their internal belief is that they are a failure, or a victim, or poor worker… Therefore, everything they do is always to confirm that bias against themselves. Thus, whenever they make progress, that growth offsets their internal balance, because it contradicts what they believe deep inside, about themselves.
Progress means that one will be happy. Progress would mean that one starts feeling more hopeful. Progress means that one would start entertaining the thought that perhaps they are more, they could be more.
And this is where cognitive distortion comes in:
You believe that you are a failure, and yet your actions of progress amounted to results that did not produce feelings that confirm you are a failure. Thus, there is a disconnect between your internal beliefs and your actions. This disconnect produces a psychological discomfort inside the person’s psyche, where one feels as if they are divided against themselves. It is like being one kingdom, but this kingdom is divided against itself.
Thus, self sabotage comes ‘to the rescue’, to restore the ‘internal balance’. Therefore, someone finds themselves doings things that are clearly self destructive, that will destroy their progress, but they keep doing it anyway. Ever found yourself in such a situation?
That is how self sabotage works. The goal of self sabotage is to ‘restore balance’, ie, to restore one to their internal state of feeling like a failure, or just feeling miserable, because that is who they feel and believe they are deep inside. Thus, any action (progress) that produces feelings contrary to internal misery are interpreted as threats. Self sabotage is a means to face off this “threat”.
By now I hope you are realizing something: That we can get addicted to misery. This is what self sabotage serves to feed. Self sabotage is like a psychological fix to our addictions to self hate, or self pity, feeling like failures, feeling rejected, or whatever your abnormal/unhealthy addiction could be.
Why am I sharing this today?
My hope is that it equips us for the course correction journey ahead.
One of the ways to be equipped is to know what threats to expect. Consider it psychological preparation.
One of the bigger threats you and I are going to face as we course correct is push back from our former ‘baselines’, that is, our former normal internal states.
No matter how horrible we have felt about our selves before, that is what we are used to, and its what our ‘internal mind’ will always keep trying to get back to, until a new normal is established.
If we have been internally miserable for too long, our internal ‘memories’ will want to keep that status quo.
For example, if my psyche was addicted to self-pity, it will keep demanding more ‘self pity chemicals’ so it can feel normal. As such, all by itself, my psyche can trigger my body or mind to perform actions that will produce those self-pity chemicals. How do I get these ‘self pity chemicals’ into my system yet I am on upward trajectory? By self sabotaging! This is so that when I fail after self sabotaging, and lack momentum, I will feel so horrible, and start pitying myself all over again… and “balance will be restored.”
You and I need to know this, that our internal states, however miserable, will fight to keep themselves as they are, or have been.
Thus, in the early stages of course correction, we are likely to find ourselves feeling uncomfortable from ‘long periods of success’. To your body, (internal mind), sustained progress will feel abnormal and unusual, because you more accustomed to chaos and misery. You may find yourself experiencing a sense of cognitive distortion from your own progress.
How does this information help you?
Use this information as a tool for self awareness. To be aware of when you are feeling uncomfortable from success, and know that you are likely to get triggered to self destruct- sabotage your own success so that to ‘restore’ the former state.
This way, this knowledge can be ammunition to face off any self sabotage triggers, to know to expect it, and to know that we will have to consciously stand against self sabotage triggers; until our bodies (internal memories) get used to winning, success, progress, continuous improvement and momentum in doing well as the normal internal states.
I hope this helps. Next, we shall look at dealing with set backs.
Till then, my best love, Risper.
