Thursday, July 16, 2009

What is Self Sabotage?

Often we blame it on feeling ‘anxious’ or ‘feeling stressed’ (both are symptoms of self sabotage), and if we are severely affected we might call it ‘feeling depressed’; but the result is, we do not perform as well as we know we can. Whether that is in an interview, at work, socialising, or any other area or our life - we get confused, stumble, cannot remember stuff we should know, get anxious, our mind goes blank or foggy, become clumsy, make what we know are wrong decisions, go all to pot, feel ill or depressed, get excessively angry and frustrated… to name a few symptoms.

Sometimes it is just one particular area that we get stuck on, and then we may even avoid it just because we know “I’m no good with that”. Or it may be a chronic feeling of never getting anything right and nothing works for us. In either case, self sabotage is at work. It can be there from early childhood, which means we may believe it is our personality to be this way. It can also appear suddenly (either in a particular area of our life or as a pervasive cloud over all parts of our life), and we know something has happened to us but we cannot figure out what it is. We might think that we’ve just ‘lost it’.

Whether we feel we were always like this or it happens to us occasionally, it can (for some) be extremely debilitating and will not only sabotage us at the time but can have a devastating effect on our career, or relationships. Maybe you know someone who can only be in a relationship for a certain amount of time before they start to sabotage it. If you ask them why their relationships never last beyond a certain time limit, they may even say “Because I unconsciously sabotage it”. They know, but they do not know how to stop it.

* Self sabotage can affect us in small, but significant, ways and we might not realise the thing we are no good at is actually self sabotage at work.
* It can also have an effect on us on particular occasions, such as feeling over-anxious when we go for an interview.
* It can stop us achieving targets, or performing to our best at work, or it can stop us having a long-term loving relationship.
* Self sabotage can be so pervasive that it effects every corner of our life, to such an extent that we seek medication.

These various levels of self sabotage can be treated. Depending upon the severity, it can take from a couple of sessions, to many months of ongoing support to bring the person to their optimum level.

Self sabotage works against us at many levels. Sometimes all that’s needed is a correction in one’s energy (meridian) system for the results to be a significant advancement on a particular skill of how we feel about something. Add to this, Colin's Advanced Performance Coaching, and you realise why he is a sought after mind coach.

For some people (with Chronic Self Sabotage), the effects of their self sabotage are so pervasive they need on-going, supervised help over a longer period so as to untangle the web of dysfunction that’s keeping them stuck.

No comments:

Post a Comment