You know how some people always seem to be struggling toward some goal they never quite reach?
They may be sabotaging themselves.
Like the 45-year-old single woman who swears she wants to get married, then undermines her new relationship by going out with an old squeeze.
Or maybe you know people who actually have achieved the success they dreamed of whether it be in the work place or in a relationship - only to foul it up and lose everything.
They, too, may be sabotaging themselves.
Self-defeating behaviors are observable in every arena: sports (the ballyhooed athlete who gets busted for cocaine); politics (the philandering politician who dares the press to catch him in the act - can you say "Gary Hart"?); business (the Wall Street investment guru who tosses away a seven-figure income to make a fast buck on insider trading); and everyday life, in which people dash their chances for promotion and doom their personal relationships by their own actions.
Meanwhile, the rest of us stand by watching all this wreckage and wondering, "Why do they do this to themselves?"
Traditional thinking has been that people who repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot fear success, feel enormous guilt or suffer from that global excuse for everything: low self esteem. An extension of the self esteem theory is that self saboteurs are seeking to punish themselves.
Newer research on self defeatists shows that fear and low self esteem are not the only culprits. "Self defeat often seems to follow from people's inflated opinion of themselves," say Steven Berglas and Roy E. Baumeister, the authors of Your Own Worst Enemy: Understanding the Paradox of Self Defeating Behavior (Basic Books, $21).
Even the occasional self-saboteurs who act from low self-esteem aren't trying to punish themselves these psychologists say. Rather, these people's judgment is distorted by their lousy self image. They don't see the reality of a situation or know their capacity to deal with it.
Not every stupid thing we do is self sabotage, of course.
"Actions qualify as self-defeating only if the harm or loss outweighs the pleasure or benefits," the authors say.
More than the outcome of a behavior, the conscious and unconscious motives behind the behavior are what define it as self-defeating. However, just as self sabotage takes many forms, the motivations behind it are many. For instance, the person who continually thwarts the career goal or relationship goal he says he wants may not be committed to that goal at all, says Belinda Judge, a licensed mental health counselor in Lake Mary, Fla.
"Perhaps he's making decisions or trying to live his life to meet someone else's expectations," she says, "whether it's to advance himself in a particular career, obtain a certain degree or pursue a family lifestyle."
Thus, self-sabotage for this person is a passive way of saying "No."
"Instead of taking a stand, he just undermines himself," Judge says. Berglas and Baumeister say that, at bottom, most self-saboteurs are obsessed with how others perceive them.
"Some of the worst patterns of self-defeat are set in motion by fear of being seen in an unflattering light," they write. To avoid having that unflattering light shed on them, self-saboteurs resort to one or more of the following behaviors:
Misguided persistence
Face it: Some of the brainstorms we come up with at work stink. Some of the relationships we get into are doomed. But self saboteurs won't give up. . "We may persist against our better judgment simply to avoid being called quitters," the psychologists write.
The refusal to give up is even more pronounced if self-saboteurs were cautioned beforehand that their choice would come to no good. Nobody wants to hear "I told you so" especially somebody with an abundance of self-confidence.
"People who cling to inflated views of themselves are unwilling to face or accept negative feedback," Berglas and Baumeister " write. Failure will cause them to push even harder, to persist in a fruitless endeavor, rather than to concede having made an error.
Self-handicapping
In this approach, the self saboteur uses impediments to preserve an image of competency. The impediments might be as drastic as substance abuse or as seemingly benign as caring for a sickly relative.
"Experiments have shown that people with low self- esteem engage in self-handicapping to protect themselves against failure," Baumeister and Berglas, write.
"By imposing a burden on your own efforts, you can set yourself up to blame any failure on that burden," they explain. "Without that burden, the outcome would have been very different."
If, for instance, you're devoted to caring for your cousin - who really should be in a nursing home - you can use the time and emotional energy you put into him as an excuse for not doing your best work. However, people with high self-esteem might engage in the same self-handicapping behavior to enhance the credit they would get for success.
"Should you prevail despite being impeded by external circumstances, your talents will be considered all the greater." (Wow! He managed to get that report done despite having to haul his cousin to the hospital: What a guy!)
Some self saboteurs even resort to pain as a self handicap.
In Your Own Worst Enemy, the authors relate the story of Doug," a 54-year-old graduate of a top university who had been renowned as a young man for his intellect. Over the years, however, he had managed to get fired from eight jobs. All of his employers had cited his procrastination and absenteeism as the reason for canning him.
Doug blamed his procrastination and absenteeism on a back ailment for which he had never sought treatment.
Why hadn't he?
"By allowing his back ailment to flourish without medical attention," the psychologists explanation, "Doug exploited a handicap that enabled him to protect the competence image he had achieved in college from potentially negative feedback that he might receive in the workplace."
Procrastination
By itself, procrastination can be a form of self handicapping. Indeed, it's the No. 1 form of career self-sabotage, according to Andrew J. DuBrin, author of Your Own Worst Enemy (Amacom, $14.95). (That's right. Same title as Berglas and Baumeister's book. But DuBrin's has a different subtitle and narrower focus: How to Overcome Career Self-Sabotage.)
DuBrin, also a psychologist, notes that an obvious reason for procrastinating is to put off doing uncomfortable, overwhelming or tedious tasks. Another reason - one that any parent will recognize - is to rebel against being controlled, to defy unwanted authority.
You may have gotten away with this with Mom, but you won't for long with the boss.
"Procrastination is career suicide in slow motion," DuBrin writes.
Fear of success may play a role in workplace procrastination, he says. Some people fear that success will be accompanied by isolation from friends or by overwhelming responsibility.
"Better to deal with those fears directly than to ensure your failure, DuBrin advises. "
And it's better to overcome self-sabotage than to let it ruin your life. The first step, of course, is recognizing that you engage in it. Then it's a question of motivation: You can resolve to stop defeating yourself now . . . or you can put it off 'till tomorrow.
Overcoming Self-Sabotage
SOURCES: Your Own Worst Enemy: Understanding the Paradox of Self-Defeating Behavior, by Steven Berglas and Roy E. Baumeister; Belinda Judge, licensed mental health counselor.
Ed Note: This article was published in mid-November in the Democrat and Chronicle.
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