Why do we sabotage our own efforts? If someone else did to us what we do to ourselves, we would be quite angry.
We can be our own worst critics, but I prefer to think of myself as my own best critic. In other words, I am tough with myself, but also generous. I want to treat myself like the way I would treat my own best friend.
12 comments:
I don't think that self-sabotage really exists. When people engage in what might look like self-sabotage, they always receive some sort of a pay off out of it. And that pay off matters more for them than the things they sabotage in return. Honesty about the pay off is the only thing that will lead to anything productive in such situations.
That's very insightful. I think you're on to something there. Someone might get more of a pay-off by seeing themselves as a victim of someone else, so they might undermine themselves and blame someone else, for example.
Exactly. I caught myself once in the realization that I was doing all I could to avoid finishing an article. I did that because the idea of submitting it and receiving rejections was painful. So it was easier to avoid the entire issue altogether.
I don't see that last comment of Clarissa's as a description of a pay-off that "matters more" to her than the things she sabotaged. I think it's a pretty common case of self-sabotage. It's what Cyril Connolly was talking about when he warned against vanity.
Doing damage to herself in one way in order to reap another (supposed) "benefit": the avoidance of possible mental anguish. It is self-sabotage if we think that this benefit is not really one at all. Honesty about this leads then to a better result. Whether you call it self-sabotage or not, or vanity or something else, the solution is the same.
I don't know if your solution is the same as mine. But I find that the best solution is to find an honest answer to what it is you are avoiding when you sabotage. You might even find that you don't really need the things you convinced yourself you need and that's why you are self-sabotaging.
I've been expelled from a psychoanalytical site where I'd been participating for years, so now I bring all that stuff here. Sorry!
Well you know that pscychoanalysis is itself the disease of of which it purports to be the cure, so maybe you are better off here.
I think I'm objecting to the idea that there's always a pay-off. Suppose I tell myself that I can't work on a paper today because I'm teaching tomorrow and I need to prepare more for class. I cancel all my writing and tell myself that I'm spending all day preparing for class and then, of course, keep it going well into the evening and night. In the morning I'm exhausted, and I perform poorly in class with a head too full of ideas, too lacking in rest.
Now, the reason I cancelled my writing was of course that I was too vain to see what my thoughts looked like on paper. But once I committed myself to the story that it was all about preparing for class, I had to ruin the rest of my day keeping that commitment. Since I didn't really care very much about the damn class, I didn't notice that my over-preparation was actually going to undermine my teaching performance. So I performed poorly (not at all) on the writing end and also on the teaching end.
I don't think we can just call that anything we like as long as we're "honest" about it. I think we have to call that self-sabotage in the classic sense. There's no pay-off, and when it's all over (at the end of a miserable class), no one, a no part of anyone, feels like they got something that "matters" out of it.
This mechanism can be repeated with grading and any other activity you like. At first it looks like one part of your life is sabotaging (or at least competing with) another part of your life. But on closer inspection it's just the one part your life putting a wrench in its own works. In addition to vanity, Connolly proposed laziness and cowardice as causes. Now, there's something to be honest about.
Well, self-sabotage is the title of my post, so I won't argue with you. It's the best name for that dynamic, and even Clarissa ended up using the word sabotage herself. The pay off is an illusion, since it isn't really a benefit at all, as in your example.
It's interesting the psychological dynamic that's developed in these comment boxes yesterday and today. "Stupidity" of my sort is the acid that will dissolve away these writing neuroses.
"Now, the reason I cancelled my writing was of course that I was too vain to see what my thoughts looked like on paper. But once I committed myself to the story that it was all about preparing for class, I had to ruin the rest of my day keeping that commitment. Since I didn't really care very much about the damn class, I didn't notice that my over-preparation was actually going to undermine my teaching performance. So I performed poorly (not at all) on the writing end and also on the teaching end."
-Oh my God, and I thought it was just me who did that! :-) This is extremely familiar. Leaving aside the issue of what to call it for the moment, it is very helpful to know that there are people who go through the same self-defeating process from time to time.
"I want to treat myself like the way I would treat my own best friend."
This is a good sentence. But in my case, when people do me what I do to myself or worse, I think I must have caused it somehow !!!
This post, these ideas, I had firmly in mind as an assistant professor and I think it's a sign that my graduate program, bad though it may have been, was OK really.
On the payoff - in my case, and I do self-sabotage, the payoff isn't real ... it's placating demons from the past. The cure for is noticing that it is that. Another cure is talking to people who don't have the same demons.
On over-preparing class - I did that when young. The thing was, the professors I had had for the same courses were major luminaries. I thought, OMG, I am now expected to be them and I am not! Then I figured it out: they had more horsepower than was needed for these classes; the classes themselves didn't need that kind of horsepower.
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