Understanding The Core of Self-sabotage

Hey guys, welcome back to my blog, I know its been about 2 weeks now since my last post, and I guess I really needed some time to reflect on a lot of my decisions and why I’m here, where I’m at now. One of the key thing that I’ve learned through self-reflecting is that I have a tendency of self-sabotaging my life when things are going good. Its one thing I truly never faced and accepted, but being in the current situation that I am. I have come to terms that this is an obstacle that I needed to overcome and not shove it to the back part of my mind. Perhaps you are in the same boat, trying to understand what could have cause you to take certain risks in your life that left you feeling lost, confused, and stuck in a repeated cycle of never feeling like you can be better. Well, if you are then this is definitely a topic for you. If your not, but this topic still interests you, perhaps there is something you can learn or gain from this. Now before we start, of course I always like to go into the definition or meaning of any topic that I’m discussing about. For Self-sabotage, the word is use to describe a person who do or don’t do things that can affect their success or prevent them from achieving their goals.

Many things come into play when trying understand the core of what causes someone to self-sabotage their own endeavors, and one of the key things that it relates back to is someone’s childhood or the way they were brought up, causing them to carried on this trait of sabotaging themselves, because they never confronted this self-destructive part of their personality.  Now if we were to look into the roots of it, some of these past experiences would be for example: the fear of abandonment, fear of not being accepted or belonging and etc. These fear have been lingering inside of us long enough and we need confront the demons of our past to resolve what we could change for our future. So, let’s dive into some of these examples.

The Fear of Abandonment, Acceptance and Not Belonging:

Perhaps as a kid when you were growing up, you putted a lot of trust into your friends, family, or a specific person, and at the end, it backfired on you. The people who you thought would have love you and will stick by your side decided to walk out of your life and this left a deep scar inside of your heart. Or maybe your parents divorced or a parent passed and due to this separation, it devastated you in a way that you never thought you could ever get over it. You beat yourself up inside because you don’t really know how to express your emotion correctly. You lost something or someone that was special and closed to your heart, and I know that feeling. It really hurts and it definitely sucks. It makes you scare to trust people as you get older, because you’re scare that one day you’ll end up losing them again (A lover, a friend, and a family) or they’ll find some kind of flaw in you and just walk out of your life. So, you started to create this wall through loneliness to protect yourself in the process of being abandon. Maybe like me, you figure you just push people away and accept the suffering first before you become to attach and become heart broken at the end. Deep down though, you really just wanted to hold on to them but because you did push them away, you started to convince yourself that you’re fine alone and that you don’t need anyone else. Denial at its finest, but definitely not healthy because in life, we all need someone to be there for us. Now how does that effect in you into adulthood? Well, if you never work to unravel the issue of abandonment, you’ll have a hard time networking, or trusting your partner or even your peers. Or maybe you do, but later on they wonder why your slowly drifting away, especially if the bond is there. Now its okay to have some alone time, to reconnect with yourself but don’t punish yourself, thinking all the negative thoughts that would overwhelm your mind. (Breathe, clear out your thoughts if anything) Believe in yourself because I believe in you. Find the right people for you, and let them fuel you and inspire you to never give up on your success. 

Don’t get me wrong, there will be times in our life or a particular chapter where some people we meet, will have to go their own way and there’s nothing wrong about that. Not every one is destined to stay in your life, but definitely cherish those who do. So, how do you face this sabotaging trait? Well, a healing method you can learn is to accept the traumas of your past. Make peace with those hurtful memories and experiences, even new ones and allow them to be set free. I know that every now and then, especially if someone from your daily lives makes you feel hurt, you can spiral down the roller coaster towards not giving a crap about anything. (And trust me, it just continues to get worst from there) You end making bad and unethical decisions but in those moments, I want you to pause. Then get to the core of why you are acting like reckless. We can never force anyone to stay in our lives or begged them when they no longer see themselves in the picture. We need to learn to truly love ourselves, accept that its okay for things to happen the way they did. True acceptance is knowing that just because people leave doesn’t mean its the end of the world. Know that everything will work out for you, even if your alone. Learn to love your own existence. Learn to pick yourself out of the mud and keep walking through it. If you have to crawl, crawl all the way but don’t let your self-worth be belittle by those who can’t appreciate you. 

Which leads me into the part of acceptance and belonging. Many of us, especially growing up in a unstable or broken home, has had hard time to trying to fit in especially in school, life at home or making friends who won’t judge us for our lifestyle or our way of thinking. And then, of course you carry this feeling with you into adulthood and it manifested into a way that you don’t really know who you are. The reason why we fear not belonging or being accepted is because we never felt like we are worthy enough to be loved. Correlating back to our youth, we were never loved correctly and we never did learn to love ourselves in a manner that will allow us to grow into better adults. I know for a matter of fact, a lot of my childhood memories was base on trying to please my peers, grown-ups, or upholding an image of someone I wasn’t. Which made me hated myself a lot because deep down, I wasn’t free to be myself and you probably have gone through the same experience. You want to break free of this person who’s slowly destroying everything around you because this inner child inside of you is so broken that it never got to heal properly. But the best way to heal ourselves is to, again, love ourselves. Now loving yourself means to know that as long as we are happy with our individuality, our existence, and our purpose. This process doesn’t happen overnight and it definitely takes time to work on, but if you want change, you must keep going. Being accepted or trying to belong won’t be something of an importance, once you’ve master your inner self. See, when we don’t recorrect these flaws in ourselves, we’ll repeat the same method of ruining our success or fail to achieve what we wanted to create because we’ll never feel like we deserve to have success or achievements. Especially, when we feel like no one even cares if you do our best or try our hardest. You don’t need validation from anyone as long as you believe in yourself. You’ll know that your own validation is more than enough. By not fearing acceptance and belonging, you’ll be on your way to curing your Self-sabotaging trait.

I’ve only scratch the surface of what causes a person to self-sabotage their success to themselves, but I’m sure if you did deep enough. You’ll find out the roots of what causes you to feel like you can’t become something great. Don’t throw your dreams and your life away for temporary pleasure or for the feeling of not feeling worthy. Take the initiative to heal the broken pieces of yourself, so that nothing will stop you from becoming the person you need to be. This is our journey together to as we learn and grow through our self-discovery and self-development. If you do want to dive deeper into this, I would recommend checking out a book that has really help me through this process called: “The Mountain Is You” by Brianna West.

Thank you guys and I hope to see you on the next blog. 

Here’s a quote for you guys:

“Everything changes when you begin to love yourself. You no longer send out energy of desperation or need to be filled from the outside. You become a powerful source within yourself that attracts better. The more you love who you are, the less  you seek validation and approval.”