Here there are a few strategies on how to breakthrough self-sabotage. Whether you are, or not, aware of your own patterns you can start getting rid of that feeling of not being in full control of your life.

1 Do not judge nor blame yourself

Just become aware and observe what happened in your life, like you were somebody else. Do not associate any judgement nor meaning to your observations, as they will prevent you from understanding. Furthermore, there’s anything to regret as in every moment in your life you have the power to change thinking and, consequently, your behaviour.

2 Shed light on the recurring patterns of your life

As first step, it is important that you acknowledge those events that triggered a similar answer from you. In other terms, start noticing all those similarities, apparently disconnected from each other, that happened to you. Especially those where it looked like you had no choice of action, but the decision you made.

Ask yourself: “if that situation had happened now, how would I have reacted?“

3 Triggers to self-sabotage

Acknowledge any similarity among the triggers that made you to react.

The idea behind that is understanding what your brain wanted to protect you from.

Was your reaction driven by a sense of danger? Did someone criticise you? Were you afraid of losing someone? Did you feel inadequate and insecure? Were you afraid of rejection? Did you fear betrayal?

4 Reacting emotion

What prevalent emotion did you use to deal with the trigger? Anger, fear, depression, powerlessness, aloofness, detachment, denial… Was this emotion connected to the feeling you felt, or was it a different/opposite one?

5 Change your self-sabotage pattern

Now that you’ve traced back your behaviours at their source, you can take advantage of the whole picture and start introducing changes.

The idea behind that is to rewrite the sequence of reactions triggered by a specific event.

How to change your pattern?

When the trigger comes to you, do the following:

  • recognise the trigger,
  • stop yourself from reacting,
  • step back from the situation,
  • observe the situation as your best friend would do,
  • listen to your brain and feel the impulse to react as you would have done usually,
  • ask yourself “what do I want to get from this situation?” and set your purpose,
  • check out if your reaction is appropriate for you to get the result you want,
  • if not, choose another action which is more appropriate or do not act until you will find an adequate action

Emergency action in case you don’t have time, but a handful of seconds:

  1. count backwards from 5 to 1; this should disrupt your automatic thinking.
  2. ask yourself “what do I want from this situation?”.
  3. choose an appropriate answer to the trigger, so that you can get closer to your goal

This way you can switch from REACTING to a more conscious RESPONDING behaviour. At the beginning it may be a bit weird and difficult to do so, but you’ll get better over time.

Here we are, I hope you enjoyed this reading. Feel free to share it with anybody who can take advantage of it and leave your own comments down below.

Help us spread Happiness & Health!

Lots of love, Roberta

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