You’re Ruining What You Care About? It Might Not Be Random

Self-sabotage in real life

You want to change jobs. You’re unhappy with the conditions, the pay, and the atmosphere. You feel resigned and burnt out. You have less energy and fewer ideas, so you want to start a new chapter somewhere else. But… you keep putting off updating your CV. You tell yourself you’re “still upskilling,” but without a real plan. You always find smaller, supposedly urgent tasks to do first.

Even though the goal feels like a priority, you keep yourself in an uncomfortable situation you already know. You avoid the anxiety of being judged in a new workplace—or you protect yourself from the possibility that someone might reject your application.

Scenarios you recognise from life

Another example: you regularly feel hurt by the behaviour of someone in your family. It might be repeated criticism, or the lack of support you expect and genuinely need. But you don’t say it directly because you “don’t want conflict.” You swallow your emotions and act as if everything is fine.

Later, you respond with coldness, irony, or an outburst triggered by something that looks trivial. The hidden benefit is that you avoid a direct confrontation here and now. The price you pay is growing distance, the feeling of being misunderstood, and emotional withdrawal.

Both situations show how sabotage works in everyday life. This stance appears when the psyche tries to protect us from fear, rejection, or escalation—briefly, from what feels like an even harder situation than the one we’re in now. And yet, the result is that our mental and emotional state still gets worse.

How it switches on

The mechanism of self-sabotage works like this: unconsciously (and sometimes partly consciously), we act against our own goals, needs, or wellbeing—even while we say we want something else. This isn’t “bad intent,” stupidity, or laziness. Most often, it’s a protective strategy the psyche built earlier in life. How does it unfold?

First, a goal or opportunity appears—career success, a close relationship, change for the better. It awakens hope, ambition, and expectation. But at the same time, alongside that positive pull, fear kicks in. So does an inner belief such as: “I don’t deserve this,” “If I succeed, I’ll lose something,” “Better not try than fail.” What does that suggest?

• The psyche tries to “protect” you from a threat
  (even if that threat is symbolic: rejection, shame, loss of control)
• A sabotaging behaviour appears
  procrastination, perfectionism, withdrawal, conflict, quitting at a crucial moment
• Short-term relief, long-term loss
  relief: “Phew, I don’t have to face the fear”
  loss: frustration, guilt, and stronger negative beliefs

Why do we sabotage ourselves?

Psychologists most often point to low self-esteem as a key source of self-sabotage. It shows up as the belief that success threatens identity (“that’s not for me”). Just as often, people fear failure—or fear success (because success brings higher demands, visibility, and pressure that can feel intimidating in real life).

Negative childhood experiences that damage a young psyche—harsh criticism or conditional acceptance—can also have a huge impact on self-sabotage in adulthood. They can create an inner split: “I want X” versus “I’m afraid of the consequences of X.”

The tension and anxiety this generates can become so intense that we prefer to “let it go” just to keep a fragile sense of peace. And then come distorted loyalty beliefs, like: “If I’m happier than my loved ones, I’ll betray them.”

Self-sabotage in practice: why it’s so hard to stop

If you try to name the most common forms of self-sabotage you see in everyday relationships, several show up again and again: postponing important matters “for later,” perfectionism that paralyses action, entering relationships that confirm old patterns, destroying good situations through conflict or withdrawal, and quitting right before you reach the goal.

Where the pattern gets its power

Self-sabotage can feel incredibly strong because it’s familiar and predictable. The psyche often prefers familiar suffering to unknown change. Paradoxically, that can give a sense of control. The mechanism can be so strong and so hard to change because it isn’t a “character flaw.” It’s a deeply rooted protective strategy that once helped you survive—emotionally or relationally.

Problems that begin in childhood

This mechanism forms early and runs automatically because it develops in childhood or in repeated, meaningful relationships. Back then, you learned how to avoid rejection, punishment, shame, criticism, and other experiences you couldn’t handle.

Because the strategy worked, the brain saved it as “safe.” Today it activates by reflex, without a conscious decision. At the same time, self-sabotage protects you from strong emotions (but not from facts). Its job isn’t to protect you from an objective danger, but from fear, shame, the feeling of being “not good enough,” and the pain of rejection. Those emotions can feel so intense that the psyche would rather block action than go through them.

Why it’s so difficult to stop

Finally, self-sabotage brings immediate relief. Even though it harms you long-term, in the short term it lowers tension, restores a sense of control, and returns you to a familiar pattern. The brain learns very strongly through relief—so the mechanism becomes reinforced.

It’s very hard to let go of this way of reacting because the mechanism becomes part of identity and often connects with beliefs like: “That’s just how I am,” “I always ruin everything.”

Changing behaviour requires changing your self-image, and that can feel psychologically threatening. Self-sabotage also creates a trap: it runs in the background, not in the centre of attention.

In the moment of sabotage, your behaviour can feel “rational” (for example: “This isn’t a good time”). Worse, you don’t experience it as a problem, but as a decision. Only with time do you see the repeating pattern—often unconscious, but regularly repeated.

What you can do differently

To weaken self-sabotage, the key isn’t to fight it, but to understand its function. Ask yourself clearly: “What is this protecting me from?” “What is this part of me afraid of?” When you build enough safety to feel difficult emotions, the mechanism no longer feels necessary. It helps to track your behaviour through a concrete path of reflection:

• Notice the moment resistance appears
• Identify what you’re truly protecting yourself from
• Work with beliefs (“Is that definitely true?”)
• Take small, safe steps instead of dramatic leaps
• Sometimes psychotherapy—especially schema therapy or CBT
• Every step forward counts as success

Self-sabotage isn’t an enemy. It’s a signal that some part of you is trying to protect you—even if it does it in the wrong way. When you start to understand it rather than fight it, you create space for choice and change. Every small step taken despite fear weakens the old pattern and builds a new experience of safety.

Change doesn’t mean living “without fear.” It means acting with more kindness toward yourself. So it’s worth repeating as often as you can: “You don’t have to stop being afraid to keep moving. It’s enough to stop hiding from yourself.”

Read the original article in Polish: Psujesz to, na czym ci zależy? To może nie być przypadek