Self-defeating behaviors and self-sabotage
In many instances that self-sabotage that’s kick in especially if the project is abandoned in a relative early stage. Sometimes it is self-sabotage and sometimes it is discouragement , I found out that we can get discouragement often when we compare our result with those of other people involved in similar endeavor.
I will talk about the love meditation I m doing as example, as you do the love meditation you will feel better but some people got instant result the very first time they do it, some people got result a after few sessions, some got result after a lot of sessions, In my case I got results after quite sometimes and it wasn’t big big results, but If I’d compared my results with the people who got instant fabulous result with that meditation , it would have been depressing. If you don’t have an happy life , if you have a lot of issues and problems you cannot except results as fast as someone who has a relatively happy life, it is the same with many things. Some people run each morning for years so when they start a new sport, they have an edge over the people who never practiced anything and if this is your case, comparing will depress you , especially if you don’t know that the person you are comparing to has a background in sport.
Now, back to the self-sabotage, some people tell to themselves ‘I keep hurting myself, but I don’t understand why‘, what is really an act of self-sabotage a self-defeating behavior according to Professor Milton. R. Cudney PhD
a true self-defeating behavior is an action or attitude that once worked to help an indivual cope with a hurtful experience but now works against the individual to keep him or her from responding to new moments of life in healthy way.
Taking weights for a girl that has been abused to not be attractive to abusive men is one of those self-defeating behavior, It might work just once but never again. Many self-defeating behavior are formed in early childhood some in later part of life. It is difficult to correct a self-defeating behavior because when we have one, we have a tunnel vision, we will exclude anything that doesn’t fit in the self-defeating strategy so we can self-sabotage ourselves , run into to that wall and complain afterward how miserable we are and why we self-defeat ourselves without understanding why.
First, when we have a strong self-defeating behavior, we don’t really want to give it up, that why there is the tunnel vision to prevent us to see an escape window, say if you have been overeating for the last 30 years, chance is that you see yourself as an overeater, so basically losing the self-defeating will be losing a part of you.
There is something called ‘Belief system crisis’, it is when something you thought was true for most of your life appear not be true at all, when it happens, you feel like dying because in a sense a part of you died , the part that held the changed belief for so long.
Now, ok, how can we heal from self-defeating behavior and self-sabotage, I don’t know of a quick fix strategy or one shot panacea. Some people go to see a therapist, some people do chakra therapy, Sedona method, the love meditation, EFT 
and the list goes on. A first good thing to do when you recognize your self-defeating behavior if you have one, write it down in details with many examples when you used it, keep the paper on you, the next time you come across an occasion to self-defeat yourself you will think about it, don’t blame or be hard with yourself if you continue to go through the defeating behavior but add it on the paper. At some point, you might decide that enough is enough, this is a Grand step toward healing.
A technique to work on self-defeating using self-hypnosis is to enter a comfortable trance state. Imagine walking in a park or hill seat on a bench there and ask to talk the part of yourself generating the self-defeating behavior for some reason I always call it my inner child but you can call the name you want or not give it a name at all.
Ask in what circumstance the behavior was created.
Tell the part that the behavior is no longer necessary.
Ask the part to adopt a new wining behavior.
Then adopt it
If you cannot go through this by yourself many CD have such technique, I’m thinking to the New Behavior Generator from Learning Strategies or the Addiction Freedom CD from Wendi Friesen.
Have fun working on behavioral change.
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