How would you define “self-sabotage”? Defined most simply, self-sabotage means doing things that prevent you from reaching your goals.Can feedback from other people help someone recognize that they’re sabotaging themselves? Sometimes it can. But one of the things that can make self-sabotaging behavior so difficult to treat is that it is largely unconscious. When someone drops out of college one class short of a degree, he doesn’t usually think he’s sabotaging himself. He thinks he’s facing reality and quitting before he flunks out. Someone who pushes her partner away thinks that he’s rejecting her. It usually takes some time in therapy before a person can recognize that they’re undercutting themselves in significant ways.Why is it so difficult for people to recognize that they’re sabotaging themselves?I think it’s because self-sabotaging behavior has its roots in our early relationships. Children are usually very good at picking up on their parents’ emotional signals, including the ones their parents send without being aware of it. For example, a parent may profess enthusiasm for something his child has accomplished but the child picks up on the tone of disappointment in his father’s voice. And, of course, it’s not difficult at all to for a child to recognize when a parent is being openly critical of her child’s achievements.Children in this position are caught in a dilemma. They don’t want to believe that their parents aren’t supportive of them. No one does. They also want to please their parents and remain close to them, so they comply with the message that they hear in their parents’ responses to them—namely, that their parents can’t tolerate their success. And then they do something to undermine themselves, all the while telling themselves that they’re failures. This makes their parents right and makes them wrong, and allows them to continue to feel that they can do something to please their parents if they just get their act together. It’s a very complicated phenomenon.How can these children interact with their parents in the future?My experience has been that the more people are able to free themselves from their parents’ expectations, the more they’re able to accept, and even feel compassion for, their parents. They’re able to recognize that their parents treated them the way they did because of the parents’ limitations, and not because there was something wrong with them as children.This isn’t always the case, however. People who have been more severely abused or neglected may never be able to find ways to interact with their parents that don’t make them feel retraumatized. I don’t think there’s any shame in that. Not every relationship can be repaired, much as we may wish that it could.Why does the parents’ unhappiness get passed down to their children? One way of accounting for that is what has been called the “transgenerational transmission of trauma.” Parents who grew up in a family where their emotional needs weren’t met are probably not going to be able to meet the needs of their own children. So emotional issues get passed down from generation to generation until someone decides to break the pattern. Often, people are motivated to work on their own issues because they don’t want to pass them on to their children. And often people are motivated to work on them because they themselves don’t want to suffer anymore. Certainly, one of the most gratifying parts of my work is seeing people break these patterns of suffering that have often persisted for generations.How prevalent a problem is this?According to researchers in the field of Attachment Theory—a field that studies how children become securely or insecurely attached to their parents—50% of people don’t have significant attachment issues. They felt valued and loved as children, and are able to be securely attached to their spouses and children and to feel successful in their lives, no matter what form their lives take. The other 50 percent exhibit a wide range of attachment issues, some of which can make it very difficult to feel good about themselves, and to make good choices in life. Some of those people are the people who have problems with self-sabotage who can really benefit from a therapy that helps them to understand how their early relationships contributed to their current difficulties.Are you optimistic for clients who have this problem? I’m very optimistic. In my experience, people who commit themselves to their therapy, and are able to stick with it even when it’s difficult, come out the other end feeling very positive and hopeful about their lives. They feel so much freer and so much less burdened by the problems of the past. Of course, they still experience the difficulties that are just a part of human life – loved ones die, work is stressful, children get in trouble, and so on. No therapy can keep bad things from happening to us. But when people have come to terms with the emotional issues that have been causing them to sabotage themselves, they have a lot more emotional energy to deal with the everyday ups and downs of life without becoming derailed.Click to learn more about finding your life path with Jane Rubin, Ph.D.
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