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Self-Sabotage in Mental and Relational Health

Do you self-sabotage your relationships?

Shirley J. Davis
7 min readSep 22, 2023
Photo by ammar sabaa on Unsplash

Many people, including those who were successful, such as Abraham Lincoln and Michelangelo, have committed the crime of self-sabotage. Chronic self-sabotage leads to destructive outcomes in our personal lives and at work. Those who have complex post-traumatic stress disorder often find themselves self-sabotaging.

This series and this piece focus on self-sabotaging behavior and ways to defeat it.

What is self-sabotage?

Believing in yourself is one of the hardest things for people who have experienced childhood trauma. Believing in oneself requires secure and constructive choices.

Self-sabotage occurs when someone makes a choice that directly contradicts or sabotages a goal or a relationship. Too often, being insecure manifests with trust issues, and we create self-fulling prophecies. Survivors often feel insecure, have problems taking constructive criticism, and have trust issues with their partner or boss.

Feeling insecure and having trust issues can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies where subconsciously and sometimes consciously, survivors’ beliefs influence their behavior. For instance, if one predicts they will fail, the survivor will almost always fail.

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Shirley J. Davis
Shirley J. Davis

Written by Shirley J. Davis

I am an author/speaker/grant writer in the U.S. My passion is authoring information about mental health disorders, especially dissociative identity disorder..

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