How to Change Your Self-Destructive Behaviors
© 2013 Health Realizations, Inc.
If you’ve ever engaged in all night drinking marathon the night before a big exam, procrastinated until the last minute to pay bills, filed your income tax forms after the deadline, waited until Christmas day to do all of your shopping or stopped at the Oberweiss drive-thru for a large chocolate shake with whipped cream and a cookie when you have been diligently following a healthy eating plan, you have engaged in self-handicapping behavior, also referred to as self-sabotaging behavior.
In a study by the Educational Psychology Review, self-handicapping is defined as “creating impediments to successful performance on tasks that the individual considers important.”
The focus of this particular study was on academic self-handicapping, where the subjects took a self-esteem protective strategy by withholding efforts on a task such as studying for an exam in order to “save face” when they then got back poor grades.
The Three Major Causes of Self-Sabotaging Behaviors … and How to Overcome Them
Research shows that there are three major categories of self-sabotaging behaviors: procrastination, overindulging and fear of failure. Below are detailed descriptions of each of these behaviors followed by what you can do to overcome them.
Self-Sabotaging through Procrastination
One of the quickest and most surefire ways to sabotage potential successes is through procrastination. The negative impacts of procrastination extend over to your health, finances, work and relationships.
In a Psychology Today article, leading experts on procrastination uncovered the below revealing characteristics of procrastinators.
Being raised under these circumstances usually results in the procrastinator turning to friends for support rather than their parents. The friends then perpetuate the procrastinator cycle by showing more tolerance to their excuses than the parents would.
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Experts have identified three specific types of procrastinators:
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Arousal -- thrill-seekers who wait until the last minute to experience the euphoric rush
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Avoiders -- attempt to avoid the fear of failure, care what others think of them and would prefer others thought they were lacking in effort, not necessarily ability
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Decisional -- unable to make a decision, which they believe excuses them from responsibilities
The heavy costs of procrastination range from health problems such as compromised immune systems, more colds and flu, gastrointestinal problems and insomnia to other major areas of life such as the workplace and relationship troubles.
Don’t Put off Today … Tips on Overcoming Your Procrastinating Ways
If the thought of giving up your procrastinating ways elicits a physical resistance in your body, force yourself to put one foot in front of the other and start with these simple techniques:
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Whatever your task is, start by breaking it up into segments and tackle one a day. You can even set a timer and tell yourself you need to complete your task before the timer goes off. Be specific with writing down your tasks and be careful not to write them in a way that sets you up for failure such as “Go on a diet.”
Put in as much detail as you can into the visualization and imagine how you see, hear and feel when you are doing it. By practicing these techniques you will be able to let go of needless worrying, start thinking positive thoughts and get your goals accomplished. It may help to do your visualizations along with a relaxation CD. Get a good night’s sleep: When we sleep, the stress hormone cortisol is lowered, but when we are sleep deprived, cortisol levels rise. Further, your energy levels will go down and you'll be less able to cope with any setbacks during your day.
Overindulgence most often happens as an unconscious response and people experience it when they’re unable or unwilling to face reality or to acknowledge the implications of the situation.
For example, while strictly following a new way of healthy eating for over a month, you may find yourself dropping a bag of Reeses, frozen pizzas and peanut butter cookies in your grocery cart on your next shopping trip, justifying it by telling yourself it’s for your husband/wife or kids, knowing deep down that is not true.
Experts say that by engaging in this kind of behavior you are your own enemy and participating in a form of self-sabotage to your own goals.
Tell Yourself You Deserve a Healthy Body
The first step to take in dealing with diet sabotage and overindulging issues is to recognize that it is happening. If you find the times that you engage in overindulging you are feeling sorry for yourself, ask yourself what the true, underlying emotions really are.
By doing this, you may find that you are eating to fill an emotional void such as boredom, sadness that your partner is out of town or loneliness because you are spending a Saturday evening alone.
Here are some tips to help you the next time you get the urge to overindulge:
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Take part of your lunch break at work to go for a walk so you’re taking the focus off of food
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Find a healthy eating partner either at home or at work and set common goals together
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If you begin to engage in negative talk, stop yourself and ask what are you feeling at that moment
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Make plans for a fun vacation once your goal is achieved
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Be prepared to deal with stress in a healthy manner … before it drives you to overeat and gain weight.
Self-Sabotaging through Fears of Failure
Most people avoid feedback and criticism like the plague and this is especially true when it comes to performance review time at work or taking an exam at school. The thought of being criticized or failing snowballs into seemingly insurmountable proportions and causes people to engage in self-destructive behaviors, such as denial and procrastination, with results that can negatively impact their work, health and organization.
You can take control of life and find out all of the possibilities and goodness that life has to offer once you let go of the fear of failure.
To get you on the path to following your dreams and accomplishing your goals, here are some practical techniques to overcome your fears:
- Consider the high price of missed opportunities and delve into alternatives -- Without taking any risks in life, you’ll never know what opportunities lay in store for you. Fear of the unknown can cause a sense of paralysis in people struggling with pursuing their dreams. Once you’ve done your research and are informed of the possible consequences of a situation it lessens the fear of failure and makes it easier to move forward.
- Understand the benefits of failure -- Put the worst-case scenario in perspective and ask yourself if you set out to do something and failed in the process, “What’s the worst thing that can happen?” Chances are the answer isn’t as nearly catastrophic as your thoughts had conjured up. As the saying goes, “As one door closes, another opens,” just as each failure represents another opportunity for growth.
- Take action -- One of the best plans of action for reducing fear and building confidence is making the first step and going for it. After you accumulate all of your knowledge and research, you are ready to take your first step and each step after that you will feel more confident and your fears will become more manageable.
Your level of self-control can be depleted by simple, daily decisions, research shows. You can help to reserve some of your willpower -- and thereby reduce your risk of engaging in self-destructive behaviors -- by asking for support from friends and or loved ones allowing you to delegate unimportant choices to others.
Sources
Psychology Today
The New York Times
WebMD.com
Psychology Today
Educational Psychology Review, Vol. 13, No. 2,
Science Daily
