Live Chat with Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes: Preventing Self Sabotage

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to today's presentation of Integrative Behavioral health with me, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. Today is our Monday Q and A session, and I only had one person write in with a question this week, but it was a very good question and one that we will be able to spend a fair amount of time on. And that is the topic of self sabotage. We talk about self sabotage, but sometimes we don't really define what it is. Self sabotage is when we do things inadvertently. You know, we're not intentionally thinking, how can I screw things up for myself? But we inadvertently do things that hinder us from making progress towards our goals. Some of those examples can be blaming others for when bad things happen and failing to take responsibility for your part. This is self sabotaging because when we fail to take responsibility for our own parts, not only does that alienate those other people who are blaming, but we also fail to learn from our mistakes. So that is one area of self sabotage that we need to take a look at and examine why we feel the need to blame others and why we're so afraid of admitting we made a mistake jumping ship as soon as the going gets tough. This is another example of self sabotage. And it's important to recognize when you do this, sometimes on thorough evaluation of situations, you recognize that this is just not where you need to be. And it is a conscious decision based on facts about what is best. Other times we make decisions, whether it's relationships or jobs or school or anything. And we make decisions based on our gut or based on a feeling, you know, it's hard, it's uncomfortable. I'm not really liking this right now, so I want to quit. And I remember during my dissertation, there were days that I just. I really wanted to quit. And because it was hard, you know, it was not easy doing the things that I had to do and getting my dissertation written and doing my clinicals. And it was important for me at that point. I had a very good friend who was also going through the program, and I had my husband and. And both of them were my cheerleaders. And they kept pointing out to me how far I had come. And, you know, the goal, the finish line was right there. I just needed to push a little harder. So it's important when the going gets tough to examine your motivations and enhance your motivations, to push through thinking about how you'll feel when you get finished, when you accomplish your goal. Even if this part of whatever it is kind of sucks right now. How awesome will it be when you get to the end and that can be, you know, this can apply to quitting smoking, losing weight, getting in better shape. There's a lot of things that we do that when it gets a little bit uncomfortable, we just kind of give up. And that is an example of self sabotage. Procrastination is another example of self sabotage. When you know you need to do something, but you just don't do it. You know, it's sitting out there. And people procrastinate for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it is fear, sometimes it is whatever you're supposed to be doing just is. Doesn't sound like very much fun. It doesn't sound enjoyable, doesn't sound rewarding. And it's important when we're talking about procrastination to address not only the thoughts, but again, look back at motivation and try to make it as motivating as possible. And we're going to talk about some more tips when we get to the next slide. Disorganization is another example of self sabotage. If you know that you need these three things for your presentation and you don't set them out the night before or you're disorganized with it, that is partly an example of self sabotage. Now, some people have a lot of difficulty with organization, especially if they have add. And it is important to figure out what. What works for you in terms of helping you stay organized, stay on task, stay motivated. We're not talking about ADD or ADHD here. What we're talking about is self sabotage for other reasons. If you do have ADD or adhd, you know, obviously you're going to have to address some of these very similar behaviors, but the reasons you're engaging in them are likely very different because you have some differences in your neurochemical balances. Aggression or passivity are other examples of self sabotage. When something happens and you are not able to appropriately state your thought, thoughts, wants and feelings. If you're aggressive, you may get what you want, but then people fear you or don't want to be around you because of the aggression. If you're passive, then you may not get your needs met and you may feel rejected, forgotten about, ignored. And when you are not getting your needs met, then you're living inauthentically. You're sabotaging your own health, happiness. Well, being another example, there's lots of examples of self sabotage. We do it a lot. Mindlessness, impulsivity, or doing things for instant gratification. And these all kind of smush together when we are experiencing distress. A lot of times we may act impulsively and even sometimes when we're feeling good, positive feelings, we may act impulsively without considering our the big picture, considering the consequences. Maybe your friend calls you up and says, hey, let's go out tonight. And you're like, sure, let's go. And not thinking about the fact that you've got a major exam tomorrow. And so in that way, by acting mindlessly and impulsively for instant gratification, you wanted to feel happy right then and there, it, it created a situation where you weren't able to probably do as well as you could on the exam the next day. So examples of this can be what I call yes, sing. And that's when people say yes to everything. If somebody says, you want to go to a party? Yes. Will you help me move this weekend? Yes. Will you do this? Yes. And before they know it, they don't have any time for doing the stuff that they need to do. So that, so they're sabotaging themselves. They're not able to attend to the things that are on their list. Addictions are another example of self sabotage. And this tends to be more to help people escape from distressful feelings, from anger, anxiety, depression. People may impulsively gamble, may impulsively eat, may impulsively use substances in order to try to help themselves feel better right now. And ultimately those things often work against our ultimate goals for a rich and meaningful life. So then, you know, let's take emotional eating for example. Maybe you want to be healthy and live to the ripe old age of 100 and that's great. But if you are self sabotaging by emotional eating, you may get your BMI up really high, which puts you at higher risk for a lot of different physical health problems. And they've shown that obesity does tend to reduce lifespan as a result. So in the big, big scheme of things, you're actually working against a goal that's really important to you. Negative or self defeating self talk is also self sabotage. If you tell yourself, well, I probably wouldn't have gotten that job anyway, so why apply? Or I'm, I mess this up. I just, I suck at everything that I do. You know, it's the all encompassing, all or nothing thinking, especially when it is negative. And, and this can be very paralyzing when we are regularly telling ourselves you can't do that, or you shouldn't do that, or how dare you even think that you could do that. We need to pay attention to what we're telling ourselves. And finally, lacking self care, this is Self sabotage people, we need to set aside time to take care of ourselves, to get enough sleep, to eat, to get enough water, to go to the doctor when we need to. All of those things to keep our body factory operating at optimal levels is important because if you're run down, if you're broken, if you're unhealthy, you are not going to be able to achieve your goals or be there in the way that you want for the other people in your life. Avoiding yourself self care or ignoring your self care is an example of self sabotage. It's important to make sure that you put your health and well being first. You need to be healthy and, and functional before you can be helpful to other people most of the time. Okay, reasons for self sabotage? Well, sometimes we learn it, we see other people do these things, they ignore their own needs, they blame others for their mistakes, they, you know, give up really quickly and they just jump from job to job, relationship to relationship, this to this. And we can see that, we see that in the media, we see that in influencers, we see that in our families and probably see that in ourselves. Some we need to be encouraged when we're growing up to stick with it even when the going gets tough. And if we didn't have that encouragement, we may not have that drive that helps us push through when it's really difficult. So what can we do here? Well, if it's a learned behavior, we want to identify, you know, become aware of your self sabotaging behaviors, become aware of things that you do that get in your own way that keep you from keeping jobs. You know, maybe you switch jobs a lot or that cause problems in your relationships. Examine your part in most of these things. There are a lot of factors that play in there. You know, it takes at least two to tango, as they say. It's important to recognize what your part is in these things and you know, give credit where credit is due. Other people contribute. But then look at your behaviors and explore the pros and cons. You know, if I would have, and I'll share with you guys, if I would have gone to community college to take calculus and chemistry when I was in graduates or when I was an undergraduate like my father had suggested, if I would have listened, you know, I may have gotten into medical school. And so in retrospect, being stubborn and not listening actually got in my own way because I, you know, I was 17, I thought I knew everything. So look at the behaviors that you do that get in your way and explore the benefits. You know, does it really help you when you do this thing or not? And if not, what are some alternatives? What could you do to to deal with life? You know, if one of the behaviors you learned was to cope with stress by smoking, okay, well maybe you look at that behavior and go, you know what? The big scheme of things that doesn't really fit with my overall life goals. So what could I do instead? And you, only you can answer that. But you've got to find before you can change your behavior, you've got to figure out what you're going to change it to. Some people self sabotage because they need to be in control. Part of that could be because of familiarity. Change causes crisis and crisis causes change. Any kind of change, even if it's positive change, is hard. So sometimes people will self sabotage. You know, they're getting ready to go to college and suddenly they forget to mail in their tuition payments. Or maybe they get senioritis and they've already been accepted to colleges, but then they fail their senior year. You know, there are sometimes there are some big self sabotages that happen, but part of that can be because of familiarity. If you are staying in a situation or creating a situation that is keeping you from moving forward in some way, then you want to examine why you know. Is it because you just want to stay with what you know, with what's familiar? Because stepping out of your comfort zone is too scary? Well, if that's the case, then get some support from other people, get some encouragement and make a plan. How can you safely emerge from that, you know, from the safety of what is known? Get out of your comfort zone in order to start moving forward? Other people need to be in control because they need to have a feeling of, of power. A lot of times this coincides with people who have a history of trauma. Explore your fears. Why is it that you need to be the one in power? Why is it in relationships you need to be the dumper, not the dumpy? In when jobs at work, you know if something starts going wrong, you quit before you can be fired. When you know, you see where I'm going with this. A lot of times if you are the one that is proactively pushing things away or needing to be in control, it's because there's a need for power. And it's important to examine where that comes from. And your fears about rejection, about isolation, about lack of acceptance and we'll get to self esteem in just a second. Fear of failure, fear of success and the imposter phenomenon. Again, I smushed all Those together. Sometimes we self sabotage because we're afraid if we try, we will fail. And I encourage people, I do an entire group with my, with my clients on failure. And we talk about embracing failure. You know, yes, it sucks. Nobody likes to fail. However, we talk about trying to figure out what can we learn from failure. And one of my favorite activities is I have them, you know, go home and when they come back the next week, each person is supposed to bring in at least one inspiring quote about failure. And there are lots of them on the Internet. Thankfully, you know, we do have the Internet now. But sometimes it helps us to reconceptualize failure. Sometimes people are afraid of failure because they equate success with acceptance and lovability. And that goes with self esteem. If you have low self esteem. If you rely on other people to tell you that you are good enough, that you are worthy, then is very scary. Whenever anything happens that might cause rejection or criticism. If you are not able to look in the mirror and tell yourself and believe when you tell yourself, you know what, I'm, I'm a pretty awesome person. If you can't do that, then you may be at risk of fear of failure or fear of rejection being a stumbling block for you and causing self sabotage. Now, fear of success is a little bit different, but a lot the same fear of success happens when people guess what, succeed. And that's awesome. But then there's a fear that okay, once I succeed, then people are going to expect me to keep this up. What if I can't do it? Or what if I relapse? Or once I, once I succeed then maybe people will expect me to do even more after that. And what if I can't do that? It's a lot of what ifs in there and, and expecting and anticipating and assuming you know what's going to happen. Fear of success is one of the most common issues that I deal with and I think my colleagues would agree in, in addiction recovery because a lot of people are. Are terrified. And same thing is true to a certain extent with depression recovery. People are terrified that if they succeed then peop. Then and they relapse in some way, then people will think less of them or they're afraid that if they succeed they may not have another relapse in them. That relapsing would just destroy them. So we do want to examine what does success mean and how might it be feel scary. Think about success being. Being akin to climbing to the pinnacle of a mountain. Now for me, I am terrified of heights so if I get up to that mountain, you know, staying up there is, you know, I want to stay up there because I, I'm afraid of falling. So in what way? If you get up that mountain, what are you afraid might make you fall? And then going along with this is the imposter phenomenon. And this is basically when you can do something, but you don't feel like you can do it. So, for example, somebody who goes through medical school and they get all the degrees and they pass all their clinicals, but they don't feel like they deserve to be called doctor. They don't feel like they've actually done it yet. They're afraid that any day people are going to find out that they're a fraud, even though they've got all the degrees and everything and they actually did pass medical school. There's part of them, there's a negative voice inside them that says, you can't do this. For people who have the imposter phenomenon, it's important to explore where that voice is coming from that's telling them that they can't do that. And, and for these three things for fear of failure, fear of success, and the, and the imposter phenomenon, I encourage you to look at three different interventions. Number one, examine what's going on. Fear of failure, Fear of success. What are the facts in this situation? What are the facts supporting the fact that you might fail or that if you succeed, you won't be able to maintain it? What are the facts for and against that belief in this context? You know, so you want to consider, you know, maybe you, you tried before. Let's stick with the recovery example. You tried before and you relapsed. Okay, well, what are the facts now in this context? How is this context different now than the context you were in when you relapsed before? And given the facts in this context that you're in now, what is the probability that you would fail? So facts, content and probability are all important. Develop positive affirmations. Something to say back to the negative Nelly in your head that's telling you you can't do this, or how dare you think you could do this. Develop positive affirmations that remind you of what you have accomplished, what you have done. They can be fact based. They don't even need to be, you know, super warm and fuzzy, emotion based. They can be very fact based, like the doctor example I gave you. The positive affirmation would be, I got through medical school, I passed my clinicals, and I, I can keep doing, you know, I can keep that up. You know, obviously I've proven to other people that I can do this. Now that's not the best positive affirmation, but it is a very fact based affirmation and when you look at it in terms of facts instead of feelings, it's like, okay, yeah, well I, I've checked all the blocks so I guess I, I did do it. And guided imagery. Envisioning yourself succeeding. Envisioning yourself and do it every day, every morning before you get up or when you're drinking your coffee or whatever you do in the morning. Envision yourself succeeding at whatever it is that you have some anxiety about or you feel the imposter phenomenon about. Visualize what that looks like and how it is probable that things will go well. Work on your self esteem. You know, if you are less afraid of abandonment because of rejection, if you're less afraid of criticism, then it's easier, it's less anxiety provoking to do things that might be a little bit stressful. So working on your self esteem can actually help you with that. Stick to it. Iveness. Develop your emotional IQ and that is your ability to identify and regulate your own emotions. What triggers anger for you may be different than what triggers anger for me. So it's important to be able to identify for yourself when you're feeling angry, what triggers it and what helps you re regulate after you've become upset or dysregulated. Poor time management is yet another issue. And for some people poor time management is a self sabotage technique. For others it's a cause of some of the self sabotage. Poor time management is. Our time management is a learned skill and it's important for all of us at some point in our lives to figure out what we need to do in order to effectively manage our time. You know, I am a very structured person so I have always, you know, estimated how much time it takes me to do things and made schedules and plans and those sorts of things. My son, not so much, bless his heart. He has difficulty with time management because he can get lost in things and he's found that he has to set timers and have push notifications to remind him to do things so he doesn't get lost in his own thoughts. It's important for you to figure out what works for your time management. Another part of that time management is being able to say no, being able to take a step back and, and I encourage people instead of saying yes or no to say I'll get back to you on that or let me check My schedule because that gives you the option to step back and think about it and examine everything that you've got to do before you say yes or no. So you can choose what's most effective for you. And finally, I did talk about motivation a little bit on the last slide. So I just want to go over the, the highlights of motivation. Because when we self sabotage, sometimes it's because we're not motivated to do it either because of fear. And we already talked about how to address fear, but sometimes we're just not motivated to do things and we sabotage ourselves because it just sounds dreadful, whatever it is we have to do. Going to the doctor, scheduling your annual exam, you know, going to the gym, which I'm going as soon as we finish here. It's important to be able to enhance your motivation. So we'll go through each dimension of motivation. Remember, we use the mnemonic device pacers here. Physical how can doing this help you feel better physically? How can it help you sleep better? Well, if you're not anxious, if you're not dreading it, let's tossing and turning in bed going, oh God, I still got to get that done. You know, you're probably going to sleep better, which will free up some energy. You're not going to be dreading it. Holding on to that, you know, distress emotionally, how is it going to help you? You know, if you get through something that's really difficult, how will it make you feel more empowered? How will it make you feel relieved, happier? Cognitively, you know, how does it make sense that doing whatever you need to do, whatever you're dreading, or changing your behavior to stop self sabotaging? How does it make sense that changing that behavior, stopping self sabotage, can help you move toward a life that is rich and meaningful. It can help you more effectively achieve those goals environmentally, what can you do? What can you put in your environment to remind you to stop self sabotaging? Whatever behavior you're using to self sabotage or behaviors I know, I use multiple. What can you do to prompt yourself to not do those things? Whether it is emotional eating or again, poor time management, whatever it is for you, can you put something on your mobile device? Can you hang up pictures? Can you, you know, you may need to get a little creative, but think about where you're at, what you're doing, what you're most likely to see or hear. When you're about ready to self sabotage, what can you do? Maybe drinking, maybe drinking alcohol is your method of self sabotage and you're not willing to get rid of the alcohol in the house. You know, okay, so maybe you put a sign, you know, hang a sign behind the door of the liquor cabinet. So when you open the liquor cabinet, you see that sign that says, do you really want to do this? There are tricks that you can do. You just need to figure out what works for you. And then finally, relationally, who can be your support, who can be your coach, your cheerleader to help you start changing this behavior? Changing any behavior is not easy. And changing self sabotaging behaviors can be, you know, very challenging because a lot of times they in some way protected us or were rewarding. So having somebody that's there to help keep you on your toes can be very helpful. So there are multiple dimensions of motivation, and if you need to go back over these, there are videos specifically on the dimensions of motivation on the YouTube channel. All right, well, the rest of this week, I know I'm going to do at least one or two shows on the properties of cannabis. Tomorrow, specifically, we're going to talk about cannabis terpenes, which are the aromas that are embedded within the cannabis plant and the effects of those, you know, so the aromatherapy of cannabis, if you want to think of it that way. Thank you everybody for being here today and thank you for emailing me the questions. Remember, if you have questions you want me to answer on the Monday show, email them to wellness_one@yahoo.com until tomorrow. I will see you later. Have a great day.