30 Signs Of Subconscious Self Sabotage

1. Self-Sabotage

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Subconscious self-sabotage involves a person undermining their own successes or well-being unintentionally.  They might have hidden beliefs or behaviors tucked away in their subconscious mind and without knowing it, they find themselves being held back.

2. Why do we do it?

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So these behaviors happen when your logical conscious mind comes into conflict with your subconscious mind or the 'anti-self'.  In other words, your inner voice has the tendency to hold you back, undermine your hard work, and stand in the way of you achieving your goals.  So, basically, your values and behavior are not completely aligned so you don't necessarily do the things you need to do to get what you really want.

3. Why should we try to avoid it?

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Self-sabotage tends to erode your self-confidence and esteem and can really affect your relationships, both personal and professional.  It really holds you back in life and must be addressed so you can make the most out of your time Earthside without any regrets.

4. Your war with the snooze button

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The first behavior that we might recognize the best to start with is the perpetual battle with the snooze button.  Your alarm clock goes off in the morning and most of us choose to hit snooze and stay in bed until the last minute, neglecting a healthy morning routine that can set us up for the day.

5. The inability to rest

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Despite the fact that we lie in bed snoozing for as long as we can, many of us are completely incapable of rest.  Rest happens when we carve out time for ourselves, whether that's sitting for a short time in the morning with a coffee, or spending time with our loved ones.  Not resting leads to burnout, and burnout leads to procrastination and a lack of production, not to mention having detrimental effects on your well-being.

6. Procrastination

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Procrastination is productivity's worst enemy.  Sometimes you're distracted by your environment, or sometimes you've done too much without proper rest and it's led to burnout.  Either way, delaying important tasks that you know are important can really contribute to your self-sabotage.

7. Negative self-talk

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When we subconsciously use our inner voice for self-talk, many people report that it's more often than not completely negative and self-criticizing.  This can really crush your self-esteem and make you feel like you're not good enough.  But it's not true, we should normalize POSITIVE self-talk.  Think about it, would you say the things that you say to yourself to someone else?  Probably not!  So be kind to yourself.

8. Self-doubt

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If you don't think that you are capable of doing the things that you are doing or want to do, you're engaging in self-doubt and this just isn't helpful for anyone at all.  All it does is make you believe that you're not worthy of success or happiness.

9. Imposter Syndrome

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With self-doubt and negative self-talk comes the dreaded Imposter syndrome.  Now this can come up during different periods of your life, but particularly when you want to do something, are working towards it, or even when you've accomplished what you set out to achieve.  But essentially, it's feeling like you're a fraud, and it's just not helpful at all.

10. Perfectionism

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Sometimes self-sabotage means procrastinating but other times, it means setting the bar a little too high and seeking complete perfectionism.  If you set impossibly high standards, you might be setting yourself up for not quite meeting them, which feels like failure.  And with that, comes that fear of failing.

11. Fear of success

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With that fear of failure, there is also its ugly sister: The Fear of Success which is often observed when we're self-sabotaging.  You might hold yourself back in some way because you have this fear of the responsibilities and expectations that will inevitably come with that success.

12. Avoiding taking risks

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When we take certain risks in life, there is a good chance that they'll lead to something wonderful.  It might be leaving that job to pursue another career or just saying yes to a new opportunity.  If you don't take the risk or are prone to avoiding them at all costs, you might turn down opportunities to advance and grow.

13. Setting unrealistic goals

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With your perfectionism, comes setting unrealistic goals, and this is a cornerstone of self-sabotage.  You see, if you set a goal to be able to do 50 bench presses in one go at 95kg by tomorrow when you've never bench pressed before, you're setting yourself up for failure and this doesn't do anything for your self-esteem.  Instead, you need a realistic time frame to break that end goal into smaller more achievable chunks.

14. Creating imaginary obstacles

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Self-sabotage can also look like you preempting potential failures by making up excuses to justify them.  You might regularly create endless obstacles so other people count you out, which of course damages your potential and limits your opportunities.

15. Escapism

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Various factors can contribute to you feeling like you need to escape reality for a little while.  And it's not always a bad thing if you use the time to rest and recharge.  However, we begin to self-sabotage when we regularly search for distractions, such as endless scrolling of the unrealistic virtual world, which can have an impact on our well-being and mental health.

16. Avoiding conflict

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It's probably safe to say that most people will want to avoid conflict, especially when there's a potential argument on the cards.  However, avoiding difficult conversations and conflicts means that you'll probably have to put up with certain things that you disagree with or are uncomfortable with.  Speaking up and potentially facing conflict is better than saying nothing at all because it's what makes change happen.

17. Seeking approval

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If you only do certain things in order to seek approval, you're no doubt going to be holding yourself back from doing what you really want.  It's self-sabotage because you're not going to be able to reach your own potential and grow unless someone else approves.

18. Analysis Paralysis

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If you are constantly overthinking everything, you are running the risk of not taking any action on whatever you're overthinking, which would be a shame since you've spent so much time thinking about it.  But the thing is, this plunges you into the depths of analysis paralysis, where you'll be trapped until you learn to stop overthinking.

19. Giving up too easily

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So you have certain goals, and you've carefully set them in order to achieve what you set out to, but with this is the risk of suffering setbacks and not meeting goals.  The self-sabotage thing to do would be to give up at your first setback, not showing any resilience in the face of challenges.

20. Ignoring gut feelings

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When you're going through a case of self-doubt, Imposter Syndrome, or having self-esteem issues, you might not feel like you're able to trust your gut feelings.  But when you ignore your intuition, you're ignoring a whole bunch of trustworthy guidance.

21. Ignoring boundaries

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Self-sabotage is also ignoring boundaries.  Not necessarily other people, though, admittedly, this could cause some conflict with others, but your own.  If you don't set your own boundaries and make them clear to others, you're at risk of being taken advantage of, which could impact your own mental health and well-being.

22. Settling for mediocrity

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Underachievement is a classic symptom of subconscious self-sabotage.  You see if you always just settle for mediocrity, you're setting yourself up to underachieve, even though you're quite clearly capable of way more than you give yourself credit for.

23. Regular pity parties

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You might even throw yourself regular pity parties and wallow endlessly in self-pity with you and yourself.  And it sucks.  It's a trap.  You might sit uncomfortably, dwelling on the past whilst taking absolutely no initiative whatsoever to try to find solutions.

24. Victim mentality

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You don't through your pity parties as part of your self-sabotage without inviting pity's good friend, victim mentality.  Constantly blaming external factors for your perceived failures and inactivity is unproductive and it's hard to snap out of the habit.

25. The master of making excuses

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Subconscious self-sabotage awards its victims with the skills of being able to make excuses.  And they don't even need to be good excuses as long as they get the job done of stopping you from doing anything.  This could damage personal relationships, and career goals, not to mention your potential.

26. Passive-aggressiveness

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If you're passive-aggressive and don't share your anger or frustrations directly, people just aren't going to get how you feel.  They're not going to know why you're acting this way if you don't tell them which fills all parties involved with discomfort and frustration.

27. Impulsive decision making

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You will no doubt subconsciously sabotage yourself if your decision-making is impaired.  You see, not being able to make a sensible decision may mean that you're putting things off, whereas making impulsive decisions can negatively impact your life in the long term.

28. Self-defeating behavior

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Lots of subconscious self-sabotage lies within self-defeating behavior.  Excessive self-criticism, Imposter Syndrome, negative self-talk, and believing you're not good or skilled enough can really undermine your own best interests and stop you from achieving your potential.

29. Cognitive biases

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It's also common for people to fall into cognitive traps like confirmation bias.  This is where you only seek information that supports your own self-sabotaging beliefs, allowing you to continue with your behavior because the information said it was OK.  But you can get stuck in the loop.

30. How to defeat it

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Being able to spot self-sabotaging behaviors will allow you to challenge your inner voice, learn how to set achievable goals, practice mindfulness, and change that negative self-talk to affirmations.  If you're worried about where to start though, seeking support is a good idea.  You can source self-help resources, or think about therapy or coaching.