Is Self-Sabotage a myth or reality?

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I have been thinking nonstop about this. I've been to a lot of therapists and all but the current one gave up on me because they said I was not trying to get better or that I "didn't want to get better." In no way was that the case. But I can see how it looked like that to them now because half of me does sabotage the other half. I am programmed to chase after things I want and if I can have them by definition I don't want them.

Someone told me something similar to this and I have been thinking about it and at first it was hard for me to get; why would I choose to be miserable? - but thinking back over my life it is the only explanation. There is no such thing as "contentment" for me. There is "sad wanting" and "happy wanting" and that's it. That has its pros and cons I guess. Contentment to me is lifeless as death. So I want what's left, which is wanting. Which often means being miserable.

In my opinion, it is very real.

It's also called "Self-Fulfilling Prophesy". To test this, Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, in 1968, gave all the children in an elementary class a test, randomly selected some of the children, and told teachers that those children were unusually clever, even though they were actually average - no better or worse than the rest of the class. At the end of the school year, they came back and tested the same class again. Guess what? The children singled out as "unusually clever" had improved their scores far more than the other children in the same class.

Example: If you believe that you are so worthless that no one will like you, then you are unlikely to make the effort to get people to like you. The end result is that no one will like you, thus confirming your own misguided opinion of yourself. The same idea applies to "no one will want to hire me" (so you never apply for a job and remain unemployed), "I'm too stupid to learn an instrument" (so you never take music lessons), "She won't go out with me" (so you never ask her and she goes out only with other people), and so forth.

There are members of this website who seem to deny themselves a world of experience because they've (wrongly) convinced themselves that they could never succeed, and so they never even try.

I pity them.


^ This, too. ^

It seems that for many people, they have spent so much of their lives in the same rut that the thought of crawling out of it makes them feel uncomfortable.

I was told about this experiment during a practical psychology course. It was fascinating. An amusing aside is that the parents of the children who were not selected as being unusually clever took the teacher to court and sued him!

Fully agree with the rest of your post too. Did you happen to do the Lou Tice "Investment in Excellence" course too? It was a real eye-opener to me just how many ways people hold themselves back from fulfilling their potential, the reasons for it, and how to overcome them. The course changed my life.

I don't remember the exact reference, but this "Investment in Excellence" principle seems familiar from uni, but I don't go to self-help seminars given by charismatic people with books to sell.

I didn't used to believe it, but I do now.