The Many Faces of Self-Sabotage (I’ve Worn Them All)

I don’t talk about healing in theory - I talk about it because I’ve lived every messy, painful, human part of it.

Self-sabotage used to run my life. It didn’t look dramatic from the outside, but inside, it was a constant tug-of-war between the life I wanted and the fear that I didn’t deserve it.

Here’s how it showed up for me:

As a Child

• Learning that love had strings attached - stay quiet, stay small, stay “good” to earn scraps of approval.

• Swallowing anger and sadness because expressing them meant punishment or rejection.

• Never feelign good enough. Ever.

• Taking on responsibility that wasn’t mine, believing it was my job to keep the peace.

• Never knowing where I stood - walking on eggshells became my normal.

  
  

As an Adult

• Overthinking every word, still afraid of upsetting someone I love.

• Saying yes when I wanted to say no because conflict felt dangerous - in friendships, at work, everywhere.

• Overcompensating as a mum, wife, friend - doing too much, burning out, repeating the same patterns of self-abandonment.

• Shrinking myself to avoid rejection, keeping the “real me” hidden to stay safe and accepted.

• Avoiding hard conversations, terrified honesty would make people leave.

• Holding responsibility for everyone’s moods, trying to keep harmony no matter what it cost me.

• Sabotaging good things - not because I wanted to, but because my nervous system was still wired for survival, not safety.

  
  

As a Wife

• Saying “I’m fine” when I wasn’t, because I’d learned that needing too much made love unsafe.

• Swallowing my feelings to avoid conflict, only to implode later with frustration and resentment - then shutting down completely because connection felt unsafe.

• Choosing “peace” over honesty, re-enforcing to myself that my voice didn’t count.

• Over-functioning - doing everything, fixing everything - because I thought if I could control enough, I would feel safe and loved.

• Accepting behaviour that hurt me because part of me believed that’s just what love felt like. Or that I didn't deserve better.

As a Mum

• Overcompensating, saying yes to everything, trying to give my kids the “perfect childhood”… then collapsing into exhaustion and guilt because I couldn’t sustain it.

• Snapping over small things because my nervous system was constantly wired, then hating myself afterward.

• Avoiding hard conversations because I feared they’d see me as “bad” or “not enough,” repeating the same silence I grew up with.

• Putting their every need before my own, calling it love, while teaching myself AND MY KIDS that my needs didn’t matter.

As a Therapist

• Pouring every ounce of myself into helping others while ignoring my own breaking point.

• Doubting my worth, second-guessing whether I was good enough to guide others because I still carried scars of my own.

• Hiding the truth of my struggles, thinking if clients saw the “real me,” they’d lose trust in my ability to help.

• Carrying everyone else’s pain without putting mine down first, staying in a constant state of depletion.

• Undercharging and over-giving, thinking if I made it “cheap enough” or “gave enough extras,” people would finally choose me.

• Saying yes to clients and sessions that didn’t feel aligned because I didn’t trust I could say no and still succeed.

• Ignoring my own boundaries - skipping breaks, answering messages late at night, pushing past exhaustion - because I thought being available 24/7 proved I was good at what I do.

• Tying my worth to results, blaming myself if a client didn’t “transform fast enough,” and constantly over-delivering to make up for my own fear of not being enough.

• Burying my intuition under what I thought “a good therapist should do,” even when my gut screamed a different truth.

  
  

The endless journey - a man walking alone in the sand dunes.

Self-sabotage isn’t laziness. It’s not lack of willpower. It’s your survival patterns running the show. It’s the quiet ways you abandon yourself because old wounds convinced you love must be earned, safety is never guaranteed, and asking for more is dangerous.

I’ve lived all of it.

And I’ve done the deep, hard work to untangle it - for myself, and now, for my clients.

I know how to help you step out of the loops you didn’t choose but have been stuck in for years.

If this feels like your story too, it doesn’t have to stay this way. There’s a way out - I’ve walked it, and I can walk it with you.

LET'S TALK