What are self-defeating behaviours and do you experience them?

Self-defeating behaviours (SDBs) are actions that can develop into unhelpful symptoms. They are a coping mechanism an individual deploys that can manifest physiologically and psychologically to impact a person's life. When an individual's functioning in daily life is affected by the visibility of stress and symptoms of anxiety, in addition to adopting unhelpful coping mechanisms, this will usually be a time when a person will start to look to therapy.

“Anxiety attacks, or anxiety which cannot be controlled, often prompt clients to ask for help. In the same way, free-floating anxiety or vague anxiety may compel some people to seek help in identifying the underlying causes."

- (Hough, M, 2014)

How anxiety and stress trigger self-defeating behaviours

Stress is the response trigger to a perceived automatic or negative automatic thought, which can be rational or irrational and conscious or deriving from the unconscious. A sense of threat, fear, doom, or apprehension to a stimulus - internal or external change, or both. However, the individual often cannot differentiate between automatic or negative automatic thoughts. It acts out the behaviour felt when stimuli that are the trigger present themselves i.e. a deadline at work is imminent, etc.

So, self-defeating behaviours are our internal unique stored self-sabotaging 'go-to guide' a person activates to elevate discomfort in the short term. Tried and tested many times before, an individual begins to rely on this as a 'quick fix' to anxiety experienced. The conscious awareness of the individual at that precise time is not aware if the reaction is because of correct or incorrectly stored cognitive maladaptive thoughts or a pattern of conditioned or learned behaviour; they know it works in lessening anxiety.

Self-defeating behaviours can be so destructive because using them over long periods results in behaviour patterns becoming rigid and fixed, resulting in being stuck and no personal growth achieved. The danger, of course, is that if these are stored faulty in the beginning, maladaptive thought patterns and perpetual vicious cycles can fuel a person's anxiety.

Throughout our lives, all humans need to grow as individuals, change, and fulfil goals for a prosperous future. However, with unhealthy self-defeating behaviours, people cannot achieve their full potential.

As humans, we all experience anxiety to a lesser degree at some point in our lives; I know I do! Thus, one can reasonably argue when born, we have anxiety as a blueprint built into our psyche regarding voluntary survival ('flight or fight'). This anxiety indeed is needed to protect our very survival!

Are we then biologically re-genetically hardwired to an innate way of being even in the womb, before we have any control over our cognitive thinking? If our brains have a default setting when faced with external stimuli as a cognitive perceived negative automatic thought, could our behaviour be just predisposed, and we cannot influence or change?

Common types of self-defeating behaviours

Below are some examples:

Avoidance

You might avoid stimuli, be it a situation or person, because the experience will result in stress and anxiety. It's emotionally painful for a person because they avoid it, but unfortunately, avoidance can add an extra layer to the issue at hand. For example, delaying going to the bank because there might be long queues, but the real reason is that you are in the red, and the bank clerk might remind you of this, causing anxiety.

Interpersonal traits

Extremes of personality traits and behaviours that affect the individual and those around them i.e. constantly suspicious, anti-social, aggressive, passive-aggressive, isolating yourself from others, uber sensitive to comments, and perfectionism. Some see perfectionism in our modern-day media-led society as something we should strive for. 

I hear the cry in echo chambers online: the only way to be successful is to put 100% in because we live in a competitive world, and if you snooze, you lose! Gone are the days when we worked 9-5 because, with the world of business connected by the internet now, we must always be accessible and work harder to compete.

Perfectionists believe all that they do requires 100%. If not, they avoid doing so, hence causing extreme anxiety, not to mention missed opportunities. However, alas, it protects the perfectionist's ego state of not failing. However, perfectionism can also be about fear of success, and who knew we could fear the one thing we desire that can change our lives? It is this change that can keep us in perpetual emotional fear.

Behaviour/substance abuse and dependency on stimulants

When external stimuli are triggered, this could be an abuse of:

• prescriptive drugs (which is worryingly on the rise in the UK)
• excessive alcohol consumption
• overeating/undereating (which is deeply rooted in our emotions)
• smoking

In the short term, all of these are unhealthy as coping mechanisms, not to mention highly addictive and cause addictions, and some can even get you fired from work as well as be illegal! If not in the buying of recreational drugs but in the behaviour that fuels addictions, i.e. shoplifting to feed the addiction, domestic violence, and violent crime.

Procrastination

Procrastination, a word that one overhears in offices or amongst students, can be seen as acute anxiety and must be the motherload of all avoidance! Avoidance plays the central part, but unlike avoidance, which can be stimuli-specific, procrastination is a pattern of behaviour used to delay and avoid to the extent that the person self-sabotages instantaneously just by deploying this self-defeating behaviour. Habitual in nature, it's on par with the same behaviour you see in addictions. The avoidant person avoids certain stimuli, but it's compulsive to prevent using avoidance.

It negatively impacts a person and can become debilitating and destructive at the same time. I am not sure if anxiety is experienced less due to its construct but my experience as a psychotherapist suggests the symptoms of stress can lessen in individuals. 

Unlike other self-defeating behaviours, procrastination is a passive behaviour that is habitually used and applied as a default setting for everything. Thus, the experience of anxiety feelings might be shortened, turning to this unhealthy maladaptive thought and behaviour setting. Like being mute to the external stimuli and having no emotions experienced, thus deadened from the experience of anxiety-driven thoughts, overthinking, and feelings unlike in other self-defeating behaviours. In those, the individual only turns to self-defeating behaviours when feelings of anxiety become overwhelming and all-consuming.

Not only does it affect one's self-esteem, but it also has a strong connection with depression. It's a self-defeating behaviour that can be seen from 'putting off' simple household chores for no logical reason e.g. danger or fear. It is not that a procrastinator cannot do a task, meet a friend, or finish deadlines on time. They can!

The self-defeating behaviours stops them, but maybe it is avoidance and perfectionism that debilitates them and fuels the need to delay. Not wanting to fail, a thinking pattern of “If I don't do, I haven't failed,” hence protecting their fragile ego from further attack by using indecision and delay as a defence mechanism i.e. a coping strategy.

Talk therapy can significantly help identify self-defeating behaviours and lessen their impact on an individual's daily life. How will a therapist do this? They will first, alongside you, identify the triggers - be they conscious or unconscious, unhealthy or unhelpful - and replace these with coping mechanisms that serve rather than hinder you. These could be rooted in one's childhood through trauma or simply stored faulty and just need some tweaking to correct.