Stop the self-sabotage, focus and actually reach for my goals

[Robert1000]

I've been in therapy now for nearly 20 years. My life is immeasurably better than before, back when I thought I had to keep my abuse secret and hidden until I was dead. I sometimes wonder how I had the energy to stay alive back then. I had suicidal urges all the time. I never had a plan. I didn't want to hurt myself. (I cut myself and did other self-harm as a teenager and sometimes after, but that was different, that was part of dissociation, I think) Anyway, since starting to get therapy, doing EMDR, getting on anti-anxiety medication and stuff, I've slowly become more purposeful in my life. Still, I struggle against avoidance, procrastination and a weird kind of dead feeling inside when I'm trying to achieve something that's important to me. The closer I get, the more I feel my internal forces to shut down and prevent myself from success. I am getting therapy, and my therapist is great, but this is the only place that's filled just with people like me. I don't want to be in this damn club. I hate it that I'm in it. But here I am. What do you guys do to counter the self-sabotage?

Oh, and I also get the "why bother?" and the feelings of worthlessness. Those are related, I suppose, as those feelings accompany the avoidance and procrastination and especially that numb dead feeling.

Thoughts? Ideas? Strategies?

Thanks. Keep healing, brothers. Keep looking for peace and enjoying it when you get it.

Also, Happy New Year! I hope you all achieve your dreams!

Bob

 

[George]

What do you guys do to counter the self-sabotage?

Pick myself up, dust myself off and keep moving forward. I am somehow an optimist by nature, the glass is half full kind of guy, despite all the trauma and drama of childhood. Before dealing with the abuse and for a long time (years) into working through it I was subconsciously self sabotaging myself, and sometimes knowingly "punishing" myself which is basically the same thing. 40+ years of feeling broken, not measuring up as a boy and later a Man, a freak and a monster left deep ruts for negative feelings to hide in. One day I realized (due to something I read here) that despite everything, I not only survived it all, but I even thrived too, and I had to give myself a lot of credit for making it. I knew too many friends and peers growing up that didn't, with disastrous consequences. Our child minds set up coping mechanisms, putting us in survival mode, shelving off dealing with the abuse and other stuff for later, and that was a good thing. Not all our coping mechanisms worked out for the best. A bad one of mine was the incessant "measuring" of my broken self against seemingly perfect other boys, and later other men, and that would only further compound those negative thoughts about me.
What I read here years ago was along the lines of, don't judge your child self as starting lifes race at the same starting line everyone else did, I/we started much further back than most, we didn't all have the same advantages as the others, some started from miles back behind the line... If you are reading this now, congrats! Despite everything you made it to here, you are on the healing journey now. This was one of those ah-hah moments in my healing, because I couldn't see the forest for the trees. I took a fresh new accounting of all of my many blessings and accomplishments and was kind of shocked how I couldn't see them as a whole picture before, and this realization and focus broke up the negative ruts, and a lot of the self sabotage & punishing.

 

[Stop]

I like this post. I have a personal project that I am very enthusiastic about. I can spend tireless time on it and wonder at what I am able to accomplish.

Then, without fail, I begin looking for wayward sexual things. Someone said "we do it for the shame" almost as if trying to prove to ourselves that we are not worth it, not capable, not reliable. And we somehow PREFER this feeling.

A shame hit.

And then it takes a month or more to come back to the project because I feel so untied.

I hope this thread gets a lot of attention.

 

[Robert1000]

Hey Stop, I feel like your comment is 100 percent on the mark. Sexual stuff as a distraction has become so annoying, and as a source of shame it's simply destructive. I mean, I can find shame in just about anything, just like how I can prove to myself that the reason I was hurt as a kid was because I was bad. I wasn't bad. I didn't deserve it. No kid does. But it was a way for me to understand what had happened, to put it into a frame where I felt as if I had some control. If I were "good," then bad things wouldn't happen to me. So then I recast every painful thing that happened as my own fault. I'd come up with the most wild reasoning that, and now and again catch myself doing it today.

It is damn hard to drop the shame. It's also damn hard to allow myself to let myself succeed in things. To be fair, I have a loving family (I hope my partner and I have broken a number of unhealthy cycles and at least have taught our children through our own selves and through the use of mental health care including therapy to be resilient), own our own home and are able to live comfortably at this point in our lives, but I'm still striving for some of the things that I've wanted to achieve for years, and I think I'm ready for it. I'm going for it.

Yesterday, though, after writing this and reading and commenting on a few other people's posts, I found myself spiraling and just in a terrible and a dark internal place. Trauma just doesn't go away. It can be managed, I guess, most of the time, but it doesn't ever leave me. Still, I am proud of what I've done with what I've had in my life. I'm proud to be empathetic and emotionally honest. I'm proud of the man I've become for my partner and kids.

I'll keep after it, and I'll try to post here more regularly. It's good to be in touch here. Here's to 2026. Take care and keep after it.