How To Improve Self Awareness and Reduce Self Sabotage

It's never too early to start considering your New Year's resolution and refocusing on your goals for the coming year. We’ll be rolling into 2024 in only a few weeks if you can believe it, so it’s the perfect time to decide what you feel you need to work on. For us, one of the major tenets to consider is your well-being and ways that you could improve your sense of self. 

Growing your sense of self and feeling secure in your skin has several benefits for almost every aspect of your mental health. It’s an underlier in most discussions we have about mental health improvement. Building and developing this sense is hard enough, but it can be harder when we hit roadblocks and participate in self-sabotaging activities. If you do not feel that there's been an actionable path to growing your sense of self, you might want to evaluate what is holding you back.

In this article we want to talk about negative habits that damage our sense of self and how to remove them and replace them with more positive habits. Over time, making these small changes may improve your overall outlook on yourself and your life. This in turn will hopefully give you the courage to take the next step into improving your confidence and meeting your wellness goals in the New Year.

Some of you may not be aware of the things that may be causing harm to your mental health, and this can leave you confused about where to start your work. One of the major ways we engage in self sabotage is through self-destructive behavior. Self-destructive behavior is any behavior that does or will cause you physical or mental harm. These behaviors can be subconscious, and linked to trauma responses or coping mechanisms. Other times, these behaviors are impulsive or spur-of-the-moment decisions that are motivated by emotional distress.

More serious forms of self-sabotage include suicidal behaviors, self-harm, overuse of drugs or alcohol, impulsive or risky sexual acts, gambling, binge eating, or excessive shopping. These are the most extreme examples, however there are several more subtle ways we self-sabotage. Behaviors such as alienating yourself, speaking about yourself derogatorily, ignoring your needs to please others, wallowing in self-pity, or clinging to people or situations that are not good for you are forms of self-sabotage.

The common thread in all of these actions is that in the short term, they may feel exhilarating, or cathartic, and cause dopamine to be released, but they have serious implications for you and your mental and physical health in the long term. For example, smoking when stressed may lead to nicotine addiction, and looking further ahead may cause cancer or another respiratory condition. In the moment, it may feel like a good way to “blow off steam” but this is an illusion, and may ultimately make your goals more difficult to accomplish.

Digging deeper into the mental health side, these mounting circumstances can have big repercussions for your sense of self. Self sabotaging behaviors may promote a feeling of hopelessness or encourage you to take on more risky behaviors as you’re “too far gone”.  They also can lessen the value you feel in yourself.  In the example of the smoker, thinking of yourself as someone who is “addicted” carries negative connotations that may stay in your psyche and warp what you feel you are and deserve.

This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where your past mistakes continue to cause you to make more poor decisions for yourself in the present resulting in further consequences in the future. This could make even the strongest person feel stuck, and unable to improve their behaviors. However, despite this, there are ways to move forward more healthily and with greater stability - which is where our positive practices come in.

As I mentioned earlier, these consequences and negative emotions about your future and yourself may feel too heavy to overhaul all in one go. This is why it’s important to find small ways to build yourself back up amid these feelings. The first step to healing the relationship with yourself is forgiveness. However, to do this you must regain trust and connection with who you are.

Taking the time to rebuild trust in yourself is well worth it if you’re trying to improve your sense of self. But how do you start? One of the easiest ways is to keep the promises you make. Even if you only promise yourself the smallest things, over time these small positive self-interactions can help you feel more capable and in charge of your destiny. This also helps overwrite negative feelings or perceptions you have of yourself and can give you the clarity you need to see that you are not your mistakes. This is the starting point of self-improvement, as you must create a safe place to nurture your inner self.

Imagine for a moment what a safe person looks like; Are they kind? Do they speak to you with patience? Do they care about you? Do they value you and your contributions? Do they want you to succeed? Giving yourself the love, patience, and care that you want from a close friend or a good partner are also the things that you should prioritize giving to yourself.  When building a positive self-image the way you treat yourself is just as important as how you treat others or what you can accomplish and overcome. A great way to begin to internalize this concept is through affirmations. Affirmations are a great mindfulness practice to incorporate as part of your morning routine, or as a grounding tool.

Affirmations, as we have discussed before, are phrases or statements about yourself that affirm who you are. Saying them out loud to yourself has permanence, and doing so regularly can aid in the process of rewriting negative mentalities. They can be calming, empowering, or simply a reminder when you lose your footing. It’s tempting to want to control others, or rewrite your past. Remember, you are only in control of yourself and what parts of your experience you internalize or put on yourself. Reminding yourself through affirmations of your competency, worth, and potential can make overcoming challenging moments much easier.

Once you feel safe and in control, you can continue to pour positivity into your cup and those self-destructive habits become less tempting. You may begin to feel that you don’t want to engage because you deserve better, and you are aligning with that ideal by continually reminding yourself of that fact. This is not the be-all cure, but it is a great building block for the self-esteem needed to kick those habits and find healthier coping mechanisms.

In short, if you’re ready to change some self-destructive habits keeping you from your full potential and replace them with more positive ones as part of your New Year's resolution, we recommend investing in yourself through building a sense of trust and incorporating positive affirmations. If you take the time to decide what parts of yourself you want to uplift and highlight, they can become your guide when life gets challenging or when you want to self-sabotage. We know that changing your mentality is an ongoing process, however, giving yourself the safety and support to grow makes the journey much easier.