“We have met the enemy and it is us.” —Winnie the Pooh
We all know the routine. We promise ourselves to work out at the gym and later find reasons not to. We tell ourselves we’ve had it with being lonely on the weekends yet we don’t join that dating service. We really miss our friends and wish they would call us yet do we lift that phone to make the call? Certainly not. We may very well know what’s good for us but we certainly don’t follow through with doing it. We just can’t help ourselves and settle into a pattern of self-defeating behaviors. Irrationally we stay miserable even when we know what would make us happy.
So why do we do it? Living in our technologically savvy world one would think that doing the reasonable thing would only come natural to us. Not so. Over and over again in my psychotherapy practice I see people who routinely don’t do what would make them happy even when they know what would. On the surface of things it doesn’t make sense. But that’s the point. What guides our behavior isn’t just on the surface. Welcome to the hidden irrational world inside our brains.
Mysterious world of the unconscious
In his Outline of Psychoanalysis of 1940 Sigmund Freud wrote about his most famous discovery—the human unconscious—the clandestine but very real aspect of our identities that actually motivates our behavior. Long before the age of computers and brain scans he was able to identify that hidden part of our thinking that guides us to make decisions for good or ill. It was an amazing discovery that endures today. Now, thanks to technology, we know that much of our functional thinking occurs in the prefrontal cortex and left half of our brains as we use language, do logical problem-solving and figure out solutions to apparent problems. This is the logical part of our brain. The other parts of our brain—the right brain hemisphere and hippocampus—account for our intuitive intelligence and decision-making based on emotional memories and feelings. This intuitive brain has no words or pictures to explain its analysis and offers answers based on our accumulated relational experiences throughout our histories. For example, our memory of how to ride a bicycle cannot be put into words and is stored in our right brains. We can ride a bike but good luck trying to describe how we do it. I tend to think of these parts of our brains as the seat of our unconscious. We make decisions off the stored memories, just like riding our bikes, from this part of the brain. It’s the mysterious world of the unconscious.
What seems illogical on the surface actually looks quite smart in the unconscious bigger picture.We all have some idea how our unconscious works. Sometimes our dreams tell us about hidden aspects of ourselves we never knew existed. Sometimes we have momentary glimpses—so called “Freudian slips”—where our unconscious emerges and we have a partial awareness of the link between our past experiences and present behaviors. Say for example we remain hopelessly stuck in a dead-end job even when our work skills are far beyond what our present job requires. If we contemplate interviewing for a more suitable job our brows may start to sweat, our neck might get tense and our breathing could get shallow. We would begin to experience the hidden historical fear that comes from growing up in a family of underachievers and overly cautious people. Perhaps our long-lost great-grandfather lost everything in the stock market and devastated his family. Our intuitive brains would remember our family history and through physical symptoms, not visual images, remind us that all hell will break out if we dare risk getting ahead just as it once did in our family growing up. We may have no idea why we are sweating. So instead of taking the logical step to interview for that new job, we stay safe and stuck at our unfulfilling but familiar jobs for fear of deviating from our family’s past. Perhaps we’ve already taken risks and fallen on our faces, only to reinforce the catastrophic thinking of our family. What seems illogical on the surface actually looks quite smart in the unconscious bigger picture. In essence our unexamined brains help us become self-defeating.
We can’t let our limited intelligence get in the way of our progress. Obviously deeper self-awareness helps. If we were more aware of why our unconscious brains were warning us we would more wisely take ownership over our lives and choose to ignore or modify needless warning signs. Unfortunately some of us remain clueless and suffer. George Santayana, a famous 19th century political philosopher, once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Unfortunately too many of us don’t see our sweaty brows, tense necks and rapid breathing as a history lesson and remain stuck in old habits. We cannot modify what we cannot see.
What really holds us back: abandonment terror and frozen grief
It may seem quite incredible that our past can hold us back when so much of us wants to move forward. We may ask, “How could something that happened so long ago have such a grip on me today?” The trick to understanding self-defeating behaviors is to realize that our pasts are happening to us today. We all live our past’s in our present’s. When we’re facing a new opportunity a part of our brain scans our past experiences to enable us to cope with present circumstances. Unfortunately such scanning may give us a false reading of danger and we may become helpless in repeating self-defeating behaviors. Often the false reading comes out indirectly in our body sensations and an intuitive sense that something awful may happen when it really won’t.
At the core of most self-defeating behaviors are two major fears: abandonment terror and alarm over unresolved grief. Our hurtful behavior patterns and addictions are all attempts to cover up feeling these specific fears. Let me describe these fears. On the surface losing a loved one to death or rejection may sound very sad but may seem tame in hindsight. However when we are actually in situations where a loved one has recently passed away or a beloved person tells us the relationship is over we can be overwhelmed with prodigious feelings of loss, helplesslness, self-blame and doom. We may feel abandoned, unlovable and deeply rejected. Perhaps the worst loss we dread to feel is the loss of ourselves. Growing up in a family that externally provided for us but did not cherish our existence may cause us to be disconnected today from everybody. Since being attached is the most important human need few of us can tolerate the extreme discomfort—like freely falling through space—of being abandoned.
So why do we repeat self-defeating behaviors? It’s because they are familiar and seem preferable to re-experiencing our worst nightmares. Let me return to the example above to illustrate what I mean. Say you do decide to take a big risk and interview for that new job. If you were trained as a child to believe that if you attempted to better your life all hell will break loose, you will sweat bullets walking into the interview room. Your discomfort itself may undermine your best interviewing skills. Even if you got the job you would still have to face fears of success since your family may see you as being disloyal to them and too important to be worth their attention. Such threats of abandonment may prompt you to be late for the interview and sabotage your success. As Sheldon Kopp, a famous psychoanalyst, once said, “We prefer the security of known misery to the misery of unfamiliar insecurity.”
Assessing our readiness to change
Be honest with yourself. Are you really ready for change? Probably not. That doesn’t make you a bad person. Some of us are just too scared to change and none of us ought to be disparaged for our fears. We all have them. However you may be fed up with the consequences of your stagnation. What are these consequences? How do your self-defeating behaviors affect all the people in your life? How do you feel about these consequences? Next realize that you need others to bring about the change in your behaviors. If you could change on your own you would have already done that by now. You have to eat humble pie if you want to change. Many of the reasons your problem behavior started are due to relationship failures. To repair these problems you need an extra set of eyes and many good hearts to heal you. If you’re not willing to reach out for help you may need to be honest with yourself and realize you’re not ready to change. At least you’re calling a spade a spade.
Flirting with change
On the other hand you may be somewhat open to change. Start by reading Self-Defeating Behaviors by Milton R. Cudney and Robert E. Hardy. List your self-defeating behaviors along with how you would like them to change. Get involved with a trusted helper and possibly a support group to help you with the steps you need to take to reach your goals. Use the good advice of peers to direct you to a competent helper and trust your gut instincts in choosing a mentor. Generally you’ll need somebody who is practical, holds your feet to the fire and is emotionally warm.
Don’t get freaked out by the enormity of your task. Just break bigger goals down into smaller, more attainable pieces. Contract with your helper to follow through with specific homework tasks after you have rehearsed how to handle them beforehand. As you change your behaviors don’t be surpised that you will have unexplained and sometimes overpowering emotional reactions out of the blue. This is a good and necessary sign. Gain and pain go together. Thawing out frozen grief and withstanding abandonment feelings is not small task but gets a heck of lot easier when you’re not doing it alone.
Actually going through a change process is a lot like having an operation. You may have intense pain afterwards but it goes away fairly soon and you are on your way to better living. Finally let me tell you a secret. If your support staff is honest, caring, kind and has a wry sense of humor, you can get through anything. Self-defeating behaviors melt away in the warmth of human love.
John H. Driggs, was a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in St. Paul and co-author of Intimacy Between Men (Penguin Books, 1990).
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Last Updated on June 7, 2025