Why do we sabotage ourselves?

[MajestyJo]

We will sabotage ourselves if we don't believe we deserve success.

Maybe we could try a different approach - stop torturing ourselves for the things we have done wrong and then try forgiveness instead. We can make amends by doing service work – a way of keeping that self-sabotaging guilt at bay.

Sometimes people don't know how to directly ask for forgiveness, but their behaviors will tell us that's what they're saying. Whenever somebody asks for forgiveness, whenever we have a list of resentments, whenever we've done something wrong, it's a good time to start making things right.

You are reading from the book:

52 Weeks of Conscious Contact by Melody Beattie

From my site Angels and Faeries

Have always sabotage myself more with things accomplished more so than things tried and failed. My God is very forgiving. I am not so forgiving of myself. Doesn't mean I am trying to play God with my life, just not use to having things and being able to keep them.

"Walk Softly and Carry a Big Book" - Book

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

When I first saw this I didn't know want to think and the thought stuck with me. Not too sure I am any wiser as to what to say in response to it. I think it described my life to a T! If it didn't fit or work, I bent or broke the rules so things did fit and they went according to JoAnne. I think it is self-justification and rationalizaiton.

As a result of justifying the wrong, I had a lot of guilt. I didn't want to take on the same, so I rebelled and played the blame game.

A lot of what I did, at 7 years sober, was not the kind of thing a lot of people do. I was very much into doing the Steps spiritually and mentally. Looking at how my thinking got me into so much trouble and how I would try to talk my way out of everything. I once said to my boss, after he said to me, "I finally got you, you weren't wrong, but you were only half right." I couldn't give him the victory. I told him that he misunderstood me, and that I had told him the right thing, only I worded it differently. I was not a very nice person. I can still go there when I get angry, it is one of the old patterns that I had to break. I was only hurting myself.

It is good when we can go to our God and ask for forgiveness and start a new day. There are some days, that are best not talked about! There have been days were the only thing positive about them were the fact that I didn't pick up a drink or a drug.

It isn't something I do so much in today, it was something I found myself doing when I came into recovery and had to break the pattern and turned over to my Higher Power.

I found that I couldn't stand success and more than I could failure, so in a lot of ways, I prevented myself from moving forward in my life. I started out as a file clerk and ended up as an office manager. That is what my boss called me, I saw myself more as a Girl Friday. The truth was, I was trying to do the work of three people, and ended up using my pills because I couldn't accomplish what I 'thought' I should be doing.