Self-Sabotage: The Silent Struggle Fuelled by Distraction

“To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

How often do you catch yourself doing the exact opposite of what you actually wanted? You plan to start that online course but find yourself binge-watching Netflix instead. You pack your gym bag, determined to hit the gym after work, only to drive right past it. It is as if there is a mysterious gap between your intentions and your actions. Welcome to a club we all know too well — self-sabotage.

Now, here is the kicker: self-sabotage is tied to your self-identity in the same way your DNA is to your eye colour. We tend to sabotage ourselves when there is an inner conflict between who we truly are and the version of ourselves we feel we must project to the world. Let us say your true self craves creativity, but your “worldly” self dismisses art as a frivolous waste of time. This disconnect often stems from beliefs we have internalized about who we should be. But here is the thing — many of these beliefs do not align with our authentic selves. Most of our internalised beliefs are just strings of words that we have clumped together, interpreted as a statement, attached meaning to, and then have had repeated to us–either by others or by our own minds.

Becoming aware of this inner conflict between what you truly want versus what you think you should want is the first step toward overcoming self-sabotage. Now, becoming aware of your erroneous beliefs is one thing, trying to do this in the 21st century is an entirely different cattle of fish! The primary culprit? Distraction.

Trying to do deep psychological or self work, such as self-reflection and restructuring of the self, requires that you tap into the emotional centres of your brain. Psychologists have long discovered that the human mind tends to handle thoughts and memories related to the self differently from other information. This is better known as the self-reference effect, where information about the self is privileged to any other salient information. In fact, researchershave discovered that the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is the star player in this process, helping you make sense of self-related thoughts and emotions. However, the minute you turn to Netflix, social media, or any other dopamine-fuelled distraction, the activity in these emotional centres of the brain diminishes. While you may feel like you are “relaxing”, what you are really doing is suppressing your emotions.

So, how does this tie back to self-sabotage? When we constantly distract ourselves, we avoid processing emotions like sadness, frustration, or anxiety — emotions that need to be acknowledged to maintain a strong sense of self. In the “good ol’ days”, you were often forced to emotionally process. If you had an argument with your spouse, there was no Netflix to binge on, social media to vent to, or Tinder to seek out some revenge. You had to sit with the anger, frustration, or hurt. Similarly, being forced to go to church or attend those family lunches, you learned how to tolerate others, to separate the self from others, and to challenge different perspectives.

Nowadays, though, we use distractions to suppress these emotions, slowly detaching ourselves from our own emotional experiences. Over time, this disconnection leads to enduring numbness. You cannot feel what you are not allowing yourself to process.

This is where self-sabotage takes root. When you are constantly distracted, you lose the ability to recognise which beliefs are truly yours and which are simply echoes of the world’s expectations. And let us be honest — how can you work on breaking self-sabotaging patterns if you are not even sure what is *you* and what is external noise?

Reconnecting with your true self requires uninterrupted attention and introspection. A strong sense of self does not come from passively consuming content, it comes from engaging in meaningful inner dialogue. This can happen in moments of solitude or even through creative activities like drawing, cooking, or reading fiction — spaces where your mind can reflect and process without distraction. Without this space, your inner thoughts become fragmented, and it becomes difficult to understand what you truly want and need.

Think about it — when you constantly escape into distractions, you are outsourcing your emotional, social, and spiritual life to the external world. How you feel, think, and behave gets dictated by images on a screen or posts on social media, created by people and organisations that do not care two hoots about you. Sounds pretty ridonkulous, right? That is a lot of power to just hand over!

In a nutshell, when you escape yourself through external distractions, you are not only robbing yourself of the opportunity to learn how to emotionally regulate, but you are not allowing yourself to process what you are feeling. You end up disconnected from your true self, making it very difficult to do the self-work required to free yourself from your erroneous internalised beliefs and, ultimately, your inner self-saboteur. So, if you want to ditch that self-saboteur, start by intentionally strengthening your attention.

P.S. If you have made it this far without feeling the urge to check your phone, well-freakin’-done! Most people cannot manage that these days.

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