WHY THEY'RE THEIR OWN WORST ENEMIES.

Byline: Loraine O'Connell Orlando Sentinel

You know how some people always seem to be struggling toward some goal they never quite reach?

They may be sabotaging themselves.

Like the 45-year-old single woman who swears she wants to get married, then undermines her new relationship by going out with an old squeeze.

Or maybe you know people who actually have achieved the success they dreamed of - whether it be in the workplace or in a relationship - only to foul it up and lose everything.

They, too, may be sabotaging themselves.

Self-defeating behaviors are observable in every arena: sports (the ballyhooed athlete who gets busted for cocaine); politics (the philandering politician who dares the press to catch him in the act - can you say ``Gary Hart''?); business (the Wall Street investment guru who tosses away a seven-figure income to make a fast buck on insider trading); and everyday life, in which people dash their chances for promotion and doom their personal relationships by their own actions.

Meanwhile, the rest of us stand by watching this wreckage and wondering, ``Why do they do this to themselves?''

Traditional thinking has been that people who repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot fear success, feel enormous guilt or suffer from that global excuse for everything: low self-esteem. An extension of the self-esteem theory is that self-saboteurs are seeking to punish themselves.

Newer research on self-defeatists shows that fear and low self-esteem are not the only culprits.

``Self-defeat often seems to follow from people's inflated opinion of themselves,'' say Steven Berglas and Roy F. Baumeister, the authors of ``Your Own Worst Enemy: Understanding the Paradox of Self-Defeating Behavior.''

Even the occasional self-saboteurs who act from low self-esteem aren't trying to punish themselves, these psychologists say. Rather, these people's judgment is distorted by their lousy self-image. They don't see the reality of a situation or know their capacity to deal with it.

Not every stupid thing we do is self-sabotage, of course.

``Actions qualify as self-defeating only if the harm or loss outweighs the pleasure or benefits,'' the authors say.

More than the outcome of a behavior, the conscious and unconscious motives behind the behavior are what define it as self-defeating. However, just as self-sabotage takes many forms, the motivations behind it are many.

For instance, the person who continually thwarts the career goal or relationship goal he says he wants may not be committed to that goal at all, says Belinda Judge, a licensed mental health counselor in Lake Mary, Fla.

``Perhaps he's making decisions or trying to live his life to meet someone else's expectations,'' she says, ``whether it's to advance himself in a particular career, obtain a certain degree or pursue a family lifestyle.''

Thus, self-sabotage for this person is a passive way of saying, ``No.''

``Instead of taking a stand, he just undermines himself,'' Judge says.

Berglas and Baumeister say that, at bottom, most self-saboteurs are obsessed with how others perceive them.

``Some of the worst patterns of self-defeat are set in motion by fear of being seen in an unflattering light,'' they write.

Fear of success may play a role in workplace procrastination. Some people fear that success will be accompanied by isolation from friends or by overwhelming responsibility.

Better to deal with those fears directly than to ensure your failure, experts advise.

And it's better to overcome self-sabotage than to let it ruin your life. The first step, of course, is recognizing that you engage in it. Then it's a question of motivation: You can resolve to stop defeating yourself now ... or you can put it off until tomorrow.

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