Self-Sabotage and Self-Harm

SELF-SABOTAGE & SELF-HARM
Sheri Smith
April 10, 2016


A facilitator in a self-help workshop I once took had us read an article that referenced a well known research study in which a school of goldfish was raised in a sizeable aquarium that sported a centremost glass wall. The goldfish eventually conditioned themselves to swim within a limited space because each time they tried to swim any further they’d hit the glass. A few months later the glass wall was withdrawn but those little goldfish just kept swimming in circles through the half tank they had schooled themselves to remain.

The point of the article was to show us that humans are really not that different. We hold ourselves back by establishing through our impressionable years inhibiting beliefs about what we are capable, or worthy of. I’ve since come to recognize that my self-sabotage occurred whenever stepping past those barriers I had mentally established; when the anxiety, fear of failure and a sense of fraudulence compelled my subconscious to thwart any attempt at success. To this day those beliefs still linger, but I’m no longer afraid of banging my face on an imaginary glass wall.

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