Many, many times I have sabotaged myself. It has most often been because of fear. Fear of failure, fear of commitment, fear of the unknown. It has been a pattern in my life that I'm glad I have found a way to control.

Self sabotage becomes magnified when you suffer from a mental health problem also, because the critical voice that may be accentuating your fear is so much stronger, sometimes externally hardened by some traumatic situation in childhood. I feel strongly that the key, if you've suffered/suffer depression/anxiety, or another so-called mild disorder, is to work first on the day-to-day situational triggers. The self sabotaging of mechanisms to wellness. For example, a depressive may not exercise as they're staying in the house because of a fear of panic attacks which they have suffered in the past. If they can get past this trigger and go out regardless of that fear it serves as positive reinforcement for tackling larger issues of ingrained modes of thought that have been strengthened by time and behavioral habit.

This is just my experience of how I built up to tackling the core problems that were bolstering the lesser day-to-day anxieties. Some therapists may disagree with this approach but they would be wrong in assessing every case as the same.

Really interesting article as always @dedicatedguy.