How do I break a pattern of self-sabotage and defeat?

July 15, 2009 8:46 PM

How to break a pattern of self-sabotage and defeat?

A bit of background that might give some insight into my behavior.

I come from a rather wealthy parents, who had provided for me all of my life, it has gotten to the point where I never really learned how to be self-sufficient. Financially and otherwise.

I also have been struggling with depression for a decade, I've bounced from therapist to therapist and have been on several medications (usually more than 2-3 years each).

I've been diagnosed with ADD and prescribed Ritalin and Provigil for the disorder. But I've since stopped taking them because they make me feel worse.

I'm in a good health, I work out regularly, I always get a perfect score on my physicals.

I recently had a big blow up with my family where I finally wrested my independence from them. Now I'm independent and more or less self-sufficient. But an old pattern is beginning to rear its ugly head:

I would work at a job for few months, then become paralyzed and just quit or get fired for not doing my work. When I say paralyze, I do mean stuck, I cannot function at the job at all (mostly Graphic Design); the task, no matter how simple would become unbearable and I would expend a lot of psychic energy getting through the work until I cannot do it anymore and just shut down.

It feels like I'm swimming against a viscous liquid that would become thicker and thicker until it solidifies completely and I cannot go any further.

I'm approaching my thirties soon, and this pattern has cost me quite a bit, broken relationships, lost jobs and opportunities and a massive debt.

I've tried many things, including CBT, GTD, and any other self-help/motivation techniques. I've trolled askmefi threads on this subject (evidently I am not alone). Nothing works, and I'm on the verge of losing my nth job because of the same pattern.

It's frustrating because I have bills to pay, gotta eat, and I really do want to build a career, but I simply cannot bring myself to do the work. It's as if there is some kind of kink in my head that is hell bent on screwing up things for me.

This is quite frustrating, and I really want to break this pattern so I can have a successful professional career and be debt free at some point in the next 10 years.

So, any similar experiences? If so, how did you overcome it?

posted by pakoothefakoo to Work & Money (21 answers total)

I might have a minor version of the above problem, the gross feeling in your insides as you know you should be doing something but are not. Procrastination mitigates this feeling temporarily, but the stuck feeling returns. Things I've found that make me do the job:

1) Break it down into easily digestible pieces.
2) Tell myself: "Self, quit the mope. JUST DO THIS ALREADY!"
3) Force myself to do it.
4) Try and avoid the "aaaahhh! this must be done! PANIC"
5) Revel in the success of completion.
6) Repeat.

Hope you can find a way out.
posted by titanium_geek at 9:04 PM on July 15, 2009 [1 favorite]

So, let's see: You have ADD. And you stopped taking your meds. And for some reason you keep losing focus at work.

Hmmmmm. Any thoughts?
posted by ook at 9:12 PM on July 15, 2009

I've been diagnosed with ADD and prescribed Ritalin and Provigil for the disorder. But I've since stopped taking them because they make me feel worse.

Well, take the pills. It's not all fun and games out here in the real world. Lots of people are entirely miserable at their jobs.
posted by delmoi at 9:14 PM on July 15, 2009

Response by poster: I have the same problem on/off the meds. It's not quite "losing focus," it's just I'd stare blankly at the screen...feeling sick to my stomach, desperately trying to figure out what to do next, to force myself to draw, write, or whatever has to be done.

It would always start off great, then become harder and harder where it will take ridiculous amount of time and energy to get through a simple task.
posted by pakoothefakoo at 9:15 PM on July 15, 2009

Response by poster: It's as if I'm willing myself to fail.
posted by pakoothefakoo at 9:16 PM on July 15, 2009

Sounds like you're looking for rock bottom. Have you ever tasted true rock bottom? If you haven't, then maybe there's a sick little part of your mind that wants to taste that in order to feel alive or feel something that the work you're doing doesn't let you feel. Once you've truly tasted that bottom, I doubt you'll ever want to be there again, and I suspect so will go your problems of getting the work done, etc...

My advice would be to try and find a relatively safe way of finding that bottom so that it doesn't tank everything else, and then build from there.
posted by fantasticninety at 9:22 PM on July 15, 2009 [1 favorite]

To clarify, "sick little part of your mind" meant "ill" and not "twisted". Hopefully there was no confusion. Best of luck.
posted by fantasticninety at 9:25 PM on July 15, 2009

Everyone goes through this at some point in their lives and you need to actively figure out a way to get through it. And by actively I mean you need to stop looking for a magic bullet and start working on your internal fortitude.

If the drugs and therapy help, then great, you should stick to it. If they don't, then you need to figure out something else that makes life work for you. Ultimately though, it's up to you.
posted by fshgrl at 9:38 PM on July 15, 2009

Psychodynamic or Psychoanalytic therapy so that you gain insight into some of the root causes of your problem, perhaps?

Maybe your ADD diagnosis can be a kind of a garbage can designation for someone who has an oppositional relation to parents and then (big surprise) has this type of relationship recapitulated in other places like at work. This is not a certain thing, but its kind of coincidental that your relations in your family and work are both strained. Exploring that with a therapist might be fruitful.

Diagnosing things and putting them in the language of the DSM is limiting. You're an individual, and if you chose to go to therapy, you deserve to treated as such.

I'll go ahead and not agree with the people to tell you to take pills that you say make you feel worse. Psychopharmacology is very delicate, and it sometimes takes trying a few different drugs before you find one that works.

Might mom and dad spring for some more therapy?
posted by No New Diamonds Please at 9:39 PM on July 15, 2009

I've tried many things, including CBT, GTD, and any other self-help/motivation techniques. I've trolled askmefi threads on this subject (evidently I am not alone). Nothing works.

Try again. Try harder. Keep trying until something works. Its the 'keep trying' that's the important part. You've lived a life of magic bullets--for a problem like this there is no such thing.
posted by Ironmouth at 9:47 PM on July 15, 2009 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Allow me impart a little gem from one of my therapists (feel free to take it with a giant bag of salt):

Have you ever considered that you might just be lazy?

This is an honest answer, because after some soul searching I've realised that this occasionally self-destructive laziness of mine is simply a core value in my own personal philosophy. It happens to get in the way of 'success' some, if not a lot of the time.

Now obviously we all have different definitions of 'success', but what you're struggling with here is 'getting by', so you need to improvise a little. You know the old song and dance, fake it til you make it, right? Well, it's not terribly far from the truth, unfortunately.

The only thing I've found that helps is practice. I'm getting better, but I'm far from perfecting my follow-through. Any progress is good, and you're not going to just suddenly get better. There's no magic key.

Sorry if this is unhelpful, but what you say about yourself resonates a lot with me, and perhaps you can benefit from my (albeit limited) experience in recovery.
posted by sunshinesky at 10:10 PM on July 15, 2009 [9 favorites]

Best answer: You're used to having someone bail you out when the going gets tough. Time to grow up and start accepting the consequences for your actions. Good luck with that.
posted by torquemaniac at 11:11 PM on July 15, 2009 [4 favorites]

Well, take the pills. It's not all fun and games out here in the real world. Lots of people are entirely miserable at their jobs.

Following on from what delmoi said, I think that it could be time to stop trying to radically change yourself and accept that work is generally speaking not going to be pleasant for you. This can be quite a hurdle to get over when you work in a job that seems like it ought to be fun; it's easy to get into a pattern of thinking "What's wrong with me that I don't enjoy this? How can I fix it?". It's part of the general pattern of thinking "I have all these advantages! Why am I not really enjoying my life?".

In other words, maybe a lot of that psychic energy you're expending to get through stuff is because you're internally rejecting the situation. If you can start training yourself to think "It's OK that I feel bad today", "It's OK that I'm bored today", "It's OK that I'd rather be outside right now", "It's OK that this task is stressing me out", you might find that things go more smoothly. Think of something you can look forward to and use that thought whenever you need an extra reason to keep going.
posted by tomcooke at 12:28 AM on July 16, 2009 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I'm in the midst of overcoming something like you describe. A gifted child with very supportive parents, I never had to take on anything challenging. I always ran from challenges. A few aborted jobs and a lot of unemployment later, I found myself reading a book called, "How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life."

I've read GTD, and like you found it unhelpful. GTD assumes you're motivated and simply helps you get organized.

The Time/Life book tackles motivation. The very first thing the book had me do was make a list of life goals.

Try it! Set a timer for two minutes, sit down with a pencil and paper, and just let fly. Don't stop writing. Anything that comes to mind. When you're done, look at the list you just made. The first time I did this, it was the most motivated I'd felt in a very long time.

The book then has you repeat the brainstorming for 3-year goals, and 6-month goals. The rest of the book is how to decide on appropriate actions towards those goals, implement them, find time, overcome procrastination, and generally follow-through.

In retrospect I found that I couldn't motivate myself because I couldn't see the value in the activities I was avoiding; I didn't know why or what for. When you can trace everything you do back to a life goal, it's harder to procrastinate. Don't get me wrong; It's still a battle for me to overcome years of crappy conditioning. YMMV. Good luck.
posted by dualityofmind at 1:18 AM on July 16, 2009 [9 favorites]

Best answer: pakoothefakoo: I've been diagnosed with ADD and prescribed Ritalin and Provigil for the disorder. But I've since stopped taking them because they make me feel worse.

I know exactly what you mean—I had the same experience when I was in school; after a few weeks/months/years on Ritalin, you begin to feel a little coked up.

If I may make a recommendation: there is a new formulation of Ritalin, Ritalin LR, which is actually vastly superior in quality, consistency, and dose. I've found that with half the amount I was prescribed before I can have the same effect, and—this is the key—I'm not constantly wondering when it's going to wear off or whether I'm in a high-concentration superfocus state. Old-formula Ritalin is now widely acknowledged to be relatively unstable, and I feel as though they only keep it around because poor people in the US can't afford anything else.

Also, I'm with you on the ‘hey, this doesn't seem to help the problem I hoped it would!’ My advice is to keep with it and find a medication that works for you. It may seem like you must have been misdiagnosed, but the fact is that those of us who make it into adulthood with ADD are prone to have a host of other psychological junk buried under it simply as a side-effect of being so infernally distracted. My first reaction to the drugs was like yours; the effect was great, so at first I said to myself, ‘gee, this is awesome!’ But as time wore on and I found myself in the same habits and traps, I started to think: ‘I must've been misdiagnosed—this problem isn't going away at all!’ My psychiatrist helped me put it in perspective: it's only that, on top of the physical and neurological condition that is ADD, I'd built up all kinds of habits and harbored all sorts of unresolved issues quite naturally.

In other words, treat the ADD, find a medication that works and keep taking the pills; it'll allow you to clear your head and focus on some of the deeper, more important stuff under the surface.

One final note: because of the insidious and ever-present advertising culture which we're so inured to that we don't even notice it any more, we tend to think of our problems as defecits and their solutions as products. I've found that this is usually true when people who're having trouble spiritually or mentally say things like ‘I've tried everything…’ But we're talking about the human spirit and the human mind here. The key isn't finding the right thing to try—it's learning to examine yourself and your life closely enough to understand what's going wrong. Theoretically, this doesn't cost anything, although a psychotherapist can be of great service. But that's the central fallacy of all those self-help books, programs, systems, et cetera: helping oneself is not an external but an internal act. The problem and its solution are both inside you; you just need to look hard enough to find them. And until you do, all the tricks, gimmicks, ‘life planners,’ ‘actualizing methods,’ ‘positive thinking techniques,’ and whatever else the next big-ticket guru comes up with, in the whole damned world won't help a bit.
posted by koeselitz at 1:31 AM on July 16, 2009 [6 favorites]

Maybe you're doing work for which you are unsuited. Unless you're a creative director graphic design is a lot of graft, with little reward, unless you find the design process itself intrinsically rewarding. Your design ideas may meet deaf ears, you often don't get much time, clients do hideous things to your vision etc.

Exacerbating this is the fact that priviledge means you've never learnt the function of work from the majority perspective (i.e. you do the thing to earn the cash, not you do the thing because you enjoy the thing) it's harder to accept the tedium of a lot of work if you aren't doing it with that aim. Most people want to get to the point where they can afford to do the thing they love. You've kind of come from the other direction. You could afford to not have to find the thing you love. So now you're adrift. Try do a menial job for a bit, just showing up and getting paid. Learn the discipline of working through. This might give you the freedom to find a better vocation.

Good luck!
posted by freya_lamb at 6:13 AM on July 16, 2009 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thank you all for the good responses. This is definitely a conditioned response.

I'll keep on drumming and exploring for solutions.
posted by pakoothefakoo at 7:29 AM on July 16, 2009 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I had a similar problem once and it was all about anxiety -- paralyzing, crushing anxiety. It sounds like you have some additional things going on, like ADD (which you should definitely get effective treatment for), but I'd guess that anxiety is the beastie that's kicking your ass. It's worse than garden-variety procrastination -- more debilitating, more destructive. I still deal with plain old procrastination sometimes, but I've more or less fixed the anxiety problem. You can too.

I bet you want to hear that I found a pill that made it go away, or discovered a meditation technique that worked within a week, or found out that if I just cut caffeine from my diet everything fixed itself and I was able to go about my business as usual. None of that is true (although I tried it all, and more). The anxiety was so bad that it forced me off my path. I had to sit down by the side of the road for a couple of years, and then when I was strong enough to stand again, I had to go down a different road. Maybe (and I know this probably sounds woo-woo, but maybe) this is a good thing. Maybe what I was trying and failing to do was not what I should have been doing in the first place, or maybe I was doing it for the wrong reasons. Maybe (hate to give the anxiety any credit here, but maybe) it was telling me something about myself that I just couldn't hear any other way.

In any case, here's what the process looked like: I quit the things I was doing. I took a big step backwards. I ended up constructing a life for myself that was extremely low-stress -- a cheap apartment, a crappy job I didn't really care about, nobody around me that I had to take care of. For about a year, I felt like a real failure. But all the while, I was focusing on making my dumb little low-stress unambitious life work. I developed some routines. I took long walks. I learned how to budget. And eventually, there came a day when I felt like doing something a little bit stressful: therapy. So I started doing that. It was scary. It disrupted my routines. But eventually, I learned how to handle it. And, sure enough, about six months later, I felt like I wanted to do another stressful thing: take a class in a subject I was no good at. Don't know why I wanted to do that, but I did. And it was scary. But I got used to it, I started to like it even. And then, about six months later ... but you get the pattern, right? I scaled all the way back to the easiest life I could -- which was the most I could handle at the time -- and then I started working my way up again. Five years later, I think things are going pretty damn well. I look back at the me of five years ago, who could barely function through a day of video-game playing, and I feel proud of how far I've come.

I think you may have to just get real about what you can handle right now. I often think about it this way: There's a strike at the factory. Your brain (that yapping little middle-management dog) is saying, "You have to do this! You have to be a successful professional! You must keep going! Don't be a quitter! Just pull yourself together! Can't you just take some kind of pill? Get over it, cut it out! Work faster, work faster!" But your body just won't do it. It stages a silent sit-in. What your brain is not realizing is that your body can only work so fast. There's something wrong with the factory machines, and you're not seeing it yet. So give up. Do what your body is asking you to do. Go slower, go easier, and give it more time. Do whatever you can do right now as best you can. And don't worry: it'll get better eventually, so long as you keep taking small steps forward. It just might take a lot more time than you think it should.
posted by ourobouros at 7:55 AM on July 16, 2009 [7 favorites]

Set a timer for two minutes, sit down with a pencil and paper, and just let fly. Don't stop writing. Anything that comes to mind. When you're done, look at the list you just made. The first time I did this, it was the most motivated I'd felt in a very long time.

This. I'm still happily tackling the "life goals" list I made shortly after I decided to stop moping around about my life. It's been hard but really rewarding, and now I can read Ancient Greek!
posted by oinopaponton at 8:01 AM on July 16, 2009

It also might be a good idea to deal with the anxiety when it comes up. So if you start a job and you get stressed and just have a 'block' then perhaps you could, at that time, interdict and try to meditate, stop thinking about how stressed you are, etc.

It also might be a good idea to get a manual labor type job, like working at target, McDonnalds, etc and just work on your art in your spare time. Supporting yourself with a job like that will cure your of any illusions about how tough life can be, and you won't have to worry about 'creative block' because those jobs require no creativity.
posted by delmoi at 10:01 AM on July 16, 2009

I have a friend who had similar issues on and off for years. He's now on ADHD meds and is much better. Tell your doc when you have issues with your meds and they will work to adjust them/try new things until you strike a healthy balance.
posted by jopreacher at 3:57 PM on July 16, 2009