Have you ever set a goal and felt like you can’t stick with it, no matter how hard you try or how badly you want a particular outcome?

In this article, we’ll look at why we self-sabotage — especially when we’re trying to make a change for the better.

If you’ve ever tried to change a habit, set a boundary, pursue a new goal, or step toward a new version of yourself that you genuinely want to become — only to find yourself hesitating, procrastinating, or quietly undoing your own progress — you’re not imagining things.

You are also not lazy, unmotivated, undisciplined, or flawed.

If you’re a high achiever, you likely identify with being capable, responsible, and getting stuff done, and it can feel deeply unsettling when the resistance seems to be coming from, well – you.

You’ve been there, right?

You clarify what matters to you.
You commit to showing up differently.

You make a plan.
You feel a spark of hope.

And then you stall.

You say yes when you want to say no.
You over-commit after promising yourself you wouldn’t.
You avoid the conversation that matters.
You say “I’ll start tomorrow”… again.  And again.  And again.

This apparent inconsistency can trigger a serious shame spiral.

There is little in life that’s more frustrating than knowing exactly what you want — and seeing yourself inexplicably pull away from it over and over again.

This gives fuel to your inner critic who has a field day with it, you feel worse than you did about yourself BEFORE you set the goal, and you just want to throw your hands in the air and give up.  

Is it just me??  

Here’s the thing – you are not the enemy and going to war with yourself is not the best way to motivate yourself to change.

A quick story (and why it matters)

In KPop Demon Hunters, the protagonists, a girl band whose songs secretly guard the world from demons, think they know their place in the world.  While not easy, they believe their job is simple: identify the demons, destroy them, move on. They’re trained to scan for and eliminate threats quickly. Their strength is speed, precision, and certainty.

But as the story unfolds, we learn that the lead singer, Rumi, is hiding a shameful secret – her father was a demon, and when she is stressed or anxious, the telltale ‘patterns’ that give away the demons become visible on her skin.  

Through the course of the movie, she comes to realize something that changes everything – not every “threat” is external.
Sometimes what looks like danger is actually somebody controlled by their shame.
Sometimes it’s fear that keeps us from becoming more than we currently are.  

And real strength doesn’t come from destroying those parts of ourselves.
It comes from understanding and integrating them.

When resistance shows up, your instinct might be to go to war with yourself: push harder, get stricter, “fix” what’s wrong. 

But what if the part of you that’s resisting isn’t trying to sabotage you?

What if it’s trying to protect you?

Why Do I Self-Sabotage When I’m Trying to Grow?

Self-sabotage is when your actions are contrary to the goals you set.

For high achievers, this can be particularly frustrating.  When resistance shows up and derails our progress towards a goal it can feel like weakness – or failure.

But “self-sabotage”  is often a predictable response to identity-level change.

When you attempt to shift who you are or how you show up, you create gaps that your nervous system can interpret as threat.  Think about it – there may be:

• A gap between who you are today and who you are becoming
• A gap between familiar behaviors and new ones
• A gap between an old identity and an emerging one

That gap is uncomfortable — and that’s where the mental and emotional resistance shows up.  That resistance isn’t a coincidence!  Your nervous system is wired for familiarity, not transformation – and the unfamiliar can feel like a threat.

When you define a new future — one that includes boundaries, rest, honesty, impact, or alignment — you are forced to face the patterns that have formed from the current way you are doing things.  These seem safe, comfortable, and familiar – even if they don’t serve you anymore.

It can be tempting to take all that resistance and let it lead to self-doubt, criticism, and second guessing yourself.  That’s your nervous system doing what it was designed to do; protect you from uncertainty, novelty, and perceived risk.

Common forms of resistance

Resistance can show up as:

• Procrastination — putting off the action even when you know it’s aligned
• Perfectionism — waiting for the “perfect time” or ideal conditions
• Undercutting small wins — minimizing progress and dismissing slow and steady progress
• Overthinking — analyzing instead of acting

These are patterns that your brain is designed to throw at you when you try to veer into the unknown.  When you understand that, it can be easier to create space for curiosity – and that curiosity can bring down the emotional temperature and make the discomfort easier to bear.

The Gap That Comes From Doing the Deep Work

If you are reading this, you are probably someone who does the deep work……or at least, is curious about it.  

Maybe you’ve spent time clarifying values or reimagining your future.  Maybe you’ve set a lofty goal and are feeling energized about it.  If that’s you — you likely felt a sense of momentum or even relief when you imagined ‘future you’.

If you’ve done the values and vision work I’ve written about in earlier posts, you’ll recognize this moment. Defining what matters — and getting clear on the future you actually want — is at once grounding and exhilarating. It also creates a very real gap between your current patterns and the version of you you will need to become to step into that vision and live it fully.

[If you missed the articles on values and vision, you can read them here:How to Create a Compelling Vision (That Doesn’t Include Burn Out)  and Burnt Out on Goal Setting? How Personal Values Can Restore Clarity

The gap that emerges can be subtle but what happens is that you start to notice misalignment between your current state of being and the future you desire.

You see where your calendar contradicts your priorities.
You notice how often you ignore your needs.
You feel the tension between who you’ve been — and who you want to be.

That awareness is powerful – but it’s also destabilizing.

This awareness leads to the realization that you will have to act or behave differently and that uncharted territory feels a lot like risk in your nervous system.

Maybe that means:

• Saying no instead of automatically saying yes
• Resting instead of pushing through
• Delegating instead of controlling
• Speaking up instead of staying quiet
• Trusting instead of scanning for what could go wrong

These aren’t minor tweaks – they are major shifts in how you think, feel, and act.

Even when the changes you want to make are obviously positive — they feel uncomfortable because they disrupt what your nervous system has come to associate with safety.

This natural resistance is what many people interpret as self-sabotage.

But resistance is often a normal nervous system response to change.

What this looks like in real life

This can look like:

• Committing to protecting your energy… and then someone asks for “a quick favor,” and you say yes before checking in with yourself.
• Deciding you’re going to stop working late… and finding reasons to stay behind, even when nothing is truly urgent.

You tell yourself you’ll speak up in a meeting… and then your chest tightens, your mind goes blank, and you convince yourself it’s “not the right time.”

You try to honor capacity at home… and then you over-function anyway, because letting someone be disappointed (or letting something be imperfect) feels more stressful than doing it yourself.

This apparent self-sabotage can trigger shame – and once you’re in a shame spiral, it’s easy to convince yourself that your goal, vision, or new way of being was never right for you in the first place.  Your brain is literally fighting for the familiar!!

Knowing that this gap is normal and expected can help reframe what’s happening so you can meet it with compassion and support rather than judgment and frustration. 

It’s Not a Lack of Motivation or Discipline

High achievers, in particular, tend to internalize this and criticize themselves:

“I should be able to do this.”
“I just need to try harder.”

I explored this dynamic in more depth in The Straightforward Truth About Why Self-Help Is Failing High Achievers.

What’s important to understand is this:

Behavior is not the starting point.
It is part of a chain reaction that begins with a subconscious thought.

The full chain looks like this:

Thought → Emotion → Action (or inaction) → Outcome → Reinforcement

Most attempts at change focus on the action:

Wake up earlier.
Set the boundary.
Stop overworking.
Have the conversation.
Start the habit.

But if the action is driven by an underlying thought that remains unexamined, your system will default back to what feels safe.

A thought — often automatic and outside of conscious awareness — generates an emotional response.

That emotional response drives action or inaction (i.e. behavior).

That behavior produces an outcome.

And that outcome reinforces the original thought.

Over time, the loop strengthens.

For example:

Thought: “If I disappoint people, I’ll lose connection with them.”
Emotion: Anxiety.
Behavior: Saying yes / over-explaining / over-delivering.
Outcome: Temporary relief.
Reinforcement: “See? Avoiding conflict keeps you safe.”

From the outside, this looks like self-sabotage.

But it’s really a protection loop doing exactly what it was intended to do.

When you step toward a new identity — one that includes boundaries, rest, or different standards — uncomfortable emotions will surface.

Anxiety.
Doubt.
Restlessness.
Even guilt.

Those emotions are often interpreted as evidence that you’re on the wrong track:

“This feels bad… so maybe I shouldn’t do it.”

And you’ll retreat without giving yourself the opportunity to consciously try shifting to another thought that could help bring the emotional temperature down, opening up potential for new actions and outcomes.

Where Your Behavior Actually Comes From

Your actions are mostly a response to a learned script.

You run subconscious scripts every day — mental shortcuts built from experience. They were once adaptive and helped you navigate school, work, family expectations, and the external environments you found yourself in.

They helped you belong, succeed, and stay safe.

Now, some of them are likely outdated — even counterproductive.

But they are still running, unchallenged in your subconscious mind – until you try to make a change and encounter fierce resistance.

In KPop Demon Hunters, the demon hunters are trained to scan constantly for danger. If something looks like a demon, they respond immediately and attack. Their thinking is black and white – if you are a demon, you die.

That script kept them alive and the world safe.

But as the story unfolds, they learn that they are just fighting external demons — they are fighting their own fear and shame. The demons in the story are controlled by their shame – and the demon hunter’s leader, Rumi, has a secret – her father was a demon and she has patterns of her own!  Their training didn’t prepare them for that.

They’ve been running a protection script and it’s a core part of their identity.  They are demon hunters, demons are evil and have to be eliminated.  The end.

By the end of the movie, they realize it’s more complicated than that.  Rumi regains her power only after being honest about her patterns and the main demon in the story saves Rumi’s life.

Not so black and white after all!  The protection scripts the protagonists were subconsciously running had to be challenged and shifted before they came back together as a tight-knit team and the world was safe again from the demons.

You are running your own protection scripts and they likely feel black and white – but it’s not that simple.

This brings us to the most important takeaway from this post:

Scripts are learned. Which means they can be refined, updated and even replaced.

The best way to do this isn’t through force or shame, but through awareness — and a new relationship with discomfort.

When you clarify what truly matters (as we discussed in Burnt Out on Goal Setting? How Personal Values Can Restore Clarity), you create the conditions for alignment to exist at a cognitive level between the way you show up and the impact you want to have.

Creating the conditions for alignment is not the same as living in alignment.  

For that to happen, you need to work through the resistance that comes up to doing things differently over and over and over again until it becomes natural and safe.

When you understand that resistance is your nervous system attempting to preserve safety — not sabotage your growth — you can shift from:

“Why am I getting in my own way like this?”
to
“This makes sense. My system is adjusting.”

The Skill No One Taught You — Staying With Discomfort

Emotional literacy is one of the most overlooked growth skills — especially for women who were often socialized to be pleasant, capable, and “fine,” even when they weren’t.  

In her book Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown shares that in early research she asked audiences how many emotions they could name. Most people identified only three: happy, sad, and angry. Yet researchers estimate that humans experience dozens of distinct emotional states.

Turns out that when our vocabulary is limited, our ability to self-regulate our emotions is limited as well.

If everything uncomfortable gets labeled “stress” or “bad,” our nervous system treats it as global threat and it’s difficult to know what action is appropriately measured in response.  Fury has a different intensity than frustration but if the word “anger” is the only one we have to describe both, it isn’t obvious what response is warranted.

When we can identify and name a more precise emotion — disappointment, shame, anticipation, envy, fear, grief — we create more options in terms of how to respond to the feeling and can better communicate, internally and externally, about it.

Research in affective science supports this; accurately labeling emotions (sometimes called affect labeling) can reduce amygdala activation and increase engagement of regulatory regions in the brain.

In practical terms:

When you can name what you feel, your nervous system settles more quickly.

A simple tool that can help expand emotional vocabulary is the Feelings Wheel (commonly attributed to Gloria Willcox and often used in therapy and coaching contexts). It organizes primary and nuanced emotions visually and makes it easier to identify what you’re actually experiencing.

When resistance shows up, instead of:

“This feels wrong.”
Try:

“I’m noticing anxiety.”
“I’m noticing shame.”
“I’m noticing fear of disappointing someone.”

This repositions or reframes the discomfort as information, or as a signal that you should pay attention to and better understand.  The language of ‘noticing’ creates some distance between you and what you are feeling which can help to reduce the intensity and allow you to explore your emotions with more curiosity.

Learning to stay with discomfort means increasing your capacity to experience an uncomfortable emotion without immediately reacting.

And that capacity, or space, gives your nervous system an opportunity to shift and refine its scripts.

This can also look like:

• grounding (feet on the floor, slow exhale, orienting to the room)
• self-soothing (a hand on the chest, warmth, steady breath)
• supportive self-talk (“This is uncomfortable, and I can stay with it.”)
• reframing (“This feeling doesn’t mean I’m wrong — it means I’m changing.”)

The goal is to become less afraid of an intense emotion or to downshift to a less intense feeling that is more tolerable.

Minding the Gap

As you move toward new goals or personal growth, it’s normal for internal resistance and emotions to intensify.

These patterns are part of you that likely helped you succeed.

They may have helped you belong.
They may have helped you feel steady in environments where that mattered.

The goal is not to eliminate them but to notice, better understand, and eventually integrate them.

 It might sound silly, but I like to imagine inviting them in for a cup of tea and chatting with them like they are good friends.  

Get curious about what they are trying to tell you and be open to what comes up.  

THE BOTTOM LINE

When resistance shows up, pause before calling it self-sabotage or beating yourself up about it.

Instead, ask:

• What is this part of me protecting me from?
• What does this part of me believe might happen if I change?
• Where does that belief come from?
• Is that belief still accurate today?

Curiosity will deepen your understanding of yourself and allow you to see patterns of behaviour that you probably haven’t noticed before.

Sometimes, exploring these patterns surfaces earlier experiences where these strategies genuinely served you. That context matters — and it often opens the door for self-compassion and gratitude rather than judgment and frustration.  

A final and very important note:

If this work activates intense distress, panic, shutdown, or unresolved trauma, trauma-informed therapy may be appropriate. Self-reflection is powerful — but it is not a replacement for professional support when deeper wounds are activated.

THE GOOD NEWS

When you can observe a thought instead of automatically believing it, you create space to respond differently.

When you can name an emotion instead of reacting to it, you have more options for self-regulation and self-soothing.

When you understand that your resistance has protective roots, shame can subside — and your own agency expands.

You aren’t sabotaging yourself.
You’re navigating identity-level change and mental and emotional resistance is  normal.

If this resonated, be sure to subscribe. In upcoming articles, we are going to explore common protective patterns that can come up — and practical, supportive ways to work with them rather than against them.

With love,
Angelina