10 Ways We Quietly Self-Sabotage Ourselves... · Sana Yara
Blog
10 Ways We Quietly Self-Sabotage Ourselves...
I always thought I was reasonably self-aware. Then I looked straight into the eyes of my inner Saboteurs...
Some time ago, I took the free Positive Intelligence Saboteur Assessment, and I wasn't particularly surprised by the patterns it identified in me, or by how much space each of them had claimed on my little internal Saboteur Council. Most of them felt almost embarrassingly familiar.
What did surprise me, though, was the number. My result suggested that, within the
Positive Intelligence model, my mind was operating from Saboteur patterns about 62% of the time!!! 🤯
· 10 min read
That number made me pause, because suddenly I wasn't just looking at a list of personality quirks. I was looking at a significant part of my own thinking that could be running on autopilot, particularly when I'm stressed, uncertain, tired, or trying very hard to get something right.
The assessment identifies nine "accomplice" Saboteurs alongside the Judge, the "Master Saboteur": Stickler, Hyper-Achiever, Restless, Hyper-Vigilant, Controller, Avoider, Hyper-Rational, Pleaser, and Victim. The framework describes them as patterns that may have developed as attempts to protect us from perceived threats, but can become automatic and unhelpful long after the original threat is gone.
And that part really resonated with me, because when I started digging beneath the labels, I became much less interested in "How do I get rid of this part of myself?" I became curious about something else. What was this part of me trying to protect? What fear was underneath it? What did it once believe would happen if it stopped doing its job? And, perhaps most interestingly, what if I didn't need to get rid of it at all? What if I could give it a different job?
I started imagining my Inner Sage walking into the meeting of my Saboteur Council. She looked around at everyone and said, "Thank you, everyone. I have it from here." Then she sat down with each of them. Not to fire them. Just to make them a little less feudal.
Here is what I imagine she might have said.
Stickler
"You need to get everything right."
Sage:
"Your eye for quality is useful. I just don't need you turning every task into a referendum on whether I've done enough."
Then perhaps a little quieter: "Where does good enough actually begin?"
This one has been useful for me to work with very practically. I try to define what "done" means before I start, put limits around how much time something deserves, and every now and then deliberately leave something imperfect. It still feels uncomfortable, which is probably why it's useful.
Perfectionism can look a lot like conscientiousness from the outside. The trouble starts when the standard becomes so demanding that doing things well is no longer the goal. Avoiding the feeling of not being good enough becomes the goal.
Hyper-Achiever
"Keep moving. Your next accomplishment will finally make you feel enough."
"Okay, I know you like a finish line. But what happens if there isn't one?"
This one has probably accompanied me for decades. I've spent a lot of my life collecting milestones, skills, knowledge, responsibilities, achievements, financial security, another challenge conquered, another level reached. And there is nothing inherently wrong with any of that. I still love learning. I still have certain ambitious plans.
But I'm becoming more interested in the parts of life that don't produce a line I can add to a résumé: reading, walking, writing, sitting with tea and daydreaming, a long conversation with someone I value, a quiet morning when nothing particularly impressive happens. Some things are valuable precisely because they don't need to become achievements.
Restless
"Surely there is something more interesting, productive or exciting you could be doing right now."
Sage:
She might not even answer this one immediately. She might just sit there, and wait, because this has been one of the more revealing patterns for me.
Sometimes I don't actually want the next thing. I just haven't learned to stay very comfortably with the thing that is happening now. So I've been experimenting with single-tasking, leaving little stretches of time without stimulation, and noticing the impulse to switch before automatically following it. There is something surprisingly humbling about realizing how quickly the hand reaches for the phone, the brain reaches for the next idea, or the mind starts planning what comes after this.
I read once about how repeated responses in familiar contexts can become increasingly automatic (awareness techniques can come to the rescue here). It made me think about how often I call something "my personality" when some of it may simply be well-practiced behavior.
Hyper-Vigilant
"What if something goes wrong?"
Sage:
"Let's prepare for what reasonably needs preparing for. Then let's stop."
That stopping part is the difficult bit. There will almost always be another risk to analyze, another scenario to anticipate, another piece of information that could theoretically make me more prepared. I've learned to ask myself what is enough information for a reasonable decision, not how can I become certain.
Because sometimes what looks like preparation is really an attempt to negotiate with uncertainty until it agrees to disappear. It rarely does.
Controller
"If you don't manage everything, something will go wrong."
Sage:
"Show me what is actually yours."
This distinction has become much more useful to me than simply telling myself to "let go." What can I control? What can I influence? What belongs to another person? Where does my responsibility end? Sometimes letting go sounds almost passive, as if we're supposed to stop caring, but healthy agency feels very different to me. It's choosing where to put my energy because I recognize that I can't personally manage every variable in the room. Honestly, I find that strangely freeing.
Avoider
"Let's not deal with that yet. Maybe the discomfort will disappear."
Sage:
"What if you don't have to feel ready?
What if the thing you're avoiding isn't the task, but a feeling underneath it and by avoiding it you are giving it more power than it deserves?"
Avoidance is remarkably good at producing immediate relief: don't send the email, postpone the conversation, don't look at the uncomfortable number, wait until tomorrow, wait until you know more, wait until you feel better. And then, of course, the brain notices that avoiding the thing made the uncomfortable feeling go away for a little while. So it learns.
I've found that one of the more useful experiments is almost ridiculously small: stay with the thing for five minutes. Open the document. Write the first sentence. Make the call. Look at the number. Have the beginning of the conversation. Not solve everything, just stop running for long enough to discover that discomfort itself is survivable.
That doesn't mean every uncomfortable situation should be pushed through. Sometimes avoidance is information that we are overwhelmed, unsafe, or genuinely need a break. The interesting part is learning to tell the difference.
Hyper-Rational
"Don't trust feelings. Gather more information."
I think my Sage would smile at this one. "Yes, you're very good at thinking. Your intellect is an extraordinary instrument. Keep that. But perhaps leave a little room for the rest of me to speak."
Because I genuinely love analysis. Give me a complicated problem, and I will readily start pulling it apart. But there are moments when another diagram, spreadsheet, article, framework, or hour of thinking simply isn't going to produce the answer. Sometimes the missing information is a feeling, a value, a preference, a boundary, a quiet inner "yes" or "no." I've been trying to notice when thinking is actually helping me understand something and when it has quietly turned into a very sophisticated way of postponing a decision.
Pleaser (luckily, this one and the next are the least prominent members of the Council).
"If everyone is okay with you, you'll be safe and loved."
Sage:
"Who said you have to disappear in order to stay connected?"
This one feels particularly tender. I can care about someone's feelings without taking responsibility for them. I can disappoint someone without necessarily doing something wrong. I can say no without producing a five-paragraph legal defense of my decision. And I can remain loving while having boundaries.
I'm still practicing that last one. There is something deeply uncomfortable about discovering that being a kind person and being an endlessly accommodating person are two very different things.
Victim
"This is happening to me, and there is probably nothing I can do."
Sage:
"Okay. Let's start with what actually happened."
I don't believe in forced positivity, and I don't think every painful experience contains a hidden gift waiting to be discovered. Some things genuinely happen to us. Some circumstances are unfair. Some losses cannot be reframed into something beautiful. But even then, there is often a small space between what happened and what happens next. What is actually within my influence? What meaning am I adding to the facts? What can I choose today? That little space can be where agency begins.
---
And then there is the Judge, the Master Saboteur, the one who seems to chair the whole council. "Something is wrong. Find what's wrong. Fix it. Find who's responsible. Figure out what you should have done differently."
My Sage doesn't want to get rid of this one either. She just wants to change its job. "I still need your discernment," she might say. "I just don't need your verdicts."
The Judge can become an Inner Editor and Discernment Advisor, someone who notices what isn't working, spots inconsistencies, sees what could be improved, and helps me learn from experience. But perhaps without turning every observation into a character assessment.
Instead of "I'm procrastinating because I'm lazy," try "something is making me avoid this, what's happening?" Instead of "I failed," try "what happened here, what can I learn from it?" Instead of "I shouldn't feel this way," try "what is this feeling trying to tell me?" And instead of "they treated me badly, so they're a nasty person," maybe "that behavior wasn't acceptable to me, what boundary or choice follows from that?"
That last distinction, between observing something and passing judgment on it, has been surprisingly powerful for me.
---
What I love most about this exercise is that I no longer see my Saboteurs as enemies. The Stickler contains conscientiousness. The Hyper-Achiever contains drive. The Hyper-Vigilant contains foresight. The Controller contains agency. The Avoider contains a very understandable wish for relief. The Pleaser contains empathy. The Hyper-Rational contains intelligence. The Restless contains curiosity. The Victim contains sensitivity to pain and injustice. Even the Judge has discernment in there somewhere. The trouble starts when a protective strategy becomes the only strategy available.
So perhaps the goal isn't to silence these parts of ourselves, but to give them new job descriptions. The Stickler can be my quality-control specialist, the Hyper-Achiever my engine, the Hyper-Vigilant my risk advisor, the Controller my agency and boundaries advisor, the Avoider my early-warning system for overwhelm, the Hyper-Rational my analyst, the Pleaser my relationship specialist, the Restless my explorer, the Victim my sensor for pain and unmet needs. And the Judge? My Inner Editor.
Useful employees, not feudal lords of my psyche. 😉
Perhaps this is where the Inner Sage comes in, not as another voice telling me what I should be doing, but as the part of me that can pause long enough to ask: "Is this response actually serving the life I want to live?"
For me, simply being able to recognize a pattern before automatically obeying it has already been a halfway step toward figuring out what has been getting in my way. Awareness creates a little distance, and sometimes that little distance is all we need to make a different choice. The rest is practice.
I'm still very much practicing. My Saboteurs haven't retired; they still show up, sometimes with remarkably convincing arguments. They just don't get to make every decision anymore. And honestly, I find that rather liberating.
If you'd like to meet yours, reach out to me via the Contact section, and I'll send you the link to the free Saboteur Assessment.
And if you take it, come back and share your results if you feel like it. I'd genuinely love to know which of these nine characters you recognize in yourself, and perhaps even more interestingly, what you think each of them has been trying to protect you from.
