Self Sabotage Screening

Self Sabotage is the term we use to identify the behaviors we subconsciously engage in to keep an internal steady-state that we are familiar with – even painful ones like Chronic Depression!

The following screening instrument was created and made available by Anne Katherine in her book When Misery IS Company – End Self Sabotage and Become Content.

Make a list of the following symptoms to which you can relate: Keep notes in your journal about each item with which you relate. That would include self-talk, images in your mind’s eye, sounds, feelings, and EXAMPLES of recent times. Your therapist or coach will be very happy to have this information – even if it is later that you get help.

1. Having a pattern of self-sabotage

2. Being avoidant

3. Losing track of the main objective

4. Injecting negatives into positive situation’s

5. Leaving or stopping a positive chain of events

6. Having a fear of well-being, happiness, or success

7. Not acting when action is required

8. Being indecisive

9. Being ambivalent

10. Longing for a certain experience but insisting that it take the form that can’t or doesn’t work

11. Insisting that the first steps towards a goal take a certain form

12. Wanting something you’ll never get if you keep doing what you’re doing

13. Feeling that your life is jinxed

14. Feeling that you’re incompetent or unworthy

15. Not changing your behavior even after it repeatedly causes problems

16. After discovering a pattern, not adjusting to deal with it

17. Acting on assumptions without checking them out first

18. Being resistant

19. Always having an excuse (why don’t you… yes, but)

20. Splitting hairs

21. Refusing helpful medication

22. Isolating

23. Resist asking for or receiving help

24. Alienating the people who can offer the most help or do the most good

25. Sacrificing

26. Being attracted to unavailable people

27. Feeling that you can never fit in or belong

28. Craving closeness but evading intimacy

29. Having multiple addictions or compulsive behaviors

30. Having a pattern of chronic relapse into other addictions or compulsive behaviors


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Don Carter CEO/Psychotherapist, Carter Counseling & Coaching Services
Don Carter, MSW, LCSW, CCTP, CCTP-II is an Integrative Psychotherapist and Certified Complex Trauma Professional at Levels 1 & 2, A graduate of the University of Missouri School of Social Work and trained by former Harvard professor, Dr. Janina Fisher Ph.D, Don's primary specialty areas include emotional, physical, and sexual abuse trauma, addictions, codependency, mood disorders, C-PTSD, and Adult/Child Syndrome. Don offers in-office and online counseling and coaching services and is licensed in Missouri.