With a foggy haze and a pounding headache, I’m seated at my desk trying to study my entire Biology course for my test tomorrow. I read my notes “the boraifhn is the axlcmfn organ in the human body due to its fjxncbfh”. I seek my only friend during this study session – my coffee. I take a big gulp hoping the caffeine can rejuvenate me. It was tepid and had far too much cream for my liking but hey! It’s coffee and it’s 3am. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. 100 pages left to memorize. There is no way I pass this test. My phone vibrates to a text from my friend, Melissa: “had an amazing time last night! So happy you decided to come out with us!”. You see, I wasn’t really planning on going out. I knew I had this major biology test to study for and that if I went out, I would need to cram all my studying in one night. My ringing ears and uncontrollable yawns suggest that maybe that wasn’t one of my brightest ideas. So why did I do it? I’m a smart girl. I knew going out wasn’t the best decision for my future self, but I did it anyways. Why?
Let me introduce you to a concept we all know too well: self-sabotage. Ah the beauty of knowing you’re doing something wrong, but you do it anyways! It’s almost as if it’s inevitable to self-sabotage. It’s like when we know we have to wake up at 7am the next morning to get our lazy asses to school, but we decide to pull an all-nighter. We know that is most definitely the worst possible decision we can make, but it doesn’t stop us from staying up all night binge-watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S. on Netflix while shoving our faces with popcorn and M&Ms.
I’ve come to learn that there are actually many psychological explanations as to why we engage in self-sabotage, some of which are shocking. According to Ellen Hendrisken in her Psychology Today article titled “Why Do We Self-Sabotage?”, we all want control. Even if you know you’re about to do something wrong, it’s nice to know it is you who is making that decision, and not somebody else. Last year I went out for a night of drinking and fun (or so I thought) to celebrate my friend’s 18th birthday. I was actually having a pretty good time until Sarah, the birthday girl herself, pulls me aside hysterically crying. I’m talking the whole shebang: runny nose, hyperventilating and black mascara dripping down her face. I love Sarah but that night she was one hot mess. Although I’m sure the fact that she was nearly too drunk to walk played a role in her endless pool of tears, she tells me that she broke up with Chad (aka her long-time boyfriend of a whole 1 month). I was shocked because I knew she really liked him and I couldn’t understand why she would dump him. She tells me it’s because things started to get a bit rocky between them and she wanted to be the one break up with him before he could break up with her. I nearly laughed in her face when she told me this because it seemed so ridiculous! Why would she break up with her boyfriend (who she was clearly still in love with) when she doesn’t even know for sure that he would break up with her? It all seemed too much for me to handle and the smell of Vodka pouring out of her breath was no sign that Sarah was clear-headed enough to be having this discussion on the dance floor of a nightclub. All of this to say, it’s interesting to see our logic behind self-sabotage. I guess it’s better to screw ourselves over than to feel like we have no control… right?
Works Cited
Hendriksen, Ellen. “Why Do We Self-Sabotage?” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 10 Oct. 2017, http://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/how-be-yourself/201710/why-do-we-self-sabotage-0.
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