self-sabotage

Post Reply New Topic

Hey everyone. It's been a while since I last posted here, but there's an aspect of my personality I really don't understand and it occured to me that someone on here might be able to relate, so here goes:

I want to succeed. Whatever I do, I work very, very hard to do it the best I can. The trouble is, whenever I have something important that I really need to do to acheive my goals, I never do it. I don't know why. Important college assignments would sit half-done for weeks until they're overdue. Grad school applications sent in but I never took the 5 minutes to order a transcript. Resumes passed out all over the place and I never replied to potential employers who left messages or e-mails for me. And all the while, I'm working hard on things I don't care half as much about.

I used to chalk it up to procrastination, but I'm worried that it's something much worse - that somehow, subconciously, I don't really want to succeed. Or maybe I don't feel I'm capable of it, or that I deserve to. For whatever reason, it seems I'm subconsciously sabotaging my conscious objectives. Not asking for free psychotherapy here but if anyone has some insight on the subject or similiar experiences to share I'd be very appreciative.

It sounds like you have a bad case of executive dysfunction, a common AS trait.

It has nothing to do with self sabotage, it is the inability of your brain to prioritize goals properly.

On solution is to WRITE your goals down and then to slavishly follow what is written down rather than listen to every changing whim of your malfunctioning brain.

Yeah, I have a very similar problem! I would always complete assignments, but I'd only start them at the last minute after putting them off for as long as humanly possible. I chalked it up to an uneasy battle between procrastination and fear of failure. I wouldn't want to start them in case I did them wrong, but once time had almost run out my brain would realise that unless I started I would be sure to fail, and I'd work non stop until they were complete.

However, for assignments or objectives with no fixed deadline given to me by a higher authority, I just wouldn't do them at all. No matter how much I cared about the potential results, I would just ignore them. For example:

- I put off applying for university and similar decisions until my parents issued an ultimatum and practically did it for me.

- When I got back from a Gap Year trip to Fiji on which I learnt to scuba dive, I never sent off the instructor-signed temporary licenses and paperwork in order to get my full license, and it eventually expired.

- After that same trip, I flew back to England via LA after being in Fiji for two months and I found out that I still had the green visa waiver paper paperclipped into my passport from my LA stopover on the outward journey, meaning that to the US immigration authorities it would seem like I'd entered the country twice but only left once, possibly making them think I would be staying in the country illegally. The guy told me to send off the green paper to a special address as soon as I got back home, yet I didn't do it until five years later, and that was only because I was planning to go to America again.

- I never revised for exams until a few days before each one. I'm lucky I have a good capacity for short term recollection.

- At university I was falling quite behind on my studies and assignments until the Disability Service gave me a student advisor to give me extra deadlines for my work. If I was given three weeks to do an assignment, she would give me a deadline for writing a certain amount of it, a couple of times a week. That really helped me out.

So, is this also executive dysfunction?

I think it is an executive function issue and one that I have a lot of problems with. I usually am good with deadlines because I'm afraid to get in trouble, but everything gets done at the last minute - to the point where I'm starting and finishing major term papers the night before they're due or studying for exams on the day of the exam. A lot of things that require filling out forms I never get around to because I don't fill out the form. I've started to write down exactly what I need to do and setting deadlines to do each step, doesn't always work though.

Great responses so far, thank you all. I had never heard of executive disfunction before but that makes sense. Any other strategies for dealing with it? I've tried writing down goals and all it really seems to do is depress me. I've ended up starting at the paper for like 5-10 minutes trying to convince myself to follow through, but my whims always seem to win out eventually, even if I'm thinking about what I should be doing the whole time and can't really enjoy anything.

I'd like to thank those who responded as well, it makes perfect sense in my situation. For a long time I was contemplating buying a mobile phone, partly for the calendar function (and partly to boot my ass into the 21st century). I finally made a double leap, going from no cellphone to smartphone, and I'm glad I did. I found a task manager app and installed it to the phone. All this stuff I'd been juggling on the fly and was taking up mental retail space was suddenly in front of me and more tangible and manageable. I've only had the app for a couple of days but so far I've been considerably more productive than usual. The jury's out on whether this will help in the long run but so far it's working miracles.
Anyway, reading this thread helped influence my decision to purchase the phone. Thanks again!