Self-sabotage at work: understanding and transforming the patterns that hold us back
- Karen Mills
- Apr 15
- 6 min read
Geoff Sim is a highly qualified, experienced and accredited Executive Coach and Mentor (EMCC / BPS) he is also a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants.
Geoff started his coaching career in sport, he translated the skills into life and business and has adopted a coaching philosophy whenever working with and leading individuals / teams in industry.
Geoff adopts a science backed approach to coaching and mentoring, he is a lifelong learner with Masters degrees in Psychology, Strategic Business Management (Distinction), a First Class degree in Sustainable Performance Management and a Level 7 diploma in Executive Coaching and Mentoring from the Institute of Leadership and Management.
Geoff is altruistic by nature and derives a huge amount of satisfaction from supporting and enabling businesses and individuals achieve their intrinsic and extrinsic goals.
Geoff is a member of the EMCC and abide by the Global Code of Ethics. He is also a COACH & MENTOR, EIA, EMCC Global, SENIOR PRACTITIONER, HOGAN CERTIFIED
Maggie Roderick is an Executive Coach, trainer and facilitator, empowering executives and senior management to achieve their full potential by building on career long coaching and mentoring skills.
As Founder of Maggie Roderick Coaching, she specialises in leadership development, career progression and empowering women and marginalised people. Her degree in psychology and sociology has shaped her coaching interests, especially in NLP, Neuroscience, Positive Psychology and Mindfulness Meditation.
An ILM-qualified Executive Coach and member of the Association for Coaching, Maggie brings a unique blend of strategic, regulatory and human-centred expertise. Her career spans roles in the civil service, local authority leadership, and national regulatory bodies, alongside her work as a Minister in the Church of Scotland.
Maggie has held multiple board-level and advisory positions and was the first woman to Chair the Chartered Trading Standards Institute in its 120-year history. She is passionate about her commitment to equality, social justice and inclusive leadership, combining deep empathy with practical insight to help individuals and organisations navigate complexity with confidence.
Definition and origins of Self-sabotage
In a professional context, self-sabotage refers to the largely unconscious patterns of thought, emotion and behaviour that undermine our performance, credibility or wellbeing, even when success is clearly important to us.
Coaches and coaching psychologists can often see self-sabotage expressed through overthinking, perfectionism, procrastination and catastrophising.
Overthinking keeps the mind locked in loops of analysis rather than action, perfectionism sets standards so exacting that progress feels unsafe, procrastination provides safety from perceived inevitable failure and catastrophising amplifies perceived risk until ordinary workplace challenges feel existential.
These processes are not signs of weakness or lack of ambition. Rather, they are protective strategies that have become misaligned with current demands.
The concept of self-sabotage has roots in psychodynamic thinking, which explored internal conflicts and defence mechanisms, and later in cognitive and behavioural psychology, which highlighted how maladaptive beliefs and thinking styles shape behaviour.
More recently, research on metacognition and emotional regulation has shown how repeated patterns of negative self-appraisal can impair executive functioning under pressure. In modern professional environments characterised by high visibility, constant evaluation and rapid change, these cognitive habits can quietly erode confidence and effectiveness, often in people who are otherwise highly capable.
Self-sabotage: Causes and propagation in professional environments
Self-sabotage begins with a complex interplay of nature and nurture.
Temperamental factors such as sensitivity to threat, conscientiousness or harm avoidance have a genetic component, influencing how strongly we react to uncertainty or evaluation.
Nurture then shapes how these traits are expressed. Early experiences with caregivers, educators and authority figures teach us what is required to stay safe, valued or loved, alternatively, these experiences can be traumatic, with a lack of safety, value or love which can follow individuals into adult life.
For some, achievement became a route to security, for others, invisibility reduces risk.
These lessons can become deeply embedded schemas that operate well beyond childhood. In professional environments, self-sabotage is often propagated through power and fear, both intrinsic and extrinsic.
Intrinsically, individuals may fear exposure, failure or success itself, particularly if past environments punished mistakes harshly. Extrinsically, organisational cultures that rely on excessive surveillance, unclear expectations or punitive performance management can reinforce threat responses.
Trauma, whether acute or cumulative, further sensitises the nervous system, making overthinking and avoidance more likely under stress. Experiences of discrimination, harassment or exclusion based on gender, race, disability, age, neurodiversity or other identities add another layer, as individuals constantly assess risk to psychological and physical safety - the trauma of repeated discrimination cannot be underestimated, especially if it is in more than one area of life.
Leadership plays a decisive role here: inclusive, consistent leadership can dampen fear and foster trust, while authoritarian or unpredictable leadership can normalise self-protective self-sabotage across entire teams.
Self-sabotage: Impact on individuals and teams
The impact of self-sabotage is both personal and systemic.
Individually, it often manifests as procrastination, indecision and what many clients describe as “paralysis”, they know what needs to be done but feel unable to start or finish.
Cognitive load increases as mental energy is spent managing anxiety rather than solving problems, leading to reduced creativity and impaired decision-making.
Confidence often becomes conditional on external validation and setbacks are interpreted as confirmation of inadequacy rather than as data for learning. Over time, lack of confidence can lead to poor mental health, which can contribute to burnout, disengagement and a narrowing of career aspirations. Criticism, real or perceived, can then encourage attempts to work harder or longer, fuelling increased feelings of failure.
When this stress becomes chronic, resilience can seem to be non-existent. Self-sabotage will inevitably continue, unless something changes
At a team level, self-sabotage is contagious. When individuals withhold ideas, delay action or avoid responsibility, collaboration slows and trust erodes. Teams may default to risk-averse behaviour, innovation declines, and psychological safety diminishes. In high-pressure environments, collective overthinking can result in analysis paralysis, while perfectionism can stall delivery and strain relationships. Importantly, self-sabotage is often mislabelled as poor attitude or lack of capability, which can trigger further fear-based responses and perpetuate a self-fulfilling cycle.
Self-sabotage: Remedies and realistic expectations for change.
Addressing self-sabotage requires compassion, structure and patience. Severe cases may require counselling, rather than coaching.
Sustainable remedies focus less on “positive thinking” and more on building awareness, flexibility and safety. At an individual level, the first step is noticing patterns without judgement, recognising when overthinking, perfectionism, procrastination or catastrophising are activated.
Cognitive-behavioural and acceptance-based strategies can help individuals test assumptions, externalise the inner critic and develop a more balanced relationship with uncertainty.
Behaviourally, working in small, values-aligned actions reduces avoidance and rebuilds self-trust. Perfectionism softens when “good enough” is practised intentionally and outcomes are reviewed as experiments rather than verdicts.
Somatic and regulation-based practices, such as paced breathing or grounding, are particularly important for those with trauma histories, as they address the physiological drivers of threat responses.
In parallel, professional environments must do their part. Truly inclusive workplaces and practices, clear expectations, fair processes, inclusive leadership and genuine psychological safety create conditions in which self-sabotage no longer serves a protective function.
In terms of timeframes, clients can often notice increased awareness within weeks, behavioural shifts within two to three months and more stable cognitive change over six to twelve months, depending on depth of patterning and environmental support.
Moving away from self-sabotage is not about eliminating fear, but about learning to act constructively alongside it. From a coaching psychology perspective, success is measured not by constant positivity, but by resilience, self-efficacy and the capacity to engage fully and sustainably at work.
Bibliography and Further reading:
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control.
Baumeister, R. F., & Vohs, K. D. (2007). Self-regulation, ego depletion, and motivation.
Beck, A. T. (1976). Cognitive therapy and the emotional disorders.
Edmondson, A. (2018). The fearless organization.
Hayes, S. C., et al. (2012). Acceptance and commitment therapy.
Kagan, J. (1994). Galen’s prophecy.
Seligman, M. E. P. (2011). Flourish.
van der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score.
Wells, A. (2009). Metacognitive therapy.
Young, J. E., et al. (2003). Schema therapy.
PBI Take: What’s often labelled as low confidence or poor performance is Self-sabotage. This is protection doing its job too well. This blog brilliantly reframes the narrative that overthinking is risk scanning, perfectionism is safety seeking and procrastination is threat avoidance. When you place a capable person in unclear expectations and inconsistent leadership, you get protection. So lets build awareness and behavioural experimentation with psychological safety and consistency to sustainable performance.
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