I have a confession to make.
For years, I thought some people had terrible timing. They procrastinated when opportunity knocked. They stayed in relationships that had long since expired. They said yes when every fiber of their being wanted to say no. They overthought simple decisions, people-pleased complete strangers, and somehow found remarkable ways to turn avoidable problems into permanent houseguests.
I’d quietly wonder, “Why would anyone keep doing that?”
Lately, I’ve become less certain. What if what looks like self-sabotage is actually an old survival strategy that never got the memo that life had changed? That thought has made me much slower to judge others. It has also made me much slower to judge myself.
Last Tuesday at The Clarity Room, we explored self-sabotage. One idea has refused to leave me alone. Sometimes the behavior we’re desperately trying to eliminate was once the very behavior that kept us alive. Not physically, perhaps. Emotionally. Psychologically. Socially.
What seems irrational today may have made perfect sense to a frightened eight-year-old. That doesn’t mean we should stay there. It simply means we should understand how we got there before declaring war on ourselves.
— -
What if self-sabotage isn’t your enemy, but an old protector that never realized the danger had passed?
— -
While reading The Body Keeps the Score, I came across the story of Annie. As a little girl, Annie lived in a home where safety and danger shared the same front door. Her father sexually abused her, and her mother physically abused her. The very people a child instinctively turns to for comfort became the source of terror.
Years later, as an adult, Annie discovered something she couldn’t explain. Whenever she became genuinely excited to see someone she loved, panic would suddenly overwhelm her. At first, it seemed absurd. Excitement should feel joyful. Instead, her body reacted as if danger were approaching.
Van der Kolk explains that her brain had learned an association years earlier. As a child, she repeatedly experienced excitement upon hearing her parents return home, only to be followed by abuse. Over time, her stress and alarm systems began linking excitement with pain.
The danger had long passed. Her nervous system hadn’t noticed. I found myself setting the book down for a moment. Not because Annie’s story was unusual, but because it made me wonder how many of us are still living inside emotional maps we drew as children.
Not all wounds are as severe as Annie’s. In fact, many aren’t. But unmet emotional needs leave marks, too. The need to feel loved. To belong. To be understood. To matter. To feel safe. Sometimes those needs were consistently met. Sometimes they weren’t.
Either way, our younger selves became remarkably adept at adapting. Some of us learned to be invisible. Others learned to be exceptional. Some learned to make everyone happy. Others decided they would never need anyone again. None of those strategies are inherently wrong. The question is whether they still belong in the lives we’re living today.
—
That thought took me back to Nanyuki Primary School, Class One. On my first day, I arrived carrying two things. A school bag and enough energy to power a small hydroelectric dam. Unfortunately, neither fit particularly well in a classroom. Sitting still felt unnatural.
Apparently, my body hadn’t yet received the Ministry of Education’s memo stating that six-year-olds were expected to sit motionless on a hard wooden bench for hours while someone explained the finer points of the alphabet.
Then I met Mr. Gituma. That’s not his real name, but after all these years, he still deserves a pseudonym. Mr. Gituma had a physical disability that reminded my six-year-old imagination of Captain Hook, the antagonist in Peter Pan. Looking back, that’s probably unfair to Captain Hook.
My first weeks in school felt less like education and more like a long-running negotiation with a cane. I was constantly talking, constantly moving, constantly distracted. He was constantly correcting. Eventually, correcting became caning. Caning became insults. Insults became an identity.
At least that’s how it felt to a little boy who hadn’t yet learned that adults can be wrong. The strange thing about memory is what it chooses to preserve. I can still remember Mr. Gituma with remarkable clarity. I remember the classroom, the fear, the embarrassment, the quest to humiliate and control.
I remember almost nothing about the lessons themselves. Memory is funny like that. It keeps the people who frightened us in high definition and quietly erases the timetable.
By the end of Class One, I had seriously considered leaving school altogether. My career options were admittedly limited. Explorer. Professional fantasy traveler. Tree climber. Anything that didn’t require spending another morning with Mr. Gituma.
Thankfully, I discovered the local library. And without realising it, that little room full of books became the safest place in my world.
If Mr. Gituma taught mathematics, the library taught me survival.
While the rest of the class was learning addition and subtraction, I was negotiating peace treaties among cats in Puss in Boots, escaping with explorers, traveling with pirates, and meeting characters whose worlds felt far kinder than the one I inhabited between eight in the morning and three in the afternoon.
My body remained in Class One. My imagination emigrated.
Looking back, I sometimes wonder whether reading saved my education. Not because it made me clever, but because it gave me a safe place to go. Children are remarkably inventive when they need somewhere to hide. Some disappear into books. Some into sports. Some into music. Some become comedians. Others become the quiet child teachers describe as “no trouble at all.” Adults usually applaud this behavior. Very few stop to ask what it might be protecting.
— -
There was another place I escaped to. Television. Every afternoon, we raced home for children’s programs. You probably remember the feeling. You weren’t watching because the cartoons were masterpieces of storytelling. They probably weren’t. You watched because, for one glorious hour, the world became wonderfully uncomplicated.
Heroes won. Villains lost. Everything was resolved before dinner. Life, unfortunately, had other plans. School resumed the next morning, and so did Mr. Gituma. For three years, I perfected an unusual skill. I became physically present and mentally unavailable.
I often wonder how many children spend years in classrooms while living somewhere else entirely. Teachers call it daydreaming. Behavioral scientists might call it dissociation. Whatever we call it, it often begins as an ingenious solution. If the place you’re in doesn’t feel emotionally safe, your mind quietly builds another. It isn’t laziness. It’s adaptation.
— -
The strange thing is that I remember almost nothing about Class Two. The following year, which was free of Mr. Gituma, I remember nothing either. Not the lessons. Not the subjects. Not even most of the classmates. I remember the teacher largely because she ignored me. She ignored me because I had learned to live in a fantasy world, silent and mediocre in class.
That’s about it. Memory, it seems, is economical. It keeps what it believes is necessary for survival and quietly files the rest somewhere beyond easy reach.
Researchers studying trauma have found something similar.
Traumatic experiences don’t always fade. Instead, they can leave lasting changes in the brain’s stress and alarm systems. Later, something entirely ordinary — a tone of voice, a smell, a facial expression — can trigger a reaction that feels far out of proportion to the moment itself.
The original danger may be gone. The nervous system hasn’t updated the map. That doesn’t happen only after catastrophic trauma. Sometimes it happens after repeated humiliation, rejection, or ridicule, or after years of feeling unseen. These leave smaller fingerprints that still shape how we move through the world.
— -
I’ve often wondered whether many of us spend adulthood reacting to situations that no longer exist. The colleague who offers feedback sounds like the teacher who embarrassed you in front of the class. When a spouse asks a simple question, it feels like criticism. The friend who doesn’t reply to your message immediately awakens an old fear of being forgotten.
Logically, we know they’re different people. Our nervous system isn’t always convinced. That’s why what looks like self-sabotage can sometimes be something else entirely. An old protective strategy. One that made perfect sense when we first learned it. One that no longer fits the life we’re trying to build.
I’ve seen it in coaching more times than I can count. One person couldn’t say no because a single “no” once led to rejection. Another worked relentlessly because achievement became the only reliable way to feel noticed. Someone else controlled every detail because unpredictability once carried real consequences. Then there are the fiercely independent people.
“I don’t need anyone,” they proudly declare. Perhaps. Or perhaps there was a time when needing someone hurt too much. The behavior is visible. The story beneath it usually isn’t.
— -
My story changed in Class Three, not because Mr. Gituma disappeared, but because something happened that forced me to look at myself differently. I don’t remember the exact day. I remember the humiliation.
Someone had defecated in the classroom. As children often do, the children immediately began looking for someone to blame. For reasons that still escape me, the finger somehow landed on me, perhaps because I was already the disruptive child, the noisy one, the one who finished at the bottom of the class.
When people have already decided who you are, evidence becomes strangely optional.
Then came another comparison I’d heard more than once. My older sister. She was brilliant. The kind of student schools proudly mention at assemblies. Teachers admired her. Parents admired her. I admired her. She collected academic accolades with such consistency that the rest of us wondered whether she had secretly struck a deal with the examination board.
Then there was me. The younger brother. The one people expected less of. For a while, I believed them until that fateful afternoon, when I walked home and decided to have a meeting with myself.
The Meeting
I don’t remember the walk home. I remember the meeting. There was no audience. No dramatic music. No motivational speaker standing under a spotlight telling me to believe in myself. Just a dusty road. A young boy. And a conversation that would quietly shape the next twenty years of my life.
I’d spent years believing the story other people seemed convinced was true: that I was the disruptive one. The slow learner. The child who would always finish near the bottom of the class. The evidence certainly supported it. My report cards did little to challenge the narrative.
Teachers had already decided who I was. Eventually, so had I. That afternoon, something shifted. I don’t know whether it was anger, embarrassment, or simply exhaustion.
But I remember making two decisions. The first was surprisingly simple. I wasn’t stupid. The second was harder. If I kept behaving like I believed I was stupid, everyone else would agree with me.
That conversation couldn’t have lasted more than five minutes. It outlived my childhood.
Looking back, I don’t think my grades changed first. My identity did. For three years, I had been protecting myself. If I never tried, failure couldn’t hurt as much. If I looked uninterested, perhaps people wouldn’t notice I was struggling. If everyone expected little of me, there was very little to lose.
It was a clever strategy. Until it wasn’t, that is what fascinates me about self-sabotage. What looks like irrational behavior today often began as an intelligent adaptation years ago. The trouble is that survival strategies have an unfortunate habit. They don’t know when the emergency is over.
There was one more discovery waiting for me. It turned out I was shortsighted. The irony still makes me laugh. For years, I thought the problem was entirely in my head. Part of it was in my eyes. I remember putting on glasses for the first time. The world suddenly acquired edges.
Trees had individual leaves. The blackboard stopped looking like modern art. Apparently, teachers had been writing actual words all along.
Who knew?
Sometimes we spend years questioning our ability when the real issue is that we’re looking at life through the wrong lens. Mine happened to be literal. Many of ours aren’t.
Something remarkable happened over the next two years. The boy who had consistently finished near the bottom of the class slowly climbed, inching upward from last to somewhere in the middle, then near the top.
Not because I suddenly became intelligent. I’d always had the ability. I had stopped arguing for my limitations. That evidence did what years of encouragement had never managed to do. It challenged the story.
Psychologists sometimes call this a corrective experience. One piece of convincing evidence begins to challenge years-old assumptions. It doesn’t erase them overnight, but it asks an important question. “What if the story isn’t entirely true?” That’s where change often begins. Not with certainty. With curiosity.
These days, when someone tells me they’re stuck, I try to resist the temptation to solve the problem too quickly. Instead, I become curious. What story is this behavior protecting?
The person who procrastinates may not be lazy. Perhaps they learned that trying their best once led to humiliation. The manager who controls every detail may not simply enjoy control. Perhaps unpredictability once came with consequences they couldn’t survive.
The people pleaser may not just be “too nice.” Perhaps belonging once depended on never disappointing anyone.
The fiercely independent person may not actually dislike people. Perhaps depending on someone once hurt too much.
Understanding the story doesn’t excuse unhealthy behavior. It explains it. And explanation fosters compassion. Compassion, I’ve discovered, is often a better starting point for change than criticism.
— -
One of the greatest lessons I’ve taken from The Body Keeps the Score isn’t that the past controls us. It’s that the past can continue influencing us until we become aware of how it shaped us. Trauma, rejection and repeated emotional pain can leave lasting changes in the brain’s stress and alarm systems. The original danger may have passed years ago, but our nervous system can continue responding as though it hasn’t.
Fortunately, the opposite is also true. Our brains continue learning throughout life. New experiences, healthy relationships, therapy, reflection, and repeated acts of courage can slowly teach the nervous system something it didn’t know before.
You are safe now.
That may be one of the most hopeful ideas in behavioral science. We are shaped by our past, but we are not sentenced to it.
I sometimes wonder how many adults are still negotiating with teachers who retired decades ago. Or fathers who are no longer alive. Or playgrounds that no longer exist. Perhaps that’s why compassion matters.
The person who procrastinates may not be lazy. The one who controls everyone in the room may not crave power. The people-pleaser may not simply be “too nice.” Sometimes they’re all doing exactly what their younger selves learned would keep them safe. Until one day they realize the danger has passed. And they finally have permission to write a different story.
I’ve come to believe that self-awareness isn’t about blaming our past. It’s about understanding it well enough that it no longer dictates our future. So I’ll leave you with the same question I’ve been asking myself:
Which part of your life are you still protecting… even though it no longer needs protecting?
If you sit with that question long enough, don’t be surprised if your younger self answers first.
Talk. Clarify. Grow. Transform.
If this message stirred something in you, don’t let it fade.
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