“The self-handicapper reaches out for impediments, exaggerates handicaps, and embraces any factor reducing personal responsibility for mediocrity…” Steven Berglas and Edward Jones, Drg Choice as a Self-Handicapping Strategy Rather than simply contending with external obstacles to success, many of us actively collaborate in our own defeat. We are our own worst enemies and our inability to achieve goals, develop our character, and attain success is a result of self-handicapping. In this video, we explore the psychology of self-handicapping.
We look at why it emerges and why living a life constrained by self-erected impediments can prove so attractive to some people. The idea that we would deliberately undermine our potential may seem absurd. Given the apparent irrationality of self-handicapping, one may be tempted to relegate it to fringe cases of severe personality disorder.
Self-handicapping, however, is not only common, but also an effective way to satisfy deep-seated psychological needs. “…self- handicaps consistently have been demonstrated in empirical research over the last decade…Indeed, although some persons are especially prone to self- handicapping, there are certain circumstances that may lead the perfectly “normal” person to engage in self-handicapping. So, if some of the people tend to self-handicap most of the time, and most of the people tend to self-handicap some of the time, a reasonable conclusion is that people must be getting something out of such maneuvers.
What is that something? ” C. R.
Snyder, Self-Handicapping Strategies To understand the benefits of self-handicapping, we need to recognize that among life’s primary motivations is the need to create and preserve a reasonably tolerable image of ourselves. Psychologists refer to this need to think well of ourselves as the need for self-esteem: “By self-esteem we refer to the evaluation the individual makes and customarily maintains with regard to himself: it expresses an attitude of approval or disapproval. ” (Stanley Cooper, The Antecedents of Self-Esteem).
There are both healthy and unhealthy paths to self-esteem. The healthy path is to strive after valued goals and in the process cultivate skills, competencies, and a more complete character. Or as William James puts it, healthy self-esteem is a product of “perceived competence in domains of importance.
” To attain self-esteem in this manner requires hard work over many years, the acceptance of risk and sacrifice, and the courage to face up to situations that may end in failure. Many people recoil from the demands and uncertainties associated with the healthy path to self-esteem. Yet the reluctance to undertake the work of cultivating competence does not eliminate our need to think well of ourselves.
When the healthy path feels too threatening or arduous, we seek alternative means of preserving a positive self-image and attaining self-esteem. One such alternative is the strategy of self-handicapping. “…people in general employ self-handicapping strategies in order to protect self-esteem.
” Frederick Rhodewalt, Self-Handicappers: Individual Differences And as Raymond Higgins continues: “…those individuals who are most likely to self-handicap are characterized by uncertainty concerning their abilities and competence. ” Raymond Higgins, Self-Handicapping: Historical Roots By partaking in chronic substance abuse, habitually procrastinating, identifying as a victim, or playing an active role in the maintenance of anxiety and depressive disorders, we impose impediments on ourselves and then invoke these impediments as excuses for our underachievement. We convince ourselves that our lack of effort and success is not the consequence of cowardice, laziness, or personal failure, but of obstacles beyond our control.
Through this mixture of self-deception and self-exculpation, we absolve ourselves of the guilt and regret that accompanies a failure to actualize our potential – and therein safeguard our self-esteem. In the words of the psychologists Steven Berglas and Edward Jones, self-handicappers “do not primarily set out to insure failure; they are willing to accept (probable) failure if it can be explained away. ” Or as Raymond Higgins continues: “Self-handicappers are adept at inhibiting or masking their achievement-status concerns and, like narcissistically disturbed patients, may appear to renounce striving for success as a means of masking their self-esteem concerns.
” Raymond Higgins, The Maintenance and Treatment of Self-Esteem It is because self-handicapping fulfills the defensive purpose of enabling us to avoid the arduous road to healthy self-esteem, while still preserving a tolerable self-image, that the great 20th century psychologist Alfred Adler referred to self-handicapping as the acceptance of “defeat in the interests of protection. ” Or as Adler wrote with striking insight: “The patient selects certain symptoms and develops them until they impress him as real obstacles. Behind his barricade of symptoms the patient feels hidden and secure.
To the question, ‘What use are you making of your talents? ’ he answers, ‘This thing stops me; I cannot go ahead,’ and points to his self-erected barricade. ” Alfred Adler, Problems of Neurosis Self-handicapping, however, does more than merely preserve a tolerable self-image in the face of a passive existence; it offers another potential reward.
If success comes our way despite the presence of self-imposed impediments, our self-image is greatly enhanced. Achievement in the face of a handicap is interpreted as evidence of exceptional ability – proof of our specialness. After all, if we manage to succeed while burdened by limitations, imagine what we might have accomplished without them.
Or as H. S. Baker wrote regarding his analysis of students who avoid studying via procrastination and other self-handicapping strategies.
“They [often] retreat to endless and [aimless conversations], smoking marijuana [or other activities that avoid studying]. Not studying offers two possibilities to maintain the grandiose self intact. If an exam is flunked, it is only due to lack of study, not due to the lack of ability; if, however, it is passed without study, it is doubly delicious, providing a good grade and “confirming” magical powers of brilliance.
” H. S. Baker, The Conquering Hero Quits Needless to say, success is unlikely to arise from the strategy of self-handicapping.
For the symptoms, illnesses, and self-erected barriers we create through self-handicapping make the challenge of attaining success in life much harder than it already is. If we participate in self-handicapping we all but assure ourselves that when we cross into the latter half of life we will have little to genuinely proud of. It is often at this stage that our self-handicapping strategies start to lose their effectiveness.
We can only blame external impediments for underachievement for so long before such excuses become old and stale. At the same time, after years or decades of self-handicapping, those within our social circle may grow weary of offering sympathy and may begin to see how desperately we cling to our fake excuses. Without other people to validate our self-constructed handicaps, and facing the emptiness of a meaningless and mediocre life, the fragile structure supporting our self-esteem is left exposed – and may come crashing down.
Or as Edward Jones explained: “The apparent paradox of self-handicapping is that [self-erected barricades] make failure more likely. Though failure can perhaps be more conveniently explained with reference to the inhibiting constraint, it is still failure. And failing or flawed performances can have a devastating long range effect on the very self-esteem that self-handicapping is designed to protect.
” Edward Jones, Self-Handicapping: The Paradox that Isn’t For those whose potential is being crippled by self-handicapping strategies, the first step on the road to recovery is the awareness of what we are doing. For the power of this strategy lies in the fact that, while we cling to self-created barriers , through an act of self-deception we simultaneously avoid awareness of our self-sabotage. For as Edward Jones writes:: “Self-handicapping phenomena…are strategic while eluding conscious awareness.
” Edward Jones, Self-Handicapping: The Paradox that Isn’t To bring these strategies into awareness and see how we have been complicit in our own downfall, is often humbling and painful. Yet it is only through this difficult coming to consciousness that there is the possibility of putting an end to this pernicious behavior. Or as Raymond Higgins and Steven Berglas continue: “…the maintenance of self-handicapping is facilitated by our motivated self-deception (i.
e. , our lack of awareness) in regard to its enactment. …for self-handicapping strategies to be effective, one must include an element of self-deception .
. . so as to prevent full awareness of the purposeful nature of the strategy.
” Raymond Higgins and Steven Berglas, The Maintenance and Treatment of Self-Esteem We will conclude with a case study described by Alfred Adler, concerning a thirty-two-year-old man whose preferred self-handicapping strategy involved the use of alcohol. This man was intelligent, healthy, and well educated, yet he lived entirely at the expense of his parents and repeatedly engaged in bouts of extreme binge drinking. Over the course of therapy, Adler came to understand that the man’s drinking served a psychological purpose as it allowed him to save face – in his own and others’ eyes – while living far below his potential.
Drnkenness and the brutal hangovers that followed, in other words, functioned less as the cause of his failure to launch, than as his secret and cherished alibi. Or as Adler writes: “The usual tensions of every day were not severe enough to drive him to drink, and he was able to use his sober intervals to display good intentions. … His drunkenness would begin .
. . when he was expected to go into society or .
. . when there was a demand of duty.
. . .
His evident aim was to be relieved of every duty and to be supported for his own sake alone. Self-centered and wholly lacking social adjustment, he had nevertheless attained a goal of superiority by the elimination of defeat. He had no defeat in society for he did not enter it; no defeat in work, for he had no occupation.
… Subjectively, he triumphed over life, lived it upon his own terms entirely; but objectively, of course, the terms he obtained were almost the worst possible.
