CAREER PLANNING
SELF-DEFEATING BEHAVIORS
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IDENTIFYING SELF-DEFEATING BEHAVIORS

When you are completely finished, send this assignment to your teacher.

 

CHOOSE YOUR SELF-DEFEATING BEHAVIORS

What Are Self-Defeating Behaviors?
Self-defeating behaviors are a series of habitual choices that separates a person from life supporting feelings, values, attitudes, beliefs, and actions. Initially, self-defeating behaviors "seem" to work by enabling a person to "cope" with the pain of an experience. These behaviors, however, are deceptive and isolating because initially they "seem" to make us feel better by temporarily restoring our equilibrium, but in the long term, they don't solve the problem or heal the pain at all; they compound problems and mask pain. Behaviors and attitudes become self-defeating when they bring to bear the effects and consequences we have been trying to avoid all along!

Self-defeating behaviors include:

  • Criticalness
  • Victimhood
  • Procrastination
  • Defensiveness
  • Substance abuse/ over eating/ under eating
  • Alienation and isolation
  • Perfectionism
  • Projection
  • Worrying
  • Exaggeration
  • Hostility
  • Suspiciousness
  • Comparing self to others
  • Unrealistic expectations
  • Distorting feedback and selective memory
  • Blaming others
  • Imposing guilt
  • Hanging on to past hurts
  • Intellectualizing
  • Hiding feelings.

 

 

 

In this activity you will practice writing different Self-Defeating Behaviors that you see in your own life. Each line asks you to write an SDB that fits the description. Follow the instructions all the way through and then, at the end, you will choose an SDB to work with throughout this unit. This is a required activity and is graded as complete/not complete.  Copy and paste this assignment onto a Word document before your complete it.  Remember to use the “Track Changes” tool.

1. The easier to change the better. In the space below write an SDB that will be relatively easy to change.

 

2. Sense of challenge. If you feel challenged to change an SDB, you are more likely to rise to the challenge. Write below an SDB that challenges you.

 

3. The less complicated the better. A bad habit like tapping your foot when you are nervous is a simple SDB. Write a simple SDB below.

 

4. Frequent enough to notice. If an SDB occurs only once a week, it will be hard to know whether or not you have changed it. Write an SDB that occurs often.

 

5. An SDB that can be clearly specified. If others can tell when you have changed, you have a better chance than if they can not. Write a clearly observable SDB on the lines on the next page.

And of course, no matter how much an SDB bothers you, in this course you are only concerned about behaviors that will have a negative effect on your career. Which of the SDBs you wrote on this page are important to your career development?

Choose an SDB to change.

Of the SDBs you have written, does one appeal to you more than the others? If you have written an SDB in two or more spaces, that behavior is probably your best choice. If you do not have a clear choice, consult with someone you trust to get some more ideas. Then, pick one SDB as your target for change. Write that SDB here:

 

 

 


 

Saving and Submitting Assignments

Save this assignment in your folder and e-mail it as an attachment to your teacher.

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