A social psychological concept called “Self-Handicapping” refers to a tendency many people display when faced with challenges they worry they might not be equal to. The bare-bones version of this concept suggests that in order to preserve our self-esteem, we may at times
I had that before I became a NEET. Doesn't help that society associates failure with incompetence, incompetence with losing, losing with evil and shame. This despite the fact that people only learn in failing.
Such a pernicious behaviour that creeps into all of our lives... what would you say is the difference (if any) between self-handicapping and self sabotage?
Probably the intention—in my mind at least, self-handicapping is meant to provide us with justification for potential (and anticipated) failure, while self-sabotage is meant to actually prevent success.
That's a really interesting way of putting it... one prevents failure, and the other prevents success... would be interesting to explore how much of an interplay there is between them! Thanks for clarifying colin
In many other circumstances, if we notice how self handicapping dominates our human mind, how the various societal parameters are also associated with self handicapping, how our own brain and mind self actualises a lot of things in that realm. Human mind often seeks completion, of an event, a task, or others. If our societal beliefs control us, along with other opposing parameters like hurdles, family, belief system, etc, this very self handicapping thought process might get capable of creating that notion of completion in our brain by connecting the dots of “why” we couldn’t do something/ it’s ok to not do everything/ etc. it then allows our brain to move on to the next goal probably & the subconscious mind of being able to fool ourselves starts repeating at every other time.
I had that before I became a NEET. Doesn't help that society associates failure with incompetence, incompetence with losing, losing with evil and shame. This despite the fact that people only learn in failing.
Such a pernicious behaviour that creeps into all of our lives... what would you say is the difference (if any) between self-handicapping and self sabotage?
Probably the intention—in my mind at least, self-handicapping is meant to provide us with justification for potential (and anticipated) failure, while self-sabotage is meant to actually prevent success.
That's a really interesting way of putting it... one prevents failure, and the other prevents success... would be interesting to explore how much of an interplay there is between them! Thanks for clarifying colin
In many other circumstances, if we notice how self handicapping dominates our human mind, how the various societal parameters are also associated with self handicapping, how our own brain and mind self actualises a lot of things in that realm. Human mind often seeks completion, of an event, a task, or others. If our societal beliefs control us, along with other opposing parameters like hurdles, family, belief system, etc, this very self handicapping thought process might get capable of creating that notion of completion in our brain by connecting the dots of “why” we couldn’t do something/ it’s ok to not do everything/ etc. it then allows our brain to move on to the next goal probably & the subconscious mind of being able to fool ourselves starts repeating at every other time.