Abracadabra: A Curious Thought About the Words We Live By
23 October 2026
Perhaps you have asked yourself the same question many times:
“Why do I keep doing this when I know where it leads?”
You promise that this time will be different. You will speak up sooner, follow through with the plan, stop returning to the relationship that hurts you or finally accept the opportunity you have worked so hard to create.
For a while, something changes.
Then the familiar pattern returns.
You delay until the opportunity passes. You begin doubting a decision that once felt right. You withdraw when somebody becomes emotionally close. You abandon a healthy routine after making real progress. You create an argument when life feels peaceful or become distracted just as your work starts succeeding.
From the outside, self-sabotage can look irrational. From the inside, it often feels stronger than logic.
You know what would support you, yet another part of you keeps pulling you towards what is familiar.
RTT hypnotherapy for self-sabotage can help you understand that conflict. It works with the beliefs and emotional patterns beneath your habits so growth stops feeling like a battle against yourself.
We often imagine a comfort zone as something pleasant. But many comfort zones are not comfortable at all.
They are simply familiar.
You may be familiar with feeling overlooked, overworked or uncertain. You may know how to function in relationships where you have to earn affection. You may understand the version of yourself who struggles, gives too much or remains almost ready.
Growth asks you to enter territory you have never occupied before.
What happens if you are respected without proving yourself?
What if somebody loves you without making you compete for their attention?
What if your work succeeds and people begin expecting more from you?
What if you become confident and can no longer hide behind the belief that you are not ready?
The life you want may be healthier, but it is also unknown. Part of you may prefer a familiar difficulty to an unfamiliar possibility because at least it knows how to survive there.
Self-sabotage can become the road that takes you back to the identity you recognise.
A habit is not always only an action. Sometimes it carries a belief about who you are and what you can safely expect from life.
Procrastination may create distance from possible criticism. Overthinking may protect you from making the “wrong” choice. People-pleasing may reduce the risk of rejection. Perfectionism may promise that nobody can find fault with you.
Even habits that cause pain may offer something emotionally important:
This does not mean you deliberately choose failure or disappointment.
It means the habit may be solving a problem you have not yet recognised.
Until you understand what the pattern is doing for you, trying to remove it can feel like taking away your protection without offering another way to feel secure.
Self-sabotage does not always appear at the beginning.
Sometimes it arrives after you have started doing well.
You establish a routine, receive praise or move closer to something you genuinely want. Instead of feeling only excited, you become restless. You skip one day, make an impulsive decision or suddenly question the goal.
You may tell yourself that you have lost motivation.
But perhaps progress has brought you close to an emotional boundary.
Success makes you visible. Visibility creates the possibility of judgement. Growth may change your relationships or challenge what you were taught to believe about people like you.
Perhaps achievement was followed by greater pressure when you were younger. Maybe standing out attracted criticism or made other people uncomfortable. You may have learned that it was safer to be capable but never too successful, confident but never too noticeable.
The self-sabotaging habit restores the old balance. You return to a level of success, love or wellbeing that feels emotionally permitted.
Then you criticise yourself for going backwards without recognising what moving forward awakened inside you.
Self-sabotage can also appear when love begins to feel real.
You may long for a close relationship but become suspicious when somebody treats you well. You search for signs that they will leave, lose interest or reveal a different side.
A delayed message feels like rejection. A small disagreement seems to confirm that the relationship is unsafe. You withdraw, test the other person or create distance before they have the chance to hurt you.
If love once felt unpredictable, calm connection may feel unfamiliar. Part of you may trust tension more than consistency because tension is what it knows.
You may also remain in relationships that continually disappoint you. Each experience reinforces a painful belief:
“This is what love is like.”
“This is all I can expect.”
“I always choose the wrong person.”
But repetition is not destiny. A familiar relationship pattern can be understood, reframed and changed.
RTT and hypnotherapy can help reveal the beliefs that influence what you tolerate, what you expect and how you respond when closeness begins to matter.
You can understand a habit and still repeat it.
You may recognise that procrastinating increases your stress or that returning to an unhealthy relationship will hurt. You may know that perfectionism is preventing you from finishing your work.
But information alone does not always change an emotional response.
The part of you making the plan and the part of you reacting to perceived danger are not always speaking the same language.
Willpower says, “Just do it.”
The old belief says, “This is unsafe.”
Willpower pushes harder.
Fear creates distraction, exhaustion, doubt or a convincing reason to wait.
Then, when the old belief wins, you blame yourself and decide that you need even more discipline.
This is why transforming habits requires more than forcing different behaviour. The meaning beneath the behaviour must also begin to change.
There is a subtle form of self-sabotage hidden inside some attempts at personal growth.
You make changes because you believe the present version of you is unacceptable. You create routines as punishment, set impossible standards and treat every setback as evidence that you have failed again.
Your new habits are built on the same old belief:
“I am not good enough as I am.”
Change created from self-rejection is difficult to sustain. Every missed day becomes a judgement. Every imperfection threatens the entire plan.
Real growth does not require you to hate the person you have been.
Perhaps the habit developed when you needed protection, approval or control. You can recognise the damage it causes now while still understanding why it once made sense.
Compassion is not permission to remain stuck. It creates enough emotional safety for you to move.
You do not have to attack yourself into becoming someone new.
You can understand yourself into becoming more free.
Rapid Transformational Therapy uses hypnotherapy as an essential part of identifying and changing the beliefs beneath self-sabotage.
RTT hypnotherapy does not focus only on stopping an unwanted habit. It explores what the habit represents, what triggers it and what you came to believe about yourself when the pattern began.
Perhaps the belief is:
“I must stay small to belong.”
“I cannot trust myself.”
“Success brings pressure.”
“Love always ends in rejection.”
“If I try completely, failure will expose me.”
Hypnotherapy creates a focused inner space in which these beliefs can be recognised and viewed from a different perspective. RTT supports you in separating what happened from what you decided it meant about you.
A difficult experience may have influenced you, but it does not have to remain your identity.
The transformational work can strengthen beliefs that support the life you are choosing now:
You are safe to grow.
You can trust yourself with opportunity.
You can receive success without fear or guilt.
You can experience love without abandoning yourself.
You can continue after an imperfect day.
You are capable of creating habits that support rather than restrict you.
RTT and hypnotherapy work together as one personalised approach, addressing both the emotional origin of the pattern and the way you want to respond in everyday life.
Transforming habits does not mean that you will never feel resistance again.
It means resistance stops having the final word.
You notice the urge to delay and begin anyway. You feel the temptation to withdraw and choose an honest conversation. You miss part of a routine and return the following day without turning one interruption into complete abandonment.
These moments may appear small, but they represent a profound change.
You are teaching yourself:
“I come back.”
“I continue.”
“I can rely on myself.”
Self-trust is not created by never making a mistake. It grows when a mistake no longer becomes a reason to give up.
There may have been a time when hiding kept you safe, pleasing others protected connection or expecting disappointment softened its impact.
But you are allowed to become larger than the strategies that once protected you.
You can appreciate how they helped you survive while recognising that they cannot lead you towards the life you want now.
Imagine accepting an opportunity without immediately searching for an escape.
Imagine allowing a healthy relationship to remain peaceful.
Imagine reaching a goal and staying present long enough to enjoy it.
Imagine creating habits from respect for yourself rather than fear of becoming unacceptable.
That is what growth can begin to feel like—not a constant fight to control yourself, but an increasing sense that every part of you is moving in the same direction.
Self-sabotage is something you learned. It is not who you are.
And what has been learned can be understood, transformed and replaced with a more supportive way of living.
For related reading:
LifeTherapy offers personalised RTT hypnotherapy sessions online and in West London. If you recognise the painful experience of making progress and then pulling yourself backwards, you can arrange a free 30-minute consultation to explore how RTT and hypnotherapy could help you transform self-sabotaging habits, trust yourself more deeply and grow into the life you are ready to create.
Book a free discovery call now and let’s start your journey together. Your path to personal growth begins here.
