There's a moment I know very well. Something I started is finally working. People are saying nice things. The phone rings with the good kind of calls. And somewhere in my chest a little voice says, quite calmly, okay, time to wreck this.
I don't always listen. But I've listened a lot.
So why do people sabotage themselves right when things are going well? The short answer is protection. If success doesn't match how you see yourself, it feels unsafe, like you're standing somewhere you don't belong. Creating a problem gives you an exit and an excuse. Psychologists call one version of this self-handicapping: you put an obstacle in your own way so that if you fail, you can blame the obstacle instead of yourself. In a BBC Science Focus piece, psychologist Christian Jarrett says it's mostly about shielding self-esteem, and it shows up most in people with low self-esteem or a fear of failure.
That's me, more or less, with some extra wiring on top.
What it looks like when I do it
It doesn't look like sabotage while it's happening. It looks like reasonable decisions.
I stop answering emails right when the project needs me most. I start something new and shiny, so the thing that's working gets less of me. I go quiet with the people who were helping. I take on so much that something has to break. In the years when I was using, a good stretch was often when it got worse, which I don't think was a coincidence. I've got a line for it: if it's bad, it's good.
When success comes, I shy away from it. It took therapy for me to see that. I co-founded a web agency. Much later I wrote a book that went #1 in its Amazon category. I can point to moments in both where the thing was working and I wanted to step back. I'm not saying that to brag. I'm saying it because the pattern doesn't care how well you're doing. It might care more.
Why self-sabotage kicks in when things go well
Success doesn't match the picture
I've had low self-esteem most of my life, and a mouth that runs on self-deprecation. If deep down you believe you're a screw-up, success creates a mismatch. Your brain likes consistency more than it likes happiness, so it nudges reality back to the version it recognizes. Wrecking things restores order. Messed-up order, but familiar.
The higher you climb, the more there is to lose
Failure at the bottom is cheap. Failure after people believed in you is expensive. So part of the brain decides it's safer to fall now, on your own terms, than to be dropped later. That's the self-handicapping logic again. If I never really tried, nobody can say I wasn't good enough. Including me.
Getting found out
Success makes you visible. Visible means people will look closer, and some part of me has always been sure that if they look closely enough, they'll see a fraud. I wrote about that in feeling like a fraud at the front of the room.
The autistic cost of things going well
This one I only understood after my Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) diagnosis, which came at 50, during a breakdown in the COVID years.
For an autistic brain, "going well" often means more. More people. More meetings. More calls, more events, more small talk, more being "on." I can run a room. I've done it for decades. But running the room costs me, and the more successful something got, the more rooms there were. Without knowing I had ASD, I never connected that exhaustion to any of it. I'd just pull the plug.
I think some of what looked like sabotage was actually burnout prevention done badly.
Boom, then crash
I also start things with huge energy and then crash. The boom part looks like success. The crash part looks like sabotage. Sometimes they're the same thing seen from two ends. There's more on that cycle in boom, then crash.
Is it fear of success or fear of failure?
Both, honestly, and they're closer than they sound. Fear of failure says "don't try, you'll be exposed." Fear of success says "don't let this work, then you'll have to keep it up." Both end in the same place: you, quietly backing out of your own life. I dug into whether fear of success is even a real thing in fear of success is real.
What I'm doing about it
I'm not cured. I still feel the pull every single time something starts working. Two things have helped.
First, naming the moment. The calm of a good stretch used to feel like waiting for the floor to drop. Now, when I feel that, I try to say it plainly: "this is the part where I usually wreck it." Saying it doesn't stop it. It slows it down enough to choose.
Second, being less of a bastard to myself. Jarrett's article points to self-compassion as one of the things that actually helps with self-handicapping, and the research on it is better than it sounds. I go into what I'm practising in how I'm interrupting my self-sabotage.
If you're in Québec and this pattern is wrecking your work or your relationships, a psychologist is worth it, and the public route starts at 811 or your CLSC (Québec.ca explains the steps). Self-sabotage is common, but when it's tangled up with depression or substance use, it deserves real help.
If the wrecking has turned inward and you're thinking about hurting yourself, the numbers for your country are on the Get help now page.