“OMG, I am such a stupid girl!” I would often say when I forget to wish my friends for their exams or birthdays (and few of them will actually vouch for me saying this.. lol). Haven’t we all, on numerous occasions displayed behavior that wasn’t appropriate? Sometimes, we wish that we would have done something completely opposite to what we have actually done and that too after knowing better ways to have dealt with the situation!
Psychologists call these actions as a part of Self-Defeating behavior- a behavior in which people bring failure, misfortune of suffering upon themselves. This theory seems paradoxical for those rational souls out there who ‘always’ do something rational and something that is beneficial to their core being. So how does one account for such a behavior? Matina Horner (1972), president of one of the most prestigious women’s colleges (Radcliffe), suggested that many women suffer from fear-of-success. This theory suggested that many women believed that if they become too successful in their work, they would eventually land up being lonely and rejected and will not find any romantic partners. And because of this fear, many women curtailed their otherwise highly successful careers! (I bet that they might have found benevolent sexist partners! Lol)
So there are two main outcomes of the research done to know the reasons for people engaging in self-defeating behaviors. One is that sometimes the good and the bad outcomes are linked together and in order to procure the good, one has to take the bad (Now, I am not repeating what our grannies told us years ago, that you have to take the good with the bad.. lol; but now I seem to wonder whether our grannies actually know about this theory before psychologists found it?? :O ). For example, I love brownies, and can eat them at any hour of the day or night. Eating brownies is good (that is what I tell myself when I accidently read the amount of calories they possess! Lol) , but what does one do about all the fat that accompanies them? Or getting tanned is completely fine if you do it the right way, but what about the peeling skin and redness of the face that happens a few days after getting tanned? Recently, many students from Trinity went to the beach for a weekend, and many of them forgot to take the sunscreen with them :O (I mean come on guys, we are in Texas and looking at your peeling faces with blotches all over isn’t a happy sight to watch! Lol)
Other reason is that people rely on faulty knowledge and on strategies that do not work. If I continue in the granny-like manner, sometimes people do not understand the world or themselves correctly, and hence, do activities that result in their downfall. Remember those times when you say that coffee makes you work better (ohkay, I usually use this excuse for drink more coffee.. lol). People who work under the effect of drinks rich in caffeine have disturbed sleep patterns and become irritable when they have high amounts of caffeine in their body, resulting in poorer work performance.
So folks, it is okay to defeat others and to protect yourself from others, but do not to handicap yourself under the disguise of Self-Defeating behavior- even the name sounds stupid! ;) Stupidly stupid,
Nupur
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