How Guilt and Self-Sabotage Maintains Inferiority

Solutions that promote healthy task engagement and interactions with others

Identifying inner dialogues discouraging effort or initiatives to be with others is hard. I have struggled for years and have progressed in managing these dialogues that discourage achievement.

However, there is a feeling of falling short despite my best efforts to correct and compensate by breakthrough acts of achievement. This essay will offer some encouragement for those interested in ending inferiority.

I sometimes experience myself speaking up, making surprising comments, or acting with greater-than-normal levels of assertiveness. In short, there are moments of breakthrough as I try to break out of the prison of passivity and inferiority feelings.

It is hard to capture these moments, though they do exist. But they exist against a background of more wishing and less doing. My compelling wish has always been to prolong the effort to be outside my comfort zone, manifesting myself as a superior, accomplished extravert.

Inferiority Blocks Achievement

Perhaps you, too, have this wish but do not know yet what is holding you back. Research evidence suggests a link between inferiority and lack of assertiveness or accomplishment.

There is research into how an inferiority complex can cause a person to feel that they lack worth and cannot meet expected achievement standards.

Alfred Adler, for example, believed that a person’s feelings that they lack self-worth drive individuals to achieve personal goals, but in some cases, they may also lead to maladaptive behaviors like withdrawal, aggression, or excessive self-criticism.

Forms of Inferiority

For me, feelings of inferiority have often taken the form of shyness when taking on unfamiliar tasks like speech-making or any performance involving a live audience.

Perhaps your hesitancy takes other forms, like being slow to introduce yourself to strangers, making telephone calls to prospects, or soliciting contributions from donors to a cause.

Whatever the form of hesitancy or shaky confidence, the cause is a lack of confidence, competence, or an aversion to the power difference between yourself and your interlocutor.

All these causes fall under the concept of inferiority, defined as a lack of self-worth, doubt, uncertainty, and feelings of not measuring up to imagined performance standards.

This is not to say that a sense of inferiority always applies to all occasions. However, it comes up enough times to delimit your willingness to engage. What is missing is a lack of unsullied confidence and assertiveness.

Saddled with Guilt

If these situations arise often, you become saddled with guilt that you are not doing better or that you find too many ways to distract and avoid situations that challenge your willingness to engage with others.

But while the guilt that leads to self-sabotage reduces the anxiety, it does not allow you to enjoy the satisfaction of goal completion. Hence, it is not a healthy adaptation, leaving you frustrated and unfulfilled. I know the feeling well.

Solutions

The solutions I have found work to close that gap between aspirations and performance. My approach exists at the level of building up self-confidence so that you become more willing to take on tasks that formerly appeared too high on the shelf, as it were.

Indirection is an attractive alternative to taking on face-to-face challenges. The strategies below work because they do away with guilt and sabotage that had formerly permitted poor coping skills.

The first strategy is to find a doable path to self-care that minimizes resistance yet produces more strength and self-confidence. Daily exercise that suits your interests and capacities is critical: walking, running, swimming, pickleball, whatever gets you out and about.

Secondly, I find it helpful to have a daily ritual that permits ongoing awareness of your needs and goals, your pitfalls needing improvement, and your attitudes that most favor engagement with others. I am referring here to daily journal keeping, writing down what comes to mind that helps you center your concerns and accomplishments.

Finally, you must set up a cheering section of accountability partners to whom you report your progress. I prefer friends or associates who know you, support you, and are willing to congratulate and point out when you lag. Other references on overcoming inferiority are available here.

These three factors will help move you forward and build self-assuredness and self-respect. Most importantly, they will undercut what has been holding you back: guilt and self-sabotage.

Sum

This essay proposes that feeling inferior is supported by guilt and self-sabotage. This happens when there is a failure in striving for self-improvement and assertiveness.

The essay cites the work of Alfred Adler and his theory about how feelings of inferiority can lead to maladaptive behaviors like withdrawal or excessive self-criticism. The recurring theme is that a lack of self-worth often hinders engagement with others and personal growth.

Readers are encouraged to address feelings of inferiority through self-care, self-reflection, and external support. Doing so will lead to greater self-confidence and assertiveness while overcoming guilt and self-sabotage.