Inside Bipolar Podcast: Self-Sabotage and Bipolar: Breaking the Cycle

Dive into the intricate dance between self-sabotage and bipolar disorder in this eye-opening episode. Join Gabe Howard, who lives with bipolar, and Dr. Nicole Washington as they explore the often unrecognized ways that bipolar symptoms can lead to unconscious self-sabotaging behaviors.

Discover how to identify patterns of self-sabotage and why understanding the “why” behind your actions is crucial for growth. If you’ve ever felt trapped by your own choices or wondered how to break free from destructive cycles, this episode offers valuable insights and actionable steps to reclaim control over your life. Don’t miss out on this essential conversation that blends lived experience with expert advice—tune in and start your journey toward healing today.

“I think a lot of people are more aware of self-sabotage than they think. So when we talk about combating it, if people say to you, you’re always self-destructing, you’re always blowing up your spot, you’re always causing yourself issues. You’re your own worst enemy. You need to get out of your own way. These are all other ways to describe you’re self-sabotaging.” ~Gabe Howard, Host

Our Host, Gabe Howard, is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, “Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations,” available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author.

To learn more about Gabe, or book him for your next event, please visit his website, gabehoward.com. You can also follow him on Instagram and TikTok at @askabipolar.

Our host, Dr. Nicole Washington, is a native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she attended Southern University and A&M College. After receiving her BS degree, she moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma to enroll in the Oklahoma State University College of Osteopathic Medicine. She completed a residency in psychiatry at the University of Oklahoma in Tulsa. Since completing her residency training, Washington has spent most of her career caring for and being an advocate for those who are not typically consumers of mental health services, namely underserved communities, those with severe mental health conditions, and high performing professionals. Through her private practice, podcast, speaking, and writing, she seeks to provide education to decrease the stigma associated with psychiatric conditions. Find out more at DrNicolePsych.com.

Inside Bipolar Podcast Episode Transcript:

Producer’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you. 

Announcer: You’re listening to Inside Bipolar, a Healthline Media Podcast, where we tackle bipolar disorder using real-world examples and the latest research.

Gabe: Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast. My name is Gabe Howard and I live with bipolar disorder.

Dr. Nicole: And I’m Dr. Nicole Washington, a  board-certified psychiatrist.

Gabe: And we love to get your feedback, your questions, your emails. We love it when you reach out to us. And there’s a few different ways that you can do so. One, you can hit us up at our email address, which is [email protected]. You can also go to either one of our respective websites, which we give at the end of the show, or you can follow us on TikTok and Instagram. Dr. Nicole is @DrNicolePsych and I’m @AskABipolar and listen, we’re great followers. I promise you will like it. And you can see clips of the show, so you can actually see the look that Dr. Nicole gives me while I’m talking. Dr. Nicole, today we’re going to talk about self-sabotage. Are you excited?

Dr. Nicole: Woo, I am, I am because I’m interested in hearing what you have to say about self-sabotage, because it is definitely something I see a lot in my patients.

Gabe: It’s really interesting. I want to start off with a little bit of controversy. As I’ve talked about on this show before, I like the lived experience, but I recognize that I am only one person. So while the majority of what I talk about is my personal experience, I do try to open it up by getting viewpoints and opinions from the wider bipolar community. And I do this by going out on the internet, going on my social media, going on threads. I’m a member of different support groups, and I’ll just bring it up and I’ll say, hey, we’re covering this topic and I want to know what you think. And I did that with self-sabotage, and I got almost everybody in the room literally looked at me and said, you think you self-sabotage because you’re bipolar? And I was like, well, yeah. And then they would say things like, oh, you know, my, my, my dad self-sabotages my mom self-sabotages, my best friend self-sabotages my cousin self-sabotages half the people at work are self-sabotaging all the time. Supervisors stood up and said half of the employees I’ve ever supervised are just self-sabotaging. I don’t think any of them had bipolar. And I really realized that it’s it was something that I was internalizing. I really felt like self-sabotage and bipolar belong together, like one was driving the other. I do think there is a connective thread between bipolar disorder and self-sabotage, but I was really surprised that the room was just like, dude, self-sabotage is not a bipolar thing.

Dr. Nicole: It’s not specifically a bipolar thing, but I would go further to say that when you have bipolar disorder, sometimes the things that are done in self-sabotage can just be more dangerous.

Gabe: I really like how you said that because of course if you live with bipolar disorder, one of the things that you can self-sabotage is your treatment.

Dr. Nicole: Absolutely. It may be that your self-sabotage has nothing to do with your bipolar disorder specifically, but it can absolutely affect your bipolar disorder.

Gabe: Self-sabotage is also one of those concepts that everybody’s heard of, but I don’t think that people really, really understand. So I did a whole bunch of research to try to find a definition for self-sabotage. And it was it was kind of off the map.

Dr. Nicole: I like it when you pull out definitions, I like it.

Gabe: I like definitions because I like I like us all to be playing with the same terms,

Dr. Nicole: I like it.

Gabe: But I did find a definition that I think encompassed it. But I also found an explanation that I think gets us a little closer. And then I found some things that I don’t think are relevant at all.

Dr. Nicole: Okay. Give us the good stuff then.

Gabe: All right.

Dr. Nicole: Give us the good stuff.

Gabe: So here’s the definition here. Here’s the one that I decided was the best out of all of them. Self-sabotage is when people do or don’t do things that block their success or prevent them from accomplishing their goals. And it can happen consciously or unconsciously, and self-sabotaging behaviors can affect our personal and professional success as well as our mental health. I felt like that one encapsulated our discussion for today.

Dr. Nicole: Yeah, I think that’s a good one. That’s. It covers everything.

Gabe: Yeah, but some of them got mean, right? Self-sabotage is a toxic trait. It means that you are intentionally blocking yourself from making healthy choices.

Dr. Nicole: What?

Gabe: Wow, that that one came off hard.

Dr. Nicole: And I don’t agree that all self-sabotage is conscious. That makes it sound like it’s all in your awareness and, you know. Oh, I’m about to blow this thing up. Like, I don’t think people always are aware that they’re blowing up the spot. I don’t think they know that all the time. Some things I think may be more intentional and in our awareness, but I don’t think it all is.

Gabe: I really didn’t like it, because sometimes the things that we do because of a symptom of bipolar disorder is very unconscious. It’s not a malicious act. It’s not a personal choice. It’s a symptom of bipolar disorder. Sometimes the things that we do have to do with symptomology, but it’s still self-sabotaging because somebody’s got to take responsibility for that. So just to throw up our hands and say, well, I’m not self-sabotaging. I’m bipolar. Okay, then what do you think? Bipolar disorder is going to fix this? So that’s why I like the unconscious part of the definition. Because if I look back at my patterns, I can definitely say, look, I made these decisions because of anxiety, or I made these decisions because of depression, or I made these decisions because of mania or grandiosity, and they sabotaged my personal goals, my personal success, and my personal relationships. Not conscious decisions, but

Dr. Nicole: Yeah.

Gabe: I do think that I have to take responsibility for them in order to fix them moving forward.

Dr. Nicole: I would bet that people who work in this area and do a lot of work in self-sabotage, I would bet that they wouldn’t even include those kinds of things that you did when you were manic as part of self-sabotage. I don’t think they would include that. I don’t know. I don’t, I don’t you. That’s a very good point that I had not thought about. But I as I sit here listening to you, I think. I don’t even know if I would include that. I don’t know now I’m torn. Now I gotta go think about stuff in my free time. And I didn’t want to think that hard about things. Now I’m going to be laying in bed tonight thinking about self-sabotage.

Gabe: I love it when I make you think. One of the problems that I have is that I feel like things have to go somewhere. I know that’s a weird way to put it, but it reminds me of, like I say, with taking responsibility for bipolar disorder. Some people believe very strongly that they don’t need to apologize for the things that they did while sick, and I am not in that camp. I understand it was not your fault, but it wasn’t the other person’s fault either, and it is your responsibility. When I look at the things that I did to self-sabotage my life, my career, my relationships,  especially when I was symptomatic, especially before I was diagnosed, when I was newly diagnosed before I reached recovery. Oh, I was not acting alone. I had a partner and that partner was bipolar disorder. But like I said, it’s never going to fix it. It’s not going to reach out and repair my career. It’s not going to reach out and repair my relationships. And I don’t know about anybody else who lives with bipolar disorder, but bipolar disorder has never once comforted me, ever. It’s never said it’s going to be okay and you can do it. It just wreaks havoc. And then.

Dr. Nicole: That’s a fine line.

Gabe: It is.

Dr. Nicole: It’s a very fine line.

Gabe: I want to borrow your medical degree for a moment, Dr. Nicole.

Dr. Nicole: Hmm.

Gabe: Is self-sabotage a diagnosable thing, or is it like a psychological concept?

Dr. Nicole: No, it’s not a diagnosis. It is. It is a psychological concept. But what it can do is help your therapist and your psychiatrist kind of guide you along. And it helps for people to know that that’s something that you deal with so they can point it out and they can call you out on it when you’re doing it.

Gabe: So it’s not a symptom of bipolar disorder, for example. It’s just something that that people do that if you’re aware of it, you can stop doing it.

Dr. Nicole: Absolutely not a diagnosis, but still something we can on.

Gabe: I think it’s a very personal as to why people self-sabotage. But one of the reasons that people give or the theories that are out there for self-sabotage is that if you don’t try, you can’t fail. So therefore, if you never try, you can never fail. So if you never try to get better from bipolar disorder, then you can’t fail at trying to get better from bipolar disorder. Just as an example, because this is a bipolar podcast, and it really reminds me of the famous poem man in the arena where where the person comes into the arena, the sports figure and they lose, and all of the spectators who never bothered to compete judge that person for losing. But the famous poem goes on to say, these people didn’t even try. They are actually less than the person who tried and failed, yet they hold themselves as higher, but they are not because they didn’t bother to compete. It’s very, very famous poem and I believe very strongly that’s true. Trying and failing, in my opinion, makes you better than the person who didn’t try at all. I’m curious as to how you feel about that as a reason for people self-sabotaging or not trying to get better.

Dr. Nicole: I think people do that a lot, whether they have bipolar disorder or not. One of the places I think we see this come up often is in relationships. You know, you’ve had failed relationships before, you’ve had some really ugly relationships, and sometimes things start feeling a little too happy, a little too nice. You start feeling like I’m getting too comfortable and you say, you know what? I can’t go through the hurt I went through before. I’m just going to leave this person before they get a chance to leave me. I’m going to pick the fights this time. I’m. I’m going to be the instigator. This time I’m ending this. I’m blowing it up because it’s been blown up on me enough. So we see this in people with bipolar disorder, right? The person who thinks to themselves, I haven’t been this stable ever. I’ve never been this stable. Something bad’s going to happen. Something bad’s bound to happen. And then they start looking for all the bad stuff and expecting all the bad stuff, and then behaving in a way that kind of creates all the bad stuff. That’s definitely a form of self-sabotage.

Gabe: I think there’s a lot to be said about this, this self-protective factor of not even trying because, again, we’re comfortable. As much as I hate to say it, people, they get comfortable in really bad situations. Myself included.

Dr. Nicole: Oh, yeah.

Gabe: I was comfortable feeling mania. I was comfortable feeling depression. I, it was very uncomfortable. When I started to get well, I started learning things about myself. I started realizing that I, I hurt people. I started realizing that I was self-sabotaging. I found this whole wake of destruction. Ignorance was truly bliss. But it wouldn’t have lasted forever. And just

Dr. Nicole: Yeah.

Gabe: Because I was ignorant to the damage that I was causing myself, doesn’t mean that I wasn’t causing myself vast amounts of damage. The quick fix is almost never a good fix. You just.

Dr. Nicole: Yeah.

Gabe: You can’t duct tape the leaky pipe.

Dr. Nicole: No.

Gabe: It just doesn’t last.

Dr. Nicole: And your overall quality of life would not have been better. So, yes, you’ve had to work harder. It’s been harder. It would have been easy to just lay there and let your episodes just happen and blow up your life. But where would you be? You definitely wouldn’t be sitting right here today.

Gabe: I want to argue with you, Dr. Nicole just because we got that kind of vibe. But. But I agree with you. There is no way that I could have achieved any level of success. And I’m not even talking about just the podcast or wellness. I. I wouldn’t be married. I would not have my wife. I would not have my friends. I, I would not have I would not have seen so much of, of the world because I’d still be sitting in a little apartment somewhere. My quality of life shot up. But make no mistake, I had to walk through hell to get there. And. But what’s the what’s the other phrase? If you’re going through hell, keep going.

Dr. Nicole: I’ve not heard that one, but I do. That’s a good one. That’s a good one.

Gabe: When I think about the things that I did to self-sabotage my life, and some of those examples were quitting jobs, I would literally be driving to work. I would have a panic attack. I couldn’t face them. I didn’t know what to do. So I would fire off a text message or an email that says, hey, I quit literally, or I would just not show up at all. And then when they started calling in a couple of hours, I’d be like, oh, I quit. That

Dr. Nicole: Right.

Gabe: Is self-sabotaging to the max. But because my

Dr. Nicole: It is.

Gabe: Anxiety was so high.

Dr. Nicole: Yes.

Gabe: But I have to stop doing that. You recognize I do need to do something about that, like report that symptom to a therapist. Figure out coping skills to better handle panic attacks and anxiety and things of that nature. So I see what you’re saying about how the person living with bipolar disorder can view it in two ways, but I would argue that everything can be viewed in two ways. One is healthy and one is unhealthy, and what you were describing where you internalize it, you decide that you’re bad and then you don’t ask for help. I think that’s an unhealthy way to handle what happened to you.

Dr. Nicole: Yeah, one of the ways I see people self-sabotage the most is by not being in treatment. They have all these things they want to accomplish in life. They want to not have these depression episodes and be able to maintain employment. And they like to have friends and they like to go out socially, and they like to feel stable and not argue all the time with the people in their lives. But then they don’t do the things that it takes to get them to that point.

Gabe: And I agree with you. But here’s the part where where does bipolar disorder begin in personality end. Because I know a lot of stubborn people. Hard stop. Not stubborn bipolar, just stubborn people. And there are a lot of people that believe that if they’re not doing it themselves, it doesn’t count. I

Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm.

Gabe: Remember I was a big for big brothers and big sisters, and I’ve had my little that’s what they’re called in Big Brother. I’m the big. He’s the little. And I had my little since he was six. He’s about to turn 30 and he’s still

Dr. Nicole: Wow.

Gabe: In my life. I love this kid, but I remember when  he was 18, 19 years old around there, he was now out of high school. He was he was joining the workforce. He was having all these problems. And I kept trying to help him because I could make life easier for him. And the first thing I want to say is I was 100% positive that the help that I was providing was appropriate. And it’s also helped that I had been given and had accepted when I was his age. But his life was different from mine. He had grown weary of the adults in his life. He didn’t have as good of a relationship with his family as I had with mine. He’d been dealt a lot of hard knocks, so he believed as a fundamental value that if he didn’t do it himself, it didn’t count. Hard. Stop. This was a value to him. It took me a long time to convince him that the reason that Gabe, his big, was doing so well in life is because I didn’t do it all by myself. I said, I can’t think of a single area of my life where I don’t owe somebody a thank you. And he did give pushback. He’s like, well, you work really, really hard. Yeah, I do work really hard, but I work really hard at the job that my buddy recommended and vouched for me for. I, I do a good job in that field because my parents sacrificed so that I could go to a private high school when I got sick and failed out of public school. You know, I have health insurance, which helps me treat the bipolar disorder that my

Gabe: Parents helped arrange. Lisa, my my best friend helped me do stuff. My wife helped me do stuff. My buddy Vin in California edited the first blogs that I ever wrote because he went to college and got an English degree, and I can barely use a comma to this day. I owe everything to other people, but that was outside of his viewpoint. And I think a lot of people with bipolar disorder, they look at other people with bipolar disorder are doing well, and they create this false narrative that that person picked themselves up. And I just, I, I think back to my little from big brothers and big sisters. He believed that being an adult meant that he did it on his own. And I had to teach him that. That’s bullshit. I did not do it on my own. I am here because of of of the privilege and the fortunate nature of the people around me who lifted me up.

Dr. Nicole: Yeah, you’re right. People self-sabotage in a lot of ways. And you’re you’re 100% correct when you say that it’s not just people with bipolar disorder who want to do things themselves.

Dr. Nicole: The bottom line is our brains want to do what feels good in the moment and what protects us. So if in the moment, it feels good for me to eat that thing, and it feels good every day for me to eat those things, and I don’t check myself, that’s a form of self-sabotage, because you have these goals that you want to accomplish for your health, and you’re just not able to do them. You talked about the person who Quits their job or doesn’t go to work because in the moment, that’s what felt good. Like their brain said, oh, we don’t feel good. Going to work is not going to make us feel good, therefore we’re not going to do it. Your brain was doing what it needed to do to protect you from feeling so icky. So in that moment, what it was telling you to do was abort, abort. Turn around, go back home, get in the bed, avoid peopling because we don’t want to deal with that. I’m trying to protect you. We all do it.

Gabe: Stick with us after the break, where we’re going to be discussing ways to curb and avoid self-sabotaging.

Sponsor Break

Dr. Nicole: And we’re back discussing bipolar disorder and self-sabotaging behavior.

Gabe: I think one of the hallmarks of bipolar disorder is sometimes it creates what I refer to as the consequence free environment, where we only care about the here and now. For example, you’re right, the reason that I quit those jobs is because I couldn’t go. I was unable to go, and I needed to protect myself. And the fastest way to protect myself was to quit. And since I wasn’t worried about the consequences, since I didn’t have the ability to think long term, I didn’t care that now I couldn’t pay my bills, that now I wouldn’t be able to afford food or I was going to lose health insurance, or it’s going to be harder to get another job. I didn’t think about any of those things because I couldn’t think past that moment. I think this is where the definition that includes unconscious really spoke to me much more.

Dr. Nicole: I could see that. I could see that. And that’s where the self-work comes in, because then you cannot jump from. I know what it feels like to feel that way. I know I’ve been dumped on enough in my life, or I’ve had enough crappy things happen in my life. It’s going to happen again. So I’m just going to run away. There’s all kinds of steps that can happen between you having that thought and then whatever behavior you do. So I guess that that’s the whole point of treatment. That’s the whole point of therapy. That’s the whole point. Because if you keep doing things that don’t align with your goals for your bipolar disorder, then you got to do something about it.

Gabe: You know, Dr. Nicole a lot of these podcasts or a lot of these articles on things like self-sabotage just include a whole bunch of steps for how to stop self-sabotaging. And I know we’ve just spent a lot of time covering exactly what self-sabotage is, whether it’s conscious or unconscious, how it relates to bipolar disorder. And I’m really, really glad we did that because I think it’s missing from almost all of these conversations. They just assume that people are able to identify their self-sabotaging behavior, that they’re able to understand why they’re doing their self-sabotaging behavior, and then they give hints and tips on how to stop doing self-sabotaging behavior. And I think people miss a lot of things, especially when we have the unholy union of bipolar disorder and self-sabotage. So I’d like to I’d like to transition into what people can do about it. Hopefully we’ve given the audience enough to think about, and now we can really maybe, maybe cover some action steps. Now I got some bad news. I

Dr. Nicole: Oh?

Gabe: Really have some bad news for the audience. Unless Dr. Nicole really knocks this one out of the park. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of super simple things to do to beat self-sabotage.

Dr. Nicole: [Laughter] Oh. Oh, no. None of it’s easy.

Gabe: There’s just a lot of hard work. But

Dr. Nicole: None of it’s easy.

Gabe: Step one is identifying it.

Dr. Nicole: Yes.

Gabe: Admitting you have a problem is always the first step towards solving a problem. And I think a lot of people are more aware of self-sabotage than they think. So when we talk about combating it, if people say to you, you’re always self-destructing, you’re always blowing up your spot, you’re always causing yourself issues. You’re your own worst enemy. You need to get out of your own way. These are all other ways to describe your self-sabotaging. So if you hear that a lot from the people in your circle, they are telling you in no uncertain terms that they believe that the cause of your issues is you. Now you can get mad at them and blow up and decide that they’re not supportive. But

Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm.

Gabe: If you really want to combat self-sabotage, then I think that step number one is to acknowledge that this is how they see it, and they may have a point.

Dr. Nicole: If multiple people in your life who you love and trust are telling you the same things about yourself, I do believe you have to take a moment and say, well, maybe there could be some truth to it and then explore that.

Gabe: Ask people what they think you did wrong and ask them in an open and honest way. I can tell you, working in a creative industry, being being a podcaster, being a speaker, being a writer, the best and worst part of my job is getting feedback, honest feedback from listeners and audience members. It can be brutal, right? It can be absolutely brutal to have people tell you that they think that you suck, or that they think that you don’t take the topic seriously, or they don’t understand why anybody can listen to your long, drawn-out analogy where you try to be funny and Dr. Nicole just looks at you weird, like they don’t get it. But I have gotten better because I’ve discovered those patterns. And I can tell you for an absolute fact, if I did not listen to the audience, I would not get better.

Dr. Nicole: To me, step one is surrounding yourself with people that if they call these things out in you, then you can move on to step two and you can identify them. You can at least start to reflect on what is it that I’m doing that I can change so much of what people who live with bipolar disorder tell me is they feel like they have no control. They feel like it’s, oh, I got to do the medicine. The medicine does this. I don’t feel like I have any control over my symptoms or my behaviors sometimes. This is absolutely a space where you have all the control.

Gabe: You really do. I think one of the first things that we need to do is once we identify what we are self-sabotaging, the very next step is the why. Why are we doing it? People are very quick to ask you what you’re doing, but people are not so quick to ask you why you’re doing it. And that’s one of the things where therapy peer support groups, honest feedback from friends is very important. But you internally have to figure out why am I self-sabotaging?

Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm.

Gabe: To give an example and to bring this into focus. I was quitting those jobs because I didn’t want to go to work. The reason I didn’t go to work is because I was terrified, and the reason that I was terrified. The why is because my anxiety, my grandiosity, my depression, my self-esteem, none of that was under good control. I

Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm.

Gabe: Didn’t understand it. I was an emotional basket case, having constant mood swings that terrified me and I was afraid. And I also mixed in low self-esteem. I don’t know that low self-esteem is a DSM five symptom of bipolar disorder. I don’t know that it’s on the list or not. Dr. Nicole is that on the list?

Dr. Nicole: [Laughter]

Gabe: Can you have a symptom of low self-esteem with bipolar disorder?

Dr. Nicole: I mean, it’s it can be a symptom of depression. It can.

Gabe: It can be a symptom of depression. All right. So it’s, it’s in there a little bit.

Dr. Nicole: It can be a symptom of depression.

Gabe: All right. Borrowing your medical degree was. It paid off for a moment, but. But I realized that that’s why I was doing it. And here’s why. The why is so important. Because some of the work that I had to do is one. Get these things under better control. That happened with both medication and therapy and coping skills. But also I had to convince myself this is where the hard work really came in for me. I had to convince myself that I deserved these jobs, I earned these jobs. I deserved to go to work. And that’s all great. And that’s stuff to work on. But that’s like a those are those are your long-term goals. So we obviously need to focus on shorter goals. Like for example, what am I going to do to not quit the next job.

Dr. Nicole: So I actually like to call these little emotional autopsies. That’s how I like to think of them. So a person dies and we’re like, oh my gosh, that person’s dead. But then they have an autopsy and that person goes, they go backwards basically. And they try to figure out like what caused this person to die. Like what? What is this? So if someone has these behaviors like this, like, oh, I quit my job again. Why do you keep quitting jobs? I don’t know, I just keep quitting, you know? Well, that’s not true. You don’t just keep quitting jobs because you like having food and clothes and shelter, and you like all these things. And I know what your goals are. So why is this happening? So those are the things we need to focus on, not the fact that you quit your job. Though I will say the loved ones in your life and the people in your life, they’re like you keep saying you want to move out and live on your own, and you want to be independent, but you keep getting in your own way. You keep quitting your jobs. You don’t keep your jobs because they also don’t know what are all those steps that happen between you saying, oh, I’m getting ready to go to work, and oh, I quit my job.

Dr. Nicole: I just didn’t go. I changed my mind. So many things happened in your brain between those two steps. That’s where you have to take those little steps backwards and figure out, why did I do that thing? So in Gabe’s example, it’s the anxiety, oh, I have to go be around people. I know I’m going to have a panic attack because I’ve had one the last five shifts I showed up to work. Oh, that’s very uncomfortable. I don’t like how I feel when I have a panic attack. I’m going to avoid that. So I’m just going to go back home. We need to intervene at that step right there. Because what does that look like? Does that look like you actually going to your Dr. Nicole and saying, hey, this is something we’ve never talked about, but I’m having lots of panic attacks and it’s interfering with my being able to function. And I’ve actually lost my job because I just kept not showing up because they were so severe. I need to know. I need to know what those things are and what those steps are. And because I don’t always have the time with you, your psychiatrist doesn’t always have the time with you to dig into those little spots in your day where we could be helpful for you. It becomes even more important for you to recognize those things and then report them back to us.

Gabe: I love that you call them emotional autopsies. I think that’s fantastic. And I want to I want to add a little caveat to that, which is the difference between a real autopsy and an emotional autopsy is in this case, the patient’s not dead. But the reason that we do autopsies is because we’re trying to prevent future deaths. So when you do this emotional autopsy, you’re digging for information that you can apply. And that really brings us to our next step. Okay. What are we going to do about it? We’ve got a long-term plan of understanding why. But what can we do about it in the moment. And I think these these steps need to kind of coincide with one another. You’ve got the long-term plan of understanding why you’re doing this, and then you need to put in safeguards. So maybe you don’t do it again. For me personally, again using this example, one of the things I did is I decided, okay, I’m no longer going to quit a job via text and email. I have to make a phone call or I’m making phone calls is much, much harder for me. The next thing I did is I engaged my support and I said, look, when I can’t go to work, will you call me off sick? That that was also very helpful because at least now I’m just calling off sick for a day.

Gabe: Now, I don’t want to give anybody the idea that this fixed everything. Obviously, when my member of my support team called in four days in a row and said, Gabe is still sick, then they wanted a doctor’s notice, and I. I’m not saying that that ultimately didn’t lead to me losing some jobs, but it started the process again. This is a long-term thing. I can tell you that now I when I have a panic attack, I just go home and have a panic attack. I have all these coping skills to manage it. So when I look at where I was before and where I am now, it’s a world of difference. And I do need people looking forward. But I want a level set that this is going to take a while. This is not you can’t just listen to a podcast and this problem is going to be resolved. You’re going to have to use these coping skills multiple times. You’re going to have to try different examples. You’re going to want to work with your support system, peer support or support groups, therapists, your Dr. Nicole and keep, keep, keep moving forward. The first one didn’t work for me.

Dr. Nicole: It absolutely takes time, Gabe. And it takes it takes a lot of input from a lot of different areas. You only got to that point because you were in treatment, because you had your therapist, because you had your peer support and your support groups where you could learn from other people who’ve been in your situation. You had your support system, your family, your spouse. Lots of things have to happen for you to for you to see a level of improvement that you can say, oh yeah, like I, I’m actually I’m actually seeing where I’m doing something good here. It takes time. We told you it wouldn’t be easy. We told you that.

Gabe: I also want to talk about not beating yourself up. Sincerely, I think one of the things that allows self-sabotage to continue is we think that this is the way that we’ve always been. So this is the way we’re always going to be. And

Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm.

Gabe: There’s this phrase that’s out there that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. And while that may be true, it’s still a bad predictor. It’s not a good. There’s all kinds of things that can change future behavior. You just have to introduce those things. I will say if you don’t make any effort, it’s unlikely to clear up by itself. I will say that if you’re not trying to fix it, it’s probably not going to go away on its own. But so many people get stuck in a rut and that’s really how I felt. I feel that I was just stuck in this self-occurring pattern, and there was nothing that I could do to get out of it. Then I started disrupting that pattern. And suddenly that made a really big difference.

Dr. Nicole: What I heard you say, and what jumped out to me, is you had realistic expectations of yourself. You were kind to yourself, but you also didn’t expect that you were going to go from, I’m having panic attacks that are stopping me from going to work. You didn’t expect the next step to be, I’m never going to have another panic attack, and I’m never going to quit another job and I’m never going to miss another day. So you had realistic expectations of yourself. You had some acceptance also of the fact that I have this thing. This is something I have to deal with. Some days it gets me down, some days it doesn’t. But I’m not going to let it win. I’m not going to let it be the thing that prevents me from reaching all those goals that I have for myself. So you’re right, being kind to yourself, but even having some acceptance about this, this is this is how my brain is wired. It just is what it is like. I can’t change that, but I can change how I respond to it.

Gabe: 100% correct. A much more succinct way of putting it, and I want to make sure that we get as much out of this example as humanly possible. I hate the phrase think outside the box. I’ve always hated it. I think it’s a corporate cliché. And it just, it just it drives me insane, no pun intended. That said, I had to think outside of the box. One of the things that I was trying to do is jump straight back into a 40 hour a week corporate job with all of the pressure and all of the stress, and I did not have the ability to handle that, and I found myself unemployed for a long stretch. And I had a therapist say to me, look, you need to do something. You’re not doing yourself any favors. And I immediately said, I can’t hold down a job. And she said, go to college, enroll in college, get the best grades you can. It’ll keep you to a schedule. And I enrolled in the local community college, and I had great success. It was not a 40 hour a week job, but it had a lot less pressure. But it still had some pressure. It had a lot less hours, but it still had a schedule that I needed to follow.

Gabe: It didn’t have a lot of work, but it still had homework and responsibilities that I was in charge of. And after I got through that quarter, my confidence skyrocketed. So sometimes doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is insanity. So when we talk about ways to combat self-sabotage again using only my example. And you have to apply this to your life. Maybe the thing that you’re trying to do, you’re not ready for, and the reason that you keep self-sabotaging it is because you’re you’re starting too big and you need to break this down into smaller chunks.

Dr. Nicole: We all need people. I don’t care what your self-sabotage is. Have bipolar, don’t have bipolar. I think it’s so easy today to just think like, oh, I should just figure this out on my own. I can get a self-help book. I can just look on the internet, I can. No, that is not how life was meant to be lived. And that is not how you’re going to successfully manage your bipolar disorder.

Gabe: No one’s an island, Dr. Nicole.

Dr. Nicole: Nope.

Gabe: Some famous person said that if I went to college, I’d be able to quote who? But I didn’t go to no fancy medical school.

Dr. Nicole: Well, I did go to college, and I also couldn’t tell you who specifically said that. But here we are together. Here we are.