The Self-Sabotage You’re Calling ‘Just Who I Am’.

“That’s just who I am.” We’ve all said it. Usually when we’re defending a habit that hurts us more than it helps. Procrastination. People-pleasing. Rage-quitting. Labeling it as identity makes it feel fixed, safe, unchangeable. But clinically, that’s called ego-syntonic behavior - patterns so fused with your sense of self that you don’t recognize them as problems.

Here’s the trap: if it feels like “me,” then questioning it feels like betrayal. So you keep circling the same cycles, convinced that discomfort is authenticity. But authenticity isn’t about staying the same. It’s about aligning your choices with your values - and sometimes that means unlearning the parts of you that were never serving you in the first place.

Psychology reminds us that identity is malleable. You’re not frozen in time. The brain rewires, behaviors shift, new narratives emerge. But only if you stop hiding behind the safety of “just who I am.”

You’re not doomed to sabotage yourself. You’re just scared of the version of you that would exist without the crutch. And that fear? That’s where growth begins.