In this short video, I explain why the part of you that wrecks good things is usually trying to protect you, and how we work with it by video.
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Online self-sabotage therapy helps you understand why you keep getting in your own way just as something good begins, and how to stop. Sessions are one to one by video, in English, each a 1-hour appointment with 50 minutes of therapy, booked at an hour that suits the place you live.
I help you find the moment the brake goes on, the old rule behind it and the feeling it saves you from. This page belongs to my online attachment therapy, within my broader online psychotherapy. If you lose yourself in other people’s needs instead, see online codependency and people pleasing therapy.
When you are ready, set up a free 30-minute call, book a video session, check my client policy or get in touch by message.
Online self-sabotage therapy is for English-speaking adults, anywhere in the world, who watch themselves spoil things they truly want. A job, a relationship or a plan for your health starts to work, and then something in you pulls it apart. You want to understand that pattern and stop paying for it.
Getting in your own way can grow from several roots, and some of them need more specific help. If one of these fits you better, the linked page is a better starting point.
You can also send me an email
These reviews describe clients’ experiences of working with me. They come from my wider practice and do not all relate to online sessions. Each person’s experience is their own, and a review does not promise a particular outcome.
“Many of the people I meet by video arrive having already found the culprit: themselves. They say they lack discipline. I think they have it the wrong way round. The part of them that pulls the brake is usually disciplined to a fault, faithfully keeping an old promise such as ‘never want too much’. When I listen underneath, I hear one voice asking ‘If I let this matter, what happens when it is taken from me?’ Another answers flatly: ‘Keep it small, keep it yours, need nobody.’ Fighting that part only makes it hold on harder. Once you understand what it is guarding, it can usually stand down.”
Mark Colclough, MA, psychotherapist and EFT couples therapist
I am Mark Colclough, MA. I have practised since 2004 and offer online psychotherapy and couples therapy in English.
My training brings together your emotions, your thoughts and your relationships. My deep passion is the moment when what happens between you finally makes sense, to each of you and to each other. I have lived and worked in nine countries, so I know something of life across languages, cultures and borders.
Read about my background, or explore online psychotherapy and online couples therapy.
I meet regularly with experienced psychotherapists to reflect on my work, question my understanding and develop my skills. Supervision is part of the professional care I bring to individual and couples work, including online sessions.
My focus is thoughtful practice, integrity and responsibility.
You are welcome to ask about the kind of support you need.
Tell me where you are based and your time zone. We can then consider whether online sessions together are suitable.
Tariq is 34 and works in product marketing in Amsterdam, having grown up in Birmingham. Last spring he trained for a half marathon, then stopped running a fortnight before the race. In autumn he was shortlisted for a promotion and arrived twenty minutes late to the final interview. His girlfriend says the relationship is the happiest she has been in, and lately he stays up gaming until three and barely speaks at breakfast.
I would start with those twenty minutes before the interview, slowly, almost second by second. In our first video session Tariq would probably notice a familiar sinking feeling just before each good thing becomes real. That turns 3 separate failures into one pattern we can understand.
I have presented this clinical example as a compound of 22 years of clinical practice.
You keep reaching for what you want, and something in you keeps knocking it out of your hand.
There is no right time to start, and no reason that has to be big enough. Noticing that you repeatedly undo what you care about is sufficient. You do not need a diagnosis, a dramatic failure or a clear theory first. Across 22 years of practice I have met this pattern in careers, love, health and money, and I can tell when a run of bad luck is really a repeating design.
I will help you find where the brake goes on, what keeps it there and what needs to change. The 6 questions below can help you decide whether to contact me.
If you do, notice where you stop. The project stalls at the final ten per cent, the application waits unsent, the course is abandoned near the end. You feel a strange relief, then a heavier disappointment that lasts for days.
I would look at when this began and whether it shows up across different parts of your life. That tells us whether this is a tired patch or a pattern with its own purpose. If this sounds like you, book a session with me and we can find the moment it starts.
Yes, and both parts are sincere. One wants the promotion, the relationship or the healthier body. The other fears what comes with them: more visibility, more expectation, more to lose. So you push forward and pull back in the same week, and feel like a puzzle to yourself.
I do not take sides against the part that pulls back. In the psychosynthesis tradition I trained in, each inner figure has something worth hearing. We find out what the cautious one protects you from, and what the ambitious one needs. Then your choices can come from both, not from a tug of war.
Many people do. When life goes well, a quiet dread appears. You watch for the catch and read small silences as warnings. Sometimes it feels easier to break the thing yourself than to wait for the loss, because at least then you chose it.
That longing for something good to last is entirely reasonable, and I will not make you feel silly for it. What I help you change is the alarm that fires before any real danger. We look at where you learned that good things vanish, often far back in childhood, and practise staying with uncertainty instead of ending it by force.
This back and forth is common with self-sabotage, and it confuses you as much as the people involved. You open up, feel wonderful and then, without warning, start a row, go cold or vanish for a weekend. Afterwards you want them back and feel ashamed of what you did.
We slow the swing down in our sessions and find what tips you from wanting into fleeing, often a moment of feeling seen or needed. I have compassion for that protective reflex, and I will also ask you to take responsibility for the hurt it causes.
Often the brake looks like calm. As something becomes important, you switch off, turn practical, decide it was never that big or bury yourself in work. It feels like control, while the thing you wanted drifts out of reach without a fight.
My view is that distance can be a sensible tool, and I will not shame you for needing it. I help you see what it spares you, often the risk of caring openly, so you can stay engaged a little longer. You learn to say “this matters to me and it scares me” before you disappear.
After enough broken attempts, the pattern can feel like your character. You call yourself unreliable or a quitter, and others may have said it too. Years of meeting expectations at school, at work or in a new country can leave you unsure what you even want for yourself. None of that means you are damaged.
I help you separate the old rules you carry, sometimes handed down in your family, from the person you actually are. I will challenge you when you shrink yourself, but I will not impose a new identity. The aim is to know what you want and let yourself have it.
If these questions sound familiar, a free call lets us talk first, and a booked session lets us start straight away.
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Tell me briefly what kind of support you are looking for.
Include your country and time zone so we can discuss whether online work together is possible and find a suitable time.
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Understanding why you pull the brake is the start, but the real test is what you do the next time something good begins.
This work will help you see what happens in you just before you undo something, recognise the patterns that keep it going and change how you act when it matters. Insight alone rarely helps here. Plenty of self-saboteurs can explain their pattern perfectly and still repeat it on Monday.
In 22 years of practice I have learned that this work moves when I take an active part. I name what I see, I challenge the stories that keep you stuck and I notice if you begin to sabotage the therapy itself. The 6 questions below show what we aim for.
Related reading: Why do I wreck things just as they start to go well? and I know exactly why I do it. Why can’t I stop?.
I help you tell the root from the fallout. The missed deadline, the late night and the sudden argument are real, but they are results. Below them usually sit a few strong beliefs: that success brings danger, that you do not deserve good things, that needing anyone is unsafe.
I tell you what I think is going on, what deserves attention first and which explanations hold you back, such as “I just work better under pressure”. We work with what you know about yourself and with what you have not yet noticed. To begin unpicking it, book a session with me.
By learning its first signs. There is usually a chain: a flash of hope, a tightening in the chest, a thought such as “who am I kidding”, then the urge to distract yourself. Once you notice the first link, you have a moment in which another choice is possible.
In sessions I help you slow that chain down and see what sets it off and what it protects. Seeing it is not enough. We practise a different next step, on screen and in your week, until you can use it on an ordinary evening without me.
Staying with it does not mean crushing the fear or pretending it is gone. It means remaining present enough to notice the feeling and still choose what you do. For many people, good news is more frightening than bad, because bad news is familiar.
I help you recognise that rise of fear sooner and understand what your body is reacting to, often an old experience of hope that ended badly. This needs a few minutes of practice every day between our sessions, and I will ask you about it.
Asking clearly starts with knowing what you want and letting yourself admit it. When wanting feels risky, you hint, joke, test people to see if they stay or say nothing and later feel let down. The unspoken wish turns into resentment, and the resentment fuels the next round of sabotage.
Together we find words that are honest and in proportion, such as “I would like this, and I am nervous about it”. I will challenge you when you hide your wishes, and also when you expect others to prove themselves before you take a risk.
Decisions get easier once you separate fear and old loyalties from what you actually want. Self-sabotage often makes decisions by default: you delay until the chance passes, or you jump at the worst moment to end the tension.
I help you look clearly at your options and what each one would require of you. You get my honest view, and I will say so when I see you avoiding the choice, but the choice stays yours. If the same pattern keeps ending your relationships, online therapy for always being in a relationship looks at that more closely.
Change has to reach beyond our calls, into your working week, your evenings and your relationships. You may need firmer routines, people who support your growth rather than your doubts, or a different way of planning big goals so the brake has less room.
We work out together which habits must go and which can stay. Your caution and your independence are not the enemy, and we are not trying to remove them. The aim is a life in which your choices follow what you value rather than an old fear.
You can also send me an email
You need no diagnosis and no neat explanation of why you do it. We start with the most recent time it happened.
In our first session I listen closely, help you name the central pattern and give the work a direction. We begin with a recent, concrete example rather than your whole history.
This is focused individual work within my online psychotherapy, and one strand of my online attachment therapy. If the undoing lives mainly between you and your partner and they are willing, online couples therapy gives long-term relational development and healing. If you know the work will take a while, a therapy bundle brings real savings and the safety of a plan you commit to in advance.
I ask what has brought you now, where the pattern costs you most, what you have tried and what you hope will be different. We often take one recent example and go through it slowly. The rest of your story can come later.
Before we finish, I give you my first reading and suggest a focus. Then you decide whether my approach feels useful. If you want to talk before committing, start with a free 30-minute call.
Individual work fits when the pattern lives mainly in you: in your history, your beliefs about what you deserve and the way you handle success, closeness and risk. That covers most self-sabotage. We can look at your relationships in depth without anyone else on the call.
One to one, I give you direction, continuity and honest challenge from week to week. If you are unsure whether to focus on this pattern or on your life as a whole, online psychotherapy describes my structured individual work.
Joint sessions make more sense once the relationship as a whole needs steady attention. If the same row keeps returning, if trust has been damaged by your pulling away, or if one of you chases while the other retreats, joint work often reaches further.
In couples work I help you both see the cycle, own your part and build steadier ways of being close. Online couples therapy is long-term relational development and healing, and some people work alone on the pattern first, then invite their partner.
The right rhythm depends on how strongly the pattern is affecting you, how much space your life has and how much continuity the work needs. Self-sabotage loves long gaps, because they make it easy to drift away.
I usually suggest weekly sessions at first. I will tell you honestly if the gaps are too long, if a closer stretch would help or when we can meet less often. If you want a concentrated start, back-to-back online psychotherapy gathers several sessions into a few days.
A bundle makes sense when you expect several sessions and want a commitment the pattern cannot quietly cancel. Self-sabotage often targets therapy too, with a missed week here and a “maybe later” there. A planned course takes that choice out of each week.
A bundle reduces the cost per session and gives you the steadiness of an agreed plan. You can see the options on therapy discounts and bundles and in the cards lower down.
Therapy has done its job when you have more ownership, clarity and choice, and the pattern has changed enough that you can carry on without the same support. You may still feel the old pull, but it no longer gets the last word.
I review progress openly with you and do not encourage therapy without an end. Sessions can thin out, pause or stop once the work is done. Should a new difficulty bring you back one day, the earlier work still counts.
Not sure this is the right door? Here is how this page sits beside the options people who get in their own way most often consider.
| Option | Choose it when | Pace |
|---|---|---|
| Online self-sabotage therapy (this page) | You keep undoing good things just as they start to work. | Weekly 1-hour video sessions at first |
| Online attachment therapy | Your patterns of closeness and distance are the wider theme. | 1-hour video sessions over several months |
| Online perfectionism therapy | Impossible standards stop you finishing or starting things. | A focused course of 1-hour video sessions |
| Online therapy for always being in a relationship | You move from partner to partner and want to know why. | Weekly or fortnightly video sessions |
Online self-sabotage therapy is individual psychotherapy by video, in English, for adults who repeatedly undermine their own goals, relationships or health. It helps you understand what the sabotaging part protects, where it learned its job and how to stop letting it decide.
I work in depth, with your feelings, your body, the different parts of you and what you inherited from your family. It sits within my online attachment therapy and my wider online psychotherapy.
Come when you can see the same pattern costing you work, love, money or health, and willpower has not changed it. You do not need to wait for a major loss. Your own sense that you keep tripping yourself up is enough.
I look at how long the pattern has run, how many areas of life it touches and what happens when you try to break it. If good intentions keep collapsing at the same point, it deserves proper attention.
Often, yes. Many people sabotage closeness because some part of them learned that love is unreliable or that being seen is dangerous. That can be understood and changed. I cannot promise how fast it shifts or how any partner will respond.
In my clinical experience, people who end good relationships tend to do it at a predictable moment, often when the other person starts to count on them. I would focus with you on that moment and on what you feel just before you pull away.
You might, and that is not a disaster. If you start missing sessions, arriving late or wanting to quit just as things move, we will treat it as the pattern showing itself in the room.
I will name it when I see it, without blame, and ask what the urge to leave is trying to protect. Working through it with me is often where the most useful change happens.
Because closeness brings two feelings at once: relief and risk. Wanting someone close is natural. So is the fear that they will leave or ask for too much. When the fear wins, you act first, so the loss at least feels chosen.
I help you see which way you move under pressure, what that move is trying to secure and what it costs the people you care about. Then we build steadier options: telling someone you are scared instead of picking a fight, and taking space without slamming the door.
We start with the present. I ask where the pattern shows up, what happened the last time and what you want to be different. By the end you will have my first understanding and a proposed focus.
There is nothing to prepare and no right way to tell it. If part of you nearly cancelled, say so, because that is useful too. You can book a first appointment now or try a free 30-minute call to start with.
Plan for a course of sessions over a few months. That is often enough to understand the pattern and begin acting differently at the key moment. If the roots go back to childhood or touch several areas of life, expect longer.
In 22 years of practice I have seen that a clear first stretch, followed by an honest review, works much better than an open-ended drift. At each review we decide together whether to continue, slow down or stop.
For most people, yes. Video lets you meet from your own room, keep going through moves and travel, and work with someone outside your social circle. It also removes one easy excuse to skip, the journey.
Bring a laptop or tablet, a steady internet connection, headphones and a room where nobody can listen in. The booking calendar shows every opening in your local time. Any practical doubts can be settled on a free call before you commit.
You book individual psychotherapy with me as 1-hour online sessions, each giving you 50 minutes of therapy. The prices page lists my current fees in US dollars.
If you know you will want a course of sessions, a therapy bundle takes 10 per cent off every session and sets out a plan in advance. See therapy discounts and bundles for the options.
Pick a time on the booking page, or ask for a free 30-minute call if a conversation feels like an easier first step. Times appear in your own time zone.
If nothing fits, or things feel urgent right now, send me a message. I hold some room for acute cases, usually a time within days, and acute online psychotherapy explains that help. Book now, before the brake has time to talk you out of it.
You can also send me an email
I want therapy to help you understand your experience and make choices you can use in everyday life. We pay attention to feelings, needs and the responses that happen before you have time to think.
Our online room should offer enough trust and honesty to explore what is difficult. I bring attention and professional judgement. You bring your experience, questions and the right to say when something does not fit.
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P.S. I’ll call you in a bit!
