How to Use self-defeating in a Sentence

self-defeating

adjective
  • You are stuck in a self-defeating cycle that isn’t going to change.
    — Jeanne Phillips, The Mercury News, 7 Feb. 2024
  • Many adults, Gaines believes, are plagued by their self-defeating thoughts.
    — Anna Halkidis, Parents, 8 June 2024
  • Self-doubt in the West will lead to self-defeating decisions.
    — Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Foreign Affairs, 11 Jan. 2024
  • But will self-defeating emotional patterns block their growth?
    — Usa Today, USA Today, 18 June 2025
  • This position is, among many other things, a somewhat self-defeating one.
    — Matt Ford, The New Republic, 8 Aug. 2023
  • Rich and Andrew agreed that a line for the bathroom is a self-defeating cycle on airplanes.
    — Zach Wichter, USA TODAY, 13 Nov. 2024
  • But sometimes the optics make the self-defeating nature of the task clearer than others.
    — Sammy Roth, Los Angeles Times, 18 Mar. 2025
  • Jose said that would create a self-defeating pattern and urged him to reconsider.
    — Gustavo Arellano, Los Angeles Times, 13 Aug. 2024
  • Explaining its brilliance beyond that feels futile at best and self-defeating at worst.
    — Indiewire Staff, IndieWire, 12 Aug. 2024
  • As the moon and Pluto clash, self-defeating beliefs prevent you from making progress.
    — USA TODAY, 13 June 2023
  • These are people on a quixotic, self-defeating quest for excellence, building their skills in lockstep with the show.
    — Alison Herman, Variety, 19 June 2023
  • Europe’s Trump strategy, in other words, is a self-defeating trap.
    — Matthias Matthijs, Foreign Affairs, 12 Dec. 2025
  • To cut off military aid to Ukraine now wouldn’t be a crime, but an incredibly self-defeating blunder.
    — Rich Lowry, National Review, 8 Dec. 2023
  • Being coherent means adding up to one clear signal, rather than acting in confusing, self-defeating ways.
    — Ginny Whitelaw, Forbes.com, 1 July 2025
  • However, self-defeating rules that alter the game’s brand should always be discouraged.
    — Reader Commentary, Baltimore Sun, 23 Dec. 2024
  • But for Russia, this kind of ambitious, high-risk operation comes with a side of self-defeating hubris.
    — Adam Taylor, Washington Post, 30 Mar. 2023
  • This self-defeating all-or-nothing mentality yields nothing, every time.
    — Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Fortune, 7 Dec. 2023
  • The obstacle was the self-defeating thoughts that dominated her mind and eroded her confidence.
    — Helene Elliott, Los Angeles Times, 18 Aug. 2023
  • His participation in The Jinx seems to follow the same strange, self-defeating pattern.
    — Ester Bloom, Vulture, 19 Apr. 2024
  • And so Republicans will embark on a silly, self-defeating impeachment that is certain to fail.
    — Alex Shephard, The New Republic, 14 Sep. 2023
  • His own actions, his own writing, provide enough evidence of just how self-defeating and self-immolating violence can be.
    — Gal Beckerman, The Atlantic, 28 Mar. 2024
  • Look to the self-defeating machinations of Merrick Garland and Jack Smith.
    — Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, 20 July 2024
  • Online, Biden was a self-defeating candidate—able to attract a critical mass of attention, but only in the worst way.
    — Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic, 21 July 2024
  • The compassion in this new cut doesn’t undercut the many scenes of bad behavior, rock-star excess, self-defeating egotism, and descent into junkiedom.
    — David Fear, Rolling Stone, 26 Jan. 2024
  • For the United States, as the world’s biggest economy, and its second-largest exporter, that would be a self-defeating outcome.
    — John Cassidy, The New Yorker, 9 Sep. 2024
  • Russia has lost most of its major gas markets thanks to the self-defeating gambit of withholding energy shipments from Europe.
    — Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Fortune, 30 Mar. 2023
  • While short-term cuts are tempting, defunding the COFTM would be a self-defeating measure.
    — Noah Smith, Denver Post, 30 Mar. 2026
  • Trump has always been incredibly sensitive to the appearance of power and prestige, usually in gaudy and self-defeating ways.
    — Alex Shephard, The New Republic, 29 June 2023
  • Waiting and watching is a self-defeating strategy and does nothing for desperate Syrians.
    — Delaney Simon, Foreign Affairs, 2 Jan. 2025
  • Leveraging private capital will help eliminate the ironic and self-defeating need to borrow from these same adversaries to close our budget shortfalls.
    — Charles Beames, Forbes, 30 Oct. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'self-defeating.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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