You can turn self-protection into self-sabotage without changing the name you give it.

Protection and sabotage can look identical from inside because both are described using the same words. Leaving before you can be left, not applying so you cannot be rejected, keeping people at a distance so nothing can be lost: each is experienced as prudence while producing exactly the outcome it was meant to prevent. The label never changes even as the function does.

Ask what your protection has actually produced over the last few years. If it has delivered the very thing you were guarding against, the name is wrong. Changing the name is the first step, since you cannot examine something you are still filing as self-care.