Self-Worth and Engaging in Detrimental Behaviour I've long felt that some people engage in unskillful behaviour as a consequence of not valuing themselves. For example, they engage in drugs to numb or detrimental sexuality, seemingly because they feel unworthy or undeserving. 

Would Buddhism link such a behaviour to self-compassion or self-esteem? Is there such a thing in Buddhism as instincts of self-harm?

Or, even, can such self-impeding behaviour be linked to some other cause, such as not seeing the consequence of actions or something of the like? 

Thank you
The origin of detrimental behavior is the "self" itself. Because self is ultimately an illusion and doesn't exists, and people's belief and identification to self makes them trapped in the cycle of suffering. The "self" can never feel worthy, because it is an illusion and an illusion is always incomplete and insecure. That's why the people who have deep narcissistic personality disorder always need to cause trouble for themselves and others because their identity is always based on the "self", which means their identity is always based on an illusion. Also the identification of the self always makes people have lack of awareness and most of the people are acting their conditioning from their birth to death. So most people literally don't know what they are doing and they are completely under control of the thoughts, emotions and feelings. 

The only way to become free from this never-ending cycle is to become free from the self itself. Trying to build a self esteem can temporarily work but it would collapse sooner or later because a sand castle can't live that long. A person who becomes free from the belief of the self and completely becomes free from the identification from it would have great peace and contentment and would not identified with the thoughts, emotions and feelings again so it would be impossible for him/her to act as an ordinary egotistical person again.

That being said, denying the identification with the self is not beneficial either because until a person completely becomes free from identification with the self-which happens in the once-returner stage-the identification with the self would continue for a person. So even that the self is ultimately an illusion, the nature of being a human is being identified to this illusion. That's why Buddhism gives the humanity the roadmap to become free from this illusion. And the core of this roadmap is mindfulness and staying away from the unwholesome actions.