I'll tell you though, what's very confusing is why a disobedient Pokemon will sometimes hurt itself in confusion.
Like, what the heck is even going on in that case? What's it confused about?
Yeah, I could understand it with Bonemerang perhaps, but what is Bulbasaur doing to injure itself with Sleep Powder?
I encountered this pretty soon on in Pokémon, using the traded Seedot in Emerald to beat the first gym leader then finding it useless battling May on the way out of Rustboro.
I've generally not struggled with it much though, even if I trade in a Pokémon to a new save in the early stages its usually been lv. 1 fresh from an egg, and I'm careful not to over-train it. But on my most recent Platinum save I went completely OTT - bred an entire team in HeartGold, all with 2-3 perfect IVs, natures, egg moves, and then EV-trained them with the Little Cup method so they didn't get over lv. 5. This then meant that before I even got to Roark my Piplup was disobeying me, something I had to then struggle with all the way through to Gardenia, then again for a short while until I got my 4th badge. It was great!
Clarification - even in my previous saves where I
haven't traded in borderline competition-ready Pokémon, I find the games rather easy. I find myself using the Togepi in HeartGold every time just to enjoy the randomness from Metronome (as opposed to making the game deliberately hard by chosing Chikorita, as Meganium sucks), so this was like that approach on steroids - we had the capability to obliterate half the region with barely any damage in return, but then Piplup would choose Bubblebeam against Roserade instead of Peck and suddenly we're on the back foot, with Shinx (Thunder Fang / Ice Fang / Fire Fang / Bite) choosing his non-effective STAB to boot. Actual tension in battles!