Self-Abandonment: What It Is And How To Stop Doing It

Hey guys, Heidi Prep here. Welcome back to my channel. Today, I wanted to spend some time talking about a word that has been super instrumental to me over the past six months or so in my attachment healing work, and that term is self-abandonment.

So, I first heard this term in some Facebook group that I was a part of that talked about attachment work, attachment healing. And I really liked it as soon as I heard it, like it resonated somewhere inside of me. I didn't really know what the term meant, but I decided, "I'm going to take a period of time and just notice when do I feel like I am self-abandoning? When do I start to notice that I am not particularly showing up for myself and being on my own team in life? And how can I start to rearrange my life in such a way that I am doing that as little as humanly possible?"

So, this video is the result of about six months of me putting myself under observation in this way and really noticing some of what I believe to be the common experiences in which many of us automatically self-abandon, often without even realizing it, and start operating from a kind of inauthentic part of ourselves. And we are going to talk about how to stop doing that.

So, I define self-abandonment as any situation in which we are fragmenting a part of ourselves and leaving a very important component of ourselves at the door in order to usually get validation or acceptance or approval out of other people. Now, of course, there are situations in which we all do this a little bit, right? So, most of us, when we go to work in the morning, there is some part of ourselves that we leave at the door in order to show up and give back in a way that puts the focus on the company or the other people that we're serving, right? So, that's natural to an extent. When we are parenting, when we are meeting new people, when we are in some sort of social role that requires certain responsibilities to be met, most of us naturally do a little bit of leaving ourselves at the door, right? So, this is is part of just being a human in society, absolutely.

However, self-abandonment is what I define as a prolonged period of fragmenting ourselves and leaving really important aspects of ourselves at the door. So, those really important, really vital parts of ourselves can be things like our true thoughts and opinions and perspectives, our true emotions and vulnerabilities and inner experiences, our true needs and wants and desires, right? So, often when we are self-abandoning, what starts to happen is that these fragmented parts of ourselves that we have left at the door start showing up as anxiety, as depression, as an inability to concentrate, or as self-sabotaging behaviors. Because I have the personal belief that there is no such thing as self-sabotage. Most of the time, when we think we are self-sabotaging, what's actually happened is we have abandoned a piece of ourselves that knows it is important for our vitality. And so that piece is coming out screaming, trying to be heard, right? Whether that is a need for comfort, whether that is the need for authenticity, whether that is actually the need for our physical, more adult survival needs to be met, right? There are all of these parts of ourselves that if we do not pay attention to them and if we leave them behind for too long, they will start to protest.

And this video is going to be all about how to stop doing that, so that as much as humanly possible, we can start bringing our true, embodied, authentic selves to every situation we find ourselves in, so no major part of ourselves has to start kicking up a fuss, begging to be seen and acknowledged.

So, from the get-go, I think a really good rule of thumb for figuring out whether we are self-abandoning or whether we are just doing some kind of natural stepping into social roles that need to be temporarily fulfilled is checking in with our bodies and going, "Okay, if I say yes to this thing, if I allow myself to, let's say, leave a part of myself at the door to either get to know this new person or to work this job or to do this favor for someone, is there going to be a significant part of me that feels tense and resentful?" Am I going to kind of hate myself a little bit for saying yes to this? Am I going to kind of hate somebody else for asking me to do this and me saying yes to it? Anytime we experience that strong sense of like, inner resistance and tension, it's often because we are self-abandoning.

The opposite of self-abandonment is bringing our whole, integrated selves into every single situation. And often, we know we are doing that when we feel a sense of ease and relaxation in our bodies, because we're not trying to change our energy to fit the situation. But without getting further into that, let's go into some of the most common areas I've noticed over the past six months that many of us are quick to self-abandon, and then we're going to go into what the antidotes to those scenarios are.

So, scenario number one, in which I think many of us are quick to self-abandon, is we put ourselves in situations that we aren't truly comfortable or aligned with, and then we start seeking out comfort in unhealthy ways. So, an example of this might be taking on a job that you know you can't really be your true, whole self within, but maybe it pays really well, maybe it's prestigious, maybe other people are going to be really impressed with you taking on this job. And so, what you learn to do is go into work in the morning with that intense inner tension that comes from resisting the truth, and that comes from compartmentalizing and ignoring important parts of ourselves. And then you find ways to blow off steam in massive ways after work, on the weekends, on your breaks. Maybe you are venting all the time, maybe you are going out and getting drunk every weekend, maybe you are eating unhealthily or finding ways to seek out the comfort that you are not getting while you're at work.

Because again, to be comfortable in the world means to have a relaxed nervous system, to feel like you are not chronically tensed up because you are always on alert for someone threatening your social mask. When we are not wearing a mask, when we are, as much as humanly possible, just showing up as who we are in the world, our bodies feel relaxed. We can take deep breaths, we can be present and focused and attentive, because we aren't distracted with thoughts about trying to push our needs aside in order to fit the situation, right? So, that sense of comfort that we get in the world from being in alignment with ourselves doesn't leave us with this extreme need to like, binge on comfort later, because we aren't sucking anything up. There is nothing to kind of let go of in a huge way afterwards, right? But this process of like, tension, then release, then tension, then release, that most of us go through over the course of the average day in our lives is what ends up causing a lot of stress, a lot of overwhelm, and a lot of compensatory comfort-seeking behaviors that maybe aren't the healthiest.

So, I always find that when I am doing work that I feel truly aligned with, when I'm interacting with people who I feel truly comfortable in myself around, and when I'm listening attentively to my own inner needs, I have the easiest time staying healthy, getting good sleep, staying present and focused on my work, because I'm just kind of being me everywhere I go. And it's very easy on the nervous system and very relaxing and very non-threatening to be you everywhere you go.

Situation number two, in which I think most people frequently and almost compulsively self-abandon, is we decide in our heads who other people want us to be, who we think we ought to be in order to be loved, accepted, validated, whatever it is. And then we shove aside every part of ourselves that does not fit that mold. And then, because it feels so uncomfortable and so bad inside to do that, we start hating ourselves. And we try to compensate for that self-hatred by doubling down on this external image of ourselves and going, "Okay, now everybody owes me love and appreciation and validation, because I killed off parts of myself to be accepted by them. So now people need to give me that sense of love that I cannot give myself."

And this is a terrible, vicious cycle that will keep us trapped our entire lives if we do not become aware of it, right? When we are refusing to show up as we actually are, when we are refusing to share ourselves authentically with other people, when we are refusing to draw boundaries where we need to draw boundaries in order to keep ourselves feeling whole and integrated, then we place this enormous expectation on other people to give us that love and validation that we are not giving ourselves. And then we grow to resent people for not giving us all of that love and validation, when it was never their job to do that in the first place.

What happens when we start doing this, and we start outsourcing our need for love and worthiness and validation, is we are telling the child that lives inside of ourselves, "There are things about you that are wrong and bad and shameful, and I'm going to hide you away so that other people will accept me." And imagine if you were telling your four-year-old child that. Imagine what that child would grow up to believe about themselves. Imagine the ways they would learn to interact with other people. Imagine the ways they would show up in intimate relationships, right? It would be a train wreck. And it is a train wreck when we make these rules for ourselves. We shove aside the parts of our inner children that we think are embarrassing or are not good enough or are not in line with this image of who the adult part of ourselves wants to see ourselves as. We are giving ourselves the message that there is something deeply flawed and broken and wrong with us. And the only antidote to that message is to start believing something different from the inside. No amount of external praise, validation, acceptance, approval is ever going to be enough to fix the wounds that we are inflicting on our inner child when we hide them from the world.

Okay, this is important. So, I'm going to say it again: Nothing we can ever get from the external world will ever, ever be enough to fix the wound we inflict upon ourselves when we reject our inner children. The only way out is to start standing up for ourselves and our inner children, allowing ourselves to integrate every part of ourselves into our lives as much as possible, and to refuse to give that message to our inner children that there is something shameful or wrong or bad about them that they must hide. The less we hide, the more we gain our own self-respect. And the more we gain our own self-respect, ironically, the more people are impressed by us and drawn to us.

So, if we want to truly fix this problem from the inside out, step number one has to be healing our relationship with ourselves. Sitting down with ourselves and going, "I do not need to hide you. I do not need to lie about who I am. I'm going to show up in the world as I actually am." And if that triggers things in other people, so long as I am being respectful of them, I'm going to leave them to deal with that in themselves. And I am going to continue standing up for my inner child and being who I actually am. Because a lot of the time, the person that we think other people want us to be is actually not at all who they want to be, right? Think about who you find really cool and attractive and impressive. It's often the people who have the most self-respect, the people who are the most willing to stand up for themselves, to say what they need and want, and to also treat other people respectfully. Those are the kind of people everybody wants to be around.

So, if you want to actually win this game, you have to go back to the source. Take that agreement you made with yourself, probably when you were a very young child, that you would shut parts of yourself up in order to get things out of other people, and destroy that agreement. And make a new one, which is what we're going to talk about in the second part of this video. But this naturally leads us to situation number three, in which a lot of us tend to self-abandon, is we fail to stand up for ourselves when we are being mistreated. And this can be overt mistreatment, so it can be someone being actively rude to our faces. Or it can be covert mistreatment. It can be people pressuring or coercing us into agreeing to things that we know we don't want to do, but we fail to see our own needs as important enough to give voice to, right? Maybe we shame, blame, guilt ourselves into saying yes to things that we really want to say no to. Maybe we allow someone to be unkind or disrespectful towards us because we really want their approval and validation.

And anytime we are allowing ourselves to be disrespected or mistreated in the external world, again, we are sending a direct message to ourselves about the kind of treatment that it's okay for us to tolerate. We are telling our inner children, "I don't love you enough to stand up for you when you are being abused, coerced, or mistreated." Think about that message. Think about what it would do to a four-year-old child to receive that. And then notice how often you are sending that message to yourself.

Now, I want to stop and acknowledge, before we get into part two of this video, which is all about how to stop doing this, that it is really difficult to stop doing this, right? It is kind of like when you are drowning and you start thrashing harder and harder to try to keep yourself afloat. The natural instinct when we are self-abandoning and we start feeling bad about ourselves and we start needing comfort is to self-abandon even harder. Because if we've gotten used to kicking ourselves off our own team, we start thinking the only antidote is to get love, acceptance, and validation outside of myself. And how do I get that? I will kick myself off my own team even harder, right? So, there's this very natural doubling down process that happens when we don't understand that we are playing a rigged game and there is an exit route.

So, if you recognize that you've been doing this and you're like, "Oh my God, I had no idea I was doing that to myself and I was kicking myself off my own team in all these ways," don't judge yourself too harshly. You are thrashing trying to keep your head above water because you didn't realize you could reach out your arms and you could float on water. And now we are going to talk about how to do that, how to stop thrashing trying to get your needs met and learn to float.

So, to stop self-abandoning, step one is start trying to tell the truth as often as humanly possible to yourself and other people. And the reason I recommend this is because when we start telling the truth all of the time, we will quickly notice this goes a lot better in some situations than other situations. There are some situations in which I truly just cannot tell the truth and keep my job, tell the truth and hold on to my relationship, tell the truth and respect myself. And if we want to start showing up for ourselves in a really real way, we're going to have to start noticing which situations am I chronically putting myself in where I can't really bring my whole self to the table and still get what I need out of the situation? And how do I, as much as humanly possible, stop putting myself in those situations?

If your partner doesn't like who you actually are when you start telling the truth and being authentic, is that the right partner for you? If your work requires you to hold so much tension in your body because you are operating from this false self whose real needs and perspectives and beliefs are not brought to the table, is that really the right job for you? If your social circle is comprised of people who want you to behave differently in order for them to feel comfortable around you, is that really the social circle you want to be putting yourself in?

Half of the brilliance of committing to telling the truth is just finally realizing all of the situations we have elected to put ourselves in over the course of our lives where lying is the most adaptive. And the more we recognize that, the more we're able to make informed choices. How do I want to show up at work? What would be something I could do that would be more aligned, that would allow me to release the tension from my body and show up as I actually am more of the time? Which traits do I need in friends or partners in order to feel like I can relax and be my full self around them? Right? Telling the truth is not a magic bullet for getting what we want out of life, but it is a magic bullet for realizing where we are out of alignment with our lives. And over a long period of time, this allows us to design our lives in a much more adaptive way, because there is no tension between what's going on on the inside and what's going on in the outside.

Tip number two for self-abanding less is one that I got from my therapist, and I loved this so much. I was essentially in a situation where I was being offered an opportunity that I thought would be a really cool opportunity. There were so many logical reasons to say yes to it. There were so many doors I believed it would open for me. There were so many connections I hoped I could make out of it. But I knew that there was a very big part of myself that I would have to self-abandon in order to say yes to this opportunity. I was already at that time feeling very non-centered, very not in alignment with myself, and I knew that I needed some time to get back to myself and to get back in touch with my inner child. And I was kind of proposing this dilemma in therapy, and my therapist said, "Well, sometimes parents have to sacrifice their needs and their wants for the good of their children. So, what is the youngest part of you right now? What is the most vulnerable and in need part of you? And how can the inner parent in you tend to that part?" And that question absolutely blew my mind. And to this day, I still try to get in touch every time I'm facing a difficult decision with, "What does the most vulnerable part of me need here?" Because the most vulnerable and in need parts of ourselves, if they get neglected, are at the highest risk for protest behaviors, for kicking up their heels, fragmenting our attention span so that we can't focus when we're trying to do what we are trying to force them into doing, for making us feel anxious, depressed, lethargic, for seeking comfort in unhealthy ways. The most vulnerable and in need parts of ourselves are always the parts we need to tend to the most, because they are the most high risk.

So, in this situation, I had to tell myself, "As much as the adult in me knows that this would open a lot of doors and create a lot of cool opportunities for me, if I cannot walk into those opportunities with my whole, authentic self, integrated, present, and online, I'm going to be fragmenting myself in really terrible ways that down the line are going to lead to some really intense challenges." And so, I had to say no and go home and take care of myself.

Now, of course, there will be times when we are, let's say, offered opportunities that we want to say yes to that require a little bit of sucking it up and working really hard for a period of time, whatever it is. The problem is when these situations become chronic, when we chronically have disconnected from a part of ourselves that needs our care, love, and attention, when we have told our inner children, "Not just, you need to take a back seat for a couple of weeks, but you need to take a back seat permanently." That's when we start getting self-sabotage behaviors. Our kids start protesting. But if we are always tuning in and asking ourselves, "What do the vulnerable parts of me need and want?" we learn to integrate and bake in comfort and self-acceptance and compassion for those young, vulnerable parts of ourselves into every area of our lives. And so, they stop protesting. They stop fragmenting our attention. They stop bringing our mood down, right? A really good sign that we are living in an integrated way is that we feel very present most of the time, because our attention is not being divided between different parts of ourselves that we have learned to fragment and leave at the door.

Which leads me very naturally to step number three for ceasing to self-abandon: is start to really appreciate what you get out of not self-abandoning. If you have the true belief that life is better when you are forgetting about all your own wants and needs, saying yes to what you think everyone else wants from you, and then living on a diet of external validation, of course it's going to be hard to say yes to your own needs. Of course it's going to be hard to tune into yourself and give yourself what you need, because you think that only bad things will come from that. And I think that this is a natural tendency that a lot of us have internalized, because that's the game we've been taught to play most of our lives, right? We have been taught the "kick yourself off your own team" game and do what other people want you to do. It's what is drilled into us from the time we are children.

The more we start to actually set boundaries, say yes only when we want to say yes, and say no when we need to say no, the more we learn to tune into our bodies, notice when we feel the most internal tension, and put ourselves in more and more situations where that tension is released, the more we realize that there is another way to live that feels way better. And the more we start to notice this, the easier it gets to continue to say yes to ourselves, right? If I set a boundary and I notice that it disappoints someone in the moment, but then later, when I'm spending time with that person, I can actually bring my entire embodied sense of self to the interaction because I don't feel any secret resentment towards them or myself, that is going to be an overall much better and healthier relationship than if I am always saying yes to please this person, but then go into the situations feeling resentment, angry, fragmented, cut off, distracted, right? That's how we build unhealthy, resent-laden connections as opposed to deep, authentic connections.

If I am chronically dissociating from my own needs for comfort and care and support and relaxation, I'm going to start having parts of my inner child coming up screaming and protesting. And I'm going to suddenly have a really hard time paying attention at work. I'm going to burn out and stop feeling creative and stop feeling inspired and start feeling depressed, anxious, fragmented, and not know why. Because these parts of myself that I've been abandoning are the parts of myself that bring that vitality, creativity, excitement, and presence to my work. And the more I'm able to realize that it is setting boundaries, staying true to myself, standing up for myself, that lead me to these places, the more I'm going to realize, "Oh my God, this is so worth doing. It is so worth the initial discomfort of setting these boundaries to get the end result of living a life that I'm actually showing up to and being present within as much as humanly possible." And I am sending such a wonderful, loving message to my inner child, which allows me to show up in the world in a completely different way.

I had a situation in the past where there's someone who I really valued and wanted to be a part of my life, but they were chronically kind of speaking to me in a bit of a disrespectful manner. And I ended up finally having to draw really explicit boundaries and going, "You know what? If we can't work this through, if you can't speak to me respectfully, I'm going to have to not have you in my life anymore." And it was a very painful and difficult boundary to set that I really didn't want to set. But the next week, debriefing in therapy, my therapist asked me a question that really got me thinking, which was, "You were 10 years old, and someone came to you and started speaking to you the way that person spoke to you, and your parent walked in and told that person, 'You cannot speak to my child that way. They deserve respect. And if you cannot respect them, you need to get out of their lives.' How much would you love that parent? How valued would you feel? What would you internalize about yourself through that interaction?" And for whatever reason, that question blew me away. Thinking of the child in me as someone who I am responsible for protecting and for teaching their worth to, completely changed the game for me.

And this is what we're doing when we set boundaries for ourselves. We are teaching the child within us, "This is what I, as your parent, will tolerate and not tolerate when it comes to how other people treat you, because I believe you are worthy of being treated well." And when we internalize that message, when the child within us learns their inner worth and value, oh my God, do they ever grow up to be a cool ass adult. They grow into this confident, embodied version of themselves who loves themselves enough to extend that same warmth and non-judgmental attitude towards other people. And that is the person who makes everybody feel good to be around, right? So, ironically, the more we refuse to self-abandon in order to get the approval or validation of other people, the more we actually grow ourselves into a person who other people super want to be around, because we are able to exude the same warmth and love and self-acceptance that we give ourselves. "I'm okay, you're okay." The secure worldview. You're no longer playing that "I'll be good enough" game, right? You're playing the game of, "I know how to set my boundaries to keep myself feeling present, vital, alive, connected, and lacking resentment towards myself and others." And I can teach other people to do the same thing by example.

All right, I could talk about this forever. Like, I could really keep going with this because it is such an important topic, and I think it is such a vital component to attachment healing work. But I've already been talking for a while, so I'm going to leave it here for today. Let me know in the comments section where you guys are at in this process, which situations do you notice yourself self-abanding in, and is there a way you are now planning to start showing up for yourself differently? I'm always curious to hear your perspectives, thoughts, experiences, so please drop them in the comments. As always, I love you guys. I hope you're taking care of yourselves, your inner children, and each other. And I will see you back here again really soon.

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