I was listening to a podcast a few weeks ago, and one of the hosts used the phrase self-abandonment while discussing a time she had not taken care of herself or used the tools at her disposal for her own emotional and physical wellness. When I heard her use the phrase, an internal bell rang, and I immediately recognized that looking at this phenomenon would be potent medicine for this moment. Right now, every single person and entity wants to pull us in different directions at the expense of our peace and wholeness. I’m excited to share some insights about self-abandoning behaviors and how to heal from their toxic effects.
External Locus of Control
When we engage in self-abandoning behaviors, we give our power away. It’s that simple, but unfortunately, it’s more detrimental than it sounds. Best understood through examples, self-abandonment is a toxic behavior or relationship with the self that can be expressed in myriad ways.
These include:
- Rejecting/neglecting your own needs for the sake of indulging the needs of others. Putting the needs of others before your own, particularly when those others could easily take care of themselves. Excessive, unnecessary caretaking behavior. Putting the physical needs of others before yours is another iteration of self-abandoning behavior. Enacting behaviors that demonstrate that you value the needs and desires of other people over your own and sacrificing your comfort and security for others. It is important to note that often the people you’re sacrificing for don’t recognize it – when they do, that’s a truly toxic situation.
- Staying perpetually busy to avoid dealing with painful or difficult emotions or to bypass your pain or uncomfortable desires. Ignoring your inner emotional landscape in favor of external behaviors.
- Seeking external validation or trying to get your needs met by someone else rather than learning to take care of yourself and work through emotional pain.
- Employing addictions or addictive behaviors to avoid processing emotions and taking control of your life. Addictions don’t have to be alcohol or drugs — shopping, television, and social media all represent addictive behaviors you can use to ignore painful emotions.
- Neglecting your goals and not making progress on projects you’re passionate about (self-neglect) because you’re too busy helping others reach their goals.
- Consistently prioritizing the emotional needs of others above your own.
- Engaging in risky or uncomfortable sexual behavior and ignoring your discomfort or fear. Engaging in sexual behaviors against your will or better judgment to assuage another person.
- Making choices and putting yourself in situations or relationships where you’re emotionally or physically unsafe.
- Taking care of other adult people when you are exhausted or ill.
- Engaging in behaviors like drinking too much or eating when you don’t feel like it to make other people feel comfortable.
- Going places that feel unsafe because other people insist.
- Rejecting some aspect of yourself. Think of the kind of suppression or rejection that leads part of the soul into shadow. This kind of rejection is why we have to do shadow work — if you don’t abandon that aspect of yourself in the first place, you can avoid doing the work later.
A quick note: It is a different dynamic if you have to care for children. The references above relate primarily to interactions with other capable adults.
Manifestations of Self-Abandonment
My mother told me about a friend who was complaining that she had been ill and was struggling to recover because her partner constantly wanted to have sex with her. She felt she would lose him if she didn’t meet those needs, but it hindered her ability to get well. This is a classic, toxic example of self-abandonment.
A friend told me about a similar situation involving someone she knew well. Her friend had a partner who woke her at all hours of the night to have sex even though she was utterly exhausted. This was happening multiple times each night and at all hours. She was performing poorly at work and feeling incoherent and dizzy because she wasn’t getting sufficient rest.
Both of these situations stink of abuse enabled by self-abandonment. In both cases, the woman failed to speak up for her own needs and let the whims of a toxic (and possibly abusive) partner cause them to ignore and neglect their wellbeing. It isn’t easy to imagine sacrificing one’s health and power to meet a partner’s needs, but it happens frequently. Not every case is this clear-cut, but women, in particular, give away their sovereignty at alarming rates in the modern world, taking on extra emotional and physical labor for others. It is abuse when someone else knowingly and intentionally takes too much from you and asks you to engage in behaviors at odds with your inner guidance. Depending on the severity, these relationships need boundaries and potentially other interventions.
The examples above are extreme and upsetting; more mundane examples might include taking a call from an emotionally needy friend when you already feel drained or making a meal for someone after you’ve had a long day of work just because they’re too lazy to do it themselves.
We’ve all made choices and taken actions not aligned with our goals and soul at some point. It’s an awful feeling, a deep self-betrayal, demonstrating that we can’t trust ourselves. When we can’t trust ourselves, everything else in life suffers. The darkest consequence of self-abandonment is the lasting trauma it causes and the way it undermines our confidence and trust in ourselves. Self-abandonment is the ultimate letdown –– letting yourself down. Over time, disregarding your emotional and/or physical safety and failing to protect yourself will erode your psychological health. Worse still, it will likely beget more of the same behavior. Repeated self-abandonment can devastate your ability to trust yourself, breaking down your self-confidence.
Giving away your sovereignty has extreme, detrimental, long-term negative consequences:
- You won’t trust yourself. Over time you become extremely out of touch with your own needs and desires, and a valuable skill of intuition may atrophy.
- The consequences of people-pleasing are never positive in the long run. Anyone willing to stomp on your personal needs doesn’t truly value you and will continue leaching your energy and causing drama as long as they’re part of your life. It’s good to look at the relationships in which you exhibit self-abandoning behaviors because they can illuminate self-esteem issues.
- You will likely continue engaging in harmful behaviors once your self-confidence has eroded.
Breaking the Self-Abandonment Cycle
Awareness: Recognizing your tendencies, knowing your patterns and triggers, and overall understanding of conditions in which you are most likely to engage in self-abandoning behaviors is the key to ending destructive cycles. Are there situations in which you consistently tend to put others before yourself? Do certain people expect you to engage in self-abandoning behaviors? Are there people you feel you’ll lose by asserting your desire and will? Are you more likely to abandon yourself when a potential partner is involved? Are there certain friends that lead you to make decisions that are not in alignment with your highest good? Is it a family thing? Mindfulness about your patterns is the first step to remedying self-abandoning behaviors. Journaling is an excellent way to understand your habits. Getting to know yourself better and understanding when and why you make self-abandoning choices that are not in your best interest is vital to moving past the behavior. Consider why you prioritize the needs of other people or why you keep putting yourself into dangerous situations. Journal about these questions and considerations to see what comes up. Try to be as honest as possible, even if that means you need to burn those sheets of paper afterward. This exercise is for you; no one else ever needs to see it.
Heal past trauma: This one seems relatively straightforward, but it’s probably the most difficult to achieve. As you become aware of your typical self-abandoning scenarios, you’ll probably also find that some of that behavior is related to the trauma you experienced. You may have to use techniques ranging from energy work to therapy to heal past trauma. Set the intention to resolve the trauma and seek the treatment you’re intuitively guided to use. Commit to doing the work to heal yourself.
Practice self-love: Learning to love yourself and understand your strengths and weaknesses, appreciating all that is unique about you is one of the easiest ways to end cycles of self-abandonment. Simply put, no one wants to disappoint or endanger someone they love. Self-love naturally engenders healthier choices. A great exercise is to find a photo of yourself as a child to tune into your child self. Appreciate how the younger version of you saw the world, the things that the child loved and feared, and remember that that child is always within you. It is your responsibility to love and protect that child. If you find yourself difficult to love, this is an excellent way to get back to your essence and start building a loving and nurturing relationship.
Boundaries: Asserting your own needs with people who have historically taken from you can be challenging and even terrifying. Making a plan using boundary setting and self-accountability will help you establish healthier relationships. In some situations, you may have to end the relationship altogether. Recognize that sometimes this is necessary. Some people do not respond well to boundaries, and if they do not respect the boundaries you’re putting in place, you may need to limit or quit spending time with them. Listen to your gut/intuition/inner knowing. If saying yes to someone gives you an icky feeling, don’t do it. You don’t have to do anything that makes you feel uncomfortable. You are in control of yourself and your life. You get to make choices about the things you want to engage in, and just because somebody wants to talk to you doesn’t obligate you to listen. If you’re exhausted and need to rest, you can tell others that you don’t have the energy to give them. You must learn to express your needs and desires, expecting others to respect them. If they don’t, it’s time for you to consider why you have them in your life.
Healing after Abandoning Yourself
Like shadow work, if you bring your self-abandoning behaviors into the light and start to understand the situations in which you make choices that are not in your best interest, you can begin to heal yourself. It won’t be easy, and it will require that you take actions such as saying no, putting yourself first, and creating healthy boundaries, but eventually, you’ll regain trust in yourself. Your self-esteem will bloom, you’ll rest easier, and you’ll get in touch with your most profound inner knowing.