#20 Self Abandonment: Stop Abandoning Your True Self

Self abandonment is what happens when dismiss your own thoughts, feelings and values. It is a learned response and coping mechanism that filters all areas of our lives and quite simply it’s an exhausting way to live.  It’s really hard to live an authentic and sovereign life where you feel fulfilled and have meaningful relationships if you keep on dismissing yourself.

In this episode, I share

• My definition of self abandonment
• The different ways in which we abandon ourselves
• Healing the relationship with yourself
• How to heal the habit of self abandonment

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About Tertia

I am a certified feminine embodiment coach and embodiment teacher.

In my private coaching and online programs, I teach you to drop from your head into your body so you can take your nervous system out of survive into thrive, clearing the way for you to live a life that fills you with joy and be guided by your inner knowing instead of outside influence.

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Transcript

This week we are going to get into self-abandonment. And specifically I want to look at what self-abandonment is, how it may show up in your life, and then what are the first steps that you can take to begin to break this cycle. My intention with this video is to create awareness around some of the patterns and behaviors that you may have in your life that you're struggling to break free from and that you're struggling to change. And I find that once we know something, once we gain a level of insight into something, it provides us with some internal resources so that we can begin to make these changes in our lives. If we look at self abandonment, I see self abandonment as you neglect yourself, not honoring your own needs, your own feelings, your own thoughts. And finally, I see it as you rejecting yourself. So it is quite as somber and sad definition, but ultimately it comes down to self abandonment means that you dismiss yourself, you dismiss your own wants, you dismiss the things that are important to you. You dismiss holding your own boundaries. We tend to put the needs of others ahead of our own needs. We tend to value the opinions of others more than we value our own opinions, and we live our lives in a way that pleases others. So when we self abandon, it really causes us not to be authentic. We are not true to ourselves. It's a learned condition, it's a learned response, it's a coping mechanism. And more often than not, we develop these coping mechanisms in our childhood. So often when our emotional needs haven't been met as children, then we find ways to compensate for that. We find ways to get that emotional need met. We get so used to being in this way that we take it with us as we grow up. The problem is though, as you can imagine, when you are a grownup and you want to live an authentic and sovereign life where you really are fulfilled, where you have meaningful connections and relationships, and you are aligned with your own values, you can't really do that if you keep on dismissing yourself and if you keep on letting yourself down. One of the first ways in which we abandon ourselves is through people pleasing, through behaving in ways that keep other people happy, through saying yes to other people at the cost of our own needs, at the cost of our own wants, so that we don't rock the boat. Often with people pleasing, you'll also find that there's an avoidance of conflict. Instead of entering in some conflict situations where you need to stand up for your own rights, we just avoid them altogether. Having a very strong toxic or negative inner critic is another way in which the self abandonment shows up. And this is something that I'm very familiar with. So healing my relationship with myself and dealing with the effects of a very negative and toxic inner critic has been a bit part of my own healing journey. When we have a very strong inner critic, we also tend to be quite perfectionistic. So it's overly perfectionistic in the sense that you never give yourself a break, nothing that you do is ever good enough, and you always keep on moving the goalposts. So you never find that you feel successful, you never find that you feel as if you've achieved something. You're always falling short and you're always finding fault. Having poor boundaries, either very rigid boundaries or very poorest boundaries is another sign of self abandonment. And this again, feeds into the people pleasing behavior where you say yes, when you actually mean no. And what could even happen is if you say yes often enough, if you've been doing this for long enough, if you've been training yourself so well to always overgive, to always take care of the needs of everyone else, to assume responsibility of everyone else's happiness, if you've skilled yourself in being like this, it can be really, really difficult to start saying no. It creates incredible internal conflict. And so it's really very important for us to have so much compassion and patience when we begin to work with these patterns as we begin to unravel them. And even some of the emotions and the feelings that we walk around with internally are signs that we abandon ourselves in the outside world. When we put expectations on other people to treat us in certain ways or to do certain things for us or to show up in certain ways, and they don't do that, we become resentful, we become angry. We say, you know, I'll just take care of that myself because you are letting me down. And when we start feeling resentment like this, it flows out into so many different areas of our lives and it turns into a negative conversation that feeds into your inner critic. It feeds into the narrative of I'm not worthy and I'm not enough, which is the core wound that underlies the reason why we self abandon, the reason why we self-sabotage, the reason why we dismiss ourselves and why we don't stand up for our own needs and our own desires. In order to break through the cycle of self abandonment, one of the things that we need to do is we need to heal that core wound of I'm not worthy, I'm not lovable, or I'm not enough. Also, things like feeling as if you've been taken advantage of, that is a big signal to say that you need to explore the relationship that you have with yourself. People only take advantage of us when we let them. They can't take advantage of us without our permission, even if that permission is implied. And we imply that it's okay for people to take advantage of us if we continue to dismiss our own needs, if we continue to dismiss our own values, if we continue to dismiss our own principles. And if we just reject everything that we stand for, feeling that other people's opinions of us are more important. And then the final way that if you're feeling this, this may be a red flag to show that you are self abandoning is if you don't want to be a burden or if you don't want to inconvenience anyone. And again, this is something that I'm very familiar with, where I feel I will rather take on all of the tasks myself, and I don't ask for any help because I don't want to inconvenience anyone. I don't wanna be a burden. I don't wanna get in the way. I don't want to make a nuisance of myself, so I will just back off and take care of it in my own way. If you recognize some of this, then I can highly recommend starting to work with your feminine energy, becoming more skilled in your feminine currency of feeling, of slowing down and connecting into your own truth, into your own wisdom. I'll link a video for you below that talks a little bit more about that. So if you've now recognized that some of these self-sabotaging patterns are playing out in your life, then the next obvious question is, how do I begin to heal this? How do I change this? So I mentioned it earlier, and I just want to say again, the most important ingredient in healing these self abandonment patterns is a very big dose of self-compassion and patience. Think about it. It took you your whole lifetime up until now to learn these patterns. You're not going to unlearn them in a day. It's a process. And what I'm gonna share with you now, all of these kind of work intertwined and they will over time lead you towards showing up in a way where self abandonment isn't even on the cards for you anymore. A way where you are truly connected to yourself, where you are authentic, you show up as the whole of you, and you accept all parts of yourself. Because this is the secret to healing self abandonment. You need to heal the relationship with yourself first. You need to see that you are worthy. You need to see that you are lovable. You need to see that you are good enough just as you are, and that you don't need others to validate you. You don't need others to approve of you. And when you can come from this place where you are authentically connected to your own self-worth, it completely changes the way that you show up in relationships. It completely changes the way in which you feel confident enough to start asking for what you need. It changes the way that you are able to assert yourself when, you know, establishing your boundaries and saying what you are available for and what you are not available for. So let me now share with you the ways in which you can begin to break this cycle of self abandonment. And after the compassion and the patience is in place, I feel the first thing that you need to do is you need to make a commitment to yourself. You need to decide that this is a new way of being that you are going to embrace.
We always have a choice to change the way that we feel inside, and that choice is one of our sovereign gifts, right? So you can make the choice right now in this moment to begin to change these self abandonment patterns. And once you've made the choice, the next step is to commit to them. One of the things that we do when we self abandon is we don't stand up for our own needs, our own beliefs and our own thoughts and feelings. And by just making a commitment to breaking this pattern, this is already a practice in standing up for your own beliefs. So awareness is so important. You can't change something if you don't know about it in the first place, which is quite logical. But this is why self-awareness is so key. In order for us to transform or to shift or to create something new in our lives, we have to be aware of what it is that is not working anymore and what it is that is preventing us from showing up in the way that we truly desire to show up. So self-awareness, I really see this happening on two levels. The first level is the mental awareness of you starting to pay attention. Where in your life are you abandoning yourself? Starting to see where you can recognize some of these patterns, some of these habitual responses, some of the typical things that will trigger you into self abandoning. And really begin to identify your specific brand of self abandonment, if I can call it that. We all have our own unique way in which these dynamics show up in our lives, and things that may be true for me might not be true for you. And so it's so important for us to really go within and start to explore with honesty and vulnerability. What are the ways in which this is showing up in my life? How is this affecting my relationships? How is this affecting the way that I hold boundaries?
So that's the first level in awareness, is on the mind side. So really begin to educate yourself there. And then on the physical side of the awareness is begin to notice in the instances where you get triggered and you reach for one of these self abandonment habits, how does it feel in your body? What are the thoughts that you have about certain situations or people? What is the self-talk that comes up? And how does it make itself known in your body? Our body is such a rich source of information. And if we can learn to turn to our bodies first as a source of information before we turn into the opinion of the outside world, this is a very powerful way of being. Now, so often all of the beliefs that we have, the conditions that's been put upon us, the stories that we've been told about ourselves and our worth, and the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves and our own worth, all of this can cause us to feel very unsafe to be ourselves.
One of the ways in which we can begin to cultivate this internal safety is to learn the skill of self soothing. And this really is a way of making your inner child feel safe. Often when we have these self abandonment patterns, I see this as our inner child that's just coming out and doing what they know best. They self abandoning in order to fill some emotional need. And so if we can begin to offer that emotional comfort to ourselves, if we can make our inner girl feel seen and loved and welcomed and cherished, then the effect of that is that these patterns start losing their hold. If I don't have to go look out there to have my emotional needs fulfilled because I'm already fulfilling them internally, this is how we begin to change and transform our lives. And then the final level, which I see is so key in us healing these self abandonment wounds is to learn the skill of embodiment. Instead of running away from your emotions and your feelings and those undesirable and unwanted sensations and thoughts, which is a reason why you are reaching for something outside of you to fill that emotional hole, instead of turning away from that, turn into that. When we become more embodied, it allows us to really get to the truth of us, to the heart of us, to get in touch with our authentic selves, and it makes us feel alive. One of the unfortunate side effects of self abandonment is that we start feeling numb. We don't feel our own aliveness anymore. We don't feel our own joy anymore. We don't feel our own passion anymore. These self abandonment patterns and the destructive habits that we use as coping mechanisms, they don't only lie in our mind, they really lie in our nervous system and they lie in our subconscious minds, you might come up with this wonderful plan that the next time that your boss asks you to stay late for work, you are just going to say no. As soon as you want to say no, you are going to have this tumultuous response in your internal world that you might not be consciously aware of, but you are going to start battling feelings of shame and guilt and discomfort and conversations about what's gonna happen, what are gonna be the repercussions if I stand up for myself. So this whole internal dynamic is going to take place and it's going to activate you. And that's why it's very difficult for us to change any of these behaviors simply by making a plan or putting action steps in place. We have to go deeper. We have to work with our nervous system. We have to work with the truth that lies in our bodies. And I also understand that for many of us, because of some of the experiences that we had in our lives, it doesn't always feel safe for us to go within to explore what our body has to share with us. And sometimes the information that our body shares with us may be colored in and clouded by anxiety and fear and pain. And so that's why I say this is a process. It's not something that's going to happen overnight. So self soothing, I see this as a key ingredient for us to feel safe in our bodies. Self soothing is going to support you to begin to unravel and break through some of the barriers that might be in the way of you accessing the truth of your body. We are so used to only living from the neck up. We're so used to avoiding all of these uncomfortable feelings that are in the body. But I often say it's like the boogeyman. You may be so afraid of feeling what is there, but then once you look under the bed or in the cupboard and you see it's not really so scary, it kind of unravels and dissolves that tension. So becoming more embodied works exactly like that. We might be so afraid of what it is that we feel when we allow ourselves to finally go there, but this is actually where the release lies. By learning to become more embodied, by inhabiting more of yourself, by being more of who you are, you are going to develop self-trust. And self-trust, self love and self-acceptance is the medicine against self abandonment.