What Does It Mean to “Abandon Yourself?”
By Andrea Lahana
“Don’t abandon yourself” is one of those phrases that gets used a lot in therapy spaces, relationships, and social media. But what does it actually mean?
Self abandonment is not a clinical diagnosis. It is a way of describing the moments in which we disconnect from our own feelings, needs, boundaries, values, or internal experiences in order to maintain something else. A lot of the time, that’s a relationship. But sometimes it’s approval, peace, control, or a sense of safety.
It can look like saying yes when you want to say no, convincing yourself something “isn’t a big deal” when it actually hurt, or knowing something in a relationship does not feel right but repeatedly talking yourself out of it because losing the relationship feels scarier. It can also happen internally when we reject the scared, angry, needy, jealous, or insecure parts of ourselves because we have decided they are “unacceptable.”
In that sense, healing is not just about learning how to stop other people from abandoning us. Sometimes it is about learning how to stop leaving ourselves.
Self Abandonment in Relationships
Relationships are one of the easiest places to see self abandonment because attachment is involved. Most of us, quite frankly, are terrified of abandonment. When a relationship feels important to us, the possibility of rejection or loss can activate really powerful responses. For someone with a history of inconsistent relationships, betrayal, emotional neglect, or relational trauma, maintaining connection can start to feel more important than maintaining authenticity.
This might look like not bringing something up because you do not want another argument, becoming hyperaware of your partner’s mood while losing track of your own, telling yourself you are “asking for too much,” or changing your boundaries because you are afraid enforcing them will make someone leave. Sometimes we spend so much time asking, “Am I being unreasonable?” that we forget to ask, “Does this actually feel okay to me?”
Research on self silencing describes similar patterns in which people suppress their thoughts, feelings, and needs in an attempt to maintain intimacy (Jack & Dill, 1992). Emotional suppression during relationship sacrifices has also been associated with lower emotional well being and poorer relationship quality (Impett et al., 2012).
Keeping the peace and feeling safe are not always the same thing.
When Being “Understanding” Becomes Self Abandonment
Self abandonment does not always look dramatic. Sometimes it looks like being incredibly understanding. You understand their childhood, their trauma, why they shut down, why commitment is difficult, or why they behave the way they do.
Empathy is important, but empathy becomes a problem when understanding someone else requires us to repeatedly explain away our own experience. You can understand why someone behaves the way they do and still acknowledge the impact it has on you. You can have compassion for someone’s trauma without volunteering to be hurt by the ways they cope with it.
Sometimes understanding why someone behaves a certain way becomes a way of avoiding a harder question: Regardless of why they are doing this, is this relationship healthy for me?
Self Abandonment After Trauma
For people with trauma histories, self abandonment responses may have started as protection. If expressing anger resulted in punishment, hiding anger made sense. If having needs overwhelmed a caregiver, becoming “low maintenance” made sense. If disagreement threatened connection, people pleasing made sense. If paying close attention to someone else’s emotions helped you anticipate what was coming next, hypervigilance made sense.
The problem is that these patterns can continue long after the original environment has changed. We can become incredibly good at reading everyone else while struggling to read ourselves.
From an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy perspective, people often develop strategies to avoid or control uncomfortable internal experiences. The difficulty comes when avoiding discomfort begins pulling us away from our values, relationships, and the life we actually want (Hayes et al., 2006). Sometimes we disconnect from ourselves because, at one point, staying connected to ourselves did not feel safe.
What Self Abandonment Can Look Like in Parts Work
Parts work gives us another way of understanding this. Imagine there is a part of you that is terrified your partner is going to leave. Another part immediately responds, “You’re being ridiculous. Stop overthinking.” Now there is not only fear. There is shame about having fear.
We often want to identify with the calm, secure, rational parts of ourselves while becoming frustrated with the anxious, angry, jealous, or reassurance seeking parts. But parts work invites curiosity instead. What is this part trying to do for me? The anxious part may be scanning for abandonment because it remembers what abandonment felt like. The angry part may be protecting a boundary. The people pleasing part may believe connection depends on being agreeable. The part that wants to run may believe leaving first is safer than being left.
Listening to a part does not mean handing it the steering wheel. You can acknowledge that a part of you is terrified without immediately ending the relationship, sending ten texts, shutting down, or demanding reassurance. The goal is not to obey every internal reaction. It is to stop rejecting yourself for having one.
Boundaries and Staying With Yourself
Boundaries are often talked about as something we set with other people, but they are also, and more importantly, about the relationship we have with ourselves. A boundary is partly a commitment to listen when something inside of us says, “This is too much,” rather than immediately overriding it to keep someone else comfortable.
That does not mean every uncomfortable feeling signals a boundary violation. Vulnerability can be uncomfortable. Intimacy can be uncomfortable. Honest conversations can be uncomfortable. A healthy relationship may activate an old wound without actually being unsafe.
The work is learning to get curious about the difference. Is this an old wound being activated, or is something happening in the present that genuinely does not align with my values? Is a protective part trying to prevent vulnerability, or am I overriding something important because I am afraid of losing someone?
Not abandoning yourself also does not mean never compromising. Healthy relationships require flexibility, sacrifice, repair, and consideration of another person’s needs. The difference is whether compromise requires you to disappear. Emotional suppression during relational sacrifices can carry emotional and relational costs, especially when we lose authenticity in the process (Impett et al., 2012).
Healthy compromise might sound like, “This isn’t what I would choose, but I’m okay doing it because it matters to you.” Self abandonment might sound more like, “I really don’t want this, but I’m afraid of what will happen if I say that.”
Learning to Stay
If self abandonment developed as a survival strategy, healing it usually does not happen by simply telling yourself to “have better boundaries.” It happens through building a different relationship with yourself. You start noticing when you dismiss your feelings, explain away something that hurt, ask everyone else for permission to trust yourself, or criticize a part of yourself for reacting.
Sometimes the most useful question is simply: What would it look like to not leave myself here?
Sometimes that means speaking up. Sometimes it means setting a boundary. Sometimes it means admitting you are scared. Sometimes it means leaving a relationship you have spent years trying to make safe. And sometimes it means staying in a healthy relationship even when a protective part of you desperately wants to run.
There is no single behavior that defines choosing yourself. It is the practice of staying connected to your internal experience while deciding what happens next. Healing is not about becoming so independent that you never need anyone. It is about being able to love, connect, compromise, and be vulnerable without disappearing inside of those relationships.
Sometimes the person we most need to learn not to abandon, is ourselves.
References
Hayes, S. C., Luoma, J. B., Bond, F. W., Masuda, A., & Lillis, J. (2006). Acceptance and commitment therapy: Model, processes and outcomes. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 44(1), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2005.06.006
Impett, E. A., Kogan, A., English, T., John, O. P., Oveis, C., Gordon, A. M., & Keltner, D. (2012). Suppression sours sacrifice: Emotional and relational costs of suppressing emotions in romantic relationships. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(6), 707–720. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167212437249
Jack, D. C., & Dill, D. (1992). The Silencing the Self Scale: Schemas of intimacy associated with depression in women. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 16(1), 97–106. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1992.tb00242.x