People-pleasing and self-abandonment

A few years ago, I sat in a circle of eight women, each of us sharing bits of our life stories: how we were raised, what we came to believe about ourselves, and the unconscious behaviors that resulted. When Carolyn mentioned “self-abandonment” to describe her inability to put herself first in relationships and how she suffered because of it, a lightbulb went off. Most of us had felt pretty emotionally abandoned as kids. Suddenly it struck us. Without realizing it, we had perpetuated that abandonment by continually prioritizing others’ wants, needs, and desires at our own expense.It’s a hard pill to swallow – recognizing that despite all the good work, hard work, you’ve done, you’ve unconsciously wound up hurting yourself in ways you’d never thought of. Because for those of us conditioned as young girls to be nurturers and people-pleasers, self-abandonment can become an entrenched pattern

Here are a few ways self-abandonment might look:

• disowning your own core values,
• putting others’ desires before your own,
• dismissing those gut feelings and intuitions,
• ignoring your mental, physical, emotional needs,
• making choices based on what you think you “should” do instead of what you truly want.

At its heart, self-abandonment a betrayal of your inherent self-worth.

But you want more for your life, right?

The path to that life starts with taking small actions to reclaim YOU:

• Take time to be still and reflect on the ways you’ve inadvertently abandoned yourself,
• Have a heart-to-heart with your inner child, vowing to better attend to her needs, letting her tell you how to nurture her now (Mine often wants to put on a pretty dress and get “made up”)
• Practice expressing your true thoughts and desires, even if it’s uncomfortable at first (and it probably will be – even stating “I want Italian” might feel challenging)