Latest / RiseUp - Live Joy Your Way / How to Recognize and Heal Self-Abandonment

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How to Recognize and Heal Self-Abandonment · RiseUp - Live Joy Your Way

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Today's episode is produced by my friends at Walk West.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you're looking to grow your brand and generate leads through podcast or video production, head over to walkwest.com.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's start the show.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: Rise up, live joy your way.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: From emotional intelligence through cognitive distortions, certified life and wellness coach Comedy Wood is on a mission to help people see the magnificence of their own unique human spirit.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Through these small bites of self-visation and self-confidence, you can have healthy relationships, success in business and career, and live the life you want to live.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: Rise up, live joy your way.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Hi there, and welcome to another episode of Rise Up, Live Joy Your Way.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Whether it's morning, afternoon, or evening, I want to say thank you for taking some time out of your day to spend with me.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: And today's topic is one that hits deep for many of us.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a topic of self-abandonment.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: So what I want to do is break it down, talk about how to recognize self-abandonment and to give some real life examples and to explore how we can actually rise up from self-abandonment one step at a time.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: So first and foremost, how do we even recognize that self-abandonment is happening?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because even before we can figure out when it's happening, we have to understand what self-abandonment really even is.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, in my humble opinion, when I'm defining self-abandonment, I say that it is what happens when you ignore your own inner voice, when you are overriding your own needs, or you are suppressing your emotions, or shrink yourself to be accepted, liked, or even more importantly, and what I see more and more often is shrinking yourself to keep the peace.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: So when we're talking about self-abandonment, it may sound something like, uh, I want to say this, but I don't want to rock the boat.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Or if I ask for help, I'll seem weak.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Or they need me more than I need to rest.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I know with the work that I do with high achievers, that's a common one that I hear a lot of the time, whether it be in work or personal relationships, there's always this idea that somebody else needs something, and that's so much more important than the individual's need to actually rest and to refuel.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And when that happens, and I've said this before, that's when you might catch yourself um over functioning, right?
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: So you might be functioning, but you're actually overfunctioning.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: So on paper, even though you look like you're thriving, right, deep inside, there is this unspoken ache or this disconnection from your own self.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what we're talking about when we're talking about self-abandonment.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: So if I was going to give a couple more concrete examples, if you are feeling exhausted, but you say yes to another request to volunteer for something because you don't want to let the person down, that would be an example of self-abandonment.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe if you're at work and you disagree in a meeting, but you find yourself nodding ahead or nodding along, you know, you're nodding your head, nodding along because you want to avoid being seen as difficult or um adversarial.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, another example might be you feel overwhelmed at home, but instead of asking uh either your partner or your kids for help, you just tell yourself, well, this is what I signed up for, or this is this is what is expected of me.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: These might seem like small decisions, but what is happening when you repeat them over time is that they become patterns.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: And what they become patterns of are saying to yourself, your needs don't matter, your voice doesn't count, and you just need to be um, you need to be compliant, you need to be, you need to be easy, right?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: You need to be easy to get along with, you need to go along with what's being requested of you, because you don't want to be seen as a difficult person.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: All that to say is that those are all examples of you abandoning yourself.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: So if we were to go even one level deeper on this, right?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: We were to take this to even the next level.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: For many of us, um, especially those of us who are raised in environments where love was conditional, meaning, you know, in order to get the affirmation or to be told that you were loved, there was some requirement, some transaction that needed to happen for you to receive that.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: What we did was we internalized messages and learned learned early on that approval meant safety and that being good or helpful meant that we were accepted.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so once again, we adapted to that.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: And through that, we became the achievers.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: We became the peacemakers, we became the fixers, right?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we become those things, when we become the achievers, the peacemakers, the fixers, then we start shutting ourselves down, shutting our voice down, shutting down our own needs, and we take on these roles and we are self-abandoning.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: So when we do this though, here's the problem that we need to kind of bring to the awareness.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: When you abandon yourself in order to earn love, you're never actually, you never actually feel loved because you're constantly chasing more.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because what's happening deep down is that they're loving sort of the mask of you, not the real you.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: They're they're loving the doing part of you, but there's this disconnect from the loving the actual person that you are, right?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Your human being part of you.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do we start coming back to ourselves if we find ourselves in this self-abandoning pattern?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's that's the crux of this.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's the reason why we're even having this conversation today.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to offer just some ideas that um you could try, some grounding tools.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really trying to offer tools that are kind of the no fluff, but the basic things uh that we can do to start stopping the self-abandonment pattern.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: The very first thing, and I've said this time and time again, is awareness.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: So the very first step is to name the moment, right?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Start catching yourself in real time.
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  SPEAKER_00: Try actually naming, like, oh, this is the moment where I want to actually abandon myself or I want to keep quiet.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: But instead, I'm gonna make the choice to pause and then recognize that when you take that pause, you're actually giving yourself some power back.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And through that pause, you're creating space between whatever was requested and whatever you're about to say.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: And in that pause, you have the ability to come back home to self.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing I want to offer is the mirror rule or the mirror idea.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Think about it this way: if your best friend told you the same story that you're living, what advice would you give to them?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because oftentimes we find it easier to be kinder, wiser, and also more protective of other people than we do to ourselves.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: So when you use the mirror rule, you think about what you would say to your best friend or even a loved one, and you offer yourself that same advice and that same care that you're offering the other person in as you visualize them.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Another way to break this pattern is to reclaim the word no.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Your no is sacred.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Every time you say no to something that drains you, you really are saying yes to your own wholeness.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to overexplain or justify a simple, I'm not able to do that right now, is perfectly fine, perfectly acceptable, and is truly enough.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: The fourth thing I want to add one offer in terms of ways to break this pattern is um setting micro boundaries.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that is oftentimes when we say set boundaries, that feels so big and so overwhelming.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: So this isn't about overhauling everything all at once overnight, but it's to say, you know what, well, I'm gonna start small and then I'm going to build off of that.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: So a small example would be I'm gonna put my phone on do not disturb starting at 9 p.m.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Or, you know what, I recognize that this group chat is really draining to me.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna actually choose to either leave the group chat or I'm gonna at least mute it.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you recognize that you're the fixer.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so you this the small boundary that you set for yourself is uh setting uh time aside.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like for instance, if you're a fixer, you're gonna say, well, I'm gonna give myself a few minutes before I even respond, right?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: So what I'm trying to say here is start setting some small boundaries.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: As you start setting those small boundaries, they're going to build off of each other and you're gonna create a bigger shift.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then I actually am one of those people that believes in writing things down because when you get it out of here onto paper, there's a difference.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you can start journaling on things like, you know, where in my life am I currently betraying myself in order to keep other people comfortable or I'm trying to keep the peace?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Or another question that you could journal on is what am I afraid will happen if I truly show up as myself?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Or where in my life am I craving to be seen?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Or where in my life am I craving to be heard that I'm not?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: When you give yourself time to think of these questions or even other ones, you know, where am I just, what what am I, what am I needing to say that I haven't said?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: And you just let the thoughts flow, you're gonna start becoming aware of where you might be self-abandoning.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: When we self-abandon, and I have been there and continue to work on it because we're all humans, we're all evolving.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it doesn't mean that you're broken or that there's something wrong with you.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: It just means that that was a way that you have adapted in order to survive.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And now it's about how do we shift that?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: So you're not just in survival mode, but you're actually living and you're and you're thriving.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: And as I've said before many, many times, you know, these are stories, these are narratives.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: And we always get the opportunity to rewrite whatever narrative we've set for ourselves.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so you get to say, I'm not gonna shrink myself anymore.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm no longer gonna overfunction.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna continue to disappear.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: If this resonated with you or you think it might resonate with somebody else, I would love for you to share it with them.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and if you'd like to talk about how coaching could potentially support you on your journey to whatever's next in your life, feel free to book a time with me anytime at coachwithcomedy.com.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: And until next time, stay well.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening to Rise Up, Live Joy Your Way.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: For more information, book a chat with comedy at www.chatwithcomedy.com.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: Or visit her website at www.comedywood.com.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: You can also find comedy on Facebook or Instagram.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Username it's authenticme.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening.