Stop Self Abandoning to Keep Connections

You wake up already calculating who you need to be today based on who's going to be in the room. Before your feet hit the floor, you're adjusting.

You've gotten so good at it that you barely notice anymore. The way you soften your voice before you say something honest, check someone's face mid-sentence to see if you need to course correct, train yourself to want less and need less and take up less space because that's what keeps things smooth.

Somewhere along the way, you confused being loved with being tolerable. And now you're exhausted from a job you never applied for.

Every relationship in your life has a cost. But some relationships charge you in a currency you can't afford: your own identity.

You stopped mentioning certain dreams because the response was always lukewarm. Certain clothes stayed in the closet because of a comment that stuck. Preferences disappeared altogether because having them meant risking conflict, and conflict meant risking them.

So you handed over pieces of yourself like deposits. You thought you were building something, but you were actually just paying rent to exist in your own life.

The cruel part is that it works for a while. People stay. The peace holds. You convince yourself this is just what maturity looks like, what compromise requires, what love costs. But the math never balances. You keep paying and the account never fills up. It just drains you.

At some point you have to ask what you're actually keeping. A relationship where you're allowed to exist? Or one where you're only allowed to exist as long as you don't disturb anything?

Where This Started

You didn't decide one day to abandon yourself. This was taught, modeled, absorbed before you had language for it.

You might have grown up watching someone you loved erase themselves to keep the family stable. Learned early that your feelings were inconvenient, your needs negotiable, your presence only welcome when it didn't complicate things. Love in your house was probably conditional in ways nobody ever said out loud but everyone understood.

So you adapted. You became easy, flexible, the kind of person who doesn't cause problems. And you carried that into every relationship since, not because it was healthy but because it was familiar.

The template you're working from was written by people who didn't know any better. It was handed to you before you could question it. But you're not a kid anymore, and the rules that kept you safe back then are suffocating you now.

This Week's Podcast: Stop Self-Abandoning to Keep People Around

In this week's episode, I'm getting into what it really costs you to keep people around at the expense of yourself. I talk about how this pattern forms, what it looks like when you're deep in it, and what becomes possible when you finally stop negotiating your identity for proximity. 

Give it a listen 🎧

The Exit Is Through, Not Around

You can't think your way out of this. You can't journal your way to self-worth while continuing to abandon yourself in every interaction. At some point, you have to do something different even when your whole body is screaming at you to fall back in line.

That might look like saying something without pre-screening it for approval. Making a choice based on what you actually want instead of what will cause the least disruption. Letting someone be uncomfortable because their comfort is no longer more important than your existence.

Your nervous system will panic. This is unfamiliar territory, and unfamiliar reads as dangerous to a brain that learned early that being yourself had consequences. But you're not in that house anymore, not dependent on those people anymore. The stakes are different now, even if your body hasn't caught up.

Every time you choose yourself in a small moment, you're teaching your system that you can survive being honest. That disappointing someone won't kill you.

Some people won't adjust. They liked the version of you that didn't ask for much, didn't push back, made their life easier by making yours harder. When that version stops showing up, they won't know what to do. Some will leave, others will try to guilt you back into the old shape.

Relationships that require your self-abandonment aren't relationships. They're arrangements, transactions where you trade pieces of yourself for the illusion of connection. You've been on the losing end of that deal for long enough.

What's left after those people go is room. Room for connections that don't require you to perform, for people who actually want to know you instead of just benefiting from your compliance, for yourself to finally exist without apology.

See you next Saturday ❤️

Suttida

P.S. If you're ready to do this work for real, my 4-week digital workbook will walk you through it. Grab your copy here.