You're Not Selfless. You're Self-Abandoning

Hot take: there's nothing noble about disappearing inside other people's needs. The way you carry everyone else while silently coming apart isn't generosity. It's a survival strategy you got handed before you had any say in it, and you've been calling it being a good person ever since.

You hold the room together while quietly falling apart inside it, answering the text right away even when your nervous system is begging for ten minutes, laughing off the comment that actually hurt, staying easy and accommodating and low-maintenance because being any other way once cost you something you couldn't afford to lose.

That's not selflessness. That's self-erasure with better branding.

The version of you that self-abandons wasn't born this way… you were trained to be this way because the adults in your life chose to let their own wounds raise you.

You remember what you were told once: "Be good." "Stop crying." "You're so difficult." "Why do you have to be like this." "Other kids don't act this way."

Each one was a small instruction in how to be loved by the people you depended on. You learned that needs were inconvenient, feelings were too much, and being easy was the difference between belonging and being a problem.

So you became easy. You became the kid who didn't ask for anything, the friend who never made it weird, the partner who could handle whatever got thrown at her, and the kid who held it together so your family could stay functional.

Recognizing that isn't an excuse. It's the start of finally seeing what you've been doing to yourself in the name of being good.

Here’s What Self-Abandonment Looks Like

It's saying yes when your whole body is saying no. Apologizing for taking up space in conversations you started. Editing your stories so they don't land too heavy on the person you're telling them to. Pretending you didn't notice the slight because addressing it would make things uncomfortable.

You hide your own wins while making sure everyone else feels celebrated for theirs. When someone misunderstands you, correcting them feels too risky, so you let it go. Picking the restaurant you actually want is somehow harder than eating somewhere you don't want to be. After enough years of performing okay, you forget what not-okay even feels like in your body.

The deepest version of this is giving until you're empty and calling it love. You pour yourself into someone for months, sometimes years, then resent them for not noticing how depleted you are. The whole time you were pretending you weren't.

What a privilege it is to be loved so well that it triggers every wound from when you weren't.

This 👆 has been sitting with me all week. It's been undoing me in the best way.

The triggers that show up inside good love aren't a sign that something's wrong. They're proof that you've finally landed somewhere safe enough for the unhealed parts to surface.

The most transformative love I've ever experienced isn't the kind that bets on someone's potential or waits for them to grow into who they could become. It's the kind that meets you exactly where you are, in real time, every day, and with steady presence.

That kind of love doesn't try to fix you. Instead, it holds you while you work on yourself. There's a consistency that becomes the foundation letting your healing take root.

And the beauty in being witnessed by someone who isn't going anywhere is the type of emotional growth and safety that will allow you to finally retire your survival roles.

There's actually research that backs this up. It's called the Michelangelo Phenomenon, and it was originally studied in close romantic relationships. The idea is that the right partner becomes a sculptor of sorts, not by changing you, but by reflecting back the version of you that already exists underneath the survival roles. Their steady belief in who you actually are slowly chips away at everything that was never really yours to begin with.

I think the underlying mechanism applies to every kind of relationship, not just romantic ones. Each of those relationships becomes its own kind of sculptor, slowly returning you to yourself.

That's what real love does. It doesn't ask you to become someone else, and witnesses who you've always been underneath everything you had to become to survive.

Retiring from self-abandonment looks like a thousand small reroutes.

• Saying the thing instead of swallowing it.

• Naming the disappointment instead of explaining it away for the person who caused it.

• Letting silence sit in a conversation instead of rushing to fill it.

• Saying no without apologizing for the no.

Each time you choose yourself over the performance, you're undoing a sentence that someone older than you wrote on your bones. Every "be good" and “be easy” begins to lose its grip. The kid in you who learned that their needs were a burden gets to see what it feels like to finally have someone honor them, starting with you.

See you next Saturday ❤️

Suttida

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