Healing the Self Abandonment Wound
A Path to Authenticity and Wholeness
What is the Self Abandonment Wound?
To live an authentic life is to live a life true to who you are, aligned to your values, your desires, your dreams, and your deepest soul self. Living authentically often necessitates saying no to what no longer serves you. We abandon ourselves when we don’t place a value on ourselves, on our own opinions and views. We abandon ourselves when we don’t honor our own needs and wishes— when we don’t act in our own best interest, and place more value on others' needs before our own. We abandon ourselves when we don’t stand up for ourselves— when we don’t comfort and support ourselves when we need it in our lives.
How might the Self Abandonment Wound show up in your own life?
See if you recognise any of these in your own life.
Not trusting your instinct: You may find yourself constantly feeling doubtful when making decisions. It is difficult to listen inward and truly trust your inner judgment and inner compass or to give voice to that in the world.
Not appreciating your successes: You may find yourself ‘slapping away’ compliments and you may feel unworthy of good things happening. It is difficult to truly feel worthy of love and care and to be celebrated.
Ignoring your own needs to please others: You hide your true feelings in moments of conflict. You say yes to ‘keep the peace’.
Your inner world is very punitive: There is a harsh critical voice inside that is very judgmental. It is difficult to allow care and compassion. “Who do I think I am?” may be part of that inner judging voice.
You hide your authentic self: You feel you are a different version of yourself, in different situations and with different people. You hide parts of yourself in order to be liked and to fit in.
You feel shame often: You might go over and over conversations in your mind with a critical lens, scanning what you said or didn't say, and worry you said something wrong. You often feel shame and self-doubt inside.
Perfectionism: You try to be perfect and find it overwhelming at times. You set unrealistically high expectations of yourself. You find yourself working late, finding it hard to say ‘no’, taking on projects beyond your capacity, and then feeling exhausted and burnt out.
Hyper-vigilance: You often feel that other people’s moods are your fault and you sometimes feel panicked and anxious when someone is in a ‘bad mood’. You scan the environment and people’s body language for the slightest hint of their moods - you are often watchful, vigilant, and internally anxious.
Over time, when we continually engage with this pattern, we abandon our own true selves. This pattern greatly impacts our relationship with ourselves and others too. It is highly stressful on a day-to-day basis. It is a mode of survival from childhood that over time is exhausting and debilitating.
Why do I have this Wounding?
The first nervous system we are attuned to is our parental figures. If we feel safe in their presence and feel that we belong, if we feel loved, listened to, seen, and valued, our nervous system comes to trust the world, accurately detects threats, and responds accordingly and we have the ability to soothe the nervous system down when the threat has passed because we have an inner template of support to rely on, one cultivated from our caregivers.
If we felt unsafe and felt like a burden, maybe because the family was in chaos or overwhelmed, then the nervous system responded by either shutting down or engaging in hypervigilance, trying to stay safe. Looking after the needs of others can become part of that survival mechanism. This is where, in childhood, an unconscious decision to abandon ourselves was made in the service of survival and the focus on the other dominated.
To be hyper-independent can be a way to keep this hurt and wounding at bay - “I will look after everything by myself”, “I don’t need anybody”.
To open ourselves up to vulnerability can feel very risky when we have been wounded and hurt and yet, to be vulnerable is also to open ourselves up to love, compassion, care, grief/loss, letting someone in, and letting life flow in. Our nervous system has come to expect threat so it will brace and armor against it.
It is an unconscious protective mechanism to ensure you won’t be let down again. The thing is, love inherently is vulnerable. Needing people is vulnerable. We can understand now, with compassion, why we responded from a place of protection and how it also now prevents us from ever having the opportunity of experiencing being supported and cared for, something we naturally all crave and need as part of the human condition.
What would healing this wound mean to me in my life?
To bring conscious awareness in our lives to this wounding is not an easy path and takes hard work and practice because it is a survival mechanism from childhood. It is vital though on our path of individuation and it is so worthwhile!
To truly engage in a meaningful life is to live a life true to who we are. To strive to live a conscious life not only improves our relationship with ourselves and others but also, our turning to the world.
A Journey Inward series of workshops was designed and cultivated to look at the Self Abandonment Wound and it explores how you can create awareness around this in your life and the ways you can begin to support yourself to heal and transform this wounding.
When you start to choose yourself in your life on a day-to-day basis, you start to feel your own presence in the world. A presence that no longer needs to be in survival mode. When you start to choose yourself rather than the pattern of abandoning yourself you will find that:
You don’t make small or little of yourself in order to be accepted or fit in anymore.
You listen to your intuition - your internal compass. How rich that gift is to the soul self.
You speak to yourself with the intention of compassion, love, and kindness.
You find yourself feeling more and more at ease with your own company.
You set healthy boundaries and this helps you in your working life as well as in relationships with others.
You don’t feel as exhausted as you did when you were engaging in hyper-vigilance.
You have an internal template for self-care and you have your own back.
You listen inward and honor what you need in a given moment.
You stand up for yourself and communicate clearly what you need and desire.
When we start to meet this wound and begin to heal it, there is a sense of peace and contentment that comes into the body. There is space inside, where we can begin to build a relationship of love with ourselves. This is so enriching in our lives, and it benefits us and the world around us. It feels very strange and unfamiliar at first, but with practice, it gets easier and it becomes a way of being. You meet yourself with love, as you are. As Marion Woodman the Jungian Analyst once said - “This is who I am, because this IS who I am”.
When we meet this wound and begin to heal it, there is more capacity and space for creativity, more space inside to play, to truly feel free and confident in ourselves and our inner world, free from the hypervigilance we lived with since childhood. In that loving relationship with ourselves, we are more compassionate to our strengths and weaknesses, consciously choosing to love and support ourselves.
This is the essence of this work - this is the Journey Inward.
Gra agus beannacht, (love and blessings)
Eileen
