You’ve gone through a lot of trials and tribulations in your past. Those trials can lead to feelings of self-abandonment that tend to harp over into your present life. In your present, with feeling abandoned, there is likely to be a cycle of self-abuse that you are unsure of how to get yourself out of. Self-abandonment is an unfortunate orthodox unorthodox feeling that you want to know how to break out of.
Overcoming self-abandonment includes acknowledging your past and reflecting, seeking help, practicing validation, overcoming fears, breaking the cycle, staying present and accepting. However, overcoming self-abandonment takes a lot of practice and patience and knowing what self-abandonment entails.
Read more about what self-abandonment is and what self-abandonment would entail in a relationship, along with the seven steps to overcome it.
As a digital publisher, we may receive compensation from BetterHelp, Online Therapy, Talkspace or similar programs if you purchase products or services through the links provided.
Article Topics
What is Self-Abandonment?
So, what is self-abandonment? Self-abandonment ignores your thoughts, feelings, and needs by putting others’ needs before yours. When you are feeling an emotion or feeling about something within your instincts, you ignore them by downplaying how you are feeling.
Self-abandonment, for some, can originate from childhood due to trauma and neglect and seep into adulthood and form relationships throughout your lifetime. Other happenings can come along the way when you are abandoning yourself.
Read more to learn about what happens when abandoning yourself.
What Happens When You Abandon Yourself?
When you are abandoning yourself, you are putting yourself as the second priority—placing yourself as a second leads you to leave your health both physically and mentally. When you abandon yourself, you hide your genuine emotions from others to please them.
Hiding your feelings over time can also lead you to second-guess yourself because you are not used to expressing your feelings. So, if someone were to shut you down and make you feel your opinion or emotions aren’t of value, you tend to believe them over your instincts.
Abandonment over your feelings can lead to depression and anxiety, developing low self-esteem and confidence. These feelings and mental illness, if ignored, can lead to a cycle of toxic, abusive relationships with friends, family, and intimate partners.
Relationships are typical situations for people with self-abandonment issues to display self-destructive behavior. Many things can happen to one who deals with self-abandonment.
Read more about what self-abandonment is within a relationship.
What is Self-Abandonment in a Relationship?
The abandonment you have felt in the past can seep into your relationships. Self-abandonment in relationships can display many self-destructing and toxic patterns that can be used as a way for your partner to take advantage of your most vulnerable moments.
Self-abandonment in a relationship can include:
- Bottling up your feelings.
- People-pleasing.
- Being submissive and not standing up for yourself.
- Differentiating from your core values and morals.
- Judging and criticizing yourself.
Despite these displays of self-abandonment in a relationship, there are ways to overcome this and break yourself from the cycle of your past trauma and abandonment.
Read more about how to overcome your self-abandonment.
How Do You Overcome Self-Abandonment?
To start with, self-abandonment takes patience and practice. It is not easy and will not happen overnight. To want to overcome self-abandonment, you must tell yourself that you will try hard every day, and if you mess up, you will pick yourself back up again and try again.
Read more about the seven steps to overcome self-abandonment.
7 Steps to Overcoming Self-Abandonment
Feelings of abandonment can stem from many things, and it can be a hard step to overcome. These steps simultaneously require plenty of affirmations to get yourself through these steps.
Read more about seven steps to overcome self-abandonment.
Acknowledge & Reflect
Acknowledge your past and reflect on it. To overcome your self-abandonment, you will have to acknowledge what you’ve been through in your past and reflect on how It’s made you a person and how you can be a better person. Not being in denial that you are not a perfect person is a starting point to self-growth and overcoming your self-abandonment.
Another reason to acknowledge your past is to look back at your family history or any other points in your past to pinpoint when your feelings of abandonment started and how they made you feel. Acknowledging this can be a starting point for figuring out ways to heal yourself from the abandonment you are feeling.
The signs that you notice in your past are the same ones that can creep up in your present. Recognize the signs of your behaviors and mannerisms from both past and present. When recognizing these signs, be patient with yourself that it will take time to break out of that cycle.
Seek Professional Help/Have a Support System
Seek professional help, or have some support system. Find people who you can identify with and can have a conversation with. Finding others like you can boost your social skills and self-esteem and make you feel less alienated. Ways to find such a support system are group therapy, group clubs, events, etc.
Practice Validation
Practice validating your feelings more. Expressing your emotions is not a bad thing and is normal and should be continued to be normalized. Remind yourself that it is okay to cry or become upset about something you are going through. Consistently validating your emotions will help you become more open with others comfortably. Overall, you will be able to process how you are feeling a lot better versus if you bottle it up and internalize them.
Overcome Your Fears
Overcome your fears—a lot of fears surrounding self-abandonment. Fears can range from losing someone you love to being broken up with. In many cases, fear is irrational and can typically be based on overthinking what has happened in your past. Learn to stop yourself and reflect on why you are feeling these fears in the first place. Self-reflection can halt you from exhibiting repetitive behavior that has been done in the past.
Break the Cycle of Trauma
Break the cycle of your trauma and refrain from being in the victim mentality. Those who have coping skills to dissociate mentally and physically are likely to be in the victim mentality role and stay in abused relationships. Staying in situations like this is a form of self-sabotage and a continuous cycle of self-abuse from yourself and the actual abuse inflicted on you by a partner, friend, or family member.
This is a work in progress to flip the script and advocate for yourself, so being patient is a part of the process. Also, seek a support system or professional help.
Stay Present
Stay present at the moment. Many of the greatest moments and memories can be made and focused on in the present. Thinking about the past or past emotional trauma can take away the joy of the now. The history will have you relieve your past traumas, causing you to overthink things that you wish you could’ve done differently or have feelings of despair, feeling trapped and abandoned into your old habits once again.
Ways to stay present are socializing, putting your phone down, going out to events, meeting new people, etc.
Self-Acceptance
Accept yourself and do not feel ashamed about it. Self-acceptance shows others and yourself that you love yourself and all of your flaws, but you still vow to be a better person. Feeling ashamed of yourself will only feel like you deserve to feel abandoned, which is not the case because everyone deserves to be treated equally, with respect.
Closing
You have now learned about what self-abandonment can happen in relationships with someone who abandons themselves. And you have also known about the seven steps to overcome self-abandonment.
