Love Won’t Heal Your Self-Abandonment

This is not a podcast about being broken, although you may have been. This is a podcast about strength for women who find themselves in difficult relationships, including that sometimes difficult one with yourself. We'll look at your relationship through a lens of psychology, faith, and a little dash of my own kind of feminism. We're not fixing them. We're fixing you. And that changes everything. Welcome to Stronger in the Difficult Places. Save yourself, heal your relationships. Listen in. Hello, welcome to Stronger in the Difficult Places. I'm your host, Dr. Zoe. Today, the topic is love won't heal your self-abandonment, but here's what will. I haven't podcasted over the holidays because I've been very busy putting something together that I'm very excited about. It's called the Stronger Woman Collective. This is a program that I'm starting. I'll be starting at end of January, beginning of February. If you're already on the waiting list, don't worry. You haven't missed anything. I'm just busy putting it all together, but we're going to ramp up late January, early February. You will get an email from me. If you haven't gotten on the list yet, hop on the list. It's free to get on the list. It's just the waiting list for the Stronger Woman Collective, which is a program that I am putting together for women who are Generally pretty successful, maybe high-achieving women, but notice that they have some codependency in their romantic relationships. They have some complex shame, which is sabotaging them in many areas of their life, maybe, maybe business, but definitely relationship. And we're going to work together in community to walk through the steps of complex shame, to learn to set healthier boundaries, overcome codependency so that you have A healthier relationship with yourself, which is going to create the healthy relationships you deserve. If you want to be part of this, it's the Stronger Woman Collective. I'm so excited. I'm going to be coming in live into the program where I will work with you guys on a live basis. We're going to be doing this untangling complex shame and codependency life together, and I'm so excited. So come join the Stronger Woman Collective. The information to sign up for the waiting list is in the show notes. So today we're talking about how love won't heal your self-abandonment, and here's what will. You don't heal self-abandonment so that someone will finally stay. You heal so that you do. That is a pretty profound statement because what we don't realize is that when we self-abandon, we develop resentment. And when we develop resentment, our relationships tend to fall apart. They tend to Disintegrate. And sometimes it's you leaving the relationship, but that's because you self-abandon. So first, self-abandonment does not begin in romantic relationships. Self-abandonment begins way earlier in family of origin and the way that you interacted with your parents and the way you saw your mom either self-abandon or the way you were required to self-abandon as a child in order to get what you needed to get your needs met. A lot of women learn to disconnect their needs from their sense of self very early in life or in an earlier relationship. So the relationship you're in right now is not causing the self-abandonment. That I want to make sure that you're clear of, that you're clear about. And sometimes it feels like, well, when I begin to really love someone else, self-abandonment happens because maybe they're allowing me to self-abandon. The reality is, unfortunately, the way that humans work is that if people are going to do things for us, we will often allow it, especially when we love them and we feel that they love us. We will take all of that. And in relationships where women tend to be self-abandoning, they are overgiving, abandoning themselves, and then feeling resentment. So self-abandonment begins in survival. Long before love enters the picture, many women learn to disconnect from their needs, their instincts, and their boundaries to stay safe, loved, or chosen. That's how it begins. And then you enter this relationship, right? So you enter this relationship and you can be deeply loved and still feel empty. So let me explain why that is. You can be in an actual relationship that's very loving, And still feel empty. And the reason why is because especially with women who have some complex shame, and codependency and complex shame go together, by the way, with women who have some complex shame, they tend to hide inside of their relationships. So you can be deeply loved, but if you're hiding parts of yourself, if you're hiding your actual needs, if you're not speaking up and saying what you need and expect from the relationship, then when someone loves you, there's still a sense of not being loved because there's a feeling like if He really knew me. If he really knew these things that I'm hiding from him, he wouldn't love me. And so even when you're deeply loved, you can still feel unloved because you are not being your true authentic self with someone else. So when you don't care for your needs or demand that your needs be cared for in a relationship, no amount of affection, reassurance, or commitment can fill that internal fracture. You'll keep reaching, right? Maybe overgiving. You'll keep reaching outward for the thing that actually must be repaired inside. So what happens is you get in this romantic relationship and your love, your, the love you have, or the love they have for you actually exposes your self-abandonment issues. It doesn't cure it because the way you tend to love is to overgive. And And so you will give, or you will sacrifice, or you will hide things to try to be loved. And that is the process of exposing that in a relationship, because when you're not in relationship, or at least when you're not in a romantic relationship, you may not feel a need to do any of those things. You can just be yourself, even be demanding, right? Even be very clear. And other types of relationships, work relationships, Other types of relationships, but then you get into these romantic relationships and all of a sudden you're not being clear. You're not demanding what you deserve. You are overgiving. You're getting in this position of codependency, right? You're trying to manage his emotions or prove your, your worthiness. And so we think that love is creating this, but love is not creating it. It's exposing. That tendency, that need, that survival skill that you already have, because complex shame convinces women that their emotional needs are too much. And so then when you make your partner responsible for making you feel needed and valued and cared for, then you end up feeling resentful and unloved. Self-abandonment disguises itself as loyalty. It disguises itself as flexibility. It disguises itself as being Low maintenance, not wanting to be a difficult person, right? And many people, women especially, confuse emotional disappearance with maturity. So what do I mean by that? Many women will say, well, I just don't really need that. I'm, I'm, I'm more mature now. I don't need him to take care of me. They feel like that's maturity or like that's grace or that's strength. But strength is not not needing someone else. Right? Strength is not not speaking up for yourself and demanding what you need in a relationship. That's not strength. That's codependency. Strength is doing that brave, courageous thing, is saying, hey, it matters to me that you didn't give me a Christmas present on Christmas. Hey, I expect my partner to be available to me when I'm in need. Hey, this is my love language. And it really matters to me when you give me acts of service or when you spend time with me, quality time, these things matter to me. Hey, I'm feeling triggered because this is an issue I have. And I need you to know that when you forget to call me, when you're running late, it's a trigger for me and it makes me feel devalued and uncared for. I need you to know that it's not your job to fix my trigger, But it's your job as a partner to know the things that trigger me. So complex shame also teaches us that your needs are the problem. Shame convinces you that if you want more, if you ask for clarity when your partner says something to you that doesn't make sense or hurts or contradicts something he said before, or that when you set limits, that it will cost you love. And so you choose disappearance. Over honesty. And that's what I meant by emotional disappearance. You choose to tell yourself your feelings aren't valid, they're too much, and so I'm going to make them disappear so that I can be loved. The most painful relationships often mirror how you treat yourself, how you think of yourself. And that might be really hard to hear, but what you will find is that when you begin to love yourself, When you begin to treat yourself differently, you tolerate less in a relationship. And less doesn't mean bad. It just means you tolerate less mistreatment than you did before. And that's because now you're loving yourself. Because what happens is choosing yourself doesn't destroy love. It clarifies it. And when I say clarifies, there may be people who are hanging around because you are low maintenance. But you've got to admit to yourself that even in those relationships, you don't feel loved. And so what are you really getting if you're staying in a relationship with someone who doesn't value you and love you, but will stay with you because you're easy? So choosing yourself doesn't destroy love because in a relationship, when you show up choosing yourself, when you show up demanding the respect that you deserve, It just clarifies the love that was already there because a partner who loves you will say, oh yes, of course I'm going to step up. Oh yes, of course. I didn't realize you needed that because you never told me and you acted like you didn't. So when you begin to choose yourself, you actually become more capable of true emotional intimacy. I think it's also important to know that healing self-abandonment requires grief, not just insight. So you might be listening to me today and think, yeah, I know I do those things. I do self-sacrifice. I'm doing this to myself, right? And that insight is important, but sometimes you also need to figure out, okay, and how do I stop doing that? How do I actually stop giving and overgiving when that's so— that comes so natural to me? And the first thing I want to say is that your work isn't to stop giving. It's to find people who will give back just like you're giving. If you are naturally a giver, if you are naturally someone who loves to care for people and give, then your work is to find somebody else who does that as well. Ironically, we tend to be drawn to the opposite in that way. So giver, you know, users will tend to connect really well with givers because they love that and they don't wanna put in the work and a giver won't make them. And givers tend to connect really well with users because it's in some way, it's a dynamic they're familiar with and they're trying to earn love because there's a A mantra. There's a message that you believe that you need to earn love. And so if you get with someone who doesn't require you to abandon yourself, it actually feels a little uncomfortable. It actually feels like, well, what's my value? What do I bring to the table? Right? And I'm here to remind you that your value is simply your presence. Your value is simply your personality. Your value is simply— You being willing to connect with somebody on a deep emotional level, that is your value. You being willing to do life with somebody. Your value is not in what you can do for someone else. Your value is not in abandoning yourself to try to get somebody else's love. And we have to grieve that. And it's not a kind of grief where, oh, this is so sad. I hate that I have to stop overgiving. It's a grief about the false knowledge that you had that in order to get love, you have to abandon self. And when you are no longer abandoning self, there is fear and there is loss because you got something. Maybe you got some kind of reinforcement. Maybe you got the Martyr of the Year award from your family and your friends. And that stroked your ego and that made you feel valuable. And you've got to grieve whatever you feel that you were getting from your self-abandonment. That's part of the process. And so what I'd like for you to do is sit and think, what am I getting from this? What am I really getting? And what do I hope to get? And what do I imagine I'm getting? Because sometimes those are not all the same. We imagine if I give and give, then they're going to love me in the way that I need to be loved. But are you really getting that? Are you just hoping, right? And then maybe, yeah, you do get those accolades. And how can you replace those in a healthy way so that you no longer are hustling for your own worthiness? So you've gotta grieve sometimes also the years that you survived by disappearing, and you've gotta honor the wisdom of the parts of you that learned to do that, because it's a smart woman that learns to self-abandon in order to survive. So let's not forget that. It's a very smart woman that learns to self-abandon in order to survive. But you've got to continue to be the smart woman who recognizes that I no longer need to do that. I needed to, and that was good. And thank you, self, for learning how to survive. And now in order to thrive, I need to no longer self-abandon because I can take care of myself in a way that I couldn't take care of myself then. And now I can. And so the best way that I can care for myself is to no longer abandon myself. So the real work is learning how to stay with yourself. If I'm in a place of, I don't need to self-abandon, I might feel a little lonely, which is interesting because you would think that when you are no longer self-abandoning, that at first you would just feel full, but instead you feel lonely. And that's a grief too, because you've got to stop a behavior That you believed was actually getting you love. And so when you stop that behavior, there's some moments of needing to kind of adjust. Your partner, the people in your life will need to adjust, and it might feel like abandonment, which is the very reason why you're self-abandoning to begin with is because you don't wanna be abandoned by somebody else. And so you've gotta sit with that tension of, will I be loved? Will I be cared for? Am I going to be okay if I'm no longer self-abandoning? And so your work is learning how to stay with yourself, how to love yourself in those moments when you are unsure. I speak to myself on a daily basis and I use my name because there's something about using your name that jars you. It reminds you, it makes you listen up. When someone says your name, whatever your name is, say it out loud. When someone says your name, you turn. You listen. And so when I'm talking to myself, especially when I'm in a space of fearing abandonment, when I go back to that little girl Zoe, or very early young adult Zoe, who was struggling, who was hustling for worthiness, I tell her, Zoe, you're safe. Zoe, I can take care of you. Zoe, you're okay. Zoe, you are lovable just as you are today without having to give or overgive or abandon yourself in order to receive love. You, just as you are right now, your presence, your unique personality, that is enough. That is enough. And so I stay with myself and I remind myself that I'm here. And I'm not going anywhere and I'm staying. I can't go anywhere, but I still remind myself, I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying with you. And that's enough. When love gets hard, when not being loved in the way that you want to be loved gets hard, the deepest healing happens when you no longer leave yourself to be loved. You no longer leave yourself to be chosen. You no longer leave yourself to be kept. And you can do it. You can do that hard work. So the hope is this: self-abandonment is learned and anything learned can be unlearned. So you didn't disappear because you're weak. You disappeared because like I said before, it once worked and it kept you connected and it kept you safe. And that means that the part of you that abandoned yourself is also not the enemy. The part of you that abandoned yourself, and I call it the Phantom Critic, if you read my book, Stronger in the Difficult Places, You will know. I call her the Phantom Critic because she's a phantom of your past. And she will teach you to sabotage your present because she's trying to protect you from what she needed to protect you from back then. Right? So she's a phantom. She's trying to protect you, but you don't need her to do that anymore. And so anything learned can be unlearned. And so acknowledge your Phantom Critic and recognize that it's a protector, that no longer needs to run the show, what I call the courageous truth teller, that part of you that is healthy, that part of you that is interdependent, and I can talk a little bit about what that is later, that part of you, allow her to show up and allow her to run the show and tell the Phantom Critic where she can go. And healing also doesn't require you to blow up your life or walk away from love. I know a lot of people feel like I'm an an endorser of leaving relationships. And I am in fact the opposite. I am an endorser for keeping relationships healthy and whole. I used to talk about the fact that you can save your marriage all by yourself, that you can save your relationship all by yourself. Wisdom and maturity has taught me that's not true. I wish it were. The reality is that you can start to save your relationship all by yourself. You can do the hard work of trying to bring your partner in, but ultimately you cannot maintain a relationship by yourself. And that's a hard lesson to learn, a lesson I have had to learn, that eventually your partner needs to come with the same intent with you. Your partner needs to come together, but I'm going to talk about that. More in another episode. And so healing does not require you to leave relationships, but it does begin with small, quiet acts of you returning to yourself. And that looks like telling the truth when it would be easier to stay silent. That looks like pausing before you override yourself. That looks like not automatically saying yes. That looks like checking in with yourself, your mind, your body, and your spirit. Before you move forward and agree to something that is self-abandoning. It means noticing what you feel and valuing what you feel instead of explaining it away and instead of not listening to yourself. And I, this still happens to me. I won't say on a regular basis, but every now and then I will be in a conversation or I will have some kind of interaction. And there's a part of me that says, Zoe, this doesn't feel right. Or Zoe, that's not okay. And a little, then that fandom critic says, oh, it's okay. You're overreacting. You're just being triggered. Oh, this isn't, you know, I'm invalidating myself. And always, always, always something ends up being revealed to me later that tells me, oh yes, you were spot on, Zoe. That feeling you had, that intuition, that wisdom, that deep-seated wisdom, which is really what intuition is, you were right on. And in that moment, you self-abandoned yourself. You abandoned yourself because you didn't trust yourself. You explained it away because you didn't want to be too much, or you didn't want to be perceived in a certain way. And so healing just requires you To stop before you override yourself and believe yourself, believe that deep inner knowing. And as you learn to stay with yourself, as you learn to respond in the moment, as you learn to discern what is a trigger, what is about present, and what is about past, you stop begging for love to rescue you, and you start allowing love to meet you where you already are. And here's the deeper truth that I think a lot of women don't acknowledge is that the more you choose yourself, the less you settle and the less you settle, the safer love becomes. Because I think a lot of women will think the more you choose yourself, the less you settle. And now there's nobody out there for you because you don't settle anymore. And that's not true. The truth is the less you settle, the safer love becomes, the more secure you become in you. And so you actually just become a magnet. Of love and of care and of attention and of interest, because you're no longer creating this energy of, please choose me. And what's most important is that we don't heal self-abandonment in order to be alone. We heal self-abandonment in order to be in relationships without disappearing. And that's— The work. And that's the hope that you can heal your relationship with yourself, that you can begin to stop self-abandoning so that you can be in healthy relationships. And that's a wrap for today. You've got this. If you want more information, if you want more day-to-day work on overcoming codependency and complex shame, I didn't end up talking today about interdependence, but I'll be talking about that later. But if you're interested and you really want to join a community of women who are doing this together, Join my Stronger Woman Collective. Get on the waiting list. It's free to get on the waiting list. I will let you know when we start, and I hope to see you there. And if not, I will see you on the next episode. Thank you for listening to Stronger in the Difficult Places. Stay strong.