Why you were raised to abandon yourself.
Think back to when you were a child…
How often did your parents genuinely ask you, “What do you want?”, “What do you think?”, “How do you feel?”, “What do you believe?” or “What do you want to do?”
For a lot of people, probably not very often.
Because the way many people are raised is built around a completely different question. Not, “What do you want?” but, “What do your parents want from you?” “What do they want you to do?” “How do they want you to behave?” “What do you need to say so you do not upset them?” “What do you need to do so you do not get in trouble?” “How do you keep Mum and Dad happy?”
Obviously, children need parenting. They need boundaries. They need discipline. They need to be told no. I am not saying children should just be allowed to do whatever they want whenever they want. What I am saying is that there is a MASSIVE difference between teaching a child that they cannot always have what they want and teaching a child that what they want DOES NOT matter.
And I think a lot of people grew up learning the second one.
You can see it in some of the smallest, most normal parts of childhood. A child comes home from school and the parent does not ask, “What do you want to eat tonight?” They say, “This is what you are eating.” The child says, “I do not like that,” and suddenly it becomes a problem. “You are eating it anyway.” “You are not leaving the table until you finish it.” “If you do not eat it, you are not getting dessert.”
Now obviously, a parent cannot cook five different meals every night because their child changes their mind. That is not my point. My point is what we sometimes communicate to the child underneath all of that.
The child has simply expressed a preference. “I do not like this.” But instead of teaching them, “What you want matters, even though you cannot always get what you want,” we can end up teaching them, “What you want is irrelevant.”
And that lesson goes much deeper than food.
It becomes, “It does not matter that I do not like this. It does not matter that I do not want to do this. It does not matter that I think differently. It does not matter that I feel differently. The important thing is that I do what Mum and Dad want me to do.”
We do the exact same thing with opinions and emotions.
How many of us were in arguments with our parents as children and eventually just said whatever would end the argument?
You knew what you actually thought. You knew what you actually felt. But you also knew that they did not really want to hear it. They wanted to hear the answer that would make them happy.
If you continued expressing what you genuinely thought, suddenly you were “answering back”, “rude”, “rebellious” or “disrespectful”.
So eventually you learned something. It is easier to lie. It is easier to say what they want to hear. It is easier to pretend you agree. It is easier to abandon what you actually think and feel than it is to deal with the conflict that comes from being honest.
You learned that EXPRESSING YOURSELF AUTHENTICALLY is WRONG and ABANDONING YOURSELF TO PLEASE SOMEONE is RIGHT.
And that is such a dangerous thing to teach a child, because now you are not just teaching them obedience. You are teaching them INAUTHENTICITY.
You are teaching them that honesty creates conflict while performance creates peace. You are teaching them that other people’s approval matters more than their own convictions. You are teaching them that the safest way to move through relationships is to work out what the other person wants from them and then become it.
You are teaching your child to abandon themselves, to be inauthentic and, worst of all, to have NO CONVICTIONS.
So slowly, without even realising it, the child learns, “What I think is less important than what Mum and Dad want me to think. What I feel is less important than how Mum and Dad want me to feel. What I want is less important than what Mum and Dad want. Keeping them happy is more important than being honest about who I am.”
And then you become an adult.
Mum and Dad do not disappear. They just CHANGE FACES.
Now Mum and Dad become your friends, your romantic relationships, your work colleagues, your boss, your social media… EVERYONE.
And you carry the exact same relational patterns you learned in childhood into every relationship you have as an adult.
You are still asking the same questions you learned to ask as a child. “What do they want from me? What do I need to say? How do I need to behave? What version of me will they like? What opinion can I express without upsetting them? What do I need to hide? What do I need to change about myself so that I am accepted?”
Except now nobody has to tell you to do it anymore.
You do it AUTOMATICALLY.
You walk into a room and instead of asking, “Who am I?” you are subconsciously asking, “Who do I need to be here?”
That is where people pleasing becomes so much bigger than simply saying yes too often. It becomes an entire way of living.
You learn to read everybody else before you read yourself. You know exactly how everybody around you is feeling. You know what they expect from you. You know what they would approve of. You know what would disappoint them. You know what version of yourself they prefer.
But ask yourself what YOU want and suddenly you have no idea.
Ask yourself what you ACTUALLY think and you hesitate.
Ask yourself what you ACTUALLY believe and you start wondering what EVERYBODY ELSE believes first.
Ask yourself how you want to dress, what you want to do, what you want to say, what kind of life you want to live, and before you have even answered the question, you are already thinking about who might disapprove.
THAT is self abandonment.
It is not just abandoning what you want. It is abandoning what you think, what you feel, what you believe, what you value, how you express yourself and eventually WHO YOU ARE.
And I think that is why so many people feel guilty the moment they even think about themselves.
How many of you reading this feel uncomfortable asking yourselves, “What do I want?”
How many of you immediately feel selfish? That very simple question immediately provokes guilt, shame and selfishness within us for even slightly considering it.
How many of you cannot make a decision without first running through everybody who might be affected, upset, disappointed or offended?
And seriously, how many of you are at the VERY BOTTOM of your own priority list?
How many of you have absolutely EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING above YOURSELF on YOUR priority list?
Your partner. Your family. Your friends. Your work. Your boss. What everybody expects from you. What everybody needs from you. What everybody thinks of you.
You think about all of them before you even think about yourself.
And eventually, somewhere right at the bottom, if there is any space left, which usually there is not, you might finally think about yourself, only to feel guilty and immediately forget about yourself all over again.
Seriously, stop and think about that for a second.
How can it possibly be healthy for YOU to be the least important person in YOUR OWN LIFE?
We have somehow convinced ourselves that this is healthy.
We have praised SELF ABANDONMENT and called it SELFLESSNESS.
But they are NOT the same thing.
It is good to care about other people. It is good to sacrifice. It is good to compromise. It is good to sometimes put somebody else’s needs above your own. That is part of loving people well.
But there is a MASSIVE difference between SOMETIMES putting somebody else first and PERMANENTLY putting yourself last.
The same way that it is unhealthy to live your life believing, “Only I matter,” it is also unhealthy to live your life believing, “EVERYBODY MATTERS EXCEPT ME.”
One extreme completely disregards everybody else. The other completely disregards yourself. Neither is healthy. Both are just as bad.
BUT we are very good at condemning the first one while praising the second.
We look at somebody who only ever thinks about themselves and call them selfish. Fair enough. They are. BUT THEN we look at somebody who has no boundaries, cannot say no, cannot express an unpopular opinion, changes themselves for everybody around them, constantly suppresses what they actually feel and think, and has absolutely no idea what they want from their own life or who they even are, and we call that person selfless and praise them.
They are not selfless. They have just learned to ABANDON SELF.
And living like that is exhausting.
NO WONDER everyone is living in anxiety when every interaction involves trying to work out how you are being perceived. Of course you are exhausted when you are constantly thinking about whether somebody is angry with you, disappointed in you, judging you, rejecting you or expecting something different from you.
Of course living completely disconnected from what you actually think, feel and want can leave you deeply unhappy. NO WONDER so many people are chronically anxious and depressed.
You are performing all the time. You are abandoning yourself all the time. You are living for EVERYONE EXCEPT YOURSELF.
And the performance is ENDLESS because every person requires a slightly different version of you.
That is why learning to ask yourself what you actually think and want matters so much.
If you are a parent, start teaching your child that they are ALLOWED TO HAVE AN ANSWER.
Ask them what they want. Ask them what they think. Ask them what they feel. Ask them what they believe. Ask them what they want to wear. Ask them what they want to eat. Ask them what they enjoyed and what they did not enjoy. Teach them to be their own individual and to be authentically themselves.
You do not have to give them everything they ask for. You do not have to agree with every opinion they have. That is not the point.
The point is teaching them that THEIR INNER WORLD MATTERS. Teach them that they are ALLOWED to think about THEMSELVES.
Teach them that their opinion can matter without always becoming the final decision. Teach them that disagreeing with you does not automatically mean disrespecting you. Teach them that they can tell you what they genuinely think without having to manage your ego because you are too fragile to hear anything other than what you want to hear. Teach them that they do not need to lie to you in order to feel safe or keep the peace.
Because if your child learns that the quickest way to end conflict is to tell you whatever you want to hear, they are going to take that lesson into adulthood.
They are going to do it with their friends, their partner, their boss, with EVERYBODY. And before you know it, you have someone who gets walked all over by everyone and has no real sense of self or individuality.
And then we wonder why we have adults who cannot say no, cannot handle disappointing people, cannot express themselves honestly and have no idea who they actually are underneath all the versions of themselves they have created for everybody else.
So if you recognise yourself in any of this, I think you need to start asking yourself some questions you might never have been taught to ask.
What do I ACTUALLY think? What do I ACTUALLY feel? What do I ACTUALLY believe? What do I ACTUALLY want? What do I ACTUALLY want to say? What do I ACTUALLY want to do? What do I want MY life to look like? Who am I when I am not trying to be what somebody else wants me to be?
And DO NOT feel guilty for having an answer.
I am not telling you to become a narcissist. I am not telling you to stop caring about people. I am not telling you that everybody else’s feelings suddenly do not matter.
I am telling you to STOP LIVING AS THOUGH YOURS DO NOT.
Learn to care about people without abandoning yourself for them. Learn to consider other people’s feelings without making them responsible for every decision you make. Learn to love people without performing for them. Learn to be honest even when honesty might disappoint somebody.
Because you should not have to completely abandon yourself in order to be considered a good person.
And YOU should not be the LEAST IMPORTANT person in YOUR OWN LIFE.
Be honest even if it annoys people, be you even if people laugh, have your own opinions and be okay with the fact that people WILL disagree, express yourself without the fear of others, have your own voice, your own thoughts, your own preferences, wants and desires. Have your own individuality and your own sense of self.
And finally, abandoning yourself to win the approval of everyone else is IMMORAL. It is the highest form of manipulation and the biggest lie we are telling everybody every day.