When You Stop Abandoning Yourself, Everything Shifts | How Self-Honoring Rebuilds Identity and Emotional Safety

Introduction

Last week, we named something many people feel but rarely articulate: self-abandonment often disguises itself as selflessness. It looks like kindness, flexibility, and sacrifice, but underneath, it slowly erodes your sense of self.

Awareness is powerful. But healing does not stop at recognition. It continues in the moments where you choose differently, where you stay with yourself instead of disappearing.

This is where identity begins to return.

What Happens After You See the Pattern

Once you recognize self-abandonment, a wave of mixed emotions often follows. Relief, grief, guilt, even fear can surface. You may realize how often you silenced yourself to keep relationships intact or to avoid discomfort.

This does not mean you were weak. It means you were adaptive.

But when you stop using an old survival strategy, your nervous system may feel unsettled. Choosing yourself can feel exposed before it feels empowering. That discomfort is not a sign you’re wrong, it’s a sign you’re changing.

Why Choosing Yourself Feels So Uncomfortable

If safety once depended on being agreeable, helpful, or low maintenance, self-honoring can feel risky. Your body learned that approval meant protection. So when you stop overriding your needs, your system may react with guilt or anxiety.

This is not intuition telling you to stop. It’s conditioning asking you to return to what’s familiar.

Learning to choose yourself is not an act of rebellion. It is an act of repair.

Self-Honoring Is a Practice, Not a Personality

You don’t stop self-abandoning with one big boundary or declaration. You stop in small, quiet moments.

It looks like pausing before saying yes.
Naming discomfort instead of swallowing it.
Allowing someone else to be disappointed.
Listening to your body when it asks for rest.
Letting your needs matter without justification.

Each of these moments tells your nervous system: I am safe to stay with myself.

And identity grows through repetition.

When Relationships Begin to Shift

As you stop self-abandoning, some relationships will change. Some people will adjust. Others may resist. This can feel painful, especially if you’ve been the one holding everything together.

But healthy relationships do not require your erasure.

If connection only survives when you disappear, that connection was never truly mutual. Healing invites you to stop carrying the entire emotional weight alone.

Practice for This Week

When you feel the urge to override yourself, pause and ask: What would it look like to stay with myself in this moment?

You do not need to act immediately. Just notice.

Presence is the beginning of change.

Journal Prompt

Where in my life am I choosing comfort for others over honesty with myself? What might shift if I honored my needs in one small way?

Affirmation

I am allowed to choose myself without guilt. I do not disappear to be loved. My identity deserves space to exist.

Conclusion

Self-abandonment helped you survive. Self-honoring helps you live.

Each time you stay with yourself, you reclaim a piece of who you are. And over time, those pieces form something solid, grounded, and whole.

You are allowed to take up space, in your relationships and in your life.

Written by Marcia Blane, LPC, NCC, C.Ht.
Licensed Mental Health Counselor | Trauma-Informed Life Coach | Clinical Hypnotherapist
www.marciablane.com