Well, hello there and welcome to this episode of the Terri Cole show. I'm so happy to see you.
I wanna start with a question. Do you identify as someone who is a kind and generous person?
And does that sometimes look like prioritizing the wants needs desires of pretty much everyone
else above yourself above your own? If you're nodding your head, yes, then this episode is
for you because I'm gonna be talking all about how to avoid self abandoning. What is self abandonment
and what are things that you can do to be less self abandoning and to take better care
of yourself. So before we get into today's episode, if you are brand new here, please
make sure that you hit the bell. Please make sure that you subscribe and introduce yourself in the
comment section, because we are a friendly group and I want you to subscribe so that you don't
miss a thing, because I put out new stuff every single week, usually on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
If you don't know me, my name is Terri Cole. I'm a licensed psychotherapist and relationship expert
and the author of boundary boss, which you can get at boundarybossbook.com. And I also always say,
and I'm so grateful for all of your comments and your participation in this channel.
I read everything. So I, and I love to actually focus and put a highlight on your comments. So
today we are focusing on what Kristi Johnson had to say under the episode,
how to create radical self-confidence with Lisa Bilyeu, who was, that was an interview with this
amazing guest who has a book out about radical self confidence. And Kristi says, thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. This hits home with me on so many levels. I'm struggling to find my joy,
my passion, my purpose, now that my twin sisters are 21 and I can start refocusing on me again.
I love the two of you together, so, so much you both are amazing role models. Thank you both for
the incredibly helpful content. I've been enjoying Boundary Boss for months. I refer to it often
and I'm looking forward to purchasing Lisa's new book now. Well, right on Kristi. Thank you. Thank
you. Thank you for saying so I super appreciate it. All right. Let's move on to today's content.
All right. So let's start with some, some inquiry. Do you have difficulty sort of
trusting yourself? Right? Think about that. Do you find yourself, um, being a boundary disaster?
Do you say yes. When you want to say no. Uh, do you feel like you're suffering from
people pleasing? Um, all of these things are an indication of self abandonment, right? So that's
basically what we're starting with. This is when self abandonment is when we reject or suppress
or ignore parts of ourself, right. Where we actually are just stuffing it down. It's like
not being dialed into our own needs and desires because we're so much more dialed into the needs
and desires of other people. So why do we do it? Well, I mean, listen, like everything else.
I mean, I hate to say it, but it can all go back to the scene of the crime. As I like to say,
which is family of origin stuff. We learn at a young age, um, what to do to get the,
any positive response or avoid negative response from the adults in our life. And again,
this is not to say that those adults did any of this stuff intentionally, and it's not to say
they didn't. Right. So I don't want us to get like caught up and focused on, um, sort of blaming the,
the parental impactors that we had growing up simply because it's not helpful. I don't feel
like we gotta protect them either. It's just not helpful. What is helpful is understanding
how your childhood relational patterns might still be negatively impacting you today. Right? That's
what this episode is about. And that's really what we care about. So if you feel like you are a self
abandoner and I'm gonna get into the ways, like I'll have a list of things, of what it looks like
as always, I'm gonna have a guide for you, terricole.com/guide where you'll have all these
notes. So don't feel compelled to take notes. Um, if, you know, if you didn't get your emotional
or physical needs met as a kid - and nobody got them met perfectly - but if you didn't get them
met in a, in a real way, it really does impact our self esteem and how worthy we feel of love,
affection, attention, and consideration from other people in our lives. So
we have tendency to just take those patterns from childhood and bring them into adulthood,
just like everything else. And again, this is can also be a learned behavior. So in the guide,
I'm also gonna give you a few, um, blueprint questions, because you may come from a long line
of self abandoners, right? That it may not just be that the parental impactors in your life treated
you a particular way. And that's it. Sometimes we see this modeled behavior and the unconscious
message that we get is this is the way to be a man or a woman. This is the way to be a good human,
right? This is the way to be in the world. This is how we're supposed to be. A lot of times, if you
had a very self abandoning parental impactor, that that alone can do it, where you go, oh, okay. I'm,
I'm just moving into that role. Now that I'm, I'm an adult,
then this is how, what it looks like to be an adult, even if it's not in your best interest,
because it wasn't in their best interest either. Right. All right. So let's look at
what are the things that might be happening in your life that can indicate
that you are self abandoning? Having bad boundaries, right. Being a boundary disaster
is one of them. So it's like not, not saying what's on your mind.
Um, not asking, not making a simple request for what it is that you want and you need,
and not setting limits with others, sort of setting yourself up to be taken advantage
of. Right. That's definitely one of the signs of self abandonment. Um, also always second guessing
having difficulty making decisions, not trusting your own gut, um, rumination,
overthinking, all of those things also can be an indication of self abandoning behavior
and also, um, sort of giving it up to other people, allowing others to make
decisions for you. And sometimes we do that by procrastinating so long that we let the situation
make the decision for us. You know, like if you drag your feet long enough on something, either
the opportunity will go away or the other person will then be forced to make whatever the decision
is that they're waiting on for you. Or they're like, okay, well, if you're not gonna decide,
then I guess I'm just gonna decide. So there's lots of different ways that we sort of get out of
taking responsibility for making decisions for ourselves, cuz it can be really scary,
but it is self abandoning, um, having the disease to please, right? The people pleasing syndrome
is another indication of self abandonment, right? It's a lot of external validation seeking, um,
being a chameleon, right? So, so that's sort of like only showing the part of yourself
that you think the people you're with or the person that you're with
will approve of. So that then means stuffing down other parts of yourself. If you think that they'll
be disapproved of another indication of self abandonment is perfectionism
because the amount of self abandonment of needs that comes along with
being, having unrealistically high expectations of yourself and other people mean most workaholics
or many, I wouldn't say most, I'm gonna say many workaholics suffer also from perfectionism.
And there is a self abandoning element to that because it's all about, even if you're exhausted,
right? It's all about just getting the thing exactly right. Even if that means
not resting or doing it another three times or whatever perfectionism is. So mean ,
it's just exhausting when you suffer from perfectionism, because it's almost like
the perfectionism is the highest goal. So how can self care and having a decent relationship with
yourself be the top goal when getting it just right is always the top goal. It is exhausting.
Um, having a really brutal inner mean committee is another indication
of being self abandoning. Just, just being really mean to yourself, saying the harshest things
inside that in real life, you would never say to someone that you loved,
you just wouldn't it's, it's not your nature. So be honest with yourself, if this is resonating
with you, because it's really not okay, it is not okay to be awful to yourself
and then to be lovely to the other people, right? You deserve that same loving treatment. Um,
and crappy self care. Just, just not caring what you need, just going, going, going, or just,
just not taking good care of yourself, not sleeping the way that you need to not, not, um,
fueling yourself with good food to the best of your ability. Like just not having self-care is an
indication because really what we're talking about is feeling unworthy of self-care. We can see how
other people should have it, but the difficulty in seeing that you deserve it as well. Um, another
indication of self abandonment is numbing, right? If we don't like the way that we're feeling,
we can numb it. There's many, many mood altering activities that we can do. Um, or we can repress
those feelings, meaning we push them down into the basement. So somewhere we know they exist, but we
are choosing to not focus on them. There's a lot of avoiding that goes on. If you are numbing, um,
uncomfortable feelings, because you don't know what to do with them because you don't know how
to have the conversation that you needed to have. Whatever the reason is. Um, also another really
big indication of self abandonment is self betrayal, meaning betraying your own values,
how you feel, what you really think, what is really important to you. So when you act against
your own values, that is self abandonment. I had, um, a client, actually, I wrote about it in the
book who was a very decent, um, moral person and married a less than decent moral person.
And this person came up with a scam for them to, she worked, um, at a financial institution
and the husband came up with a scam for them to basically embezzle money. And she went along with
it. Now, she became a client of mine after the fact, but it was, she was so ashamed and so, ugh,
but it was like losing his approval was more important than that self betrayal. And yet of
course they ended up getting divorced and ended up getting caught, ended up getting divorced,
ended up having, you know, having all kinds of legal problems from it. Um, jail and all. Um,
but this is why self abandonment, part of why - and I share that story with you because it's so
incredibly important to be able to stay true to our own moral compass in a world that is lacking
in so much of this. Even if it means having a hard conversation, even if it means the disapproval of
people that you care about, because ultimately, our own approval of us has to be more important.
Because as much as she thought she couldn't live without him, of course she is living without him,
happily and fine and making amends for that mistake that she made. But it's taken years
of healing from that act of self abandonment. It's very painful. And the last one, which maybe is the
mother of all self abandonment, is codependency, one of my favorite topics to talk about.
So what is that, if we're looking, what is it? It means you're focusing on the other person's stuff,
their wants, their needs, their desires. As I like to say, their feeling states, their decisions,
their situations, their circumstances, and their problems, their issues, what they need,
and not focusing on yourself and where you're at and what you need and how you feel.
All right. So what do we do about this stuff? Well, part of it is really, we are reestablishing
or establishing for the first time, a healthy, loving, vibrant relationship with yourself. So
the first thing that we're gonna do is we wanna understand where it comes from. I'm
gonna give you a couple of questions in the guide, Terricole.com/guide that will let you be able to,
um, make the distinction of what you saw in your childhood. What was modeled behavior for
you? Because that's important. So that'll be the first stop. And then we have to dial into
and get to know and understand our own feelings. One of my fave therapists, uh, Sharon Martin
talks about, um, checking in once a day or a couple of times throughout the day with yourself,
right? And it can literally be like I'm feeling... and identify the feeling. What do I need right
now? And when we start to do this on a more regular basis, you become so much more fluent
in your own feeling states. So I would, I will have my therapy clients do this and put
an alarm on their phone and just three or four times a day check in.
Right, right now I am feeling name the feeling. I'll also give you a list of feelings. If you are
not that fluent in feelings, it might be helpful to see it on a list. What do I need right now? And
sometimes it's as simple as I'm thirsty. I need to drink some water or I need to pee, or I need to,
whatever, whatever the thing is, but it's, this is how we start shifting into a healthier
and more compassionate and caring relationship with ourselves is by checking in the same way
you would with a kid, right, with a kid, you don't just let them go all day. Not drinking
water when they're out in the sun, you're like, Hey, Hey, Hey, come on over. You need some water,
right? I mean, if they're too young to tell you that they're thirsty or they're too young to know
that they're gonna get dehydrated, but again, thinking of yourself in that same proactive,
loving way that you would, or that you do a child and, and moving back into the compassion piece,
instead of that inner a-hole being so mean as my friend, Jen Pastiloff would tell you that,
you know, she talks quite a bit about the inner [_]. Um, instead of going with that, be mindful
that you don't deserve that caustic treatment, be compassionate.
That just the endless judging is just so exhausting
and it's not gonna get you where you wanna go. It doesn't make you better. You know, like if
you were raised by parents who thought that being critical would then, you know, really prepare you
for the world or whatever. It just doesn't from a psychological point of view. I hate to break it
to you now. I don't think we need to come from the point of view that everybody gets a medal either,
but the reality is being supportive of yourself, right? And of children, having compassion if they
make a mistake. Of course, we want kids to learn from mistakes, but we need that same compassion
for ourselves. When we make a mistake, stop holding yourself to that crazy perfectionist
standard that no one can meet or just being so mean to yourself, thinking low of yourself.
Because of course, you know, I always say, and it's true when you have a low opinion of yourself,
who do we attract? Other people who will agree with that low self-assessment and you, my dear,
are amazing. There's no other you in the whole history of the world, there has never been and
will never be another person with your DNA, your uniqueness. This is the next step in healing
is embracing and celebrating. What makes you unique? It's not about being like other people.
It really is just like being like you because there is no other you,
there never is going to be. So I think part of this is really allowing yourself to be uniquely
you because only you can do that. That's it. And then of course, boundaries, boundaries,
boundaries. I have so much out there about boundaries. Get clear about your own preferences,
your limits, and your deal breakers. That is your job. If you don't know how go buy my book
or look on anything I've done in the past 10 years on boundaries, but it's important
that you get clear about what's okay, and what's not okay with you, your boundaries or
your own personal rules of engagement. And we've got to let people know what is okay,
and what is not okay with us. That is our job. So I hope that this was helpful to you. If you
really are, have been self abandoning, I hope that this will give you some tools and some inspiration
to take better care of your amazing unique self, because really we need you. We really do. Um, if
this was something that added value to your life, do me a favor and share it with the people in
your circle. I would love that. I hope you have an amazing week taking amazing, amazing care of you.