I will not stay – not ever again – in a room or conversation or relationship or institution that requires me to abandon myself.
~Glennon Doyle, Untamed
“To abandon myself.” I’ve been thinking a lot about those three words. And I’ve been thinking about the myriad ways, over many years, that I abandoned myself. Or, as I sometimes put it on this site, that I betrayed myself. And it is that betrayal, of myself, that was even more painful than my husband’s betrayal of me.
Not all of you have betrayed – abandoned – yourself. Among our mighty tribe are those who held their ground, who knew themselves, who never tolerated disrespect or silencing, who, when they found out, fought like hell for themselves and never doubted their worth.
And then there are the rest of us.
The pleasers. The silenced. The don’t-rock-the-boaters.
Even now, almost 14 years after D-Day, I struggle with not betraying myself. Those old lessons, carved into my cranium in childhood, are hard to unlearn.
I have to challenge myself constantly, in matters big and small. If someone is upset, I always ALWAYS try to fix things. I didn’t know this about myself. Not at first. It’s like that comic of the two fish swimming around when one fish says, “The water is nice.” To which the other fish replies, “What’s water?” I didn’t see myself pleasing because I didn’t realize there was another way to be.
Fixing things was the water I swam in.
Pleasing was the oxygen I breathed. And it was killing me.
But though, when I read words like those of Doyle’s, I respond with a raised fist and a “hell yes!”, when I try to imagine living those words, things get a bit fuzzy. Like…what exactly does it look like to never again stay in a room or conversation or relationship or institution. I’m all for not abandoning myself, but…how?
In a word, boundaries. Boundaries, I have learned, are the single best way to ensure we don’t abandon ourselves. Boundaries are a superpower. And yet, most of us have grown up in a culture and a society in which boundaries were often confused with being selfish.
Consider this conversation I had with my father when I was visiting him. My 22-year-old daughter called, stressed about an event she was holding at our house. I had been out of town visiting my dad and the house was “messy”, she told me. And where was the bucket for ice? And…and…and… I could feel my own stress rise. I wished I was there to help her and lower her stress. It’s a familiar dynamic between my daughter and me. When she stresses, I over-function, which leads to her underfunctioning. Her anxiety pulled me in, like a fishing line hauls in a fish. So though I kept telling myself, “this is not my problem. This is not my problem”, I nonetheless felt that THIS IS MY PROBLEM. I told my dad about the conversation with my daughter. “It’s because you care,” he said. No. Wrong answer. But that’s what I’ve always been taught. That we over-involve ourselves because we care. That we take on problems because we care. But I now know that’s just not true. I take on my daughter’s problems because I lack boundaries around her. I want to fix things for her because her anxiety triggers my anxiety. It’s not about caring, it's about reducing anxiety. I can care and be empathetic without trying to fix things. In fact, I now know that it’s more caring (and healthy!) to trust that she can handle things herself. Which, incidentally, she did, given that I wasn’t able to step in and fix things. As the old saying goes, constantly holding our child’s hand leaves them one less hand to use.
But, wow, is it hard! We women have been told for so long that “caring” is the same as “fixing”, that loving is about pleasing. And so, in all our fixing and pleasing, we abandon ourselves. By the time we read something like what Glennon Doyle says, we sense its truth. But often we’re so far gone we don’t recognize ourselves. We’re no longer sure where we end and other people begin. So when we’re asked not to abandon ourselves, we might think, “hell yeah” but when it comes down to it, we aren't even sure who "ourselves" is anymore.
That was me. Maybe it’s you too.
But I’m here to assure you, it’s not a lost cause. YOU are not a lost cause.
You have abandoned yourself. But you are worth rescuing.
It’s going to be a steep learning curve. You are going to have to flex some atrophied muscles. You are going to have to retrace your steps sometimes to figure out exactly where you veered off the path. You are going to have to learn that “no” is a complete sentence. You absolutely must prioritize your own needs, within reason. Agreeing to something you disagree with is a surefire way to mix resentment into your relationship. You are going to have to disentangle the idea of a wishbone and a backbone. You can’t wish someone into caring about you. You must insist on it as the price of admission into your life.
You will mess this up. That's a given. But our job is not to know, it is to learn. And be willing to self-correct.
Let's do this together. No more abandoning ourselves. No more pretending we're fine when we're not. No more taking one for the team. No more sacrificing our own wants and needs to ensure that every else gets theirs.
No more.
Who's in?
