Hello and welcome to or welcome back to Try Not To Care.
If you're listening in real time and you listened to last week's episode, you know that I talked about the process of learning to love yourself, going from enemies to lovers with yourself.
With that kind of theme in mind, I kind of wanted to expand on it and expand on this idea that we sometimes are our biggest haters, which plays a huge role in how we interact with other people and how we think other people perceive us.
When you have this insecure relationship with yourself, where you don't really like yourself, you tend to think that everyone else around you feels the same way and it's just a matter of time before they leave you.
Obviously, there's more than one reason that we think that people are going to leave us or reject us.
But the one thing that I want to talk about today is how our fear of abandonment is directly linked to our self abandonment.
A quote that I think demonstrates this really well is maybe you have a fear of abandonment because you consistently abandon yourself to convince other people that you're worthy of not being abandoned.
So today we're going to talk about where the fear of abandonment stems from being afraid that people are going to leave us, what self-abandonment looks like, and how you're going to overcome this fear of people leaving you.
So with all of that being said, let's get into today's episode.
I think where people get confused when it comes to the fear of abandonment is they struggle with this fear of people leaving them, but they haven't physically been abandoned.
They look back at their childhood and they're like, well, my parents were great to me.
I had a great childhood.
I don't understand why I'm so scared of people leaving me.
But it's not always a parent walking out on you or forgetting about you.
Most people haven't been physically abandoned as a child, but they may have been emotionally abandoned.
You might have been a little kid, being a little kid, being loud, being crazy, just being yourself.
And, as a little kid, You seek attention, attention specifically from your parents, your grandma, your grandpa, your older siblings.
And when they don't give you that attention that you're looking for, it can feel like abandonment, because you're being ignored and you're being dismissed, especially when those people tell you to knock it off, to quiet down, to stop being so annoying.
And it might not seem like a big deal.
Like when you look at little kids now being loud and obnoxious, you're like wow, they're so loud and obnoxious.
But in that moment as a little kid, it hurts and it sticks with you because you're being yourself.
You're expressing yourself authentically and you're being shot down for it.
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It makes you feel as if being yourself is a bad thing and that if I act the way that I'm acting right now and I act the way that I want to, people aren't going to like that.
They're going to tell me to stop being so loud, to stop being so annoying and to stop being myself, because apparently being myself is a bad thing.
Being afraid of abandonment can begin in a multitude of ways.
There's not one specific situation that makes you start fearing people leaving you.
But the one thing that's consistently at the scene of the crime is the feeling of you're not worthy of being loved.
The most common thing that we all think of is being abandoned.
As a child, you know a parent walking out on you, or your friends or peers at school rejecting you and not wanting to be around you.
These situations make you feel like you did something wrong.
And now you're not deserving of having a parent figure or having friends.
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Another thing that can cause fear of abandonment is inconsistent or conditional love.
Having someone tell you, I will only love you or I will only be with you if you do this for me.
For example with my ex.
He was constantly asking me for money and it got to a point where I felt as if he would only be with me if I was supporting him.
And I felt this way because anytime I didn't give him money or I was unable to give him money, he would break up with me.
It made me feel as if I was only good for one thing.
When you feel this way, what often ends up happening in future relationships and friendships is you feel as if you have to give everything you have and be on your best behavior and do exactly as they say, or else they're going to leave you.
You turn into a serial people pleaser.
Having these types of inconsistent relationships and being around people that make you feel like you're hard to love or you're hard to be around ends up affecting how you view yourself and how you interact with other people.
You start believing that you aren't enough and that people will only love you and they'll only accept you when you're exactly the way they want you to be or when you're giving them exactly what they want.
You try to earn people's affection by minimizing who you are and being who you think they want you to be.
This is what's happening every time.
You find yourself overthinking your words or your actions, when you're texting someone and all of a sudden, you're like, oh my God, I'm so annoying.
I'm probably bothering them.
Or after you hang out with someone and you're playing every conversation you had with them back in your head, asking yourself did I say too much?
Did I overshare?
Was I too loud?
Was I too awkward?
Or when you're out at a bar and you're supposed to be having fun and dancing and singing and being yourself, but you sit back and you stay quiet.
And you stay calm because you're afraid of people judging you or thinking that you're too much.
You can't let your guard down and just be yourself, because you're afraid that if you show too much of who you are, people will either not like you or they will leave you.
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You end up minimizing yourself and suppressing important pieces of you that make you who you are for other people's approval.
You end up abandoning yourself to try to make other people like you, because you believe that being yourself gives people a reason to retreat.
What you don't realize though, is every time you abandon yourself, you are reinforcing the idea that other people will leave you too.
You know yourself better than anyone and you're still choosing to leave.
You are feeding... the thing that you're most scared of.
Self abandonment can look so many different ways, but at the core of it, you are stepping away from all of the things that make you you.
And when I say make you you, I mean who you are without the mask, who you are when you're not performing, who you were when you were five years old and you knew nothing about the world.
Other people and their opinions had no effect on you.
And you were led only by what you were interested in.
You weren't doing things for any other reason than your own enjoyment.
You weren't thinking let me go outside and play in the dirt because Sally down the street is going to think that's cool.
You did it because you wanted to.
I'm talking about that.
Who you would be.
If no one else's opinions matter to you, who you are, with no attachment to anything other than your happiness.
Self-abandonment happens when all of that, all of the things that actually matter to you, you suppress and you ignore and you tell yourself no, that they shouldn't matter, because what other people think and what other people like matters more.
You hide parts of who you are because something or someone has made you feel like You're not good enough as you are.
You feel like everything you do is cringy and embarrassing.
Everything you say is so stupid and so annoying.
You think Expressing your feelings will make you look clingy and emotional and you just aren't proud of who you are.
So you alter yourself and you alter your behavior for the acceptance of others.
You change your interest.
You pretend to not like certain things, certain music, certain clothes, certain people.
You change your ideas and your beliefs.
You pretend certain issues don't matter to you.
You drop your needs for other people and you pretend that things don't bother you.
And you try to look cool and you try to look unfazed.
You bite your tongue to avoid conflict.
You say yes when you mean no.
You take responsibility for other people's actions.
And you do all of this to hopefully be more digestible for other people.
You minimize who you are to uplift other people all to avoid being abandoned by them.
But the thing is, every time that you ignore your needs to say yes to someone else, you are saying no to yourself.
You're doing exactly what you're afraid to do. of other people doing to you.
Imagine if you went to your boyfriend or your girlfriend and you said I really need support right now.
I really need a hug.
And they looked at you and they said, that's great, honey.
Yeah, I'm not going to do that.
I'm going to actually go help this other person out and give them a big fat hug, because they're more important.
That would be a slap in the face.
That would hurt.
That would make you feel abandoned.
That's exactly what you're doing to yourself.
Every time you push your needs aside for someone else, your interests aside for someone else, you suppress your emotions for someone else.
You are abandoning yourself emotionally.
It's so ironic that we beg for people to love us and to not leave us when we have done exactly that.
It's like saying not to bully someone and then you go and bully that person.
It's the pot calling the kettle black.
You want someone to love you and stick with you, but you can't do that for yourself.
You try to be seen as more lovable by everyone around you, while also changing everything about yourself because you don't love you.
We fear being abandoned by others because we've practiced abandoning ourselves first.
The good thing is you can fix this.
You don't have to permanently be afraid of being abandoned.
You know, things happen to us and we can't go back in time and change them.
We can't reverse the damage that's been done.
But we don't need to sit with that hurt forever.
Regardless of what has happened to you, I can promise you that you can get through it.
I'm not going to sit here and say that I know what you've been through or that I can relate to what you've been through, but I can say that I have been through some fucked up things in my life.
Things that...
I thought I would never be able to work through, but I'm here, I'm well and I'm constantly working on myself, every single day.
It is possible to love yourself even if you absolutely hate yourself right now.
It's not going to happen overnight and I spoke about that in last week's episode, but it is possible to change.
It's possible to do better.
It just takes time.
I'm going to ask that if you haven't listened to last week's episode, after you're done with this episode, go back re-listen to it.
I also have other self-love episodes, but go back and listen to those.
But for now, if you are someone who is always on edge over people in your life potentially leaving you, What you need to do to overcome that fear is to build a secure relationship with yourself.
Start rebuilding trust with yourself.
This can look like being there for yourself when you're struggling emotionally, not brushing it off and acting like it doesn't matter, allowing yourself to be upset and processing your emotions in the same way that if a friend came to upset, you would listen to them.
You would comfort them.
You wouldn't turn your back on them.
You would be there for them.
Keep promises to yourself.
If you say that you're gonna do something, actually follow through and do that thing.
Don't put it off to go hang out with someone else or to go and help someone else.
Imagine how upsetting and frustrating it would feel if you had planned with your boyfriend or your girlfriend and they canceled on you to go hang out with someone else.
That's what you're doing every single time that you ignore the plans that you make with yourself and the promises that you make to yourself to please other people.
Building trust with yourself can also just be listening to yourself and trusting your taste, trusting your intuition, trusting your knowledge.
Leaning into the type of music that you like, the type of clothing that you like, the type of movies and books and entertainment that you like.
Sticking with your beliefs and values regardless of what other people think.
Not needing other people to validate how you think and feel about yourself.
Another thing that I'm going to ask you to do is build emotional independence.
We are so afraid of being abandoned because that would mean that we are alone with ourselves.
To a lot of people, that's scary.
It's scary to be alone with no one to lean on.
The thing that you need to realize is you are the only constant in your life.
It is you or nothing.
You cannot rely on other people to make you happy or to make you feel fulfilled.
You need to be able to rely on yourself.
You need to be able to sit with yourself and sit with your thoughts and be comfortable in your own company.
When you're able to do this, the fear of abandonment might not go away, but it definitely lowers because even though you want these people in your life, you want healthy relationships, you want amazing friendships, you want people to like you.
When you're able to be independent and you're able to enjoy your own company.
You know those people are only an addition to your life.
That whether or not they like you or they want to be around you, you're going to be okay.
You're going to be okay on your own because you've got you.
So a way to build this emotional independence is forcing yourself to spend time alone, and spend time alone doing things that make you feel good.
This can be taking yourself out on solo dates.
This can be going to the gym.
This can be having a self-care night.
This can be reading a book, journaling, finding a new hobby.
The more comfortable that you are with yourself and the more comfortable you are spending time alone with yourself and actually enjoying the time you spend with yourself, the less you're going to need other people to fulfill you.
Again, you want people in your life, but when you're okay with being alone, it's not this constant anxiety that you have, that when you're around people or when you're in a relationship, you're not constantly thinking oh my God, oh my God, they're going to leave me.
Oh my God, they're not going to like me.
And it's because, when you like yourself, no relationship is going to define your sense of safety anymore.
Also when you like yourself, when you respect yourself, when you enjoy spending time with yourself.
It's easier to believe other people are going to feel the same way about you.
That's why, when you don't like yourself, it's so easy to believe other people aren't going to like you, because that's how you feel about yourself.
Other people are literally just a mirror showing you how you feel about you.
There's going to be people who leave you.
And it's going to hurt.
Just because you like yourself doesn't mean it's not going to hurt when someone breaks up with you or decides they don't want to be your friend.
But...
The difference is, when you like yourself, it's not the end of the world.
If someone rejects you, it's not this detrimental thing of oh my god, they don't like me, so I must be unworthy, I must not have value and no one's gonna love me again.
When you actually like yourself, when you actually love yourself.
Your worth, your value, isn't reliant on other people and their opinions.
Overcoming self-abandonment and learning to like yourself.
Learning to love yourself is still going to come with obstacles.
But you learn that rejection doesn't mean unworthiness.
So anyone that rejects you when you're being yourself doesn't get to define you or to devalue you.
They just get to decide whether you fit into their life appropriately.
And if you don't, if you're not their cup of tea, That's all it means.
You're just not made for each other and that's okay.
You will find people who fit you better and appreciate you more and bring out more of who you are, who will encourage you and excite you to express yourself authentically.
The goal isn't to make everyone like you.
It's to make sure you like you.
No amount of approval from other people could ever measure up to the pain of losing yourself.
Don't lose yourself trying to make other people like you.
What I want to end today's episode with, and what I want to set you off with, are a few journal prompts.
And I'll leave one in the Spotify comment section so you can reply there.
But I want you to think about what are parts of myself that I hide to seem more likable?
Who am I when no one else is watching?
And why am I afraid of letting people see the real me?
Think about those and if you feel inclined to share them with me or with Try Not To Care community, you can let us know in the comment section on Spotify.
You can let us know in the group chat links in the show notes.
If there's any journal prompts you can think of, or that you know of, that fit appropriately with today's episode, please share those.
I love to find more journal prompts, but I hope those help you.
I hope this episode resonated with you.
I hope you enjoyed it.
If you did, make sure to rate Trying to Take Care on Spotify and Apple.
It really helps me out.
And if you're not already, make sure to follow me on my socials, my Instagram.
My TikTok are linked in the show notes.
And I hope to have you back here next Monday.
Until then, I will talk to you.
Next Monday.
All right.
Love you.
Bye.
