18d • General discussion
Why We Abandon Ourselves in Relationships (And How the Nervous System Learned to Survive)
Pause for a moment before reading on.
Not to think.
Not to understand.
Just notice your body where you’re sitting.
Is there tension anywhere?
A holding?
A subtle bracing you weren’t aware of until now?
Many of us learned very early that our inner experience was too much.
Not through words but through tone, timing, withdrawal.
Through the moment your tears met impatience instead of arms.
Through the sigh that followed your anger.
Through the warmth that only arrived when you were calm, agreeable, quiet.
What did your body learn in those moments?
For many, a silent agreement formed long before language:
My feelings create problems.
My sensations disrupt connection.
And so a protocol was installed.
When something rises inside you now sadness, fear, excitement, need what happens first?
Do you feel it…or do you immediately scan the room?
You were brilliant.
Your nervous system adapted exactly as it needed to.
It learned to track others instead of yourself.
To calculate impact instead of staying with sensation.
To leave your body in order to preserve the connection you depended on to survive.
Can you sense how young that strategy is?
This isn’t a flaw.
It's loyalty.
And it often becomes the longest relationship you’ll ever have the habit of self-abandonment.
Notice what happens in your body as you read that.
Does anything soften?
Does anything tighten?
Over time, this protocol becomes so familiar it feels like who you are.
You become fluent in others anticipating moods, managing reactions, smoothing edges while your own inner landscape grows quiet, encrypted, distant.
When was the last time you trusted a sensation without needing to justify it?
That clench in your gut that says no.
That heaviness in your chest that says this hurts.
That pull toward rest, space, or truth.
If you learned that love required manageability, what did you have to give up to stay connected?
This is how spiritual homelessness begins not as drama, but as dislocation.
You move through life competent, capable, often caring deeply for others…while feeling strangely untethered from yourself.
Anxiety, here, isn’t just worry.
It's the vigilance of a system still scanning for danger long after the environment has changed.
Exhaustion isn’t laziness.
It's the cost of running two systems at once:the feeling you learned to suppress, and the version of yourself designed to contain it.
What does your body recognize in these words?
From a nervous-system perspective, nothing about this is broken.
Your system learned a rule:Connection equals abandoning self.
It was the right rule once.
And now it may be the very thing keeping you from the intimacy you crave with others and with yourself.
Healing doesn’t begin by tearing this strategy apart.
It begins by meeting it.
Can you sense the protector in you that learned to disappear?
Not to shame it but to thank it?
Reconnection happens in small, truthful moments.
Letting the tears come before deciding if they’re appropriate.Saying “I need a moment” instead of overriding yourself with a yes.
Pausing long enough to ask your body not your thoughts what it’s actually asking for.
What might change if your sensations were treated as information, not interruptions?
This is the healing we do here.
Not fixing.
Not overriding.
Not thinking your way out.
But staying.
Staying with what arises.
Staying when it’s uncomfortable.
Staying long enough for your body to realize it no longer has to leave to belong.
As you read this, something may be happening quietly inside you a softening, a resistance, a memory without images, a sense of being seen without fully knowing why.
That matters.
You don’t need to name it correctly.
You don’t need to understand it.
You only need to notice it.
So we’ll leave you with this not as a task, but as an invitation:
What is your body asking for right now… if you didn’t have to explain it, justify it, or make it make sense?
If you feel moved, you’re welcome to share in the comments:
- what you noticed in your body while reading
- or what you’re beginning to feel ready to listen to
And if what’s stirring feels like it wants support not advice, not fixing, but presence this space exists for that too.
Connection doesn’t require self-erasure anymore you’re allowed to arrive whole.
💛 A gentle reminder as you sit with this:
There is no right response here.
No insight you need to land.
No healing you need to perform.
If something stirred, even quietly, that’s enough.
You’re welcome to take your time with this.
To step away and come back later.
To notice what your body needs next rest, space, movement, a breath, a hand on your heart.
And if you feel the pull to share, you can do so simply:
• a word
• a sensation
• or “I’m here, reading”
We’re holding this space with you not to fix, not to analyze just to stay present together.
Lee & Sherry 🤍
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Why We Abandon Ourselves in Relationships (And How the Nervous System Learned to Survive)
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