It is people-pleasing, self-abandonment, or both?
Have you heard the phrase self-abandonment?
It’s exactly what it sounds like: the act (consciously or not) of disowning our own feelings, needs, desires, values, priorities, agency, and sometimes, even bodies.
People-pleasing is one way that self-abandonment manifests—but it’s not the only way. Self-abandonment can also look like feeling painfully uncomfortable in our own company, trying to change or control others’ actions because we’re disconnected from our own sense of agency, or trespassing others’ boundaries because we’re so desperate for their reassurance.
So what’s the difference between people-pleasing and self-abandonment? Can we experience both at once? And how do we heal?
People-pleasing is one slice of the self-abandonment pie.
You know how all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares?
Well, all people-pleasing is self-abandonment—but not all self-abandonment is people-pleasing.
People-pleasing is an interpersonal and transactional phenomenon: it’s the act of chronically prioritizing others’ needs, wants, or feelings at the expense of—and to the detriment of—our own needs, wants, or feelings. We may people-please to get others’ love or attention, to be treated well by others, or to feel safe in others’ presence.
But self-abandonment is broader, and deeper, than this. Many of us have trouble knowing, allowing, and prioritizing ourselves whether other people are involved or not.
Even in the absence of others, many of us still avoid tending to our basic needs—distance ourselves from our true emotions—and neglect our own well-being.
Many of us are cruel to ourselves, constantly battling with self-shaming and perfectionism, and subsequently avoid ourselves through compulsive other-focus, compulsive work, or compulsive numbing out.
When we self-abandon, we leave ourselves behind: our needs, feelings, values, dreams, and even bodies. Self-abandonment can look like:
Not being able to identify or feel our feelings
Trouble identifying or meeting our own needs
Distrusting (and eventually disconnecting from) our own instincts and gut feelings
Devaluing our own needs, feelings, values, beliefs, and passions
Difficulty expressing requests and boundaries
Difficulty identifying the bounds of our agency: what’s in our control and what’s not
Engaging in perfectionism, toxic self-shaming, and critical self-judgment
Using compulsions and addictions to avoid feeling our true emotions
Difficulty practicing distress tolerance skills, self-soothing, and self-compassion
Over-functioning in imbalanced or one-sided relationships
Trouble distinguishing where we end and others begin
Difficulty identifying and exiting toxic, harmful, or abusive environments
Feeling like we can’t trust our own judgments
Experiencing potent discomfort when we’re alone with ourselves
Difficulty experiencing or prioritizing pleasure
Disengaging from creativity, play, wonder, joy, and delight
Sometimes, self-abandonment is people-DISpleasing.
One of the key distinctions between self-abandonment and people-pleasing is that self-abandonment can manifest in ways that are actively harmful, unpleasant, or frustrating to other people. In other words: ways that are people-displeasing.
When we have abandoned ourselves, we often:
Try to control others’ decisions and actions (because we’re fundamentally disconnected from our own sense of agency)
Try to change others’ minds to agree completely with us (because we have trouble holding on to our own opinions in the face of differing opinions)
Overstep others’ emotional boundaries by demanding that they soothe or reassure us (because we don’t know how to soothe ourselves)
Many of these people-displeasing aspects of self-abandonment involve trying to control the things we can’t because we have a skewed relationship to our own agency. Part of self-abandonment is not being able to identify where we begin and others end (this is called differentiation in Bowen Theory). The Bowen Center explains,
“The less developed a person’s ‘self,’ the more impact others have on his functioning and the more he tries to control, actively or passively, the functioning of others.”
Someone who is less at home in their own sense of self may try to find solidity, stability, and power in others. This can lead to being controlling—being overly dependent on other people—being overly reactive to others’ actions and decisions—or trying to change other people to better suit our needs.
This is why “coming home to ourselves” after self-abandonment involves developing a healthy relationship to our own sense of agency. We heal as we begin to discern what is in our control and what’s not—and act within the bounds of our control.
The origins are largely the same.
Like people-pleasing, self-abandonment can have many origins:
Being neglected, abused, or repeatedly shamed as a child
Growing up in an unsafe or hostile environment
Having emotionally unavailable or emotionally immature parents
Needing to be “the little adult” for mentally ill or addicted caregivers
Receiving praise only for achievement, productivity, and perfection, leading to the internalization of the idea that “you are what you do” and nothing more
Being socialized in a community that demanded the subjugation of the self for the collective good
Being socialized in a culture that oppressed, stigmatized, or shamed people “like you” —people of your gender, race, sexual orientation, ability level, etc.
Through these experiences, we learn, consciously or not, that our “whole selves” are bad, or at the very least, not worthy of love. We learn that it’s not safe to bring our true selves to interactions with others—and also struggle to “be with ourselves” in any sort of meaningful or compassionate way.
We learn to judge and discount the parts of us that were judged and discounted by others, internalizing these messages so thoroughly that being alone with ourselves can feel painful.
So… how do we heal?
Understanding people-pleasing as one component of the broader phenomenon of self-abandonment can help us make sense of behaviors or patterns we hadn’t previously understood.
We perpetuate self-abandonment by continuing to run from ourselves—and we heal self-abandonment by coming home to ourselves.
Coming home to ourselves includes allowing for our feelings, needs, values, limits, instincts, and desires—and bringing those needs, values, limits, instincts, and desires into our relationships with requests and boundaries (learn the difference between the two here).
It means replacing an attitude of self-criticism with an attitude of self-compassion so that our “home” is a safe place to return to. It means developing emotional resiliency and distress tolerance skills so that, when we go through something hard, we can soothe and be with ourselves instead of running away into compulsive behaviors.
It means developing an understanding of our agency—what’s in our control and what’s not—and working strictly within the things that are.
And finally, it means learning to delight in activities that bring our true, unbridled selves forth—namely, play, delight, and creativity.
Get my on-demand talk, Why So Serious? How Recovering People-Pleasers Can Reconnect with Play and Creativity, to learn how you can rediscover joy, play, and vitality as you break the people-pleasing pattern.
Those of us who have a history of people-pleasing and self-abandonment often find ourselves out of touch with our creative and playful sides. We might even believe our playfulness or creativity is “gone forever” — or just “not who we are anymore.” But that is a myth.
This talk brings humor, inspiration, personal experience, and a nuanced attitude to a discussion of how play and creativity are especially important for the recovering people-pleaser, offering a necessary antidote to self-abandonment and constant other-focus. Get it here and watch anytime at your leisure.