The snare of self-abandonment - part 1
Part 1 of a 2–part article series.
Self-abandonment – the term sounds scary and serious, doesn’t it?
It sounds that way because it is! The snare of self-abandonment is one of the most pervasive and deadly snares set for mankind by the enemy of our souls, Satan, and many of us aren’t even aware that we’ve become caught in it. It is something that traps both non-christian and Christian alike.
And getting caught in that trap is deadly! It traps us in a life of self-punishment, self-imprisonment and slow internal suicide.
When I first heard that term, I realised that it described so much of how I had treated myself during much of my life. And it is still something I am actively working against allowing to stay as part of my life.
So, what is self-abandonment? Self-abandonment has two main aspects to it. It is abandoning our God-given identity and taking on a warped or false identity. This happens because either we don’t know our true identity or because we believe the things others say about us, or we believe lies the enemy of our soul (Satan) has told us, and take them on as our identity. Secondly, the term applies to not taking proper care of, and stewarding well, the body God gave us.
How can you know if you’ve been affected or trapped by this deadly thing?
You have allowed others (apart from God) to define you and tell you who you are.
You see yourself as less than God sees you.
You diminish or discount your feelings and needs because you think that they don’t really matter.
You have a hard time trusting yourself.
You hide parts of yourself – your feelings, beliefs, and ideas – in order to fit in, or to please others.
You diminish or discount your skills and abilities in order to appear humble and remain acceptable to others.
You don’t speak up, give your opinion, or stand up for yourself because you fear what may happen if you do.
You act like a chameleon, morphing into whatever role will keep the peace and help you avoid ridicule, put-downs, or physical and emotional pain.
You continually show up as that capable, can-do person, regardless of how you really feel inside.
You seek to use spirituality, toxic positivity, and spiritual bypassing within your Christian life to cover up your hurts and be seen as acceptable, or spiritually mature.
You often over-commit and have a compelling need to turn up for everything you’ve committed to. You don't listen to your body’s need for rest and replenishment. You even turn up when you’re sick.
If you saw yourself in these descriptions then you’re probably suffering from the effects of self-abandonment to some degree. Self-abandonment is something we all do at times, but for many of us it’s something that has become a habitual response to life’s challenges, and a way of living that we’ve become trapped in.
How it starts
Self-abandonment is a learned behaviour, a way we try to cope with unhealthy, or dysfunctional, relationship dynamics and to cope with living in a sin-ravaged world. It can happen early in life, or it can start later on as a teen or an adult. But the seeds of it are usually sown in our formative years, as we are taught by society that we need to perform in certain ways to be acceptable.
As small children we instinctively know that we were born having worth and value; we dream big dreams of accomplishing great things. Why? Because that’s what God has planned for each of us. None of us is born believing that we were created to be a drug addict, a thief, a habitual liar etc; these are not in our pure, small child dreams for ourselves. But then along come people or situations that shake that belief in our own worth, power, and abilities, and our pure childhood dreams begin to get attacked as our self-worth gets attacked.
It may be that your parents, or other influential adults, didn’t meet your emotional and/or physical needs in childhood, and they abandoned you emotionally or physically, causing you to feel unworthy and unlovable – somehow not enough. Or maybe negative things were spoken over you, and because they were spoken by someone you looked up to you believed that they must be true about you. You may have looked different from other kids, or other, already hurting, kids may have begun to bully you. The temptation to begin to see ourselves as ‘less than’ or ‘not enough’ can happen in many different ways.
When things like this happen to us as a child then lies about our value and worth get embedded in our hearts and minds, and we began to see ourselves according to those lies. Our identity becomes warped and damaged and we then begin to abandon our true selves and give ourselves over to living from that warped sense of identity.
Children need, and depend on, adults to meet their emotional and physical needs, but if those basic human needs aren’t met, and especially if you live in an unpredictable, chaotic, or abusive family, then you learn to hide your true self. It’s a self-protection thing, and you do it because you feel scared and vulnerable, unprotected. It happens in many ways, for many reasons…
in order to try to fit in.
to feel accepted.
to not rock the boat.
to become invisible and protect yourself.
You learn to suppress your feelings and needs. You learn that your worth and acceptance depend on your performance – what you accomplish, or do. Sadly though, whatever you do, it’s never enough. Instead you learn that your needs, interests, and goals don’t matter, and that you don’t deserve love and compassion.
Over time you begin to live from shame, you devalue and distrust yourself, your instincts, your emotions, and your mind. In the fight to survive you forget to affirm or support yourself, believing instead that you need the affirmation and support of others to bolster your self-confidence. And over time, because you’ve abandoned your feelings, your self, you no longer really know how to be there for yourself, how to give yourself the compassion and care that you need and long for.
Maybe you had a childhood where you were loved and cared for and you grew up with a well-developed sense of confidence and healthy self-love, but later in life things happened that began to eat away at your confidence and belief in yourself – bullying, peer pressure, narcissistic relationships, abuse, etc. And the good work that was done in establishing self-worth and identity as a child began to get chipped away at, and you began to take on a warped identity and began a journey of self-abandonment in some area or another.
How it shows up
Self-abandonment shows up in our lives in many different ways, such as…
negative beliefs about ourselves – our value, our worth, our lovability.
negative self-talk.
lack of confidence.
questioning our abilities and doubting ourselves.
not trusting our instincts.
comparing ourselves with others.
people pleasing.
hiding parts of ourself.
perfectionism.
self-criticism and judgement.
not honouring our personal needs.
suppressing our feelings.
not acting according to our values.
co-dependant relationships.
not speaking up for ourselves.
fears, and the way that we let them determine our lives – fears that lead us to doubt ourselves habitually, or make us feel that who we are is somehow ‘not enough’ or ‘not good enough’.
Self-abandonment is a self-destructive pattern that is often at the root of many emotional and behavioural issues. It can contribute to anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and unfulfilling relationships. It can ruin careers and cause problems in families and marriages. Often times it will lead us, as adults, to believe that others should be responsible for meeting our needs, and when they can’t we get hurt, and blame them for shirking the responsibility that we placed on them. When all the while our habitual self-abandonment means that we are not meeting our own needs as we should, and we may even feel that we are incapable of doing so.
But self-abandonment is not a life sentence that we are doomed to live out forever. We can learn to treat ourselves again with the dignity and respect that we deserve, as someone made in the image and likeness of God. We can learn to take back, in a right way, the power to have a voice, to give ourselves permission to say ‘No’ to other’s demands on our time and energy. We can learn to recognise our feelings and give them space, and honour them as the messengers they are – messengers that are wanting to give us vital information. We can learn to trust our instincts again. And we can learn to see ourselves, once again, as God sees us ,and walk in all that He has dreamed for us to walk in.
In the next article, we’ll look at how to rebuild healthy self-love, compassionate beliefs and behaviours, and how to establish them as our habitual way of living.