🫥 How “Personal Growth” Can Become Self-Abandonment 🕳️
There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes… not from spinning your wheels or doing everything wrong…
It comes from doing everything right.
You’ve certified in numerous proven modalities.
You’ve outgrown your trauma-bonding tendencies and learned to accept your shadow.
You’ve become more aware of what’s held you back and you’re diligent about solving each obstacle.
And like an underappreciated-yet-LEGIT superpower, you’ve healed literally every thing you could identify or name.
And yet—somehow—instead of feeling more put together, more at ease, more fulfilled…
You’re. just. fucking. tired.
Not dramatic tired.
Not collapse tired.
Just a low-grade, persistent weariness that doesn’t lift no matter how much rest you get.
If that’s you, there’s nothing wrong with you.
And you’re not imagining it.
When self-abandonment gets mislabeled as “personal growth”
Many people are taught that personal growth means being less reactive, less needy, less disruptive.
“Just let them” anyone?
Be more understanding that they won’t change.
Be more tolerant of the ways they can’t meet you.
Be more patient when someone you love treats you like you don’t matter.
And above all: EXPECT LESS.
I’m not dissing in-depth treatments of how over-responsibility for others or needing to control another’s responses is also its own form of torture…
But most people aren’t doing personal growth the old fashioned way.
They’re doing it through bite-sized, downsized, oversimplified Instagram reels and Tik Tok fads.
But what most people are learning comes down to one behavior:
OVERRIDING themselves in the name of belonging to the spiritual in-crowd.
They learn to stay quiet when something doesn’t sit right.
To smooth over discomfort.
To be “the bigger person.”
To endure situations that slowly drain them because leaving would seem selfish, dramatic, or it would jeopardize safety or stability.
This often gets praised, and hence reinforced.
You’re so grounded.
So evolved.
So easy to be around.
And for a while, it does feel like progress.
Because self-abandonment, at first, often brings stability.
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Why this pattern feels like growth (until it doesn’t)
When you override yourself, things usually calm down externally.
Conflict decreases.
Tension smooths out.
Other people feel more comfortable.
Somewhere along the way, your nervous system learns an equation that makes perfect sense at the time:
Approval equals safety.
Belonging equals survival.
Especially if, earlier in life, being attuned to others was how you stayed protected, loved, or included.
So the body adapts.
It learns to quiet signals that might disrupt connection.
It learns to tolerate misalignment.
It learns to keep the peace when something inside says, this isn’t right anymore.
This isn’t a flaw.
But it comes at great cost…
The cost no one warns you about
Over time, the body keeps score.
What once felt like calm begins to feel like numbness.
What once felt like compassion begins to feel like resentment.
What once felt like strength begins to feel like depletion.
You may notice:
Chronic fatigue without a clear cause
A loss of desire or aliveness
Irritability you can’t quite justify
A sense that you’re “off,” even though nothing looks wrong on paper
This is often the moment people start blaming themselves.
Maybe I’m not healed enough.
Maybe I’m missing something.
Maybe I need to try harder.
But what if none of that is true?
What if the exhaustion isn’t a failure… but a signal?
What your body is actually asking for now
At a certain point, growth stops being about endurance.
It stops being about pushing through discomfort, reframing pain, or “holding space” for things that quietly cost you your vitality (and sanity).
Instead, the body begins asking for something simpler, but much harder:
Honesty.
Not dramatic honesty.
Not confrontational honesty.
Just the kind that doesn’t override itself anymore.
This is usually the phase where people feel destabilized.
Because the strategies that once kept them safe—being agreeable, adaptable, understanding—start to fail.
And without those strategies, things can feel uncertain.
You may notice:
Less tolerance for environments that once felt manageable
Less patience for conversations that avoid what’s real
A quiet refusal to keep explaining yourself
This can feel like regression if you don’t know what it is.
But it isn’t.
It’s reorientation.
The difference between kindness and compliance
Many people worry that if they stop overriding themselves, they’ll become selfish, harsh, or unloving.
But there’s a difference between kindness and compliance.
Kindness includes yourself.
Compliance asks you to disappear.
Inner authority doesn’t announce itself with confidence or bravado.
It often shows up as:
A subtle no you stop negotiating with.
A boundary you no longer feel the need to justify.
A choice you make quietly—even if it disappoints someone.
This isn’t about becoming rigid.
It’s about becoming congruent.
Why this phase often feels lonely
As inner authority comes back online, some relationships may strain.
Not because you’ve changed into someone unrecognizable, but because you’re no longer organizing yourself around being easy.
Some dynamics only work when one person keeps absorbing the discomfort.
When that stops, the system reveals itself.
This can be painful.
And isolating.
But it’s also clarifying.
Because connection built on self-abandonment eventually collapses.
While connection built on honesty has a chance to deepen.
Letting this be quieter than you expect
There’s a tendency to think that reclaiming yourself should feel empowering in an obvious or loud way.
But more often than not, it feels understated.
Less urgency.
Less proving.
Less explanation.
More space inside your own body.
It’s a relationship you’re rebuilding with yourself.
And like most real relationships, it stabilizes through consistency, not intensity.
True personal growth isn’t about becoming more.
It’s about becoming more TRUE. More REAL. More YOU.
That’s it.
And you get there when you stop allowing the quiet betrayals that once felt necessary…
And you begin to trust what remains, when you don’t override yourself anymore.
Yes thank you for giving voice to this. Being true to ourselves takes a lot of inner listening.
100% This is what I see as well. The problem with understanding and therefore forgiving situations and actions in our lives that are not based on Truth is that we think we have to stay in these situations and keep accepting behavior that is not respectful. That is where we fail ourselves. So, a big Yes to saying No more often and reorienting our lives toward respectful and honest and reflective relationships!