#196: How & Why We Self-Abandon in Relationships
If you’ve ever felt like you’re constantly bending, morphing, or minimising yourself in order to preserve connection in a relationship, you’re not alone. For many of us—particularly those with anxious attachment patterns—self-abandonment is an all-too-familiar experience. And while it’s easy to focus on the external dynamics of our relationships, the truth is that so much of what plays out between us and others begins in the relationship we have with ourselves.
If you’ve ever felt like you’re constantly bending, morphing, or minimising yourself in order to preserve connection in a relationship, you’re not alone. For many of us—particularly those with anxious attachment patterns—self-abandonment is an all-too-familiar experience. And while it’s easy to focus on the external dynamics of our relationships, the truth is that so much of what plays out between us and others begins in the relationship we have with ourselves.
Recently, I shared a post on Instagram that struck a nerve for many:
“I’ve never met someone who deeply fears abandonment who doesn’t also regularly abandon themselves. I’ve never met someone who’s terrified of rejection who doesn’t also reject, criticise, and shame parts of themselves on a daily basis...”
The post went viral, and I received countless messages from people saying, “This is me. Please talk more about this.”
So, let’s.
What Is Self-Abandonment?
Self-abandonment is any time we disconnect from ourselves in service of staying connected to someone else. It might look like:
Saying you’re okay with something when you’re not
Silencing your truth to avoid conflict
Minimising your needs to avoid feeling like a burden
Overriding your boundaries to keep someone close
It’s a subtle but powerful pattern where, over time, we trade authenticity for attachment. And while it might feel like a necessary strategy in the moment, it always comes at a cost—to our self-trust, our self-worth, and our sense of inner safety.
Why Do We Do It?
At its core, self-abandonment is a protective strategy. For many of us, especially those who grew up without consistent emotional attunement or support, connection came with conditions. We may have learned early on that being loved meant being agreeable, undemanding, or endlessly accommodating. That being ourselves—fully and honestly—risked disapproval, conflict, or even emotional withdrawal.
And when abandonment feels like a threat to our very survival (as it often does for children), we adapt. We learn to shape-shift. We become peacekeepers, perfectionists, people-pleasers—whatever it takes to keep the people around us close.
As adults, though, these same patterns tend to backfire. What once kept us safe now keeps us stuck. We overfunction in relationships, tolerate what doesn’t feel good, and ignore our own intuition—all in the name of avoiding the dreaded experience of being left.
But here’s the thing: when we consistently abandon ourselves in relationships, we’re not actually avoiding abandonment—we’re perpetuating it. We become the source of the very pain we’re trying to avoid.
The Cost of Staying Disconnected from Ourselves
Every time we betray our needs, override our truth, or ignore that inner nudge that says something isn’t right, we chip away at our internal relationship. And over time, that erosion breeds anxiety, self-doubt, and a lack of trust in our own inner compass.
This is the heartbreak of self-abandonment: it creates a vicious cycle. Our insecurity leads us to abandon ourselves, and each act of self-abandonment deepens our insecurity. So we reach for others to soothe the growing discomfort within us—often the very people who may be contributing to our pain.
And yet, this doesn’t make us weak or broken. It makes us human. And it makes so much sense when we consider the wiring of our nervous systems, our early experiences, and our deep need to feel safe and loved.
The Way Forward
Healing from self-abandonment isn’t about suddenly becoming immune to fear, rejection, or the desire for connection. It’s about learning to stay with ourselves in those moments—especially when it feels hard.
It’s about choosing to honour our inner experience, even when it would be easier to dismiss or override it.
It’s about building that internal foundation of self-worth, piece by piece, so that we’re no longer reliant on external validation to feel okay.
This is the work I support people with every day. And yes, it can feel big and messy and confronting. But it’s also profoundly liberating. Because when you learn to stay connected to yourself—to speak your truth, to honour your boundaries, to treat yourself with compassion—you begin to experience relationships differently.
You stop grasping for scraps of connection. You stop tolerating the intolerable. You stop needing someone else to make you feel whole.
And instead, you start choosing relationships that reflect and reinforce the self-respect you’ve cultivated within.
Coming Home to Yourself
Ultimately, the journey out of self-abandonment is a journey home—to your own body, your own voice, your own values. It’s a reclamation of agency, worth, and truth.
And while that path might feel unfamiliar, even frightening at times, I can promise you: it’s worth walking.
Because there is nothing more empowering than knowing that no matter what happens in your relationships, you won’t lose yourself in the process.
You’ve got you. And that changes everything.
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:04]:
You're listening to On Attachment, a place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience relationships and where you'll gain the guidance, knowledge and practical tools to overcome insecurity and build healthy, thriving relationships. I'm your host, relationship coach, Stephanie Rigg.
[00:00:23]:
And I'm really glad you're here. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, we are talking all about self abandonment, how and why we abandon ourselves in relationships. So this is a really big one and it is at the heart of so many of our attachment patterns, particularly if you lean more towards anxious attachment in your relationships, as I know the vast majority of my listeners do. And this episode was actually prompted by a post that I shared on Instagram last week, which went really viral and it was about self abandonment. I might actually read it now so that everyone has the benefit of that. The post that I shared said, I've never met someone who deeply fears abandonment, who doesn't also regularly abandon themselves.
[00:01:12]:
I've never met someone who's terrified of rejection, who doesn't also reject, criticise and shame parts of themselves on a daily basis. I've never met someone who constantly feels like an afterthought to others, who is genuinely good at prioritising themselves. I've never met someone desperate for reassurance, who deeply trusts that they will have their own back no matter what. I've never met someone who struggles with boundaries in relationships, who holds clear and consistent boundaries with themselves. The things we fear in our relationships are so often reflections of the relationship we have with ourselves. This is where our work begins. So I shared that on Instagram and it went really viral. And I had so many messages from people saying, please speak more about this.
[00:01:58]:
I definitely do that. I see so much of myself, myself in this. And so that prompted me to then think, okay, we probably need to do a podcast episode on this. And it was funny. In preparing for this episode, I was thinking, you know, we're almost at 200 episodes of this show. Have I really never done an episode on self abandonment? And it turns out I've never done an episode directly on self abandonment. And yet I've done dozens of episodes on self abandonment because really, self abandonment is at the heart of so many of the expressions of anxious attachment that we talk about on this show all the time. Things like people pleasing, things like a lack of boundaries, things like a lack of self trust, things like not speaking up for our needs, things like pretending to be fine when we're not, things like really overriding our non negotiables or invalidating ourselves.
[00:02:49]:
These are all expressions of self abandonment. These are all ways that we leave ourselves behind, that we trade authenticity and self honouring for connection and holding on. So self abandonment is not something to think of in isolation as its own little set of actions. It's really the underlying piece that drives so many of these outward expressions of anxious attachment that we know so well. And so in today's episode I want to dig a little deeper into this, addressing head on this topic of self abandonment, looking at not only how it expresses but also why. And I think that that part is really, really crucial because as always, my philosophy is not just to identify the things we don't like about our behaviours in relationships and then say, okay, I've got to stop being so anxious or I've got to stop being so sensitive or I've got to stop abandoning myself. Going to war with parts of ourselves like that, deciding that, you know, those things are the problem. So we've just got to stop doing them and then all of our struggles will dissolve and everything will be great.
[00:03:57]:
That tends not to be how it goes. What we really want to do is get curious around, okay, but why do I do this? How is this pattern protective for me? What is it trying to keep me safe from? You know, what am I afraid would happen if I didn't do this? That level of inquiry is what really points us towards the deeper fears, the wounds, the negative beliefs that maybe require our attention. And it's only when we can get to the root and we can build safety and trust within ourselves. That's when those protective mechanisms and strategies can naturally ease and soften rather than than us trying to forcibly suppress them, which tends to have the opposite to our intended effect. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. I hope that it's going to be an episode that is illuminating and resonant for many of you because as I said, if you struggle with anxious attachment patterns and frankly other insecure attachment patterns, there's a near certainty that this is part of your story and part of what you navigate when it comes to your inner and outer relationships. Before we get into today's episode, a couple of quick announcements. I just wanted to share again about my upcoming event in London in a couple of months time.
[00:05:12]:
Obviously I don't get to do these kinds of in person events very often being as I am on the other side of the world. So I'm really excited to be in London and to be able to hold an event. I'm going to be giving a talk for 90 minutes or so. There'll be about an hour of Q and A and then plenty of time afterwards to connect. Stick around, say hi. So I would really, really love for anyone who's in or around London or wants to travel to London to join with me in a room of like minded others to talk about really all of the things that we're going to be digging into in today's episode. So if you're interested in coming along, maybe you know, bring a friend or a partner, make a day of it. I'd love to see you there.
[00:05:54]:
And the link to buy those tickets is in the show Notes Second quick one I just wanted to share for anyone maybe who's new here or needs a reminder if you are struggling with anxious attachment, I so many free resources on my website. Obviously I have my paid programmes like Healing Anxious Attachment, my Breakup course, all of those things. But if you're not quite there or in a position to invest, be sure to check out the free resources page of my website. I have a free training on how to heal anxious attachment. I have an Anxious Attachment starter kit. I have free guides. I have all of the things. So if you're just starting out or you want to go a little bit deeper than just the podcast, that's well worth checking out.
[00:06:33]:
Okay, so let's get into this conversation around how and why we abandon ourselves in relationships. So as I alluded to in the introduction, self abandonment can take many forms and in my mind it's essentially anything we do where we're choosing connection to other over connection to ourselves. And that might sound a little abstract, but what I'm talking about is, you know, biting our tongue to keep the peace, or not speaking up for fear that someone will become defensive or reject us, or pretending to be fine with something when really we're not fine with it. Allowing certain behaviour, behaviours that really feel uncomfortable for us, continuing in a connection that doesn't feel right because we're scared of letting go. All of these things where we are overriding our inner judgement, our inner wisdom, our sense of right and wrong, our integrity, our boundaries, our comfort. We're overriding all of those things in order to hold on to someone else. And you know, here the relationship between self abandonment and a fear of abandonment in relationships becomes really apparent because if you look at all of those things, really we're doing it as a way to buffer against the risk of someone leaving us or someone not wanting us, or someone saying we're Too much. And so in order to prevent that from happening, when that's something that we fear so deeply and viscerally that someone's going to leave me, I'm not lovable, I'm not good enough, I am unworthy.
[00:08:03]:
All of these big, deep beliefs that we can have about ourselves, whether consciously or not, when we've always got this sense that connection is very, very fragile and could be withdrawn at any moment, that we're going to be blindsided, that someone is going to just pull away and we're going to be left on our own, we have this imperative in our system to try and make sure that doesn't happen. And for a lot of us, we learned at a very young age to morph ourselves into whatever shape we needed to take in order to make the people around us happy, to keep the peace, to keep people close, to prevent rupture. And that felt paramount to our sense of safety. And of course it did, right? Of course it did. Because as a child, abandonment is literally a life threat. And so we are wired to do whatever we need to do to prevent that from happening. And to be very clear here, abandonment doesn't have to mean literal physical abandonment, being left out on the street as a child, but the sense of I'm alone in a frightening experience, I have no one that I can reach for or lean on or be protected by, that's a very, very frightening experience for a young. And so if there was any sense of that, if there was any sense of not having the support you needed, not being able to rely on your caregivers or the other people around you to create a really consistent and reliable sense of safety for you, physical, emotional, all types of safety, that fear gets really deeply wired into your system and naturally you will go to great lengths to prevent that from happening, to prevent being left alone with your fear, that feels too big to handle, right? And so while we can look at that in its early expressions and see that it makes absolutely perfect sense and is incredibly wise that we would adapt in that way.
[00:09:56]:
Taking on people, pleasing behaviours or performing, achieving peacemaking, being a conflict mediator, whatever role we might have taken in our family system, we can also see that carrying that through to our adult romantic relationships and maybe other relationships as well, friendships, family dynamics, as an adult was still harbouring this deep fear of being alone and being left and what that might mean about us, and that's still influencing the shapes that we take in our lives. And the key here is to really understand that while you may not have had Other options. When you first learned to do these things, when you first learned to abandon yourself in order to hold on to connection, whatever that looks like for you. As adults, we do have choices. And our job is to remind, to teach, to show our system that actually we're not not back there anymore. We're in the here and now. And we are competent, capable, autonomous adults with agency. And we're no longer trapped in the past because that's oftentimes what those fearful parts of us and those protective parts of us, that's where they're at and that's what they're afraid of and that's what they're trying to keep us safe from.
[00:11:10]:
So that's sort of the why we do this. It's broadly speaking that we've developed this imprint around being so afraid of abandonment by other people, because that feels so viscerally unsafe that we do whatever we need to do. And oftentimes that takes the form of self abandonment in order to hold on to the other person. If the other person is providing the life raft, is providing the sense of safety, then my needs, my desires, my boundaries, my opinions, my preferences, my comfort, all of that is secondary to my sense of safety. And so if I have come to associate safety in a life or death sense, again, we can rationally not know that that's not the case. But our system doesn't make that distinction. So if safety equals being connected to someone else, then we will drop all of the other things in order to hold on to that. And that is ultimately the trade off that so many of us are making when it comes to self abandonment is I would rather stay connected to you and disconnect from myself and my truth and my authenticity and my needs and my boundaries.
[00:12:11]:
Because ultimately my sense of safety trumps all of those things. But of course, while we can have so much compassion for that, we can also see that it's really, really costly as a strategy to carry with us into our adult romantic relationships. It's a heavy burden because it very reliably chips away at our internal relationship and it erodes any sense of self trust, self esteem, self worth. All of these things get left behind every time we choose the other person choose holding on instead of honouring ourselves. And it's one of those loops, one of those feedback cycles whereby anxiety and low self wor breeds these patterns of self abandonment. So it drives us to abandon ourselves. But also every time we abandon ourselves it breeds more anxiety. It reinforces that sense of inner split and lack of integrity and self doubt.
[00:13:06]:
And all of those things that in turn makes us more likely to do it again because we just don't have that safety within ourselves. And so we go and look for it in someone else. So all of that might sound like a lot and it might even sound a bit, bit defeating. Maybe you feel like, wow, this stuff runs really, really deep and there are so many tentacles here, there are so many branches off the tree and it infiltrates every area of my life. And where do I even begin here? Like, is this really something that I can change? And if that's kind of where you're at when you're listening to this, I want to emphasise that healing is absolutely possible because healing from this is really the healing work of people with anxious attachment patterns. It's what I do every single day. It's what I've obviously experienced firsthand. My.
[00:13:52]:
It's what I teach in all my programmes. And like, yes, it's big work, but it is work that can be done. And as I said earlier, I don't think that it's something we just solve in isolation. It's not like self abandonment is its own neat little box that sits separate from everything else. But really it's part of this broader trajectory of how do I nurture my inner relationship, how do I build up that sense of self? And you know, this is what I've spoken about before in the context of like pillars of self worth, things like self compassion, self validation, learning to actually honour and acknowledge and attune to our own experience, self regulation, self soothing, you know, self honouring, self advocacy, self respect, self trust, all of these things. The way that we build up that self muscle so that we don't have to leave ourselves behind this shadow of ourselves in order to cling to someone else. But we will, will always do that. For so long as there is a safety deficit within our own system, we will always go looking out there for someone else to tell us that we are good enough, that we are lovable, that we are safe, that we're going to be okay.
[00:15:04]:
We'll always go looking for that for as long as we can't provide it to ourselves. And that's really the crux of what I was trying to convey in that Instagram post around. Those who fear abandonment invariably abandon themselves. Those who fear rejection invariably reject themselves. Those who have a really hard time with boundaries with other people tend to have really shocking boundaries with themselves. All of these things are a mirror of our inner relationship. And so if we want to transform our outer relationships, we have to start with ourselves, we have to start by building self trust, by building self worth, by honouring ourselves, respecting ourselves, really learning to live from a place of integrity and inner alignment. Because until we do that, we're always going to be looking to fill a void and the trade off of I just looking for something to make me feel temporarily better because I don't know how to deeply nourish my own system.
[00:16:01]:
I don't know how to tell myself that it's going to be okay and I'm going to have my own back no matter what. When we don't have that sort of trusting relationship with ourself, then we will always look for it out there. And that leaves us really vulnerable to over reliance on relationships to provide us with a sense of identity, a sense of purpose, a sense of meaning, a sense of safety. And of course, course when we're over indexed on relationships, then we tend to look past all of the red flags, all of the mistreatment, all of the boundary violations, all of the breaches of trust. These things that we know aren't right, that make us feel sick and anxious and unsure of ourselves and all of those things. But we don't have a sturdy base to come home to within ourselves. And so we hold on to the driftwood of our maybe not so aligned relationships to provide something. Because that something is better than the nothing that we feel when it comes to our relationship with ourself.
[00:17:02]:
Again, I know that that can feel like a lot to take in and maybe there's overwhelm or guilt or shame, but again, know that all of this makes so much sense. I have been there, I've had to do this work myself. I have walked with thousands of people who've done this work. And it is actually a really beautiful process of coming home to yourself. And I've said this many times before, but I'll say it again. Building a really deep, nourishing, supportive relations within yourself is really to me the definition of resilience and freedom. Because we stop being so afraid of life, right? We stop having to work overtime tirelessly to try and prevent and predict anything bad from ever happening. Because we stop being so afraid of our own feelings.
[00:17:46]:
And we know that we're going to hold ourselves through whatever happens and whatever life brings. And we trust ourselves to be a really reliable and safe companion through the ups and downs sounds. And that to me is incredibly liberating. It is incredibly comforting and I really want that for you. Okay guys, I'm going to leave it there. Obviously I could just keep yapping on about this all day, but I won't. I really hope that this has been helpful again. I know that I've already said this, but this is really the kernel at the heart of so much of what I teach.
[00:18:15]:
So if you want to go deeper, be sure to check out some of those free resources or my healing anxious attachment course is obviously there as well if you really want to dive in. Otherwise Otherwise thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for your ongoing support. I'm so grateful to all of you and I look forward to seeing you again next week.
[00:18:36]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you want to go deeper on all things attachment, love and relationships, you can find me on Instagram at @stephanyrigg or stephanyrigg.com and if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a five star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here and I hope to see you again soon.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
self abandonment, anxious attachment, relationship patterns, fear of abandonment, fear of rejection, people pleasing, lack of boundaries, self trust, self worth, self criticism, self shaming, prioritising others, reassurance seeking, attachment styles, insecurity in relationships, healthy relationships, boundaries with self, practical tools for relationships, healing attachment, emotional safety, negative self beliefs, self compassion, self validation, self regulation, self advocacy, relationship with self, self soothing, inner relationship, authenticity in relationships, coping mechanisms
#195: Two Simple Principles for a Healthy Nervous System
A healthy nervous system isn’t built through constant calm — it’s built through balance. In this episode, I share two simple yet powerful principles for nervous system wellbeing: learning to stretch your capacity through gentle challenge, and then restoring it through nourishment, pleasure, and rest.
Understanding and working with your nervous system is absolutely essential for building healthier relationships and developing more security within yourself. It's a foundational building block that can be genuinely life-changing.
When you develop an understanding of how your nervous system works and learn its language, something incredible happens. Those overwhelming experiences that once felt chaotic suddenly start to make sense. Not only can you understand them, but you can actually shift gears and work consciously with your system. You move from feeling like a passenger to being in the driver's seat of your own experience.
Myth-Busting: What a Healthy Nervous System Actually Looks Like
Let's start by dismantling a common misconception. A healthy nervous system is not one that stays regulated all the time. If you've been beating yourself up for getting triggered or experiencing stress responses, you can stop right now.
Experiencing stress, being triggered, and becoming activated is not only natural—it's actually desirable. Your nervous system is meant to adapt and respond, moving fluidly between sympathetic activation and a more parasympathetic state. It's designed to meet whatever the moment calls for.
The problems arise when:
Your system is constantly wired for threat, humming at a high stress level without returning to rest
You experience wild swings with erratic, disproportionate responses (like launching into a full-blown stress response over a simple follow-up email from your boss)
A healthy nervous system isn't one that's in rest mode all the time. It's one that responds proportionately to what's actually happening.
The Container Metaphor: Two Key Principles
Think of your nervous system as a container. There are two simple principles that guide everything:
Build the Container: Deliberately expose yourself to stress, pressure, and challenge to expand your capacity.
Fill the Container: Resource yourself with nourishing, restorative activities to maintain your wellbeing.
Principle 1: Building the Container
This is about deliberate stress exposure. Think:
Lifting heavy weights
Cold water exposure
Challenging physical movement
Public speaking
Asking for a raise
Having difficult conversations with friends
Essentially, anything that feels hard, pressured, or stressful that you consciously choose to engage with. The magic happens when you experience the discomfort and come out the other side thinking, "I survived that, I didn't die."
Your system learns: "Oh, that was uncomfortable, but we're still alive. We can do hard things safely."
Finding Your Sweet Spot: Uncomfortable but Safe
The best way to conceptualise the “sweet spot” is to picture three concentric circles:
Centre circle: Comfortable and safe (no growth happens here)
Middle circle: Uncomfortable but safe (this is your growth zone)
Outer circle: Uncomfortable and unsafe (this can shock your system)
If you're terrified of public speaking, jumping straight to speaking in front of 100,000 people might land you in that outer circle—potentially causing a panic attack and reinforcing fear rather than building confidence.
The sweet spot is challenging enough to push you, but not so challenging that you can't do it safely.
Principle 2: Filling the Container
This is what most people associate with nervous system wellbeing—all the lovely, regulating activities:
Quality sleep
Nutritious food
Sunshine and fresh air
Time in nature
Connecting with loved ones or pets
Hot baths
Whatever feels nourishing to you
Think of these as putting money in a piggy bank or marbles in a jar. These activities keep your container as full as possible, ensuring you're well-resourced and regulated.
Bringing It All Together
When you weave these two principles together—building your container's capacity while keeping it well-filled—you develop genuine stress tolerance. You move through life with resilience, trusting in your own capability and capacity.
Instead of feeling frayed at the edges constantly, you have enough in the tank to be present, experience joy, and take it all in. You're not on edge all the time because you know you can handle what comes your way.
Your Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Approach
The beauty of these principles is that there's nothing prescriptive about them. You get to fill in the blanks based on what makes sense for you, what feels good, and what feels manageable.
Consider these questions:
What might it look like for me to challenge myself in uncomfortable but safe ways?
How can I be more intentional about filling my container?
What nourishing activities could I weave into my daily life?
Remember, building a healthy nervous system isn't about perfection or constant regulation. It's about expanding your capacity to meet life's inevitable challenges whilst maintaining the resources to thrive, not just survive.
This approach to nervous system health forms the foundation of secure attachment and healthier relationships. When you understand and work with your body's natural systems, you're not just healing yourself—you're creating space for deeper, more authentic connections with others.
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:04]:
You're listening to On Attachment, a place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience relationships and where you'll gain the guidance, knowledge and practical tools to overcome insecurity and build healthy, thriving relationships. I'm your host, relationship coach, Stephanie Rigg.
[00:00:23]:
And I'm really glad you're here. Foreign welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, we are talking about two simple principles to build a healthy, resilient, adaptable nervous system. So if you've been around here for a while, you'd know that understanding and working with the body and the nervous system is absolutely essential to my work, to my understanding of how we move through relationships and also how we heal and develop more sturdiness and security within ourselves and within our relationships. So this is really foundational. It is an absolute building block. And, you know, I've said it before many times, and I'll say it again now. For me, developing an understanding of how my nervous system worked and really learning the language of my nervous system, developing a level of literacy and fluency around working with my body and really understanding the way my body works and its role in everything.
Stephanie Rigg [00:01:27]:
Emotions, perceptions, thoughts, beliefs. It is incredibly empowering because all of a sudden, these experiences that we can have that can feel really overwhelming start to make sense. And not only can we make sense of them, but we can actually shift gears. We can consciously work with our system and feel like we're in the driver's seat of our experience rather than feeling like a passenger. And all of these things are happening to us. And that experience of stepping into agency is nothing short of life changing. And I don't think that's an exaggeration in the slightest. So I'm going to be sharing in today's episode two really simple principles that guide everything I do in terms of how I think about my own nervous system.
[00:02:08]:
And that will allow you to apply that to your own life and the daily practises you might incorporate. And what I really love about the principles that I'm going to share with you today are there's nothing prescriptive about it. You get to fill in the blanks in terms of what makes sense for you, what feels good for you, what feels manageable for you, not about me telling you you have to do these 10 things every day in order to have a healthy nervous system. So it is very much a choose your own adventure, but these guiding principles really provide you with a clear map or a framework that you can then adapt to your own life. Okay, so before we get into today's episode. A quick reminder for anyone who is in or around London that I am going to be in town in early September. I'll be teaching about the patterns of self abandonment that so many of us have carried and how building really deep and embodied self worth and self esteem allows us to rewrite and transform our lives and relationships from the inside out. So I'll be giving a talk.
[00:03:05]:
There'll then be ample opportunity for Q and A and I'll be sticking around for a little afterwards to connect with you all. There are only 70 seats available, so it's going to be nice and intimate and they are already selling quickly. So if you are interested in coming along on Saturday 13th September, I would so love to see you there. It's such a rare thing to be able to connect in person, particularly when I obviously live on the other side of the world. So it would be wonderful to connect with you in person if you're in or around London and would like to come along. Okay, so let's get into this conversation around principles for building a healthy and resilient nervous system. So I want to start by myth busting a little and just dismantling this idea that I think a lot of people have around. A healthy nervous system is one that is regulated all the time.
[00:03:51]:
And I see this a lot when people are in the process of healing and growing and then will say like, oh, I'm really mad at myself because I got triggered by something, or I'm really mad at myself because I notice that I'm still experiencing moments of sympathetic activation, you know, still experiencing stress responses. And it's just so important that we understand that experiencing stress, that being triggered, that becoming activated is not only natural, but it's actually desirable. Our nervous system is meant to adapt and respond and move between sympathetic activation and a more parasympathetic state. You know, almost, almost constant state of fluidity. Right. Our system is designed to meet the moment, whatever the moment calls for. Now where we can get into trouble is where our system is so wired for threat and stress that we're either humming at a really high level of stress all the time and never coming back into a more rested, restorative state, or we have these wild swings and roundabouts and have this very erratic, up and down stress response where we're maybe responding to a stressor in a really disproportionate way because our system is so on edge, so wired for threat. So we get an email from our boss following up on something that we forgot about and we launch into like a full blown stress response as if something very, very bad and threatening is happening.
[00:05:13]:
So it's not that we never want to experience stress or we never want to be dysregulated. That would actually not be desirable at all, because nervous system and our stress response is beautifully protective and adapted to mobilise us to deal with threats and stress and pressure. But we do want to build our capacity and maybe recalibrate our system, create enough safety so that our responses are proportionate. So a healthy nervous system is not one that is just in rest mode all the time. It's one that is meeting what the moment calls for. Okay, so I now want to move into what these two key principles are. And it's very simple. I'm just going to share what they are and then I'm going to unpack each of them in turn.
[00:05:52]:
So if you think of your nervous system as a container, this is the visual that I like to use. We want to deliberately expose ourselves to stress and, and pressure and challenge in order to build the container. So we want a bigger container. And then we want to resource ourselves, we want to rest, we want to do nourishing, restorative things to fill the container. Okay. So you can use whatever visual or metaphor you'd like. But for me, this idea of the container is really helpful. So talking first about building the container, this is the domain of, you know, deliberate stress.
[00:06:25]:
So things like lifting heavy weights, things like cold water exposure, other forms of physical movement that feel really challenging to our system and that force an adaptation. But also other things like this might be public speaking for you, it might be asking for a raise, it might be having an awkward conversation with your friend about something they've been doing that's really been disappointing you. Basically anything that feels hard, that feels like pressure, that feels like stress, that you take steps towards and allow yourself to experience the discomfort of in a way that allows you to come out the other side saying, like, I survived that thing, I didn't die. And that teaches your system, like, oh, okay, we can do that. That was uncomfortable and we're still alive. So that gets filed away in your body as like, oh, okay, I don't have to, you know, go to great lengths to avoid ever having to do those things, because I can do it safely, because I actually am strong and capable enough and competent enough to do something hard and come out the other side. So a couple of caveats here. It's really, really important that we find the sweet spot of uncomfortable but safe.
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So if we just do comfortable and safe, you can think of that as like the centre of the circle, then we're never going to grow, right? That's just like only doing the easy things. That's staying in our comfort zone. The next layer of the circle is uncomfortable but safe. And this is our sweet spot where growth happens. Okay, so what is something that's uncomfortable but not so uncomfortable that it's going to shock my system? And that's what the next layer on the circle would be, uncomfortable and unsafe. So if I am terrified of public speaking and I decide to really push myself by standing in front of a hundred thousand people, and that's just way too big of a first step, so my whole body goes into shutdown, I have a panic attack and have to run off stage crying, that's not going to be a great learning experience for me. That's not going to send my system the message of, that was hard, but we could do it. That's too much, too soon.
[00:08:23]:
Likewise, to use an example of lifting weights. If I'm lifting weights that are really light for me, I'm not going to get any stronger. If I lift a weight that is way too heavy for me, I'm going to hurt myself. So we want to find that sweet spot of this is hard enough that it's really challenging for me, but not so hard that I can't do it safely. And so that first pillar of building the container of our nervous system is all about finding this sweet spot of uncomfortable but safe. How can I challenge myself, push myself, expose myself to discomfort in really deliberate ways that will increase my capacity, that will allow me to experience my own efficacy and competence that is extremely powerful for expanding our capacity capacity to hold and navigate so many of the inevitable stresses that life will throw at us. Now, the other side of the coin is what I think a lot of people associate with nervous system wellbeing and nervous system regulation, which is all of the nice stuff. And this is equally important, right? It's not to minimise or dismiss the importance of regulating activities.
[00:09:25]:
Things like getting quality sleep and eating good food and getting sunshine and fresh air and time in nature, connecting with friends or people that you love or pets, you know, having a hot bath. All of these things are really important. And you can almost think of like putting, you know, money in a piggy bank or marbles in a jar. These are all of the things that I'm adding into my container to keep it as full as possible as much of the time. And so when we weave together these Two principles of can I build my container so that I can hold more? And can I have all of these regulating things to hand so that I can ensure that I'm well resourced, well nourished, well regulated? That's what ultimately builds our stress tolerance, and that's what allows us to move through life with this sense of resilience, with this sense of trusting in our own capability and our own capacity, but also not feeling like we're frayed at the edges all the time and that we actually have enough in the tank that we can be present, that we can experience joy, that we can take it all in and not be so on edge all the time. So my hope is that that resonates with you and inspires you to think about how you might apply that to your own life. You know, what might it look like for me to challenge my in uncomfortable but safe ways? What might it look like for me to be more intentional about filling that container, about, you know, continuously nourishing myself and allowing myself to be well resourced as I move through the world? Okay, I'm going to leave it there, guys. I really hope that this has been helpful, as always.
[00:10:56]:
For those of you who leave reviews and send kind words, all of the things, I am eternally grateful, and I look forward to seeing you again next week. Thanks, guys.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
healthy nervous system, resilience, adaptability, nervous system regulation, stress response, building capacity, self-worth, self-esteem, relationships, attachment, security, nervous system literacy, emotional wellbeing, stress tolerance, strengthening nervous system, public speaking, deliberate discomfort, self-abandonment, self-growth, practical tools, self-agency, restorative activities, challenging yourself, comfort zone, nervous system healing, stress management, nourishment, regulating activities, self-nourishment, agency in relationships, stress adaptation