The Cost of Abandoning Myself to Belong

I had learned to outsource my sense of enoughness and call it connection.

I used to spend a lot of my life trying to prove myself. My internal compass had been conditioned to signal that if I didn’t do something to fix me, to make me more favorable, more lovable, I would remain lost.

It wasn’t always obvious. On the outside, it probably looked like I just cared, or that I was driven, or doing my best. But underneath it, there was a constant pull to be seen a certain way. To be liked, respected, validated. To feel like I was enough because someone else reflected that back to me.

Because of that, I would bend. I would shape myself around other people’s paths, other people’s expectations, thinking that was the way to belong. If I could just get it right, then I would feel settled, secure, at home.

Even when the validation came, it never really lasted. It faded quickly, and I would find myself searching for it again.

So I started gathering pieces of other people as reference points. The way they lived, their resolve, their creativity, how they moved through the world. I thought if I could collect enough of those pieces, I could stitch myself together into someone whole.

I didn’t realize at the time that the more I did this, the more my own instincts, opinions, and inner world were being silenced, numbed, and suppressed, ringing true to the signal of that internal compass.

This showed up a lot in my friendships.

I would find myself drawn to people I was really taken by. People who had something about them that I admired or even felt a little envious of. And without fully realizing it, my efforts to connect were tangled up with trying to find a sense of myself in the relationship.

I would mirror them. I thought if I could understand the formula of who they were, maybe I could embody some of it and finally feel whole.

At first, those connections felt strong. There was a sense of closeness that felt real. But as time went on, something would start to feel off. I would feel unfulfilled, agitated, or resentful, even though on paper the friendship looked good.

Looking back, I think some of the tension came from feeling stifled. And in an attempt to ease some of that discomfort, I would start breaking the rules, as it were (the unspoken code), by showing up more as myself. It was as though the part of me who had been hiding would begin to emerge, in a little bit of defiance, while also testing to see if she would be received.

Ahh, relationships are complicated. You see, at this point the dynamic would usually change, and the response to me showing up a little more authentically wasn’t always what I hoped for. It often led to distance, disconnection, or even rejection. And I would feel hurt and confused, yet also strangely relieved. Like I could breathe again.

Perhaps a friendship built on this dynamic is not really a friendship at all. If my insecurities are feeding my motivation to connect, it most likely won’t cultivate meaningful connection. It might even set into motion an endless feedback loop. Because I have noticed how this pattern in my life seems to attract people who are also looking for validation. In return, it seems to perpetuate the same need in me: to be seen and affirmed in what they reflect back. And so the loop continues.

Of course, at the time I wasn’t aware of this. I just knew things often ended in a kind of heartache I couldn’t fully explain.

But I started to become aware as I moved deeper into my own work, learning how to accept myself and bring my inner world out of that place of abandonment. In one particular friendship, I started to track this both retrospectively and in real time.

I could see how, at the beginning, I had been drawn to this person and quickly put them on a pedestal. My usual people-pleasing charm was in fine form, as I began to mirror them, securing the connection.

As I started to honor my own reflection, though (my choices, limits, and intuition), the connection didn’t hold in the same way. It had been built on different rules, and I was changing the rules.

The grief hit me so hard.

But surprisingly, so did the relief of realizing I no longer wanted to disappear inside someone else in order to stay connected to them.

This was a catalyst. Something started to open up in me. I felt so cracked open and also held together all at once. It gave me such a rubber-hitting-the-road opportunity to start coming back to myself through small, honest choices… choosing what felt right for me even when I knew it might not be understood or approved of. Following my own pace. Letting myself have preferences without needing to justify them. Making decisions based on what felt aligned, and staying with myself even if it didn’t turn out the way I hoped.

I started to build trust with myself in a way I hadn’t before.

This trust kept growing. In fact, it sort of became exhilarating. I could make mistakes without turning them into evidence that I was the problem. I could be accountable with less of that debilitating swing into carrying burdens that aren’t mine, or shirking responsibility because I felt ashamed. I started to have more tolerance for disappointment, embarrassment, regret, and uncertainty that would normally spiral me into some form of self-abandonment.

This led to a softening of that drive for external validation. The need for someone else to reflect my worth back to me started to become less urgent.

My relationships are not perfect. I am still finding my way. This stuff takes time. But I am noticing less pressure in general around them. I feel less fascinated with being chosen and more concerned with knowing the person in front of me and allowing them to know me too.

It has taken so much courage to walk this one out. When you have built your whole identity around external reference points, it’s not easy to let go. It has felt hollow and disorienting at times to recalibrate and learn to trust my own compass. Like I am walking off a cliff. These are the survival patterns that helped me through the times where I had no other option. So there has been a season of grieving the anchors I once relied on, the versions of me that I worked so hard to perfect.

But within all that, there has been this beautiful invitation to feel whole. A kind of fulfillment that isn’t fleeting because it is really about belonging to myself.

Oh, how that has become one of the greatest ways I have fallen so deeply in love with my life.