When Self-Improvement Becomes Self-Abandonment
How many times a day do you think you try to convince yourself—or maybe even force yourself—to feel differently than you actually feel?
Or try to reframe your thoughts so they're more positive, more compassionate, more hopeful?
I'll bet it's a decent amount.
And I'm not here to argue that there's no value in learning to see things differently or intentionally changing your perspective. Because I think there is.
But I also think a lot of us try to do this way too quickly and way too often.
And there’s a real downside to that: all that energy we’re putting into trying to be better and feel better can actually turn into a form of self-abandonment—and end up taking us further away from the things we’re trying to work toward.
(If you'd prefer to watch the YouTube video on this same topic, you can find it here.)
Let’s imagine a scenario where we really want something.
Maybe we’ve fallen in love with a house and put in an offer. Or interviewed for our dream job. Or maybe we’ve gone on a few dates with someone we really like.
And then, for whatever reason, it doesn't work out.
Our offer falls through. Someone else gets the job. The person we’re interested in decides they're more interested in someone else.
And we’re disappointed, understandably so.
There’s a good chance we’re also sad, angry, or even envious of the person who got the thing we wanted.
And in the face of those uncomfortable feelings, most of us will pretty quickly—if not immediately—start internally maneuvering.
We might try to reframe the situation, telling ourselves that everything happens for a reason. There’s a lesson here. Things in life happen for you, not to you.
Or maybe we jump right into analyzing what happened, looking for what we did wrong or could do differently in the future. Should we have used a different realtor? Answered that interview question differently? Smiled more? Smiled less? Been more or less open with our date?
Or we might even try to regulate our nervous system out of what we’re feeling, immediately reaching for whatever tools we have to calm ourselves down or shift our internal state.
None of these responses are inherently bad. In fact, they can all be really valuable and helpful.
But when we reach for them too quickly, something important gets lost—and that’s the simple fact that we're disappointed.
Something we really wanted didn't happen. And that hurts. And it sucks.
So the problem isn't the reframe, the reflection, or the regulation tools. It’s that we’re using them in a corrective way.
There’s a sense of:
I'm disappointed, and I don't want to be disappointed, so let me find a way to make the disappointment go away.
And while it’s totally understandable that we want the disappointment to go away, there’s a hidden cost to relating to ourselves in this way.
When helping ourselves becomes abandoning ourselves
Amidst all that effort to feel something different, the part of us that's disappointed—or angry, sad, or envious—never gets acknowledged.
She never gets seen or heard. Nobody is there for her.
Instead, we're trying to shoo her away or move her along as quickly as possible. And if she’s not going willingly, we might start pushing a little harder.
The messages that accompany this effort usually sound something like:
I shouldn't feel this way.
I should be grateful for what I have.
I’ve got to stop feeling sorry for myself and move on.
In one way or another, we’re conveying to ourselves that something about what we’re experiencing right now is not OK and it needs to change.
And in doing that, we're turning away from the part of ourselves that's actually having the experience.
So in our efforts to help ourselves feel better or be better, we actually end up abandoning ourselves.
Why do so many of us do this?
For a lot of us, this tendency starts pretty early. We learned that certain feelings and parts of our experience weren't particularly welcome—whether in our families, our relationships, or the culture around us.
And that’s often part of what brings us to the world of personal development or spiritual growth in the first place. We’re trying to heal some of those earlier experiences so we can feel steadier, more confident, and more connected.
But then, within that world, we end up encountering a new version of that same message.
We start to believe that becoming steadier, more secure, more peaceful means getting rid of the parts of ourselves that don’t feel that way. And so we start to see disappointment, envy, anger, insecurity, and all the other experiences we’d rather not have as things that are standing in our way.
And underneath that is often an even bigger assumption:
If I WERE more healed, more evolved, more secure, more regulated—whatever my particular version of "better" happens to be—then I wouldn't be feeling this in the first place.
And I think this is where things can get a little distorted.
Because yes, we can change. Our brains change. Our habits change. Our responses change. What we repeatedly practice matters.
I’ve been practicing and teaching this for two decades. I don't disagree with any of it.
But I think we can take that idea too far.
I don't think that's how wholeness works
We can start to believe that if we do enough inner work, we can condition ourselves out of certain aspects of being human. And that that's something worth striving for.
We’re waiting for a day when we won’t feel disappointed. Or envious. Or angry. Or afraid. Or heartbroken.
And then when those feelings inevitably arise, we see them as evidence that there's still something wrong with us.
We’re not evolved enough yet. We still have more work to do.
But if we slow down and really think about this for a second, we can see the contradiction.
We’re trying to become more peaceful, secure, loving, integrated people, but we’re attempting to get there by continually pushing unwanted aspects of ourselves out of the way.
We’re trying to become more whole by getting rid of the parts of ourselves we don't want.
We’re trying to become more accepting and loving by exiling the parts of ourselves that we find unacceptable and unlovable.
And I don’t know about you, but I just don't think that's how wholeness works.
Instead of wholeness, this way of relating to ourselves creates a cycle of inner division where we're forever convinced that we’re not yet how we should be.
So what's the alternative?
A different way of relating to ourselves
After 20 years of teaching yoga, meditation, and Eastern philosophy, I’ve spent the last few years practicing and teaching a somewhat different way of relating to our inner experience. And it has left me feeling a lot steadier, more comfortable, and more connected in the ways I had been longing to feel connected.
Before I try to do anything to change my experience or my perspective, I turn toward myself and spend a little time with what’s actually here.
And I don't mean just being aware of it, like I might be in a meditation practice. I’m not just noticing and letting it pass through.
And I don't mean analyzing it or trying to figure out why I feel the way I feel, like I might do in therapy or maybe even processing with a friend.
I mean actually relating to it.
Getting curious and being honest with myself about what I’m experiencing.
I’m noticing a heaviness in my chest and a tightness in my throat.
Something in me is feeling really anxious.
And then spending a little time being present with the part of myself who feels that way.
Something like:
I see you. I really get why you feel that way.
Sometimes I do this for just a quick moment amidst all the movement of my day. And sometimes I sit down and let it be a longer process.
Here’s a simple example.
While I was writing about this, I got a Facebook message from a friend who I haven't talked to in years, but who I used to be really close with.
It was a warm, sweet message of well wishes. But she referred to me as “sweetie,” and the moment I read that, something in my body went, Ugh. I don't like that.
At the same time, I was genuinely happy to hear from her.
And almost immediately, I noticed the part of me that feels love for her trying to override and argue away the feeling of “ick,” telling myself:
She was just trying to be nice.
What's the big deal?
This is silly.
And yeah, from one inner perspective it was silly. But it was also true that I didn't like it.
So instead of trying to figure out why I didn’t like it or deciding which perspective was right, I just acknowledged all of it.
To the part that didn't like it:
Yeah, you didn't like that. Ick.
Done.
To the part telling me it was silly:
Yeah, this is kind of silly. I get why you feel that way.
And to the part that was happy to hear from her:
Yeah, she was a really good friend, and I'm happy she's doing well.
And that’s it.
This is a tiny example of a fleeting moment and a fleeting feeling, but I’m sharing it because it illustrates a simple shift that’s actually kind of massive:
No part of our inner experience has to win out over another.
It all gets to be here, and we can be here with it—seeing it, acknowledging it, relating to it.
What if we start welcoming more in?
A lot of us have spent a lifetime trying to get the parts of us that we deem “good” to defeat the parts of us that we deem “bad.”
And what I’m suggesting is something different. Something that almost feels like the opposite.
What if we start welcoming more in?
What if we stop constantly trying to decide which parts of our experience should be here and which ones shouldn't, and instead try to relate to more of it with genuine curiosity?
Now, for a lot of us, this pretty quickly pushes up against a deeply held belief.
We know that what we repeatedly practice gets stronger, so then if I give my attention to disappointment or anger or envy, aren't I reinforcing those feelings?
If I stop fighting this stuff, won't it just grow bigger?
And I think there's an important distinction here.
Having a feeling and giving it some space and attention isn't the same thing as reinforcing it, wallowing in it, or overly identifying with it.
There’s a difference between noticing and relating to anger, for example, and continually rehearsing the story that’s making us angry. Or getting lost in it and letting that anger become the only perspective we can see.
The point isn't to feed the anger or keep coming back to the narrative around it. It's to make enough contact with it that we don't have to abandon the part of ourselves that's feeling it—and so we have a chance to hear whatever information might be there in it.
Maybe my anger is showing me that a boundary has been crossed. Maybe my disappointment is showing me how much something mattered to me. Maybe that little ick is worth getting curious about.
I don't have to assume the feeling is right. I don't even have to understand it. And I certainly don't have to act on it.
But if I immediately override it because I've decided it's a feeling I shouldn't be having—that this feeling makes me unevolved or bad—then I lose the chance to listen to it and to the part of myself having it.
And if our automatic response every time something uncomfortable arises is to brace against it, suppress it, or immediately try to make it go away, that becomes its own pattern.
The maneuvering, the denying, the suppression—all of those internal gymnastics can become a pattern of their own.
So the risk isn't really that we're “wiring in” the initial feeling. Those feelings are a natural part of being human.
The risk is that, in trying so hard to deny those feelings or get rid of those feelings, we keep reinforcing the habit of struggling against them.
Disappointment, anger, fear, envy—these aren't mistakes in our system that we need to train ourselves out of having. They're part of being human.
They arise. They change. Sometimes they bring valuable information, sometimes they don’t. And when they have enough space and support, they can move.
So the goal isn't to get lost in every feeling, believe every thought, or follow every impulse.
It's to stop abandoning ourselves the moment something shows up that we don't like or think we shouldn't be experiencing.
This isn't another thing to do “right”
Talking about all of this conceptually makes it easy to turn the idea into another directive:
Okay, now when I'm disappointed I'm supposed to tell myself it's okay to be disappointed. I’m supposed to feel it and let it move.
But that’s not really what I’m proposing.
This isn’t something we can do only cognitively. We have to learn to actually make contact with our experience as it’s happening—our sensations, thoughts, and emotions—and learn how we can start to meet what we find with more curiosity, understanding, and care.
There’s a somatic component to this and a nervous system component, too. I’m not going to get deeply into those here, but they are important pieces of the puzzle. They help us develop the ability to stay present with different aspects of what we’re experiencing without becoming overwhelmed or completely swept up in them.
This is a lot of what sits at the heart of the work I do that I call Withness.
Because the way I see it, growth in these arenas isn’t about becoming someone who has eradicated the more challenging aspects of the human experience.
It’s becoming someone who has more capacity to remain in relationship with themselves when those aspects arise—and that capacity is something we can cultivate.
And the funny thing is that when we're no longer using so much energy fighting, correcting, and managing our own experience—when we’re no longer trying so hard to be steadier, kinder, more optimistic, and more understanding—those qualities tend to emerge naturally.
Want to explore this more deeply?
I have a free class called Beyond Self-Awareness.
In it, we look at why insight and self-awareness don't always translate into meaningful change, the role the nervous system plays in shaping our experience, and what can begin to shift when we learn to relate to ourselves differently.