Finding Yourself After Self-Abandonment

That moment when you finally get quiet and realize you don’t know what you want anymore can feel terrifying and weirdly ordinary at the same time. Today I’m going to shine a light on what’s happening for so many women in unhappy marriages and in the aftermath of divorce: identity loss through self-abandonment, the slow, almost invisible disappearing act that can look like love while it quietly erases you.

I'll talk about how this pattern builds over years through tiny decisions like deferring to his preferences and decisions, putting your needs at the bottom of the list, and learning to distrust your intuition. I connect the dots between cultural conditioning, the pressure to be the caretaker and emotional manager, and why so many women only initiate divorce after they’ve tried everything. 

Then we get practical. I walk through clear signs of emotional self-abandonment. And I finish the episode with five simple steps to rebuild self-trust. I also share my guide, 115 Ways to Get to Know You, if you want a fun place to start.

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Transcript

Welcome And What We’re Naming

Karin Nelson 0:00

Welcome to Becoming You Again, the podcast for divorcing and divorced women who want to stop self-abandoning and start trusting themselves again. I'm your host, Karin Nelson, a divorce coach with a passion for helping women trust themselves, reconnect with their intuition, and build lives that actually feel like theirs. In today's episode, I'm talking about the slow, almost invisible way women lose themselves inside a marriage and how to start finding your way back to her. Let's get started. Welcome to Becoming You Again, the podcast where you learn to step into your power as a woman in this world, where you learn to reconnect to your wholeness, your integrity, and bring into alignment your brain, your body, and your intuition after divorce. This is the podcast where you learn to trust yourself again and move forward toward a life that you truly want. You are listening to Becoming You Again, and I am your host, Karin Nelson. Welcome back to the podcast, my lovely, lovely ladies who are out there listening every week. I appreciate you. I'm so glad to be back here with you today.

The Moment You Realize You’re Gone

Karin Nelson 1:10

Today we're going to be talking about something that almost every single woman who has gone through a divorce or who is currently maybe even finding themselves in an unhappy marriage, they're not really sure what they're going to do yet. But all of us, we have experienced it. And the thing is, is so many of us don't have language for what it is that is happening to us. And it's this identity loss that we experience during our marriage. It's that moment when you finally just have like a quiet second to be with yourself, to sit with yourself. And you just have this realization of I don't actually know who I am anymore. You don't know what you like, you don't know what you want. You don't know what you would order at a restaurant if no one else was at the table. You wouldn't even have the courage to go sit in a restaurant by yourself. This is my cat over here doing his little morning scratchy scratch. So I apologize about that. Charlie is vocal in so many ways, including scratching, which I know is not a way of being vocal, but um, maybe noisy is the better word. Anyway, back to the podcast. Like you maybe even wouldn't even have the courage or the self-confidence to go sit in a restaurant by yourself without feeling judged or feeling invisible, even in some way. And if that describes anything that you have ever felt, I feel you. I have been there. That was me when I was in my marriage. So if you are in your marriage and you're questioning, you don't know what to do, if you're during if you are in the middle of your divorce or if you are divorced, I just want you to know that this is something that so many women experience. And you are exactly where I have been, where so many other women have been. And so today I just want to kind of give you like language or validation for what is or has happened to you. And then I'm gonna give you some steps that you can take to start to come back to you, to start to see yourself again. So if you find yourself disappearing in your marriage or disappearing in your life even after divorce, these are gonna be steps that you can take to reclaim your identity, figure out who you

How Identity Loss Happens Slowly

Karin Nelson 3:51

are. The thing about identity loss in marriage is it almost never happens in just like a big moment, right? One day you wake up and you're like, oh no, I just don't know who I am anymore. I have no idea that just yesterday I did and now I don't. Like it doesn't happen like that. It happens in these tiny, like almost invisible decisions that we make over and over for years. And it can look a lot like just deferring all of the big decisions to him because he's the authority, his opinion carries more weight. And that's not a thought or a decision that you came up on your own, that you came up with on your own. That is for sure a socialized condition of this is just how it is. Men know more. Their authority holds more weight. They're the ones that are included in the rooms, and this has been going on for centuries, millennia, even, right? But it can also look like putting your needs at the bottom of the list because everyone else's seems more urgent or more important in moments. It can look like not trusting your intuition when it's talking to you, when it's, you know, whispering, maybe question this. Is this the right thing? And again, not your fault. You have been conditioned to believe that your intuition is silly, that you shouldn't be listening to it, that it how could you possibly know what's best for you, right? It can look like making sure everyone else is taken care of first: the kids, the husband, the in-laws, the volunteer commitment, the people at the church, the people in your neighborhood, your mom, your dad. And that's when you wake up one day and you have the realization I genuinely don't know who I am. I genuinely don't know what my needs are or what my wants are any longer. I have self-abandon, and it is like this slow, quiet kind of disappearance. Researcher Terry Real, who's been studying marriage for decades, has talked about this pattern of what he calls self-abandonment in relationships, where one partner, and it's typically almost always women, slowly subordinates their own needs, their own desires, their own identity to keep the relationship intact. And the cost is she doesn't even recognize herself anymore after years of this.

Why Women Shrink To Keep Peace

Karin Nelson 6:40

So why do we do this? Why do so many of us lose ourselves trying to hold the marriage together? Well, the reason is, and I've already kind of touched on it a little bit, is that we have been told our entire lives through culture, through society, through maybe a religion that you were raised in, through your family, through literally every romantic comedy ever made, that a woman's worth is tied to being chosen by the man, tied to getting that ring on her finger, getting married, tied to becoming a wife, to becoming a mother. And if we lose that, or if we walk away, somehow we've lost our value. And on top of that, on top of that, we've been told that if we leave, we're the one being selfish. Like we didn't try hard enough, like we weren't enough in some way. There's actually a really powerful 2015 study from the Council of Contemporary Families that found that close to 70% of divorces in midlife are initiated by women, not because they fell out of love overnight, but because they reached a point where staying required more of themselves than they had left to give. And I can 100% agree with this because I have many clients who this is the exact reason that they have left their marriage and asked for a divorce. So by the time a woman leaves, she has typically already tried everything the therapy, the books, the conversations, praying, and then turns into shrinking or trying harder or begging her husband to change, to show up, to see her, to help, to recognize what's happening. This woman has already left a hundred times in her head before she ever leaves in real life. So if that is you, I want you to hear me. You are not being selfish when you decide, if you decide that you're done. So going back to that idea of why this happens, right? Why we hyperfocus on everyone else's needs while we ignore our own, this isn't like a personal failing, like, oh, I've just been doing it wrong this whole time. Uh, no, you've been conditioned to do that the whole time. Girls in our patriarchal culture are raised from the time they're little to see themselves as givers, to see themselves as the nurturers and the caretakers. And then as they grow, as the managers, the fixers, right? We are taught explicitly and implicitly that our job is to make sure everybody else is comfortable, everybody else is fed, everybody else is taken care of and validated and emotionally regulated. And we're taught that we are the supporting caste in everybody else's life, right? We are never taught to be the lead in our own life. I mean, I remember having conversations with my sister growing up, uh, talking about, you know, one day when we'd be married. Well, yeah, I'm gonna do whatever I can to support my husband and his career. Because if he's happy and he's chosen a job that he loves and he's successful in that job, then I will be happy and the kids will be happy. Like, not even like that was it wasn't even a question of what would make me happy or what do I want to do, anything like that. It was all about him, he's the lead, I support him, in whatever way that looks like. And then by the time we get into marriage and we start raising children, those patterns are so deeply embedded that we genuinely don't notice we're disappearing. Because the disappearing feels like love, like devotion, like support, like this is what it means to be a good wife and a good mom. It's not. This is self-erasure, but with a smile on your face.

Signs You’re Self-Abandoning

Karin Nelson 11:02

So here's how we start to recognize and have awareness that you've been self-abandoning. These are some of the signs of emotional self-abandonment. You don't trust yourself anymore. Like even small decisions feel really scary or impossible because you second guess every choice that you have to make. You feel stuck. Like you can recognize that something is off, but you can't name what it is, and you don't know how to get unstuck. You don't know what you want. You don't know what you need. You don't know what you like. Someone asks you about you, and you'll give a surface answer, but there's nothing deep going on inside because you're so afraid or you have been so disconnected to yourself that it's scary to even look, to even question. You resist any kind of uncomfortable emotion, sadness, anger, loneliness, rejection because it feels like you've been feeling those things for so long that they hurt so much that you would rather just go numb to it instead. Numb yourself with food or with wine or with Netflix or or with overfunctioning, right? Or with Doom Scrolling or anything of that type. But maybe one of the biggest ones is like spending decades walking on eggshells, scanning every room for a mood, and then doing whatever you can to try and like manage his mood. Because we think we can do that. Because if we can manage it or if we can anticipate his reaction before it happens, then we don't have to feel the brunt of that. And so we're trying to like edit ourselves in real time. That's not your personality coming out, that's not who you truly are. That's your nervous system reacting to every situation that you find yourself in. And then you become stuck in survival mode. And it's like living in this constant nervous system-activated state. Trauma researcher Stephen Porges calls this a chronically dysregulated nervous system. Because what it's doing is it's slowly destroying your confidence, your self-trust, and your ability to even understand what is happening in your body, like what you are feeling anymore. So, how do we come back to ourselves? How do we stop disappearing? How do we stop self-abandoning? How do we see ourselves again?

Start Listening To Your Body

Karin Nelson 13:53

Step one, I want you to start to notice your body. Like what is happening in your body 10 times a day, or if that seems like too much, maybe just shoot for twice a day, right? We don't have to be perfect in this, but like a couple times a day, just stop, take a beat, and ask yourself, what is happening in my body right now? Are my shoulders up by my ears? That's that's my thing. I have my shoulders are like constantly up by my ears, and I have to like, okay, let's just relax our shoulders, right? Is my jaw clenched? Am I holding my breath? Your body has been talking to you this entire time. We just got really good at ignoring it and not listening to it. Most of us live from the neck up, meaning we stay in our heads and we're always overthinking and ruminating and spinning and managing and doing all the things. We're not willing to take a look at what's happening in our body. So we got to practice that. The only way to get better at something that we're not very good at is by practicing. So we're just gonna practice noticing what's happening in our body.

Tiny Choices That Rebuild Self-Trust

Karin Nelson 15:03

The next thing you're gonna do is just start practicing figuring out tiny preferences. When someone asks you what you want for dinner or what you want to do on the weekend, or what movie you want to watch, or what you want to watch on television, actually give an answer. Actually think about it and give an answer. Don't just say, I don't care, whatever, whatever you want, or I don't know. Actually think about it. Even if the answer feels silly or small, or you think everybody's gonna disagree and not want to do that, practice having a choice and then another one, and then another one, because self-trust is built by these tiny preferences, by these tiny decisions. And it seems like the small ones aren't gonna make a difference, but I'm that's where the practice comes in. That's where the self-trust is built, is in the small ones. The next thing you're gonna do is you're gonna stop apologizing for existing. Notice every time the word sorry comes out of your mouth when nothing is actually warranted for you to say sorry. Catch it. Catch yourself. And if you don't catch it now, look back on your day, maybe before you go to bed, and go, Did I do I notice, do I remember any times when I said sorry? But if you can catch it and replace it with nothing at all, or thank you, or just some other word that does not mean oh, I'm sorry, right? And taking the blame for everything, that is going to do you a huge service of recognizing I am here, I'm not invisible, I am a human that is allowed to exist. Step four is I want you to start taking one take up space action today. Like, what does that mean? Um take a break without telling yourself you can't until you earn it. Say no and then don't explain your reason why or overexplain. Order what you actually want, or make dinner that you actually want to eat, even if you know like a couple of the people in your family don't like it. You're allowed to do that. These are tiny acts that tell you and your identity to your core that you are worthy of being here, that you are worthy of taking up space. And that is how we start to see ourselves again. That is how we start to step into our lives

Curiosity, Homecoming, And The Guide

Karin Nelson 17:54

again. And then the last thing that I want you to do is I want you to start to get curious about yourself. There is a version of you who existed before you started disappearing, before the slow disappearance, right? What did she love? What did she want to do? What music did she listen to? And if you don't know, that's okay. Just get very curious because that version of you, even if you don't want to go back to who you were before, you can start now. You can figure this all out now. There's a version of you inside that is just waiting to be seen, that is just waiting to be heard. Take these moments and do that for yourself. Get to know you. Get curious. Let this be more fun than scary. I actually have a guide that can help you do this. It's seven bucks. It's called 115 Ways to Get to Know You. And it's designed to be fun and to allow you to get curious about yourself. So if you're scared about that or if you don't know even where to start, grab my guide. It's seven bucks. But here's what I want to leave you with today. If you're starting to have this realization because you've been listening to this podcast and you're like, oh my God, that is literally me. I've literally done all of these things. This is me. I don't know what to do. I want you to know that, like this part of your story, this is not a tragedy because what you're having now is realization, is awareness. And that means we are at the start of one of the most important things in your life, which is your homecoming, you coming home to you. This isn't a failure. You weren't so weak that you didn't know what you were doing. You weren't stupid. All you were doing was the very best that you could in a system that told you that you're shrinking and your becoming invisible was how to love someone, how to show other people that you love them. It wasn't because what happened in that is you forgot to love yourself. Because you forgot to see you. And the woman you were before all of this, she's still in there. She's been waiting to be found, and she is so, so, so glad that you're finally recognizing I can get to know myself again. That is what I have for you today. I hope that you will take the time to get to know you because you are worth knowing. You are worth being seen by you. And it has to start with you. We can't wait for other people to do that work for us. We have to do it ourselves. And you deserve to do that for yourself. All right, my friends, I love you. Thank you so much for being here. I will be back next week. Hi,

Coaching Invite And Listener Support

Karin Nelson 20:50

friend. I'm so glad you're here and thanks for listening. I wanted to let you know that if you're wanting more, a way to make deeper, more lasting change, then working one-on-one with me as your coach may be exactly what you need. Together, we'll take everything you're learning in the podcast and implement it in your life with weekly coaching, real life practice, and practical guidance. To learn more about how to work with me one-on-one, go to Karin Nelsoncoaching.com. That's www.k-ar-in-n. NE -L-S-O-N coaching.com. Thanks for listening. If this podcast agreed with you in any way, please take a minute to follow and give me a rating wherever you listen to podcasts. And for more details about how I can help you live an even better life than when you were married, make sure and check out the full show notes by clicking the link in the description.