Why Choosing Yourself Feels So Uncomfortable

If choosing yourself makes you feel guilty, selfish, or wrong, this episode will help you understand why that discomfort may not mean you’re doing anything wrong.

In this episode of Love From the Inside Out, Susan explores why choosing yourself can feel so uncomfortable, especially when you’ve spent years being the dependable one, the helpful one, the person who figures it out, or the one who says “it’s fine” even when it’s not really fine.

This is not a conversation about becoming selfish or walking away from your responsibilities. It’s about the difference between abandoning yourself and honoring yourself.

Susan shares personal reflections on growing up without really knowing what it meant to have needs, building success around proving herself, shifting from wanting to be chosen in dating to choosing from a place of self-worth, and learning how unfamiliar healthy, stable love can feel when you’re used to being the only person you can count on.

She also talks about how midlife, postmenopause, body changes, energy, hormones, digestion, sleep, and real-life obligations can make it harder to keep overriding yourself the way you used to.

This episode is for you if you’ve ever said no and then immediately questioned yourself, felt guilty for wanting more space, or wondered whether choosing yourself means disappointing people you care about.

Sometimes choosing yourself feels uncomfortable because you’re interrupting an old pattern that once helped you feel safe, loved, successful, needed, or chosen. And sometimes the most loving thing you can do is stop disappearing inside the care you give to everyone else.

In this episode, Susan explores:

• Why choosing yourself can feel selfish, even when it’s not
• The difference between self-honoring and self-abandonment
• How people-pleasing and proving can become part of your identity
• Why healthy love can feel unfamiliar when you’re used to anxiety or uncertainty
• How midlife can make it harder to ignore what your body and energy are telling you
• Why guilt does not always mean you made the wrong choice
• How to start trusting yourself when choosing yourself feels uncomfortable

Susan also shares more about Notes From the Inside Out, her monthly note for women in midlife who are navigating body changes, burnout, relationships, self-trust, menopause, identity shifts, and the process of coming back to themselves. 

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If this conversation resonates with you, follow or subscribe to Love From the Inside Out, and share this episode with someone who may need the reminder that choosing yourself does not mean you have stopped caring about everyone else.

You are allowed to matter here, too.