EPISODE 130 | DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN SELF-ABANDONMENT AND AUTHENTIC SELF-GIFT
[00:00:00] I lose trust in myself. The more I do it, the more I lose trust in myself. Just think about how empty it is, how empty it feels. When you have done this over and over again, you've laid your life down so to speak, you've sacrificed yourself and it's not appreciated. It's not seen or when you need someone, someone's not there for you.
[00:00:22] INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Becoming Me, your podcast companion and coach in your journey to a more integrated and authentic self. I am your host, Ann Yeong, and I'm here to help you grow in self-discovery and wholeness. If you long to live a more authentic and integrated life and would like to hear honest insights about the rewards and challenges of this journey, then take a deep breath, relax, and listen on to Becoming Me.
[00:00:58] PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON SELFLESSNESS
Hello, everyone. So, something that has always been on my heart, on my mind a lot, is what does it mean to lay down my life in the way that Christ laid down his life. But in such a way that I don't feel diminished by it, if I'm absolutely honest with myself, right? In a way that actually gives me life, that makes me feel more myself.
[00:01:35] The reason this has always been on my mind is because, you know, if you've listened to my earlier episodes on the Becoming Me Podcast or heard me tell my life story before about on my journey, you'd know that for the longest time, I didn't have a good sense of myself because I come from an enmeshed family system. There were no boundaries.
[00:02:01] While I was trained and taught to be selfless, to be loving, you know, I grew up in a Catholic household. My parents were first generation Catholics. You know, the scriptures, gospel, the mention of God, of Jesus, the example of Jesus, is never far, was never far in my upbringing.
[00:02:23] So, I knew all these things were important to give of myself, to be loving, to lay my life down. The problem was I couldn't seem to know how this could happen without brewing resentment in me, or without me feeling like I don't have a choice, or even in what was modelled to me.
[00:02:49] Okay, unfortunately, as we live in a broken world, the figures, the people that were my mentors, my teachers, my caregivers, they had their own take and interpretation, maybe a distorted interpretation of what laying down their lives meant too.
[00:03:07] Some of these came from our culture, some maybe are generational patterns or cultures within the larger culture or within the family that's been passed down. And so, I absorbed all that and what came out was often this compulsion sometimes, to lay my life down.
[00:03:28] It's a blend, okay. I want to say it's a blend. It's a mix. It's a very interesting mix of genuine desire. There's a part of me that really would like to be able to lay my life down for others to give of myself but I couldn't do it in a way that was free and that was authentic because there was this compulsion as well that I needed to do it.
[00:03:48] I had to do it because if I didn't do it, then I would be bad. If I couldn't lay down my life, then I would be selfish and selfish was bad. And that would mean that I am unworthy of love. So, because there's this component of compulsion, over time, I think the compulsion won out. I had to try and be selfless.
[00:04:11] I loved people, you know, passionately. I loved my friends passionately. I did my best. But because I felt like I tried so hard to lay my life down, to give myself to others, when it wasn't reciprocated, when I didn't feel that the other person appreciated it or would return the favour, I would always feel so betrayed.
[00:04:37] It may sound a little melodramatic, but I remember as a teenager, especially, I mean, I guess most teenagers are maybe somewhat melodramatic. I felt very betrayed. I felt devastated. Like I would do so much for you. Why is it that you can't love me as much as I love you, right? And this played out in more significant relationships as I grew older, as I came into adulthood and I started dating and I got married.
[00:05:07] And it wasn't until I began the interior integration journey, the healing journey, when I began to have my eyes open to the shadows in my life, it was only then actually that I realized that there was something very unhealthy and very dysfunctional about the way I was going about trying to love others, right?
[00:05:26] SELF-ABANDONMENT VS SELF-GIFT
What I thought was laying my life down. So, I want to talk about the difference between self-abandonment, which ultimately is I think what I learned to do. I learned to abandon myself in a way that was emotionally unhealthy. Okay, I want to talk about the difference between self-abandonment and self-gift.
[00:05:49] Okay, when I actually gift, make a gift of myself, my life, my time, my energy, whatever it is, without abandoning myself. So, that's a distinction that I think I didn't really hear talked about much when I was younger. Suddenly, there was no difference in the way that it was modelled to me. I would say that my childhood heroes or heroines - they would sacrifice themselves greatly. I think I always thought it was self-gift.
[00:06:22] But perhaps, there was actually a lot of self-abandonment involved as well because there were always some undercurrents of resentment of such a heavy burden of duty and obligation that ultimately, sometimes, with these people, I didn't really see that they were more alive or more themselves.
[00:06:40] If anything, some of them came across as being very bitter and very petty and, you know, resentful and angry when the people around them did not value their sacrifice, right? And that cannot be the kind of self-gift that Christ was modelling for us.
[00:07:03] THE CONCEPT OF SELF-GIFT
So, self-abandonment versus self-gift. Or you may have heard the term kenosis, right, which is self-emptying, the self-emptying of Christ.
[00:07:12] And we hear this term so often in spiritual context and religious context, in religious education, in catechism, in faith formation, in retreats. You know, this exhortation to imitate Christ's self-giving.
[00:07:29] MY PERSONAL JOURNEY
So, something that had came to me more than 10 years ago now. I was in the midst of a very busy season of being in full-time ministry in the parish. It started off very well. I think there was a lot of joy. There was a lot of freedom in the way I was giving myself, but pretty soon, I got caught up again in my old dysfunctional patterns and it began to feel laborious.
[00:07:54] I began to burn out. I began to feel like I didn't have a choice. I had to keep giving more and more and more. The demands would never diminish and you know, I always felt I had to meet the demand, the needs. So, at some point, in a time of prayer, I felt Christ ask me, "Ann, what life are you laying down in the first place?"
[00:08:21] Because I always say I'm trying to lay down my life and this verse came to me, right? This is actually from the gospel of John. And this is what Jesus said with regards to Him laying down his life. He said, "no one takes my life from me. I give my life of my own free will", okay. Or some translation says, "I give my life of my own accord. No one takes my life from me".
[00:08:41] And I felt Christ asked me, can you say the same? Can you say the same that no one is taking your life from you and that you are laying down your life of your own free will? And I realized that I couldn't say that. I couldn't say that because the reality, the honest reality was I felt like my life was being demanded of me.
[00:09:02] Sometimes, I felt like, well, Jesus, aren't You the one demanding my life? Aren't You the one saying that, you know, if I were to be Your disciple, I have to lay down my life and pick up my cross and follow You. I have to do what You did. And that's so telling, isn't it? I mean, He did say that, but I never felt like I really had a choice.
[00:09:24] You see, this is so subtle and I think many of you may actually be able to identify with it if you take a moment and you think about your experience of all the times that let's say you sacrifice yourself. When you do something is what you think of as laying down your life for someone, do you really feel like you have a choice and that there was a space where you would not be diminished if you didn't give it? You didn't feel that you'd be less worthy of love if you didn't do it? You didn't think that you would be disappointed with yourself, or that God would be disappointed in you, or that other people will be upset with you.
[00:10:02] I mean, they may be, but the point is, have you ever, do you feel, that, in spite of all that, that people may be upset with you, that you're not diminished if you don't do this, and that you really do have a choice in laying down your life?. For me, that was not just a foreign concept.
[00:10:20] I couldn't remember a time I felt that way. Because how can I say I have a choice? If I don't do it, then I'm not a good disciple. If I don't do it, then I'm not a good daughter. You know, I'm not kind or selfless. And I couldn't deal with my self-image. My ego couldn't deal with a self-image that was less than perfect and giving and you know always laying down my life. So, that was the bind I was caught in.
[00:10:47] And when Jesus confronted me, I think God confronted me by asking me, "can you say what I say; that I lay my life down of my own accord? No one takes it from me". That was when I knew I had to grow in freedom that I didn't have that interior freedom, that I didn't know how to love in an emotionally healthy way, I didn't have an emotionally healthy spirituality, that the love that I was giving is not that it's not love at all.
[00:11:12] It was it's a maybe a very distorted love, it was very composed love, it was a giving with a hook because I was giving something expecting or in a way that I will get something in return because I couldn't give that something to myself. Okay, so, that's what I mean by self-abandonment.
[00:11:33] DISTINGUISHING SELF-ABANDONMENT FROM SELF-GIFT
So, I'm just going to go through some descriptions, okay, of what it feels like to abandon myself. Or when you might identify with this when you abandon yourself versus what it feels like when you are actually making a genuine self-gift of yourself. All right, so, when it is self-abandonment? When it is self-abandonment, I often feel frozen or numb in my body because it's something that I need to do. It's something I have to do.
[00:12:05] If there is any part of me that actually feels like I don't want to do this, my automatic response last time, was to just dissociate or numb it out because that's not helpful since I need to do it anyway. Okay, so, I'll feel numb or frozen in my body. I feel like I don't really have a real choice.
[00:12:23] NOT HAVING A CHOICE
Okay, I've mentioned this before because if I don't do it, then I'm not a good person and I'm not worthy of love and I want to be worthy of love I want to be a good person. I need to be a good person. You hear that? It's like I don't have a choice then if I want to be a good person, I have to give of myself.
[00:12:39] Okay, so, that's what self-abandonment feels like. I don't have a choice and I'm also at the same time, laser focused on doing the right thing. It's like a very narrow perception of what the right thing is in this particular instance. There's only one right answer. There's one right way. Everything else, every other possibility would mean that I'm selfish. I'm not selfless. I'm not following Christ.
[00:13:06] This way of thinking, I think, reflects also what I hear a lot in my life. Sometimes the narrative, the language that is used around me when I was a child, people may not be talking about me, but they may be talking about other people. You know, it could be adults in my life, in my family, it could be priests, it could be other adults in church.
[00:13:28] I listen to the way they talk about people, who is praised, who is criticized, who is praised as holy, who is good, who is bad. All that went into shaping the sense for me, right? And in my upbringing, doing the right thing - it's very, very specific. And it's almost like a do or die thing. So, I can become very, very laser focused on that to the exclusion of everything else.
[00:13:53] And when I'm so laser focused, there was no room for nuance. There's no room for really looking at the larger context or even thinking that maybe in a different scenario, you know, each time something happens that maybe the context is a little different and maybe a different response may be possible.
[00:14:11] For me, it was very black and white. There's a right thing and there's a wrong thing and I have to do the right thing. Okay, what else? In self-abandonment, when I abandon myself to be kind to somebody else, I ultimately feel betrayed if that, that sacrifice that I made, if it is not if it was not reciprocated or appreciated, if the gift, the gift that I made, okay, or the sacrifice that I made did not earn me the safety that I needed.
[00:14:41] Okay, so by safety here, I mean emotional safety. Which is ultimately that I feel I am received, I feel that I am seen, that I am loved, because ultimately, I mean, that's what I wanted. I mean, as a child, I just want to be loved, right? So, if I do the right thing and I don't feel like I'm seen, I don't feel like I'm loved, I feel betrayed.
[00:15:05] Because ultimately, think about it, that was why I did the right thing in the first place, because I needed that love. I wanted that love, right? So, I would feel betrayed if I didn't get the safety I needed. And so, the sacrifice that I ultimately do, even if there was some, there is genuine good intention, like it's not that I don't care about this person at all, but when I extend myself beyond what I can freely give, there is an element of transaction there.
[00:15:31] I'm sacrificing for you so that you should sacrifice for me so that, you know, between the two of us, we will both receive what we need, right. So, it's self-abandonment instead of self-care or self-love. I don't know how to look after myself. I only know how to try and buy that love from someone else by sacrificing myself.
[00:15:55] So, when I self-abandon. I lose trust in myself. The more I do it, the more I lose trust in myself. Just think about how empty it is, how empty it feels. When you have done this over and over again, you've laid your life down so to speak, you've sacrificed yourself and it's not appreciated. It's not seen or when you need someone, someone's not there for you.
[00:16:19] You don't just kind of let it go, get sad and lose faith in relationships or friendships and people. At a more fundamental level, you lose faith with yourself. You lose trust in yourself because, I mean, you keep abandoning yourself, right? That's quite a sucky friend. I mean in a sense that's quite a sucky person to be someone who keeps abandoning him or herself So, you lose trust in yourself.
[00:16:44] I lost so much trust in myself without even knowing because my growing up years, I don't think I've ever experienced what it was like to really trust myself. I always needed an external gaze someone else's opinion of me, judgment of me to give me a sense of whether I was doing okay or not, whether I was right or I was wrong.
[00:17:06] It was so insidious, okay. So, I didn't have self-trust for the longest time. And so, I couldn't be myself. And of course, when you keep abandoning yourself that way, you become codependent. I was very codependent on others in order to make up for this lack of self-attunement. And so, it just becomes a toxic cycle.
[00:17:24] Self-abandonment does empty you. I mean, in a sense, it's a kind of self-emptying, but it's a very emotionally unhealthy kind of self-emptying. It leads to very toxic relationship cycles. It leads to deep unhappiness. It leads to a diminished sense of self. You don't know who you are. And you're just miserable.
[00:17:48] And I just have to say that I actually see this a lot, especially among women. I think, maybe not exclusively in women, but I see this a lot in women and a lot of the young women that I cared for in the past that I mentored and formed, you know, the young women. And I see this in older women too. Some former clients that I've had or other friends that I've accompanied, you know, maybe there was a cultural expectation or so, right?
[00:18:13] That women must always sacrifice. But what I see is the sense of abandonment resignation ion. They can't say no. It's like even if they would like to, they don't feel like they have permission to say no. They need external permission to say no. They are not able to give themselves permission to draw the boundaries they need to say no.
[00:18:38] So, self-abandonment becomes a way of life and they are so often taken advantage of by family members, by friends, by colleagues, by bosses, in the church community. I mean, these are people that would keep on giving. You know, it's not that difficult to get them to give because they don't know how to stand up for themselves.
[00:19:00] Okay, and it doesn't matter if you seem very confident and very capable. There are some very high achieving and high performing people out there, all right. They're not necessarily meek and shy, but they can't say no. Okay, so, that's self-abandonment. So, what would self-gift on the other hand look like?
[00:19:22] WHAT DOES GENUINE SELF-GIFT FEEL LIKE?
Okay, so, a gift, in a sense, presupposes that you made a choice to give it, right? And you didn't abandon yourself to have to make this gift of yourself, of your time, of energy, whatever it is. So, this is what I experienced self-gift to be like.
[00:19:38] One, I can feel conflicting emotions sometimes when I have an opportunity to give of myself. Maybe it will be demanding. Maybe I know that it will really stretch me. Maybe I'd rather not pass on part of me. Maybe that's a bit more self-preserving, would rather not but I am aware of all these different conflicting emotions. I am aware of my fatigue or my tiredness. I'm aware of let's say my dislike or my hesitation maybe to do something for this person. But at the same time, I'm also in touch with the part that says I would like to be able to help this person, right - this person needs me right now. This person is very down. It's someone that I love and It's going to stretch me. It's going to cost me, but I do genuinely have this element that I would like to help him or her.
[00:20:32] So, in the process of self-gift, of healthy self-gift, I can tune into all these different emotions. Okay, I'm not just zeroed and fixated on doing the right thing.
[00:20:44] I can hear my own needs. I can also see the needs of the other person. And then another point is that my self-acceptance is not conditional on my ability to step up and give of myself, okay. So, when I'm operating out of self-abandonment, there is a part of me that feels I have no choice because if I don't lay down my life, so to speak, for the other person, I'm going to hate myself.
[00:21:08] I'm going to judge myself. I'm going to think of myself as lazy and selfish, right? So, there is going to be self-rejection if I don't give of myself. But in genuine, authentic self-gift, my self-love and self-acceptance is not under threat, right. I'm compassionate to myself. If I decide that I'm not going to do this for this person, I'm not going to think I'm a bad person.
[00:21:30] I just know that right now, my capacity just doesn't allow me to do this authentically. There is self-acceptance still, okay. And I can appreciate, you know, the nuanced complexity of the whole situation and not lose sight of my needs. That's so important. In self-abandonment, I can't see my needs. My needs have no right to exist, in a sense, alright?
[00:21:55] In self-gift, in kenosis, in this authentic self-giving, or laying down of my life, I give from what I am freely able and willing to offer, right? This may sometimes overstretch myself. It doesn't mean that I'm always very careful with my energy. I'm aware.
[00:22:16] Okay, so, what I mean is, more often than not, I'm aware of my boundaries. I'm aware of what I can offer without burning out without let's say maybe falling sick. Yeah, but it doesn't mean that self-gift is always very measured. Self-gift can be extremely generous. It can sometimes overextend itself. But the point is that there is that moment of choice of freedom that I know I cannot do this and I still love myself that God still loves me.
[00:22:46] I'm not a bad person but if I decide to give of myself and maybe even overstretch myself, it is freely done which means that if then I do burn out a little or if I fall sick, right? I accept that peacefully, actually sometimes, you know? If not, joyfully at least. Peacefully because I made that choice. I had that freedom and I made that choice to overstretch myself in this particular instance or for this particular person or during this season of my life, right?
[00:23:18] See, so, that's a huge difference. I don't feel betrayed by myself or by the other person when I forsake, for example. All right, because I'm at peace. The dignity of the gift that I give - this is another important point - this dignity is also not diminished when it is not appreciated. So, what do I mean by that?
[00:23:42] When I'm giving out of a place of self-abandonment, I need the recipient of my gift or whoever I'm sacrificing for. I need that person to see me because there's a big reason why I'm abandoning myself, because I need that person's love, or I need praise, or I need some affirmation about the fundamental goodness of my being, right?
[00:24:03] So, if I don't get that, or if I'm criticized, even after I have sacrificed myself, it's devastating. Because not only am I not seen, I'll feel so misunderstood and so wronged, right? And while that may be true, I may be wronged, I may be misunderstood, it hurts so much more because I don't have the resources within me to hold that pain, okay?
[00:24:29] Because I was relying on the other person on the other to give me the validation that I needed that I'm of worth. So, when that person criticizes me or misunderstands me, I'm really left with nothing. But when I give from a place of genuine authentic self-gift, even if that person cannot see the value of what I've given, even if the person still chooses to criticize me - because, let's say, the offer that I've given is not in the form of love that that person prefers, this happens. This happens.
[00:25:01] We have difficult people in our lives, right? I mean, sometimes they want to see something very specific and they may be very unreasonable or they may be asking for something that we cannot authentically give them, authentically give.
[00:25:14] So, when we discern what is it that I can genuinely and authentically give to love this person and I make that gift and it does cost me but it's not what the other person wants and that person maybe criticizes or misunderstands me, I do not feel diminished neither do I feel the dignity of the gift that I've given as diminished. I do not feel less.
[00:25:36] And this is so, so huge and so important. Because then, I'm still rooted in my worth, you know? I can even acknowledge that I'm not able to love this person the way they need.
[00:25:52] But I don't criticize myself for it. I don't see myself as a worse person for it. When I really give myself from a place of self-gift authentically and freely, every time I self-gift, it strengthens my self-trust and it actually strengthens my interior wholeness because it's an integrative force or process, okay?
[00:26:16] Genuine, authentic self-gift. Doing it actually integrates us because there's this whole process of being attuned to ourselves and to the other, being aware to the nuances and the complexity of the situation and harnessing our freedom, right, and our compassion to make a choice to give. How much or how little, whatever it is, but it's free and because it is freely given, it integrates us.
[00:26:45] It makes us feel actually more confident that we are able to grow in love because love is a process. Every time I do this, a genuine self-gift of myself, I grow in my capacity to love. And over time, my generosity can really, really increase without me having to abandon myself and force myself and guilt myself or manipulate myself to do the right thing so that I am kind and selfless.
[00:27:11] No, I can actually genuinely grow in the kind of love that is unconditional, you can say, right? Unconditional in the sense, even if it's not a great sacrifice, whatever I'm able to give is unconditional because even if you reject it or you criticize it. It's still freely given and I'm not less for it.
[00:27:30] So, self-gift is just so different, okay. From self-abandonment you know, we grow in our dignity and our self-possession. So, then we can say, like Christ did, no one takes my life from me. I lay it down with my own accord. I give it freely. I give it freely. And even if it is not appreciated, I give it gladly.
[00:27:55] FINAL THOUGHTS
[So, that's what I have for today's little sharing about self-abandonment versus self-gift. I hope that. Some of what I said landed with you. I hope that it gives you something to think about your own experiences when you try to be self-sacrificing or selfless.
[00:28:15] The next time you're in that situation or somebody makes an ask of you or you know, you're in a situation where you're called to be generous, can you pause and just tune in for a moment and ask yourself, how free am I to make this choice? Can I say I give freely because I choose to, because I'm ready to and I want to? Or am I driven by compulsion, by my need to appear a certain way to the other person or even to myself? Am I afraid that I will offend or disappoint God if I'm not able to make this sacrifice or do this thing for someone?
[00:28:58] Just be aware that in this whole process of interior integration, what we hope for, what we are working towards is really to be able to pour ourselves out, you know, in joyful response to being very, very loved right by God and by ourselves. And when it's a joyful response that we are giving, then our self-emptying in the form of self-gift, right? Emotionally healthy self-gift, it truly is life giving to others and it's life giving to us.
[00:29:34] When we give it, when we give of ourselves out of self-abandonment, not only does it deplete our own joy. I'll tell you something, if you haven't already noticed this happening in your life; it takes life and joy away from the people that you're giving to as well because when we give out of self-abandonment, we often make the recipient of our gift feel like they owe us.
[00:29:58] You know, they will feel a sense of imposition that they ought to be grateful. And if they're not grateful, we may make them feel it, right? I mean, whether or not we overtly say it, or we're passive aggressive, or in our body language, or whatever it is. Think of all the times that someone has sacrificed for you.
[00:30:21] And you felt like you owed them, that's not really coming from a place of kenosis. And I'm so sorry if that's how you feel towards God. I know I used to feel that way towards God because God emptied Himself for me. He sacrificed His life for me. I felt like how can I not be grateful for that, right? But the reason I felt that way was because in my life, self-sacrifice was modelled to me and done for me or to me in such a way that it made me feel bound.
[00:30:57] It made me feel obligated. It made me feel like I owed something. And it took me so long and so many years of healing to realize that's not love. Well, that's a distorted love. That's not free and authentic love. And that the way God loves me, even though He did give everything for, it sets me free.
[00:31:18] It's mind boggles, right? It sets me free; it does not bind me into duty and obligation to be a good person. It does not bind me and obligate me to return his love because genuine authentic love always sets us free. And because it sets us free there is so much joy that comes from receiving such love that we naturally want to respond by giving back and by giving freely, authentically. And I really hope that that's what all of us will come to experience over time as we heal and as we integrate. So, thank you for listening to today's sharing. Bye!
[00:32:01] CONCLUSION
Thank you for listening to Becoming Me. The most important thing about making this journey is to keep taking steps in the right direction. No matter how small those steps might be, no matter where you might be in your life right now, it is always possible to begin. The world would be a poorer place without you becoming more fully alive.
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