The 5 Seconds Before You Abandon Yourself

In this episode of Back to You, Anne explains self-abandonment in the way most high-achieving women actually experience it: not as one dramatic life collapse, but as the tiny everyday moments where you override what you need, choose what feels easier, and then wonder why you don’t trust yourself to follow through.

If you’ve ever found yourself doom scrolling when you meant to rest, snapping when you meant to pause, saying yes before checking in with yourself, stress eating, overworking, skipping the workout, ignoring your body cues, or starting over every Monday, this episode will help you see the pattern underneath the pattern.

Anne breaks down why this isn’t a discipline problem, why your nervous system moves into protection when pressure, guilt, overwhelm, conflict, or exhaustion hits, and how protective behaviours can look like both hustling and hiding.

You’ll learn how to recognize the micro-moment before self-abandonment takes over, why resistance doesn’t mean something is wrong, and how to start practising one small act of self-loyalty instead.

This is for the woman who knows what to do, but keeps leaving herself when life gets loud.

In this episode, Anne talks about:

• What self-abandonment actually looks like in real life
• Why consistency feels so hard for high-achieving women
• The nervous system pattern underneath overworking, scrolling, snapping, and shutting down
• Why discipline alone doesn’t create self-trust
• How to catch the five seconds before the old pattern takes over
• The “When I leave myself, I stay with myself by…” practice
• How tiny acts of self-loyalty rebuild trust with yourself

If this episode resonates, send it to a woman in your life who keeps blaming herself for being inconsistent when she may actually be stuck in protection.

You know what to do. You're not confused about the plan. You're just not there when life gets loud.

This show is for the high-achieving woman who can still function, still perform, still hold everything together — and still feel like she's quietly disappearing on herself in the process.

Here, we talk about the real reason you fall off (it's not discipline), what's actually happening in your body when you override, override, override, and how to stop starting over every Monday.

You don't have a discipline problem. You're disappearing on yourself. And that's a nervous system problem — one you can actually change.

I'm Anne Jones — nervous system coach, former RMT, and certified fitness coach of 16+ years. I'll help you build the kind of steady, grounded capacity that holds when life stops cooperating.

No hustle. No perfect conditions. No performing your way through another week.

Just honest conversation, practical tools, and a way back to yourself.

Start here:

• Free Guide: The High-Achiever's Guide to Losing Fat Without Obsessing Over Food or Workouts: [https://www.annejonescoaching.ca/free-guide-your-body-your-way]

• Deeper support + essays: Join my Substack: [https://annejonesfit.substack.com/]

Work with me:

• Website: [https://www.annejonescoaching.ca/]

Connect With Me:

• Instagram: [@an...

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Welcome to Back to You. I'm your host, Anne Jones, nervous system coach, a former registered massage therapist, and certified life fitness coach of 16 years, and someone who knows what it feels like to constantly abandon yourself when life gets overwhelming. This podcast is for high-achieving women who know what to do, but still find themselves overthinking, overworking, people-pleasing, shutting down, stress eating, doom scrolling, or starting over every Monday. Here, we talk about the real reasons consistency feels so hard, how to regulate your nervous system in real life, and how to stop disappearing on yourself the moment things get stressful. I'll be in the trenches with you as you build self-trust, create sustainable habits, set better boundaries, and learn how to stay grounded, calm, and connected to yourself no matter what life throws at you. You'll always get honest conversations, practical tools, nervous system support, and real-life strategies you can actually use. Let's get into it. Okay. I wanna talk about something today that I think almost every high-achieving woman experiences, but most women don't have the language for, and that is self-abandonment. Because I think most women believe self-abandonment has to look dramatic, ending or leaving a relationship, quitting a job, having some huge, dark night of the soul. And honestly, sometimes it does look like that. Some of it, all of it. sometimes self-abandonment does become so loud that your whole life starts screaming for your attention. But more often it looks really small, and that's exactly why it keeps running your life, because you don't notice it. You don't call it what it is. You just think, Oh, I'm tired," or, "I'm overwhelmed," or, "I'm just being lazy. I have no discipline. I'm just not consistent. I'll start again on Monday." But what if that's not actually the problem? What if the real problem is that you are leaving yourself in tiny moments all day long, and then you're confused about why you don't trust yourself to follow through? That's what I want to unpack today. Because when I say self-abandonment, I don't mean you're a bad person. I don't mean there's something wrong with you. I don't mean you're consciously choosing against yourself because you don't care. I mean there are those tiny moments where something inside of you knows what you need, what you want, what would support you, what would honor you, what would help you feel like yourself again, be for your highest good. And then another part of you chooses the easier, more comfortable, familiar, more protective thing instead. That is the moment. That is the whole thing. And I think this is the moment nobody teaches women how to work with, the five seconds before the pattern takes over. Because we've been taught how to make plans, we've been taught how to set goals, we've been taught how to track habits and food, and oh my God, endless tracking. We've been taught how to be productive and efficient. We've been taught how to push through. We've been taught how to be good. We've been taught how to be needed. We've been taught how to be useful. But nobody teaches women how to stay with themselves when discomfort shows up, when all those things get exhausting, when there are too many of them. And honestly, th- this is the work. That's the real work. Because most women do not have a knowledge problem. All the information is available to us. They have a nervous system problem. Meaning when pressure, guilt, overwhelm, conflict, exhaustion, hits, your body moves into protection automatically, and most of us don't even know what that feels like. And then protective behaviors can look incredibly productive and socially acceptable. Overworking, cleaning, researching, planning, thinking, fixing, people pleasing, staying busy. Just doing one more thing. Opening the laptop again. Checking the app again. Answering the message immediately, answering the email immediately. Making another list. Trying to figure it all out right now. And protective behaviors can also look like disappearing. Scrolling, shutting down, avoiding, procrastinating, going back to bed, numbing out, eating past fullness, pouring the wine or the drink, saying, "Ah, whatever, I don't care," apathy. But underneath both of these patterns, the same thing is usually happening. You're leaving yourself because staying with yourself feels uncomfortable. And fair enough. Nobody taught you how. So I want to give you a really simple example from my own life. I have many every single day, 'cause we all run into this discomfort. But I think this is where it starts to make sense. So for example, I go to yoga in a public class two or three times a week. Okay? And, sometimes it's restorative yoga. I know even if it's an energetic class, there's gonna be meditation, sometimes a lot of it. There's gonna be slowing down, and there's gonna be Shavasana, right? Always, like here in my old city, everywhere. and I was thinking about how I've gone to live yoga classes consistently for years, It's in my calendar, something I do. Pretty consistent. And yet, almost every time I'm driving to yoga, there's this moment. I'm thinking about it. It's not a huge moment, not a dramatic crisis, just this little sensation in my body when I remember, oh, I'm gonna have to slow down, this little resistance to... This little like, ugh. And what I notice, it's not that I don't want to go to yoga. I do. I love how I feel after yoga. I love the slowness. I love the strength. I love the breath. I love the room. I love being there. I love the people. I love the quiet. But there's a part of me that knows, oh, I'm going to have to slow down. I'm going to have to be still. And I like that. I want it. I know logically it's good for me. But there's always a moment that my system resists it. Just as like every morning when I'm about to meditate, I'm like, okay, like I want to do it. I'm like, okay, now I have to slow down. Like it would be easier, more comfortable for me to jump into doing the things, right? Because slowing down is not always comfortable at first. For a lot of high-achieving women, slowing down sounds really good in theory, but in the body it can feel agitating. It can feel like This is what I hear a lot-- heard a lot from my clients is they know logically they want to do it. It's good for them, but they're having the thought, I should be doing something else. My time would be better spent somewhere else." Even for working out, which is like they, they want to do it. They know that they should be doing it. Brain knows this logically, but it doesn't feel safe for the body. So the body's like, but what if you're forgetting to do something else? What if you don't have time for this? What are you not doing? Who else might need something? What else could you be getting ahead on? You could be doing emails. What problem could you solve? What could you produce in this 75 minutes instead? And this is what I want you to understand, that little moment in the car on the way to yoga is a micro moment where I could abandon myself. We all have them every single day, and it's not, like I said, it's not big and dramatic. It's not a big, dark night of the soul, but if I were to abandon myself in that moment and not go to yoga or turn around and go home or go shopping instead, that's not, like, obviously destructive, right? It's not like I'm going on a bender. But it is choosing productivity over presence, by choosing doing something over just being me, being with myself, by choosing what feels familiar instead of choosing what actually supports me. And the reason that I don't abandon myself in that moment is not because I don't feel the resistance, okay? I want you to hear me say that. I feel the resistance. I feel it for working out, eating vegetables, going to bed, waking up. I feel the resistance. But the reason that I don't abandon myself is not 'cause I don't feel resistance. It's because I recognize the resistance. I expect it. I don't make the resistance mean anything is wrong, that I shouldn't go to yoga. I don't make it mean that yoga is a waste of time or that I'm self-indulgent. I don't make it mean I'm too busy for it. I just notice, oh, right, there's that part of me that feels safer when I'm doing something. And then I keep driving cause that's self-loyalty. So that is what I want you to hear. It's not hustling, forcing, rigidity. It is not discipline. This is what I mean when I say it's not discipline that gets me to yoga. It's not discipline that gets me into the gym. It's not discipline that gets me, to meditate. It is self-loyalty. There's a structure. Those things are on the calendar, like I mentioned. But it doesn't matter if they're on the calendar and you have a structure if you're going to abandon yourself every time the clock turns. So I want you to hear that because some people would just hear this story and say, Well, Anne, that's just a discipline. You're so disciplined." This is a different kind of discipline. Okay, we can call it discipline, I just don't like to use that word 'cause it has a different connotation. This is a discipline of devotion. This is a discipline of self-loyalty. This is a discipline of choosing the version of myself that I actually want to be in the moment when it would be easier not to, and that feels very different. One is rooted in pressure and shame, and the other is rooted in identity. One says, "You better do this or else," and the other says, "This is who I am now." One creates an internal war, the other builds self-trust, and that is a completely different nervous system experience. The same thing happens for me, with meditation. Most mornings I meditate first thing, almost every morning. Sometimes I slip into it easily, and sometimes I feel beautiful and grounding and I'm like, "Oh, thank God. This is exactly what I needed. Woo." And sometimes my brain is like, "Absolutely not. You should create this thing first. Open your laptop." I love Davidji. The other morning I did a 25-minute Davidji meditation. I remember looking at it and thinking, "25 minutes?" And immediately my brain started offering me all the things I could do, 25 minutes, instead of just a 10-minute, I don't know. Thought I was gonna check emails, start work, get ahead. I could clean something, I could respond to someone, I could plan the day. And I had this very clear awareness of "Oh yeah, this is the micro moment. This is the moment where I either stay with myself or I tell myself the lie and I abandon myself." Because the truth is there is a version of me that feels safe in doing. I have felt safer doing for a long, long time. There is a version of me who would love to earn the rest, to get a gold star and fall down dead. That used to be me. There is a version of me that wants to prove I am useful before I get to be still. There is a version of me that thinks if I can just get ahead enough, then I can relax, I'll feel calm. But that is not the version of me that I want running my life. That's not the version of me that I want to become. That is my productive shadow self. Bless her. That's my hustly, performative, over-functioning self. And I say that with love because she has helped me survive a lot. She built things, she achieved things, she got me through hard seasons. She made me hardworking and capable, but she is not the part of me I want leading most of the time anymore. So when I choose the meditation, I'm not just choosing the meditation, I'm choosing not to abandon the part of me that needs stillness, that needs to slow down. I'm choosing to tell my body, "You don't have to earn this. You get, you get to do this this morning." I'm choosing to practice being with me before I'm being with anyone else. And that is not just a habit, that is a relationship. And this is where I want you to start thinking about your own life because maybe your version is not yoga. Maybe it's not meditation. Maybe it's not workouts at all. Maybe your micro moment is much more basic. Maybe it's when you need to go pee and you override it and you don't go. That sounds ridiculous, but it's not. I hear it from clients all the time. How many women are walking around ignoring the most basic cues from their bodies? You have to pee, and you just keep working at your desk. Your body literally has these built-in signals to tell you, and you just ignore it. You're hungry, and you just push through. And you might even think it's better to not eat. Or you're full, and you keep eating because you're disconnected from body. Or you're exhausted, and you just open another app, open the next loop. You're completely maxed out, and you say yes anyway. You're overwhelmed, you say yes anyway. You're overstimulated, and instead of pausing, you snap the next person you love who speaks to you. Those moments matter. Not because you need to become precious and obsessive about every body cue. I don't believe in like o- over-optimizing all the health stuff. I think we've gotten a little carried away with that. can we just not optimize some things? But I think if you're listening to your body, you're like optimizing it in the way that's for you, not like for everyone else. Because your body is literally always communicating with you. And every time you ignore it, override it, dismiss it, or tell it to shut up because something else is more important, you are training yourself to leave yourself. And then women wonder why they feel so disconnected from themselves and don't know what they want and who they are. It's not one big thing. It's a thousand tiny cuts of not listening because we're moving too fast. And this is why I think we have to redefine self-abandonment. Because when we make it seem very dramatic, we miss the everyday ways that it happens over and over. Self-abandonment can look like pouring the glass of wine when, when you actually need to cry or to eat dinner, have a tough conversation, go to bed, ask for help, be alone for 10 minutes. Self-abandonment can look like eating all the tortillas in the fridge when what you actually need is comfort, safety, or a break from being over-responsible for everyone in your life. Self-abandonment can look like snapping at your kid because rushing them feels easier than taming your own urgency. Self-abandonment can look like blaming your partner for your emotional state because staying inside your own body feels too vulnerable. It can look like scrolling for 45 minutes because choosing the next right thing to do just feels too hard. It can look like going back to bed because the day ahead of you just feels too big. Self-abandonment can look like cleaning the kitchen instead of eating breakfast. Self-abandonment can look like saying yes before you've even checked in with yourself or your calendar. It can look like making your life harder later so that you can avoid discomfort now. And that last one is huge. That's a theme, right? Because so often the thing that feels easy in the moment makes your life harder later. Scrolling feels easy now, but later you feel be- not- behind and annoyed with yourself. You know, skipping the workout feels easy now, but later you feel disconnected from your body. You don't have energy. You feel weak. Saying yes feels easier now than upsetting or disappointing someone, but later you feel resentful of them and of yourself. Eating past fullness feels easier now, but later you feel ashamed and uncomfortable. Opening your laptop at night feels easier now because you get a little hit of control, but later your sleep is garbage and your nervous system is fried and you wonder why your brain is going at 3:00 AM. Snapping feels easier now, but later you feel guilty and disconnected. And then what do we do? We make it a character flaw. We say, "Oh my God, what is wrong with me? I'm a terrible mother. Why am I like this? Why can't I just be consistent? I'm a bitch. Why can't I just stop doing this thing?" And I want to interrupt that. Because the question is not, what is wrong with you? The question is, what feels safer about that pattern? That is the nervous system question. That is the question that changes the work. Because if you only ask, "How do I stop doing this?" You will usually just create more pressure. But if you ask, "What is this pattern doing for me in the moment?" Now you're building awareness and self-compassion, and awareness is where choice starts. I'll give you another example from my own life. So a few weeks ago, my mom was here and I was getting ready to come down here and work. She was getting ready to do school with Sophie, and I open... I'm like rushing, rushing, rushing to come down here. I opened the microwave to put my coffee in to reheat it, and the microwave cover thing was already in there. So I hit it with my coffee cup. I spilled coffee everywhere. And I had a microsecond meltdown. Not a huge one. But I caught it pretty quickly because I don't do this anymore usually. Like those little moments where previously I would be like, "Everything is terrible," and I'd text my husband and cry and I used to do that frequently. I don't, I almost never do that. So which is why I felt it, 'cause I had this like coffee spill, and I felt the old pathway. The like, "Oh my God, everything is terrible." And my mom was there and Sophie was there, and there was this part of me that could feel how comfortable it would be to snap and explode, make it a whole thing, to be a petulant child. "I'm so busy. This is terrible." Put on a little show and be like, "Great. Of course. My day is ruined. I have so many things to do. Everything's so hard. Nobody gets this. Like my life is ridiculous." We say these things to ourselves, right? Listen, there was a version of me four or five years ago who did that almost every day. Not because I was a shitty person, because I was so overwhelmed. My nervous system was overloaded. My capacity was low. My body was living in urgency, pressure, and depletion. And when something small like that happened, it felt huge because my stress bucket was full. The coffee wasn't just coffee, the spill wasn't just a f- spill. I made it become evidence. Evidence that my life was hard and nobody helped me. Evidence that my life was too much. Evidence that everything is hard. I can't catch a break. But now, because I've done this work, I can see that moment coming so clearly. I can feel the fork in the road. I can feel the part of me that wants the reaction because the reaction would create relief. That's important. Sometimes a reaction is relief. We just don't know how to let it out. Blaming can feel like relief. Slamming things can feel like relief. Just letting everyone know you're upset can feel like relief. That is one way, but it costs you. It costs you your power, your steadiness, it costs you your connection with those people. It costs you the version of you that you are trying to become. And I'm not saying that we should never be upset. Please do not hear that. This is not about like becoming some perfectly regulated Wandla robot who never has a feeling. That sounds terrible. We don't want that. It's fake. It's not real. I'm talking about the difference between feeling something and abandoning your whole self to the feeling, giving it up. There's a difference. You can be frustrated and stay with yourself. You can be overwhelmed, stay with yourself. You can be disappointed and stay with yourself. You can be angry and stay with yourself. I just worked on this with a client a couple weeks ago. You can be exhausted and stay with yourself. That's a skill. The skill is not not feeling discomfort, but not immediately outsourcing your discomfort into a behavior that takes you even further from who you want to be. This is where parenting examples are huge. I've been working on this a lot with my one-on-one clients. And if you are a parent, you will know, and if you're not a parent, you will still be able to relate to this 'cause we do- Can sometimes treat adults like this too. The easier thing is often to react. The easier thing is to rush them, to blame them, to make their behavior the reason that you lost your center. "Look at this. Now we're late." The easier thing is, "Why are you doing this to me right now?" But the more honest thing is often, "I am dysregulated. I am rushed. I am overstimulated. I am feeling out of control, and I want to put that on you because it would give me somewhere to put this feeling." That does not mean that kids don't need boundaries and timelines. They do. They really do. It doesn't mean people don't need accountability. They do. It doesn't mean you become passive. But the quality of your leadership changes when you stop abandoning yourself in the reaction. Same with partners. You see a look on their face. You make it mean something. You decide they're annoyed. "How dare they? You're judging me. They're You're just disappointed in me." You decide you're in trouble, and then you react to the story that you just created. Now, maybe they were annoyed. Maybe they weren't. But either way, the moment you abandon yourself to the spiral, you bring down your power. You lose power in the relationship cause now you're not responding from the truth. You're reacting from a perceived threat. And again, I say this with so much compassion 'cause I've done literally all of these things. I've lived all of this. I'm not teaching this 'cause I read it in a book, and I thought it sounded fun to share with you. I'm teaching this 'cause I know intimately what it feels like to be hijacked by a moment and then have to live with the aftermath of the way I reacted. I also know what it feels like to start catching the moment sooner, and I know that is everything. That is where your life starts to change. Because when you can catch the moment sooner, you don't need a massive life overhaul. You need one small interruption, one breath, one pause, a sentence, a hand on your chest, a step away, one honest, "I just need a minute", one moment of choosing not to disappear on yourself. Last week inside my Back to You course, we practiced something really simple. The sentence is simply, When I leave myself, I stay with myself by blank." And then we practiced pre-choosing one tiny action or tool. Not a complete life overhaul. Not becoming a different person overnight. Just an interruption, a moment of staying. One woman in my program realized that every time she leaves herself in the morning, she goes back to bed after the alarm instead of going to work out. So this is where traditional, like, discipline and goal setting would say, Okay. Wake up at 5:00. Do the morning routine. Drink the lemon water. Journal, meditate, work out. Just become, like, a brand-new human by Friday." No. We don't work like that. It doesn't work like that. It might work like that one time, but that is why people quit. So her action that we worked was when I leave myself, I stay with myself by putting on my workout clothes. Not the whole thing, just the next, just the next right step. Not even the whole workout. Don't even care if she gets there at this point, to be honest. Not the perfect morning, just putting on the clothes because that action moves her back towards herself. Another woman realized that when she argues with her son, she, gets dysregulated, completely shuts down, and then leaves and scrolls 'cause she feels emotionally flooded. That's not wrong. Of course her body wants an exit. Of course her system wants a way out of the intensity. But the scrolling takes her further away from the relationship and further away from herself. So her action became, when I leave myself, I stay with myself by taking one deep breath. I'm not then telling her what to say to her kid or make him do or how to fix the relationship. I want her to learn how to regulate herself because she knows. She knows what she wants to do next. And if she doesn't, she's gonna have a much easier time connecting to it than if she's dysregulated. We don't make our best decisions from dysregulation. So the point is not for her to become perfectly regulated over one night. The point is for her to catch it and take a breath instead. Another woman in Back to You, realized that she becomes reactive and overwhelmed during chaotic mo- mornings taking care of her granddaughter. So instead of staying in the escalating energy, her action became when I leave myself, I stay with myself by giving her a minute and walking away to start the car, which I think is beautiful. It's creating space, refraining, pausing, regulating before reacting, and then she can come back to it. That's the work. This is what I want you to understand. The action is not actually not supposed to be impressive. It's supposed to be accessible, un- even underwhelming. Because the version of you that is dysregulated, flooded, overwhelmed, tired, ashamed, overstimulated doesn't need an impressive plan. She wants a doable next move. Tell me what the next move is. This is why I'm always talking about minimum effective dose and smallest possible action because most women are trying to build consistency from a regulation fantasy version of themselves. You're not always gonna be the version of yourself who slept well, had coffee, no interruptions, feels inspired, and has the whole day open, right? Your kid gets sick, your dog gets sick, the email comes in, the unexpected bill, an appointment runs late, your house is loud, your body's tired, your partner's grumpy. There's a schedule change, and suddenly that plan, that beautiful plan, feels too big and inaccessible. And instead of adapting, you abandon. And then you call yourself inconsistent or undisciplined or lazy. But what if you weren't inconsistent? What if your plan was just not built for the state you're actually in when life gets real? That is a different conversation because threatened humans do not become consistent humans. They become protective humans. Your brain is always trying to avoid discomfort, seek relief, and conserve energy. That's the brain's three jobs. Avoid com- discomfort, seek relief, conserve energy. That is it. So when you feel overwhelmed, criticized, overloaded, behind, trapped, pressured, afraid of failure, you will automatically choose what feels most comfortable and protective in the moment. Not what's best for you long term, not what aligns with your values, not what future you will thank you for, what feels protective and safe right now. This is why I don't love when people reduce everything to discipline. discipline has a place. You guys have seen my calendar. I love a schedule. I love a strategy. I love structure. I love boring, repeatable systems. But the question is, are you regulated enough to execute it? What is the energy underneath it? Are you using the structure to punish yourself, or are you using the structure to support yourself in a realistic way? Because the reason I meditate in the morning, work out in the morning, fit in walks, and go to yoga is b- is because those things are scheduled. They are on my calendar. Otherwise, I would forget. I'd have to think about it. But that's not from rigidity. It's the opposite, actually. It's from ease. I'm making the decision ahead of time, so I don't have to negotiate with my survival brain later who's like, "Oh my God, it's Monday. What do I do on Monday?" Nope, I've already decided. And then I have the capacity to deal with things as they come up. That is not control, that's kindness for myself. I'm not waiting for motivation to work out. I'm not waking up every morning and asking, "Do I feel like being the version of myself I would like to be today?" No. I'm waking up and asking myself, "How do I want to feel today? How am I gonna execute this plan that I already have? What is most important today?" Cause some days, honestly, the answer would be no. I feel like doing whatever is easiest. Some days I feel like scrolling. Some days I feel like working my butt off instead of slowing down to prove myself. Some days I feel like skipping the thing that would be supportive of me, because being supported can feel weird when you're used to being driven by pressure. So I make the decision ahead of time, and that makes it easier on my future self. And that is the part that I want you to take away. You are not building a life where you never feel resistance, you are building a life where resistance does not get to be in charge. You can feel resistance and still go to yoga. You can feel resistance and still put on the workout clothes. You can feel the resistance and still close your mouth and take a breath and say, "I need a minute." You can feel resistance and still feed yourself and eat vegetables and drink water and close the laptop and choose yourself. That is self-trust. That's having your own back. Self-trust is not built by never struggling. Self-trust is built when you stop making struggle mean that you should abandon yourself. One of the concepts that I teach my clients is called clarity by contrast, meaning sometimes the fastest way to understand what you need is to get really honest about what you keep doing instead. So maybe for you, when you leave yourself, you scroll, or you shut down, or you snap at people, or you just overwork, you clean, you avoid, you procrastinate, you try to control everything, or you people please, or you overthink, or you numb out, or you go back to bed, or you eat when you are not hungry, or you ignore hunger cues until you're ravenous, or you drink when you're actually lonely, or you say yes because disappointing somebody feels unbearable. Okay. Good. That's awareness. That's not shame. Those are patterns, and patterns can change. But not through pressure, through awareness, through pattern interrupt, through repetition, through staying with yourself. So I want to give you a simple practice. Not a complicated one, just something you can start noticing today. Ask yourself, When do I most often leave myself?" So the most frequent or the, the most triggering. And don't make it fancy. Look at your real life. Is it in the morning? Is it at night? For me, it used to always be at night. Is it when your kids are loud? Is it when your partner seems disappointed, you feel behind at work, you're tired? You feel criticized or judged? Is it when you have five minutes of empty space and immediately grab your phone? No judgment. Is it when you're hungry, but you don't wanna stop what you're doing? Or you need to rest, but you feel guilty taking it? Find one moment, just one, and then ask, "What do I usually do in that moment? Do I hustle to do something? Do I hide, avoid, scroll, snap, try to fix it, freeze, clean something? Over-explain? Do I eat? Do I pour a drink? Do I look for something to do?" Again, no shame. You're just collecting information. And then ask, What would staying with myself look like here?" And this is where I want you to be mindful, cause your brain will, will try to make the answer too big. It will say, "You need a new schedule. You need a new workout plan. You need a new diet. You've gotta stop scrolling, give up your phone. You should probably wake up at 5:00. Meal prep every Sunday. Oh, you need to have a big boundary conversation with your mom." No. Too much right now. Smaller. Staying with yourself might look like putting on your shoes, having one 60-second tool, two breaths, going pee when you need to go, eating lunch before you answer your emails, closing the app, putting the phone in another room for 10 minutes, saying, Let me check my calendar and get back to you," walking away before you snap at someone, drinking water, just putting your hands on your chest, sitting on the floor for 60 seconds, opening the document, writing a sentence, turning off the computer, going to bed. The action will look too small for your high-achieving brain. Perfect. That's how you know we're getting somewhere. The goal's not to impress your brain. The goal is to teach your body that you can stay, and that happens through repetition. Tiny repetition, unsexy repetition, boring repetition, the kind nobody's gonna clap for, except me. The kind that literally changes your life, though. And honestly, once I understood this, I stopped treating myself like a problem to fix, which changed everything. Because now the work is not, "How do I become perfect?" The work is, "Can I stay with myself a little longer here? Can I interrupt the pattern sooner, more frequently? Can I come back to myself faster? Can I choose the version of me I'm becoming even when the old version feels easier?" That's it. That's the work. And listen, I don't want this to become another thing you perform, 'cause I know you. You'll hear this and immediately turn it into homework, another thing to do. Okay, I need to identify every self-abandonment pattern I have, and create a full spreadsheet, and fix them all by next week." No. That would be you abandoning yourself through overworking, overdoing. It's sneaky, right? It's so sneaky. This work is humbling, 'cause even the way you try to heal can become the old pattern. So keep it simple. One moment, one pattern, one tiny action that feels too small. When I want to leave myself, I stay with myself by finish the sentence, practice it, see what happens. And if you forget, just come back. If you abandon yourself, come back. If you scroll, come back to yourself. You snap at someone, repair and come back. You overwork, catch it, come back. The win is not never leaving yourself. The win is noticing sooner and returning faster. That is how self-trust is built. Not through perfection, through repair and repetition. Through choosing yourself in the moment it would be easier not to. And if this episode speaks to you, I want you to know this is exactly the work that I do with clients. You don't need another plan. You don't need more pressure. Like I don't do this because you need someone yelling at you to be more disciplined, but because you need to understand what is happening inside of you in the exact moment you normally disappear. You need to understand the patterns that are causing you suffering. You need to understand what your nervous system is protecting you from. You need simple tools that actually work in real life, in the messy moments, in the loud moments, in the tired moments, in the I know what to do so why am I not doing it moments. Because this is where your life changes. Again, not in the fantasy version of your life where everything is calm and spacious. In this life, with the interruptions, with the people, with the dishes, with the big feelings and the full calendar, the body that is begging for you to listen, with the nervous system that is trying to protect you, with the version of you who is learning slowly and honestly to come back to herself. I want to end with this. You're not lazy. Nothing wrong with you. You're not uniquely bad at consistency, but you may be deeply practiced at leaving yourself. And if that is true, shame will not bring you back. Pressure will not bring you back. Another perfect plan will not bring you back. Presence will. Awareness and mindfulness will. Tiny acts of self-loyalty will. The moment you notice, oh, this is where I usually leave, and you choose one small way to stay, that is the beginning of a different life. It's not dramatic or flashy, but it's very real. And that is the work. If this episode hit you hard and you already know your pattern while listening to this, that is your starting point. And if you want support learning how to stop abandoning yourself every time life gets overwhelming, emotional, busy, or uncomfortable, that is exactly the work that we do inside Back to You. You can find everything linked in the show notes. And if this episode resonated, please send it to someone you love who needs to hear this today. Okay. Love you lots. Bye.