Yesterday I scheduled a meeting crammed right up next to my dentist appointment. If you were in my head, you would’ve heard: I know that meeting is going to go over. There’s no way I’ll get to the dentist on time. On the text stream, you would’ve read: “Sure, Monday at 3:30 works great! See you then!” Exclamation points always make you sound confident and cheery.
If we’re lucky, we only go to the dentist twice a year. Yet the appointments are so important that we schedule them months in advance. We get reminder texts, postcards, and voicemails we never listen to. And still, I acted like it didn’t matter.
The dentist is loaded for me. If you’ve been following me, you know I’ve been open about my relapses into disordered eating...
Yesterday I scheduled a meeting crammed right up next to my dentist appointment. If you were in my head, you would’ve heard: I know that meeting is going to go over. There’s no way I’ll get to the dentist on time. On the text stream, you would’ve read: “Sure, Monday at 3:30 works great! See you then!” Exclamation points always make you sound confident and cheery.
If we’re lucky, we only go to the dentist twice a year. Yet the appointments are so important that we schedule them months in advance. We get reminder texts, postcards, and voicemails we never listen to. And still, I acted like it didn’t matter.
The dentist is loaded for me. If you’ve been following me, you know I’ve been open about my relapses into disordered eating. Every time the dentist opens my mouth, it feels like he’s opening a stall door to my worst moments—purging, crying, praying. When he scrapes, I feel the digging up of my shame, my piles of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup wrappers.
If you’re someone in recovery from substances, anxiety, depression, people-pleasing, or just life, you know what that feels like. You also know why avoiding it doesn’t work.
As Oliver Burkeman writes: “Rationally speaking this kind of avoidance makes no sense at all…The more you arrange your life around not addressing the things that make you anxious, the more likely they are to develop into serious problems.”
Self-abandonment usually starts small. You eat lunch at your desk. Cancel your therapy session. Let resentments brew. Say yes when you mean no. It feels familiar. Comfortable. But it costs you.
As Brianna Wiest writes in The Mountain Is You: "Ending self-abandonment will cost you the identity that survives by being needed, pleasing, productive, and ‘fine.’ It will disrupt your comfort zone and confuse your sense of direction at first—but that disorientation is part of becoming someone new."
Here are five practices you can try today. They draw from my Wise Effort Method, and they begin with this mantra: Get curious. Open up. Focus your energy on what matters most.
**1. Get Curious and Track It. **Start noticing the times you override your system—biological, emotional, existential. Your wise mind whispers: Saying yes here isn’t going to go well. Your body’s tired. But you push through. You know you need rest, but keep going. There’s wisdom in those whispers.
Wise Practice: Start mentally monitoring or tracking each time you abandon yourself. Be on the lookout for:
- Emotional abandonment
- Physical abandonment
- Existential abandonment
- Relational abandonment
Even just noticing builds self-awareness. Change begins before you “do” anything else.
**2. Ask: What Don’t You Want to Feel? **We abandon ourselves for many reasons—shame, fear of conflict, discomfort with stillness. Maybe you were never taught to care for yourself. Maybe you’re afraid of what will shift if you do. There’s responsibility in self-care. It may mean letting go of things, disrupting relationships, and facing dreams that feel too big.
Wise Practice: When you notice the urge to abandon yourself, pause and ask: What dreaded experience am I trying to avoid right now?
**3. Be Willing for It to Feel Bad So It Can Feel Really Good. **It feels bad for me to go to the dentist. I cry. I text my husband. I plug in Tara Brach or a mantra mix. It’s gotten a little better—but still feels bad. But when I go, I leave feeling great. I deserve the free toothbrush.
Wise Practice: Finish these sentences:
- “When I take care of myself, I’m investing in…”
- “Integrity for me means…”
- “When I abandon myself, the cost is…”
- “When I stay with myself, I have more…”
**4. Stop Faking It. **Self-abandonment works partly because we make it look normal. You sound enthusiastic about plans you don’t want to keep. You cancel yoga with a “scheduling conflict,” when really you chose productivity over your body. You smile while quietly resenting how others rely on you.
This sends mixed messages—to others and to you. How can you trust yourself if your needs inside don’t match your words outside?
Wise Practice: Catch the incongruency—fake smile, automatic “sounds great”—pause, and choose one congruent action:
- “Let me get back to you.”
- “I can do X, but not Y.”
- “What do I need right now?” Then act on that.
**5. Focus Your Energy: Start Being There for Yourself. **Secretly, we all want to be rescued. I wish the receptionist would drive me to the dentist. Or that the person I’m double-booking with would say, “Are you sure that works for you?”
But the truth is: No one will rescue you every time. Some friends may check in. But they’re busy, too. Ultimately, you’re the one who’s with you to the end.
Wise Practice: Choose one small self-loyal action:
- Protect your body
- Tell yourself the truth
- When you catch yourself abandoning yourself, repair fast
Your Wise Effort practice is to keep choosing yourself in small ways, again and again—until you become someone you want to spend the rest of your life with. Someone you feel proud to be. Someone who deserves the free gift at the dentist.