The First Act of Self‑Abandonment

No one is born abandoning themselves.

Children enter the world with an extraordinary capacity for authenticity. They cry when they are distressed. They protest when something feels wrong. They reach for comfort, express curiosity, become angry, laugh freely, and reveal themselves without hesitation. They do not wonder whether their needs are too much or whether their emotions make them difficult to love. They simply assume that who they are is welcome in the presence of those who care for them.

Something changes.

For many people, one of the earliest psychological lessons is not simply how to love. It is how to remain loved.

The appeal of this adaptation is deeply understandable. Children are completely dependent upon their caregivers. When emotional expression is repeatedly met with criticism, inconsistency, withdrawal, emotional unavailability, or environments in which authenticity threatens connection, the developing mind faces an impossible dilemma. The child cannot abandon the relationship upon which survival depends. Instead, the child gradually begins to abandon parts of the self.

This is the first act of self-abandonment.

By self-abandonment, I do not mean ordinary compromise or healthy sacrifice. Every close relationship requires flexibility, generosity, and the willingness to place another person’s needs alongside our own. Self-abandonment is something fundamentally different. It is the gradual relinquishment of one’s authentic thoughts, feelings, needs, perceptions, or identity in order to preserve attachment, regulate another person, or maintain a relationship upon which one’s sense of psychological safety depends.

It rarely occurs as a conscious decision. Rather, it unfolds through countless small moments. A child learns that expressing anger leads to rejection, so anger quietly disappears from awareness. Another discovers that having needs overwhelms a parent, so those needs are no longer expressed. Another becomes exquisitely attuned to the emotional states of others because anticipating another person’s needs feels safer than revealing their own. Over time, authenticity gives way to adaptation.

These adaptations are remarkably intelligent.

They preserve attachment under circumstances in which authenticity feels dangerous. They allow the child to maintain connection with the people they depend upon most. From the perspective of development, they are acts of psychological survival.

The tragedy is that what once protected the child often becomes the prison of the adult.

The personality gradually organizes itself around preserving connection rather than expressing authenticity. Relationships become governed by accommodation instead of mutuality, hypervigilance instead of trust, perfection instead of spontaneity, emotional withdrawal instead of vulnerability, or relentless caretaking instead of genuine intimacy. What once ensured survival eventually prevents psychological freedom.

This way of understanding personality offers a different perspective on personality disorders. Borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, avoidant personality disorder, and dependent personality disorder appear remarkably different on the surface. Yet beneath these differences lies a common developmental dilemma:

Each personality organization answers that question differently.

The individual with borderline personality disorder may abandon a stable sense of self in desperate efforts to prevent abandonment. The narcissistic individual may construct an idealized self that protects against unbearable shame. The avoidant individual may relinquish opportunities for intimacy before rejection becomes possible. The dependent individual may surrender autonomy in exchange for security. Although these adaptations differ dramatically in appearance, each reflects an attempt to preserve attachment when authenticity once felt too dangerous.

Perhaps this is why self-abandonment is so difficult to recognize in adulthood. It no longer feels like adaptation. It feels like identity.

Patients often tell me, “This is just who I am.” Yet what they describe is frequently not their authentic self, but a personality organized around surviving relationships that no longer exist. The adaptation has become so familiar that it is mistaken for the person.

Psychotherapy therefore asks something profoundly challenging. It does not simply ask patients to change behaviors. It asks them to risk becoming more authentic than their early relationships once allowed them to be.

This is why recovery often feels frightening rather than liberating.

To someone whose personality developed around self-abandonment, authenticity initially feels far more dangerous than accommodation. Expressing disappointment, setting boundaries, acknowledging anger, asking for comfort, or revealing vulnerability can evoke the same fear that shaped childhood:

That question cannot be answered through insight alone. It must be answered through new emotional experiences in which authenticity no longer threatens attachment. It must be answered through relationships in which disagreement does not lead to abandonment, vulnerability does not invite humiliation, and needs are not experienced as intolerable burdens. It is through these experiences that the personality gradually reorganizes itself around a new expectation: that connection and authenticity need not exist in opposition.

Perhaps this is the deepest purpose of psychotherapy.

Not simply to reduce symptoms or improve coping, but to help people discover that the adaptations which once ensured survival are no longer necessary. The self that seemed lost was never destroyed. It was protected, hidden, and patiently waiting for relationships in which it could finally emerge.

The first act of self-abandonment may occur in childhood. Healing begins with the first act of returning to oneself.

Author’s Note: The ideas presented in this essay draw upon a rich psychodynamic tradition, including the work of W.R.D. Fairbairn, D.W. Winnicott, Otto Kernberg, John Bowlby, and others. Justin Jones, Ph.D., is developing Structural Relational Psychotherapy (SRP), an emerging psychotherapy model for personality pathology, through the Center for the Study of Personality Structure and Psychotherapy Process.