When Success Hides Self-Abandonment

“Another contract signed. Weeks of long nights, stressful negotiations and putting family life on hold are paying off” — thought Mike, a successful entrepreneur. And yet… Can it be that the price of this success is self-abandonment? Sometimes, abandoning ourselves wraps itself in the attire of socially approved and widely rewarded behaviours that quietly erode our sense of self-worth and self-trust.

Take Mike. He owns a vegan supplement brand and knows he owes his success to his determination, long work days, and unwavering commitment. He likes to stay fit and strong and regularly goes to the gym. Recently, he started feeling very tired often, has been having trouble sleeping, and wakes up with anxiety — and his usual tricks (cold plunge, extra gym session to boost energy, extra shot of coffee) won’t work.

Mike knows he can endure a lot, he can push through difficulties and stay focused when others give up. And this very trait that most likely contributed to his company’s success has also trained him in ignoring his bodily signals. Mike knows how to push through pain. He can’t sense his limits — such sensitivity has never been useful, what was useful was to disconnect from his body to be able to achieve more, to be more productive, to stay on top of everything. 

This is self-abandonment. Despite his authority, confidence, and professional satisfaction, Mike is abandoning himself. His body is showing him what his mind won't acknowledge.

Then there’s Laura. Recently, she’s been promoted to a senior position in her law firm. She has two children, a husband who often travels for work, and an elderly mother who is dependent on her. Professionally, she is known to be decisive, opinionated, and firm, and at home, she manages to stay on top of her household basics, kids’ schedule, and her mother’s day care.

To Laura’s surprise, she experienced her first panic attack out of the blue just last month, and things that used to be easy suddenly started being overwhelming and unmanageable. She started questioning her work and wondering if she is a good enough mother. Headaches happening more and more often are debilitating, and she often finds herself, without an apparent reason, paralysed to make a decision. 

Years of focusing on the practical side of life and solving problems for other people are taking a toll. It’s not that Laura is not assertive. Quite the contrary. She can set boundaries and demand what’s hers.

Her pattern of self-abandonment is more subtle — she has learnt to quieten her curiosity, her passions, and her spontaneity. It’s a pattern of pushing away all that is not necessarily practical but feels alive, of silencing her existential questions and turning away from things that do not fit into other people’s demands. Unconsciously but persistently. 

Neither Mike nor Laura struggles to set boundaries or say no in their everyday lives. The self-abandonment pattern sometimes is more complex and harder to detect, especially for people who have ‘done well in life’. 

Sometimes, it is disguised in pushing through pain because you can. 

Sometimes, it looks like achieving more while feeling less joy.

Sometimes, it is seen as capability on the outside, collapse on the inside. 

The pattern is subtle. Socially rewarded. Even celebrated. Easy to miss.

Until tension, exhaustion, and pain show you what your mind cannot see. 

Sometimes recognising self-abandonment means paying attention to your body because our culture will thoroughly mask it as an expected, rewarded, even honourable behaviour.

We are used to objectifying our bodies and treating them as separate from ourselves, instruments to maintain rather than inherent parts of ourselves. But our sense of self originates with sensing our bodily experience and creating meaning based on the sensations. There is a constant ‘conversation’ happening between our body and cognitive mind. 

Self-abandonment happens when we habitually refuse to listen to these bodily signals. It’s not always that we don’t notice our sensations. Our relationship to the sensations changes — instead of listening, we override or misinterpret their meaning. 

What Mike and Laura have in common is that at some point in their lives, unconsciously, they started placing moral judgment on physical experiences — judging fatigue as bad and unwanted, or longing for depth as inconvenient obstacles on the path to productivity. That is why Mike pushes through when he feels tired. That is why Laura experiences panic attacks as a forceful way to draw her attention to ‘unproductive’ needs.

They both created ways to adapt to the circumstances they found themselves in. When they experienced stress, demands, and pressure, they coped by focusing on productivity, which for Mike meant adding cold plunges or for Laura — developing her competence. 

These adjustments are, however, effective only if we allow ourselves to recover from stress. If we prolong exposure to stress and normalise it, eventually the body stops responding to the strategies that used to work. What used to be adaptive turns into liability.

Mike and Laura represent people often called high achievers. Their nervous systems are used to detecting demands quickly, and when they respond fast, complete tasks, and produce results — they get satisfaction and relief. And, although this is useful and adaptive in some contexts, if prolonged, this creates a cycle in which the nervous system remains activated longer than it was designed to. 

In other words: rest feels dangerous, and stillness is recognised as a failure. 

Their nervous systems had learned that movement was safety and stopping was threat. The body has been switched on and running for a very long time, and exhausted its capacity to recover.

Why this mechanism is so widespread and seems to work so well is related to the way we are brought up in the West. We tend to believe that who we are and how we’re valued is attached to certain behaviours, that by just being, we don’t have enough worth. 

Subconsciously, we create self-concepts of how we have to be and what we have to do (or not do, and not be) to earn love, safety, or success. For Mike it would be: I am someone who endures when others give up. For Laura: I am a woman who always has a solution.

And this constructed self-image sometimes is not aligned with what we actually feel, need, and sense. This gap is what produces feelings and experiences, such as for Mike (his body refusing to go full speed at all times) and Laura (her body pointing her towards neglected parts of her identity). What doesn’t fit our self-concept gets denied and exiled from awareness.  

For high achievers like Mike and Laura, the condition of worth is ‘performance’. The parts of self that don't perform — the tired body, the curious mind, the spontaneous impulse, the existential question — get quietly abandoned. Probably their disconnection from self began long before the demands of the career or the social approval. Underneath the outward confidence, emotional neglect lingered.

Nothing that Mike and Laura do is wrong. The patterns they developed helped them cope with life — and do it productively. Moreover, as we live in a culture that praises ‘growth, productivity and efficiency’ in a very linear, cumulative way, the social systems validate such adaptations as adequate.

Mike and Laura once created intelligent adaptations that have outlived their context. The point is not to pathologise them but recognise them for what they are. Success is a particularly effective mask. Achievement gets high reward — the dopamine hit, the social recognition, the identity reinforcement — which makes self-abandonment deeply ingrained.

From the inside, it doesn’t look like self-abandonment. It looks like doing what works.

The challenge is that slowing down and exploring their moment-to-moment experience without a clear end goal is the opposite of what people like Mike and Laura learnt to do in life. And stepping onto this path might be the greatest act of courage they ever show.