How to Stop Abandoning Yourself: A Guide to Emotional Reconnection with an LGBTQIA+ Counsellor in Melbourne

Feeling Numb, Lost or on Autopilot? You’re Not Alone

Do you often find yourself putting your needs aside for others? Are you unsure of what you need to feel emotionally connected to yourself, or if you do know, do you not prioritise the actions necessary to care for yourself? Perhaps you feel like you’re on autopilot and, over time have been slowly abandoning yourself and neglecting to check in with what you might need. 

Many of us are conditioned to believe that our feelings and needs aren’t important, and that it is virtuous to put others first. While this can be true at times, when we habitually place ourselves last, we gradually stop being able to hear our needs for self-soothing and support from others, eventually ending up feeling numb and lost.

I get it; tuning in to and listening to what our feelings mean takes work and can often bring up feelings of vulnerability around having to ask for what we want and the potential for disappointment. In unsafe environments, it doesn’t make sense to be connected to our deeper feelings; it's smart to prioritise our survival instincts. 

I also know that when we are in a safe setting, feeling emotionally disconnected from ourselves can leave us lost, and longing for direction and clarity on where to focus our energies. In this post, we will explore what emotional self-abandonment entails, how parts of our psyche can block our emotions, and how you can begin to own your feelings and needs today.

Signs You Might Be Abandoning Yourself Emotionally

1. Getting Lost in Codependent Relationships

• Maybe you have felt lost in codependent relationships where you play the higher functioning role, you focus on looking after your partner and forget to check in with yourself about what you might need.

2. Numbing Out Difficult Feelings with Alcohol and Drugs

• You may be numbing difficult feelings with alcohol and drugs. If we don’t see it as safe to connect and express our emotions, one way to cope with these feelings is to numb them. Over time, this can lead to a sense of disconnection from others, known as emotional loneliness. Sometimes this strategy shows up subtly; for instance, instead of asking your partner for a hug and some time to discuss your difficult day, you might have a few glasses of wine to take the edge off.

3. Emotional Numbness or disconnection. 

• You don’t know how you feel. Over time, we can develop parts of our psyche that guard or block out our feelings, so that day-to-day we don’t feel much. We stop being aware of our need for downtime or connection because it doesn’t cross our minds. This can manifest in sharing difficult experiences with others in an emotionally disconnected manner, for example,  describing a distressing event in an emotionless, matter-of-fact tone. 

What Helps: Simple Day-to-Day Strategies to Reconnect with Your Feelings

Turn Your Attention Inward

The first step to healing self-abandonment is learning to turn inward with curiosity. Try daily practices like:

• Leaving space for silence (e.g., no music in the car)

• Freeform journaling, one page a day

• Nature walks without distractions during sunrise or sunset. 

These moments create space for your emotions to emerge and be heard.

Reconnecting with Yourself in Therapy with an LGBTQIA+ Psychologist/Counsellor in Melbourne

1. Gestalt Therapy: Recognising Patterns of Self-Abandonment

Gestalt psychotherapy helps you recognise the triggers and patterns that cause you to disconnect from your feelings. Together with a therapist, you can explore how your negative patterns were formed and experiment with new responses.

2. IFS (Parts Work): Building Trust with Your Protective Parts

Internal Family Systems therapy enables us to become aware of the parts within us that hinder our emotional experience. These parts are often trying to protect us from pain, but with compassion and care, we can help them relax, allowing greater access to our true feelings.

3. EMDR Therapy: Healing the Root Beliefs Behind Self-Abandonment

Often, painful past experiences or trauma lead to beliefs like “My feelings don’t matter.” EMDR helps us process these memories and shift the underlying assumptions that maintain self-abandonment.

Through this work, therapy clients can begin to:

• Feel clearer about their emotional needs

• Develop greater self-worth

• Build confidence in asking for support

• Feel more emotionally present in their relationships

• Learn to fill their cup first before offering to help others.

Reconnecting with Yourself Is Lifelong Work—But You Don’t Have to Do It Alone

We all experience levels of emotional disconnection throughout our lives. Self-abandonment may have served as a crucial survival strategy that is no longer applicable in our current circumstances. Emotional reconnection is a lifelong journey and demands self-compassion.

Book a Free Consult with an LGBTQIA+ Psychologist/Counsellor in Melbourne

If you’re ready to stop abandoning yourself and start reconnecting with your emotional world, therapy can help. I offer trauma-informed therapy for LGBTQIA+ adults in Melbourne using approaches like Gestalt, IFS, and EMDR.

FAQs on Emotional Self-Abandonment

• How does self-abandonment relate to people pleasing?

  People-pleasing is a more commonly used term for self-abandonment. People-pleasing refers to the external behaviour between individuals, while self-abandonment denotes the inner psychological process. When I encourage clients to address people-pleasing behaviours, I advise them to start small. This can include expressing your desires about where you would like to eat, rather than giving a habitual ‘I don’t mind' response. 

• How long does it take to reconnect emotionally?

  Emotional self-abandonment varies in severity, meaning that emotionally reconnecting can happen much faster for some individuals than for others. The more time, effort, and curiosity my clients invest in exploring their emotional world, the quicker they reconnect. Typically, within the first six sessions, clients report feeling more emotionally connected to themselves and, consequently, more capable of asking for what they need. 

• Can therapy really help me to reconnect with my needs?

  It's normal to wonder whether therapy will help; it’s a significant investment of time and energy, so we want to know it's going to be effective. In therapy, you get to practice asking what you need upfront, setting goals with your therapist by discussing how to best work together and how that aligns with your values.

  To help us assess the effectiveness of therapy and to ensure we are engaging with the right areas of interest my clients will complete short feedback surveys at regular intervals. These surveys allow the opportunity to express key details such as how much they feel that they are being heard and understood during our sessions together. These check-ins are an opportunity for clients to tune in to their needs, and for us to learn more about how we can guide them to a better connection with their emotions in future. 

• Can EMDR help if I can’t remember anything specific?

  EMDR can work even without a particularly distressing memory to focus on by using a symbolic memory that stands in for memories that cannot be recalled. This symbolic memory includes familiar sensory details of places where you learnt that your feelings didn’t matter; for instance, it could be the family dinner table or the feeling when your partner frequently dismissed your emotions as silly and over-the-top.