The Heart’s Journey Home: When We Stop Abandoning Ourselves
This is Part 3 of The Heart’s Journey: Attachment & Connection, Rupture, and Healing. If you haven’t read the earlier parts, begin here: Part 1 – When the Heart Finally Opens—and Panic Follows and Part 2 – Why the Heart Aches: When a Short Connection Feels Like a Deep Loss.
The story continues.
The connection was re-established.
The friendship deepened. Yet, it remained up and down, marked by moments of closeness and uncertainty. Older patterns, stories, beliefs, and triggers began to emerge—for both of them.
The woman began to feel a deeper connection, more than she would have liked to. There was ambivalence on the other side, yet the connection continued to develop quickly.
Waiting for a phone call, a message, or the possibility of seeing each other in person became an agony. Every moment seemed to stretch into an eternity.
Both of them began confronting their own demons from the past.
Then came a point when the woman realized she had to let go of her armor and face her inner world. Otherwise, weighed down by that heavy protection, she feared she would drown in the rising tide of emotions, memories, and beliefs that had begun to surface.
When the Inner World Becomes Overwhelming
She was confused about what she was feeling. She began to feel a web of emotions, from joy to heartache. She found herself smiling one moment, with tears in her eyes the next.
She could feel herself falling for the other person, even though she could see the red flags. The emotional unavailability and self-centeredness were unmistakable, echoes of patterns she thought she had left behind.
Yet, despite everything her logic screamed at her, she felt powerless to shut down her feelings. Her emotions had become too powerful to simply reason away.
She judged herself for feeling the way she did.
Why am I reacting like this?
Why can't I just be logical?
Why can’t I act like a grown-up?
Why can’t I control my emotions?
When the sleeping dragon awakens, it can create havoc within our inner world.
It can feel as though something essential has been lost, like a needle disappearing into a haystack. Nothing seems to make sense. We become bewildered, ungrounded, and unable to understand why something seemingly small is affecting us so deeply.
Suppressed pain can surface with an intensity that feels almost like grief after losing someone close. It can become difficult to make head or tail of what is happening inside.
The nervous system can become overwhelmed. Sleep, appetite, concentration, and the ability to function can all be affected.
These are often the moments when we begin to curse life, blame other people, or turn against ourselves.
There may be crying spells.
The smallest thing can suddenly trigger something much larger inside us.
The body can react in different ways—aches and pains, lethargy, loss of appetite, disrupted sleep, and more.
And yet, beneath all of this, something is trying to be heard.
The Turning Point
Eventually, the woman began to realize that what she was experiencing was not simply about this person.
Something deeper needed her attention.
She found herself sitting with a therapist, beginning to explore the layers beneath the immediate pain.
Through therapy, contemplation, and deep self-reflection, she began to understand something important:
She had not experienced this kind of connection in a very long time.
And although she could see that the dynamics between them were not healthy for her, she also began to recognize that she had been operating from a deep human need to connect, to be seen, and to be emotionally held.
Needs that had gone unmet for a very long time.
Needs she had learned to suppress.
For years, she had taken on the role of caregiver.
She was there for others.
She carried responsibilities.
She supported people.
She kept going.
But somewhere along the way, she had stopped asking:
Who is there for me?
No one was caring for her in the way she had learned to care for everyone else.
And that had become exhausting.
The Cost of Living Behind Armor
She began to see how often she stayed in the shadows of her own life.
She didn't share what she was going through.
She didn't always acknowledge her own feelings.
She didn't allow herself to be emotionally held.
She kept her armor on.
Even with people close to her, she often remained the one who showed up for everyone else while keeping her own needs on the back burner.
She began to recognize the imbalance.
Always being there for others while neither being there for herself nor allowing others to be there for her was not strength.
It was a pattern.
And she realized how much of a disservice that pattern was—not only to herself, but also to the relationships she cared about.
Because when we continually hide our needs, we don't give others the opportunity to know us fully or to meet us where we truly are.
And then she caught herself falling into the same loop again.
She was beginning to do it with this person, too.
She knew it had to stop.
Not because her capacity to care was wrong.
Not because her desire for connection was wrong.
But because she could no longer abandon herself in the process of caring for someone else.
Learning to Honor Her Own Needs
For perhaps the first time, she began to understand that being a good person does not mean continually sacrificing herself.
She could support others without doing so at the expense of her own wellbeing.
There had to be balance.
She began to understand that healthy relationships require reciprocity, respect, and room for both people to exist as themselves.
She felt respect in this connection.
But she did not feel the reciprocity she needed.
And that realization hurt.
Because things cannot always happen on someone else's terms.
She, too, had a right to have needs.
She had a right to express what she felt.
She had a right to be seen.
She had a right to be emotionally held.
She had a right to want what she wanted.
She had a right to be who she was.
And perhaps most importantly, she had a right to stop putting herself on the back burner.
Breaking the Old Pattern
The deeper healing was no longer about whether this connection would work out.
It was about what the connection had revealed.
It had shown her how deeply she longed for connection.
How much she wanted to be seen.
How tired she was of always being the strong one.
How much of herself she had placed behind armor.
And how often she had confused self-sacrifice with love.
She began to understand that she did not have to save everyone.
It was not her job to carry the world.
She could care.
She could love.
She could support.
And she could still choose herself.
The old pattern was beginning to loosen.
She was learning to honor her desires instead of automatically silencing them to fulfill her obligations.
She was learning to listen to her feelings instead of ridiculing them.
She was learning that authenticity does not mean having everything figured out.
Sometimes, authenticity simply means being honest enough to say:
This is what I feel.
This is what I need.
This is who I am.
And perhaps this was the real turning point in her journey.
The sleeping dragon had awakened—not to destroy her, but to show her what had been waiting to be felt, acknowledged, and reclaimed.
She was finally beginning to understand that healing was not about becoming someone who needed less.
It was about becoming someone who no longer abandoned herself for the sake of everyone else.
And maybe, after years of putting herself last, it was finally time to come home to herself.
This closes The Heart’s Journey. From the moment the heart first opened, through the ache of rupture, to finally coming home to herself—her story is a reminder that healing is not about needing less. It is about no longer abandoning ourselves.
If this story resonates with you, I'd be honored to support your own journey.
For a deeper look at the philosophy and approaches that guide my work, explore My Philosophy and Therapeutic Modalities.