In my work with women, I often meet someone whose life looks intact from the outside. She is thoughtful, capable, and self-aware. She has done the work. She shows up and follows through.
Beneath the functioning, there is often a persistent sense of disconnection she cannot quite explain. What she describes, when she finally finds words for it, is a sense of living her life from the outside — present in it, but not quite inside it.
This is one of the most common and least understood experiences I encounter in my work. It is also one of the most important to take seriously.
What self-abandonment actually looks like
When most people hear the word self-abandonment, they imagine someone who has visibly fallen apart. That is rarely what I see.
Self-abandonment in high-achieving women tends to be woven into very functional, socially rewarded ways of being. It can look like knowing what needs to be done but not feeling fully behind your own choices. It can look like saying yes when something in you hesitates or moving through your days with a persistent sense of effort rather than ease. It can look like prioritizing what is needed over what is true, staying composed instead of staying connected, or doing what works even when it does not feel like you.
Over time, these patterns create a particular kind of distance. You are living your life, but not quite from inside it.
Why it can be so difficult to recognize
Many of the women I work with would not describe themselves as self-abandoning. They see themselves as self-aware and intentional, and in many respects they are. This is precisely what makes self-abandonment so difficult to recognize from the inside.
When you are functioning well, meeting your responsibilities, and continuing to grow, it can be easy to dismiss the feeling that something is off as ingratitude or oversensitivity. That dismissal, however, is itself a form of self-abandonment — the act of overriding your own signal in favor of continuing to function.
What that disconnection is pointing to
That persistent sense of disconnection is rarely random. In my experience it is often the first signal that something deeper is asking to be understood, something with roots that reach further back than the current circumstances of a woman's life.
Understanding those roots does not just explain the disconnection. For many women, it opens the door to a relationship with themselves that feels, perhaps for the first time, genuinely true.
If this is resonating with you and you are ready to explore this more deeply, I am currently offering an intimate online retreat called The Mother Wound: Honoring What Was Missing and Discovering the Divine Mother Within, on May 9.
You can read more and reserve your place here: sujatauppal.com/mother-wound-retreat
