One day you'll get a message and instead of feeling triggered by it and feeling like you're overanalyzing,
Curating every single word in order for the other person to understand,
You'll sit with it,
Feel it in your body,
And decide if it even deserves your energy.
One day you'll leave a conversation and instead of waking up at 2am with it replaying in your head,
You'll leave that conversation behind knowing that you were anchored in your truth and you didn't leave yourself behind.
One day you'll feel that sensation of guilt pulling you back into old patterns and instead of giving into it,
You'll recognize it for what it is and stay with yourself.
One day instead of listening to everyone else's expectations of you,
You'll listen to your nervous system and how you feel in a situation and whether it feels safe to be in or not and you'll honor it.
If you're hearing this and there's a part of you that's wondering if that's actually even possible for me,
I made this for you because a few years ago I wouldn't have believed this was possible either.
I thought the anxiety,
The overthinking,
The guilt was just part of who I was and it kept pulling me back but what I didn't understand then is these were not personality traits.
These were patterns my body had learned and my beliefs kept me in and now I don't live in that constant brace anymore.
I don't spiral in the same way and I do not abandon myself to keep the peace and it's not because my life is perfect or things are calm and everything just worked out great for me.
It's actually the opposite.
The more complex my life got,
The more challenges I felt,
The more I realized that I can no longer leave myself behind and that the most important person to be anchored into was myself because I was no longer willing to erode my essence in order to keep people comfortable and that's what I'm going to show you inside this episode.
And if we haven't met,
My name is Dr.
Kelly Kessler.
I'm a doctor of physical therapy and a nervous system educator and the work I do is centered around helping women understand why choosing themselves can feel so difficult even when they know it's what they need because this is not just about boundaries.
It's about what happens in your body,
In your mind,
And in your heart when you stop abandoning yourself.
It's about the guilt that shows up,
Which I know all too well.
It's about the anxiety.
It's about the sensations in your body that tell you you're doing something wrong and it's about the second guessing,
The urge to go back on the decisions you already know were right but yet don't quite feel anchored in.
And in this video,
I'm going to show you why this is so meaningful,
That it's not just about choosing yourself.
It's about transforming your entire life from the inside out and it's about your relationship with your nervous system,
Your relationship with yourself,
With guilt,
How you handle contact and pressure in the way that you never used to.
When you begin to become self-loyal,
This is not just a theory.
It's in those everyday moments,
Those moments that the doubt creeps in,
The guilt creeps in,
That pulls you back into these suffocating patterns.
And if you stay with me,
I'm going to walk you through the specific shifts you'll start to notice so you can recognize where you are in this process and what's actually changing for you.
I'm going to share with you 10 shifts that happen when you stop abandoning yourself and you start living a more self-loyal life.
So number one is your relationship with guilt changes.
This is where you start to acknowledge the difference between guilt that belongs to you and guilt that was placed on you by someone else.
And this is a huge distinction because when you start to become more self-loyal,
You release some of the patterns of self-abandonment,
Relationships and dynamics change.
And one thing that gets weaponized is guilt.
Guilt gets projected onto you from others as a means to control you and pull you back into the dynamic that was familiar.
And this is where you gain your power because once you recognize the guilt that's being projected onto other people is theirs and not yours,
This is where you stop obeying it.
This is where you get to feel it,
You get to name it,
And then you get to set it down without letting it pull you back into self-abandonment.
This is where the for the first time you understand that there's a difference between having a conscious and carrying someone else's guilt.
And you recognize that those are two very different things and you're not responsible for the guilt that's projected onto you.
And that's where you start to become more free and anchored in yourself.
The second shift that happens is how you handle contact and pressure.
You used to receive messages and they would send you into a spiral,
Feel like you would get into that whole doom and gloom of the message.
But now once you become more self-loyal,
You recognize there's a pause between the stimulus of the message and your response.
And that pause is where your power resides.
It gives you that choice of how you're going to show up.
And this is where you start to make that shift because you stop reacting out of fear and the need to respond to them immediately.
And you start responding from a place of groundedness.
You can read something that's designed to destabilize you and without letting it consume you,
You come back to yourself before you ever respond to that person.
This is where you can be in the same room as someone who maybe before would send you off the deep end.
And now you can be with yourself,
Allow your nervous system to stabilize,
Feel grounded in your space,
And you no longer dread that contact because you trust how you're going to show up inside of it.
The third shift that happens is your inner dialogue.
That voice that used to ask,
Did I do the right thing over and over and over again begins to quiet.
And it's not because you become more numb,
It's actually because you've built enough inner safety that you no longer need that constant reassurance from the outside world to validate your decisions.
You stop replaying conversations.
You stop asking people's opinions about what happened.
You stop rehearsing how you're going to show up.
You stop feeling like you have to build a case just to exist.
You feel like you don't have to justify yourself and your decisions anymore.
All that matters now is that you know what's right for you.
You trust your body.
You trust your nervous system.
You trust yourself.
And that's it.
It becomes more simple.
Instead of managing everything outside yourself,
This is where you get to come inside yourself,
Recognize how you're showing up,
How you're feeling,
How your body is responding,
And be there for yourself in those moments.
It actually feels so much more simplified when you're self-loyal and not self-abandoning.
The fourth shift that happens is in your relationship with the story.
You know how it feels when you just desperately want somebody to understand you,
To understand your choices,
To understand the impact of their choices,
And you feel like you need some kind of validation from them,
Some kind of mutual understanding for there to feel peace.
And that's what stops when you become more self-loyal.
You don't desperately hold on for them to understand you and come around.
You reclaim your narrative,
Even if it doesn't match theirs.
You stop feeling like you have to prove yourself.
And you start trusting your experience.
Even if somebody misunderstands you or intends to misunderstand you,
That's okay.
And you let them have their version of the story without feeling like you need to correct it.
You know what happened,
And that's enough.
The fifth shift that happens is in your boundaries.
Boundaries no longer feel like you have to white-knuckle yourself through them.
They actually start feeling like an extension of you.
You don't feel like you have to over-explain things.
You stop apologizing for them.
You stop collapsing in moments.
You stop feeling like other people's disappointment is yours to hold.
You have a capacity to feel what you need to feel,
Knowing what you are able to hold,
Knowing what you're able to show up for.
And you honor your limit with warmth without guilt.
You realize that your boundary does not have to be delivered perfectly to be valued as long as you value it.
And you see boundaries as more of an invitation,
That you are so valued within yourself,
That there's so much love from within yourself,
That you are not willing to open your life up to everybody who wants to trample in it.
This is where you have so much worth that boundaries are essential,
And you recognize that you're protecting yourself through them,
And they invite the right people in,
And they let the people who are not going to respect your worth fade away.
The sixth shift is in your relationship with loneliness.
And you'll find as you become less self-abandoning and more self-loyal,
It sometimes is a really lonely journey to go on.
Because unfortunately,
A lot of the dynamics that functioned in your past life or this current life are ones that depended on you carrying the emotional load.
And the minute that you pull yourself back and you take your energy back,
Many of those dynamics fade away or shatter.
And it feels very lonely when that comes up.
Because you got used to being the one who overgave in relationships,
You got used to having the people around that depended on you.
And even though it can feel very liberating,
That is a big shift for you.
But the difference is that loneliness takes on a new meaning.
Instead of feeling like a lack,
A lack of people in your space,
It actually feels like a spacious sense of belonging to yourself.
That space to be with yourself,
To be quiet with yourself.
And you start recognizing that the absence of chaos does not mean emptiness.
It actually means that you have an opportunity to learn about yourself,
To respect yourself,
Give yourself what you need and build the connections with yourself and then eventually with the right people after you come back home to yourself.
The next shift is your relationship with grief.
When you stop abandoning yourself,
An inevitable part of this is grief.
Because again,
Relationships shift,
Dynamics shift,
And it can feel like a major loss to your system because what you knew is no longer what is.
And while grief is part of this process,
Your relationship with it changes.
You learn how to feel the sadness in your body.
You're not overriding it.
You're not numbing it.
You're being with it.
And you recognize that grief allows for clarity.
It allows you to see what was meaningful to you,
What is meaningful to you.
And you honor your grief.
It allows you to feel like you have that emotional connection with yourself.
You recognize the harm that may have been caused and you allow yourself to feel it.
It allows you to soften some of the parts that had to harden to make the dynamics work.
And now grief becomes more about wisdom than wounding.
It teaches you so much about yourself when you're able to sit with your own grief and feel what you need to feel.
The eighth shift is in your spiritual experience.
This is where you stop seeing yourself as a victim of circumstances and more of the creator of your circumstances.
You stop thinking that life is happening to you and reacting to that in a fear-based model.
And you start seeing that life was actually working for you.
And when you stop abandoning yourself,
You start to get the exposure to what was meaningful in your life and what was not meaningful in your life.
You start to be able to decipher what's for you and what's not for you.
And this brings so much clarity into recognizing who you are at your core.
The essence of you before became eroded from this many years of self-abandonment.
You get to come back to your center and recognize your purpose here and your profound gifts now that they're not being relinquished into things that were draining you.
The ninth shift is that you show up for your children differently and you show up for the people in your life differently.
This is one of the most profound ones in my life because there were moments when I was self-abandoning that I remember sitting on the couch feeling like I was completely numb,
Paralyzed,
As if I couldn't even move or speak because I was so dysregulated,
So impacted by what was happening in the outside world.
And I remember seeing my boys sitting in front of me playing with their toys and I just really couldn't even function in that moment because I was so impacted by everything going on.
And that was not how I wanted to show up for them.
And this became that powerhouse driving force in me to realize that I am worthy of more and I will come back home to myself.
And this is a huge shift because when the pattern stops in you,
It then stops in your children.
And I was willing to feel what I needed to feel to break those generational patterns so that my kids could have a mom who demonstrated self-loyalty,
Who demonstrated dignity,
Self-trust,
That they could witness what it means to feel your emotions,
Feel safe to feel your emotions,
And be at peace with that.
And this becomes one of the most quietly powerful motivators for you to keep going when you're self-loyal because you see how when you change your inner world,
The way you show up for your children also changes.
And the tenth shift is your overall sense of self.
You feel like you're at home with yourself again.
And it's not because life is perfect or everything just fell into place,
It's because even if the storm is going on outside,
You feel so anchored in yourself.
It's like having such a deeply anchored root system of a tree that no matter how big the storm is outside,
That you are still anchored in yourself.
And this can be one of the biggest shifts is that you have a sense of who you are,
You know your values,
You know your desires,
You know your truth.
And even if others can't see that,
You're okay with that because you become the authority of your own experience.
You become the creator of your life.
You become the creator of your destiny.
And you realize what's possible for you once you reclaim your energy and direct it in ways that you choose.
And these transformations,
These ten transformations are just the start.
This is just the start.
When you are self-loyal,
Your whole perception of life changes.
You see things with greater clarity.
You allow yourself to feel the emotions of it.
You allow yourself to have a whole different experience.
And you trust that even if things become more chaotic or tumultuous in your life,
That you know you can handle it because you have before.
Because the next time that that happens,
You're not going to abandon yourself in the middle of it.
You're going to come back home to yourself.
You know the next time something happens,
You'll have your own back.
And you create so much inner safety that you allow yourself to have a different experience.
You show up differently.
Your energy is different.
And the world mirrors that back to you.
These are some of the most profound shifts I've experienced in my life and I know it's possible for you too.
When you stop abandoning yourself,
Your whole life shifts.
The thing about self-abandonment is that it's a slow erosion of your essence.
And many times you're so in it that you can't even see what's happening until you get to a point you look at your life and you feel empty inside.
Wondering where am I?
What do I want?
And who am I?
And that's the problem when you abandon yourself for so many years.
That coming back home to yourself can feel foreign until you take that first step.
You choose yourself and then you choose yourself again and again and again.
And every time you choose yourself,
You teach your system that you're worthy of your own love,
Your own protection,
And your own peace.
Thanks for joining me.
