Self-Abandonment (Why You Keep Playing Small)

A few years ago I had a thought that made me go — oh my god, wait a second. Why not me?

I'd been the background person my whole life. The one keeping everything running so everyone else could be out front. I was the crew, never the lead. And one day that question just showed up, uninvited: why can't I be the one out there?

There's a moment in the movie The Holiday — Kate Winslet's character, after spending the whole film being the one everyone else leans on but no one ever really sees, finally realizes she's been living like a supporting character in her own story instead of the one it's actually about. I watched that movie years ago and I went - Hey Me Too! I don't think I'm the leading lady. I put everyone else's needs first. Everyone else's opinions first. I'd been doing it so long I didn't even register it as a choice.

So when I started my podcast, it should have been a huge step out of that pattern — and it was, a little. But I still held back. No trailer. No real strategy. I just put it out there and hoped. Even my one real act of stepping forward, I made sure it was small enough that no one would really notice.

I've since started calling this self-abandonment — and it's not just about hiding success. It's what happens with feelings too, in either direction. Downplay your excitement before anyone else can notice it, and you've abandoned the version of you who's excited. Tell yourself to buck up when you're actually sad, and you've abandoned the version of you who's sad.

I had a client this week — hugely successful, the kind most people would shout from the rooftops — who's spent her whole life running the exact same program, just in a different room than mine. We traced it back to a single family rule: be humble, or you'll make people uncomfortable, and they'll leave.

I asked her: are you done with that?

Where this actually comes from — for her, for me, and probably for you — usually traces back to one of a few places. Sometimes it's direct: being visible as a kid meant being a target. Sometimes it's modeled, watched rather than taught. And sometimes it's something else entirely, tangled up in loyalty, or control, or simply wanting room to make mistakes without an audience.

I get into all of it — where it actually comes from, what her answer was when I asked if she was done playing small, and what it felt like in my own body the moment I finally stopped holding back — in this week's episode of The Emotional Truth.

Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.