Sophia was a good friend. She was always trying hard to be a good friend, anyway, focused only on how she could be more helpful, more caring, more "there." To her friends, old and new alike, she was ever-attentive, reliable, and endlessly accommodating; she remembered birthdays, would stay up all night for friends in crisis, and constantly put aside her own wants, needs, and boundaries to meet the needs of those around her, even at her own peril. However, despite trying to be a good friend, she often felt an underlying and persistent sense of loneliness that she struggled to explain. Sophia, as it turns out, wasn't giving herself to her friendships; she was abandoning herself in friendship instead.

What is self-abandonment?

Self-abandonment is the chronic tendency to override one’s own needs, boundaries, preferences, and emotional experiences in order to meet a goal like maintaining a connection or belonging to a group. While it can be mistaken for kindness by others and indeed the person abandoning themselves in relationships, self-abandonment is fundamentally a disconnection from the self, which is done with a particular goal in mind. In Sophia’s example, and in the experience of others who identify as being "the good friend" despite inner feelings of loneliness, that goal is the preservation of relationships. For Sophia, for instance, staying up all night for a friend going through a breakup........

© Psychology Today