When We Choose Everyone Else First: The Layered Journey of Self-Love

A recent experience of being conned out of money, coupled with conversations with prospective clients, crystallized something I've been circling around for a while: the profound ways we abandon ourselves while hoping someone else will see our worth.

Gabor Maté writes in *The Myth of Normal* that "most people abandon their true selves (authenticity) to please others and keep the relationships (attachments), even if they are ones that are toxic and destructive." His words have become a mirror I keep looking into, each time discovering another layer of where I'm still not choosing myself first.

The Dance We All Do

Reading Maté's insights into how and why we prioritize others—even in the face of illness, even to our own detriment—continues to be a lesson I keep relearning. Self-love isn't a destination; it's layered, complex, an onion we peel back throughout our lives.

Maté explains the impossible choice we face as children: "If the choice is between 'hiding my feelings, even from myself, and getting the basic care I need' and 'being myself and going without,' I'm going to pick that first option every single time." And so we learn early to trade our authenticity for attachment, our truth for safety, our needs for acceptance.

Fear of rejection. Uncertainty about whether we truly deserve. The paralysing fear of making a mistake. These all keep us trapped in a circle of handing over our power, considering everyone else's needs even when **the call is to ourselves**.

"Most of our tensions and frustrations stem from compulsive needs to act the role of someone we are not," Maté reminds us. At its core, "the essence of trauma, at its purest level, is disconnect from the self."

How We've Been Taught

Women have been socialized to do this dance particularly well. In our families, in our workplaces, we've learned to consider everyone else first. It's what "good women" do. It's how we've been taught to earn love.

But men? They've been doing this far longer, in ways we're only beginning to understand.

In *The Boy Crisis*, Warren Farrell and John Gray illuminate how society has historically trained boys to be disposable: "Every society that has survived has done so by training its boys to be disposable—disposable in war, in work (coal mines, oil rigs, firefighting)... And to train our sons to forfeit their lives in war and hazardous jobs, we had to train them to act tough and not express feelings."

For country. For colleagues. For the job. For mates. For honor. For so long that many men are now too numb to even know what's happening inside them.

Farrell writes: "Their successful husbands had learned that earning money led to love. Because it did. However, earning money didn't sustain love. As women were becoming more in touch with and sharing what was bothering them, their husbands were often burying their heads in the sand, hoping the bullets would miss. The more successful they were, the more they learned to repress their feelings, not express their feelings."

Society says men aren't allowed to talk about their feelings too much, too often. That it's not safe. When they're told their masculinity is toxic for repressing feelings, yet accused of "mansplaining" the moment they try to express those feelings, "they feel damned if they do and damned if they don't."

The Path Forward

With the help of the medicine (and the wisdom of teachers like Maté and Farrell), I continue to discover where I am again not choosing myself first. Where I'm still hoping that someone else will validate my worth instead of claiming it myself.

This is the work, isn't it? To notice. To choose differently. To reclaim the parts of ourselves we traded away for safety that was never really safety at all.

Self-love is layered. And perhaps the most radical act of all is choosing to peel back one more layer, to reconnect with that authentic self we abandoned so long ago—the one who was always worthy, always enough, always deserving of being chosen first.

**Especially by ourselves.**

*What parts of yourself have you traded for acceptance? Where are you still hoping someone else will see your worth instead of claiming it for yourself?*