How suppression disconnects us from what we want
Suppression is the act of overriding our needs, feelings, and truth in order to stay safe, connected, or accepted. When suppression becomes a pattern, it turns into self-abandonment—a state of disconnection from who we really are.
When we abandon ourselves long enough, we lose access to our own wants and desires. Self-abandonment trains us to prioritize everyone else's needs until we can no longer hear our own. Reconnection starts with simple, honest practices like free writing that let us witness ourselves without performing or editing.
There's a particular kind of blankness that comes from years of self-abandonment. Someone asks us what we want and we can't answer. We can name what other people need. We can describe what's expected. We can lay out the responsible, logical, reasonable next step. We just can't locate what we actually want.
This is the result of overriding ourselves for so long that our own voice becomes inaccessible.
Self-abandonment is the pattern of overriding our own needs, feelings, and truth in order to stay safe, connected, or accepted. One of its most disorienting effects is the loss of access to desire. We stop knowing what we want because we've been training ourselves, for years, to want what works for everyone else.
What does it feel like to lose access to what we want?
It usually doesn't feel like loss. It feels like normalcy. We function well. We perform well. We're good at reading rooms, meeting societal expectations, and keeping things smooth. From the outside, everything looks fine.
On the inside, there's a blankness where preference used to be. Someone asks where we want to eat and we say "I don't care, you pick." Someone asks what we want for our birthday and we can't think of anything. A bigger question comes along, like what we want our life to look like, and the blankness gets louder.
We may explain it away as being easy-going or flexible. We may tell ourselves we just don't have strong opinions. The reality is usually different. We have wants. We've just been overriding them for so long that we can't hear them anymore.
How does self-abandonment create this disconnection?
Self-abandonment is a learned pattern. Most of us developed it early. At some point, expressing what we wanted led to tension, disapproval, or disconnection from someone important to us. So we adapted. We learned to read the room instead of reading ourselves.
Attachment research shows that our early relational experiences shape how we relate to our own needs throughout life. When our needs were consistently met with responsiveness, we learned to trust them. When they were met with friction or dismissal, we learned to suppress them.
Over time, that suppression becomes automatic. We stop checking in with ourselves altogether. We make decisions based on what's expected, what avoids conflict, what keeps things moving. The part of us that knows what we want gets quieter and quieter until it goes silent.
The gap between "I can't think of one thing I want" and "I have a hundred things pouring out of me" is the cost of self-abandonment. The wants were always there. We just couldn't hear them over everything else.
Why does reconnecting with what we want matter?
Knowing what we want is foundational to self-trust. We can't make choices aligned with our truth if we don't know what our truth is. We can't set boundaries if we don't know what we're protecting. We can't build a life that feels like ours if we can't access what we actually desire.
When we reconnect with what we want, the effect extends beyond just having preferences again. We start to feel more like ourselves. Decisions get clearer. The fog lifts. We stop feeling disconnected because we're back in contact with the part of us that knows things.
This is what makes self-abandonment so costly. It doesn't just take away our wants. It takes away our sense of self. Reconnecting with desire is one of the most direct paths back.
What helps us reconnect?
One of the simplest and most effective tools for reconnection is free writing. I’m not talking about writing to publish something. This is free, uncurated writing. No set agenda. Just free-flowing writing of thoughts and feelings in the moment.
Expressive writing research has shown that the act of putting our internal experience into words has measurable effects on emotional processing and self-understanding. Writing bypasses the filters we've built up. It lets us be honest without performing coherence. It gives us access to parts of ourselves we've been editing out.
A practical way to start: open a blank document and write 100 things you want. No editing. No justifying. No making sure they're reasonable or achievable. Just the question: what do I want?
The first few will be hard. That's normal. That's the cost of years of self-abandonment. The blankness is simply a layer of override sitting on top of everything we've been holding back.
Write one thing anyway. Then another. At some point, the gap closes. The wants start coming faster. Things we didn't know we'd been holding. Things we hadn't let ourselves admit. Things we'd been waiting for permission to want.
The wanting was never gone. You just needed a way to hear it again.
How writing becomes a practice of self-loyalty
Being witnessed, even by ourselves on a page, brings us back to ourselves.
The more we write, the more we can hear ourselves. The more we can hear ourselves, the harder it becomes to abandon what we know.
Free writing with no agenda or goal becomes a practice of self-loyalty. We show up to the page the way we want to show up to our lives: honestly, without performance, willing to discover what's true.
Free writing requires willingness. A blank page and the question "what do I want?" is enough to begin (start here).
Frequently asked questions
Why can't I figure out what I want? Difficulty knowing what we want is one of the most common signs of self-abandonment. When we spend years prioritizing other people's needs and expectations, our own desires get pushed further and further from our awareness. The wanting is still there. It just needs space and permission to surface again.
Is free writing the same as journaling?They're related and different in practice. Journaling usually has structure: prompts, reflection on the day, gratitude lists. Free writing has no agenda. We write whatever comes out, without editing, organizing, or making it make sense. The lack of structure is the point. It lets us bypass the filters that keep our real thoughts and wants hidden.
How long does it take to reconnect with what I want? It varies. Some people notice a shift the first time they sit down and write. For others, it takes weeks of consistent practice before the deeper wants start surfacing. The timeline depends on how long the self-abandonment pattern has been running and how much permission we give ourselves to be honest. What matters is starting, even when the page feels blank.
