The Quiet Ways We Leave Ourselves
- Prema Posner
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
Most of us don’t leave ourselves all at once.
We drift away in small, almost invisible moments, moments that once helped us cope, stay connected, or keep moving forward.
Over time, those moments become habits, and the body forgets that staying is an option.
Self-abandonment is rarely dramatic. It’s quiet. Practical. Often praised.
It can look like pushing through when you’re exhausted.
Ignoring a subtle ache or tightness.
Saying yes when your body whispers no.
Distracting yourself the moment something feels uncomfortable.
Staying busy so you don’t have to feel.
None of these are failures.
They are learned responses, ways the nervous system figured out how to stay safe.
The body leaves not because it wants to, but because, at some point, staying didn’t feel possible.
What’s important to understand is that self-abandonment doesn’t happen in the mind first.
It happens in the body.
Breath shortens.
Muscles tighten.
Awareness narrows.
We move away from sensation and into strategy.
And often, we don’t even realize it’s happening.
This is why returning to ourselves can feel unfamiliar, even tender.
Staying present asks us to feel what we once learned to avoid, not all at once, but gently, at a pace the body can trust.
In yoga and meditation, the practice isn’t to force presence.
It’s to notice when we leave, and to return without judgment.
Again and again.
With patience.
With choice.
Presence is not a permanent state.
It’s a relationship.
Each time you notice yourself drifting and choose to come back to your breath, your body, the sensation of being here, you’re rewriting an old pattern.
You’re teaching the nervous system that staying is safe now.
The work isn’t loud.
It doesn’t announce itself.
But it’s deeply healing.
Coming back to yourself doesn’t require effort.
It requires permission.
And that permission can begin in the smallest, quietest way, right here, right now.
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