I Thought I was unappreciated. I Was Abandoning Myself.

On people-pleasing, and seeking appreciation as proof of being enough

I spent years trying to make people around me happy. Yet, no matter how much I gave, I kept waiting for the appreciation that never seemed to come.
I wondered: Am I asking too much? Or am I not doing enough?

---

I remember when I was twelve years old, I performed a piano piece, which I practiced a long time, on stage. I was so nervous when I sat down at the piano in front of a big group of people that I blacked out for a moment before starting to play anything.

When I was finished, my mother’s first comment was: “The pause was really not necessary.”

Until this day, I still remember vividly what it felt like to hear such criticism from someone I trusted the most. It felt like a punch in my gut. That pause became bigger than everything I had done right.

Moments like that left the same imprint every time:

I wasn’t enough.

---

And that belief often made decisions for me.

Once in college, I had to practice a special dance that required the female dancers to keep turning in circles for minutes. It was something friends chose for me without even asking. I would’ve never chosen on my own. I actually wanted to switch to other styles that were the reasons I joined the dance club in the first place. But seeing that everyone was excited about the decided assignment I couldn’t bring myself up to ruin the high spirit. I didn’t want to cause disappointment or inconvenience. So I swallowed my no and said yes.

Every practice made me nauseate already after 5 minutes, not to mention for an hour. I never enjoyed it but I convinced myself to try to like it.

It never occurred to me that disliking something was information that I should pay attention to.

I was spending my free time of my own free will doing something whose sole purpose was supposed to be fun. Yet I had to endure every practice session. One time I mentioned briefly that I would like to change to something else. Right away I was met with people’s drastic opposition because it would be a huge inconvenience to reorganise. So I convinced myself that it was fine.

Finally it was the performance day. We danced in front of hundreds of people on stage, and the entire show was quite successful. Secretly though, I was jealous of those who could do the kind of dance I’d like to do. Yet again, I forced myself to feel grateful for what I had.

When I came down from the stage, the only comment I received from someone was from my mom. And she said:

“Your part had nothing but turning around. It was kind of boring. Why didn’t you choose something else?”

That one sentence brushed away six months of nausea as lightly as a summer breeze moving through leaves. So lightly. So indifferently. It made the heaviness of me biting through to make everyone happy seem ridiculously unimportant.

I looked around. Everyone was happy after the performance. I found myself wearing the best smiles on my face too. But deep down I was very confused.

Something felt really off. I had done everything right. Being flexible. Grateful. Accommodating.

So why was I the only one carrying the disappointment?

---

The same story followed into my marriage and motherhood.

It started with a task during my free time. My body wanted rest but my mind said I shouldn’t be selfish. Then another task. And another. I put aside my own interests and immersed myself in my husband’s hobby projects. After all, his happiness was what I wanted anyway.

But at times I felt strangely absent from my own life. I kept spinning around everyone else's priorities, doing things I didn't even enjoy. Sometimes I wondered what would make me happy.

Four months postpartum I returned to finish my PhD. Keeping a sharp mind for discussions with doctors during the day. Nursing a baby through the night. My eyelids were so heavy sometimes I had to force them open with pure will.

Despite that my body screamed no to more grocery shopping, to cooking every evening and weekend, I shoved the no aside and did it anyway. What else would we eat?

When our second son was born, I thought I had to choose career or home. I chose home because the workload was too much—the children, the cooking, the invisible labor. It never occurred to me that some of the work wasn’t mine alone. It never occurred to him, either.

---

For a very long time, I lived with a strange contradiction: feeling under-appreciated while still believing I wasn’t doing enough… Until one day I suddenly realized, I thought the lack of appreciation from others was the problem. I tried to fix it by doing more, becoming more “enough”. In fact the real problem had always been my own self-abandonment.

I learned to abandon myself in childhood, and I had been doing it ever since.

I was people-pleasing—saying yes to something when every cell in my body screamed no, just to avoid disappointing or inconveniencing others.

I was suppressing emotions—burying the unhappiness, the jealousy, the longing to stop. Telling myself my needs were “too much” and my longings were “ungrateful.”

I was overriding boundaries—reorganizing my own choices to fit others’ convenience.

I was abandoning myself and I called it being a good friend. Being helpful. Being kind. I was abandoning myself in exchange for the hope that someone would finally tell me I was enough.

---

For years, before I made time for myself, I had always checked the kids’ schedules, waited for my husband’s confirmation, organized an easy plan for him. Only then could I collect the leftover crumbs of time and plan a dinner or quick outings.

It had worked out fine for many years. Until we were processing divorce and he wanted to go out with his new girlfriend on yet another weekend, even on the agreed ones when kids were supposed to stay at his place.

I refused.

I refused to make my time around his schedules.

And he was furious: “why can’t you just be kind and help me out?”

For a moment, I thought he was right. Maybe my plans of doing nothing weren’t that legitimate anyway.

Then I caught myself. Since when was taking the designated weekend off for myself really a moral crisis?

That’s when I finally saw it—the entire architecture of self-abandonment I’d built. In his mind I was making it difficult on purpose. He didn’t see that I was simply no longer making it easy for him.

---

I trained people to overlook needs I never defended.

Boundaries looked to me like a line drawn on grass. Every time I pushed through my own boundary, that line became the new standard. If you always say yes and never ask for what you need, your extraordinary efforts become the baseline expectation rather than a favor. I knew then that it would never be enough.

I thought I needed appreciation.

What I really needed was to stop abandoning myself.

….. ….. ….. …

---

---

P.S. I'm glad you're here. If you'd like to join the more intimate side of this conversation, I'd love to welcome you into the inner circle.