Why You Neglect Yourself (And How to Finally Stop)

What if the ways you’ve been neglecting yourself… aren’t actually your fault?

In this solo episode, Anna opens up about a recent health scare that forced her to confront a lifelong pattern of self-neglect—and the surprising realization that it didn’t start with her.

Through storytelling, reflection, and powerful questions, Anna explores how self-neglect is often inherited, rather chosen. Learned through observation, passed down through generations, and reinforced by unconscious beliefs like:

• “My needs can wait.”
• “I’ll deal with it later.”
• “Everyone else matters more than me.”

This episode dives into:

•  How self-neglect shows up in your body, relationships, finances, and love life 
•  Why awareness—not discipline—is the first step to change 
•  The generational patterns you may be carrying without realizing it 
•  How to begin rewriting the narrative that’s quietly running your life 

If you’ve ever felt disconnected from yourself, stuck in avoidance, or unsure why you’re not showing up fully in your life—this conversation will meet you exactly where you are.

Because healing doesn’t start with perfection.
 It starts with awareness—and the willingness to choose differently.

✨ Reflection Question:
If you truly believed you were worthy of care… what would you do differently today?

✨ Join Me On Retreat
During The Medicine of Spring: May 29-31 in the Catskills, NY
www.annamcbride.com/spring-retreat

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Transcript

Welcome And Support Options

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome back to She Asked: Tools for Practical Hope. I'm your host, Anna McBride, and I am so glad you're here. This space is about helping you understand what's going on beneath the surface in your life. Whether it's your relationships, your career, or how you look at yourself, I and the guests we have on the show give you tools to begin shifting in a real grounded way. Before we dive in, as a quick note, if you are listening and you find yourself caught between where you are and how you dreamed you would be, I can help you bridge that gap. I work one-on-one with clients or in a group setting, and all of that information and links are in the show notes. I also host retreats throughout the year for women who are ready to step out of the noise of their life and really reset. And if you're new here, I am a therapist and a coach, and my work centers around helping you rewrite the narratives that on an unconscious level are running your life so that you can actually create meaningful, lasting change. So with that, let's get into today's conversation. Today, we're going to be talking about a question that I have been living with for at least the last week, if not most of my adult life. And that is why do I neglect myself? Or more importantly, how can I stop doing that? As we always begin our episodes with a story. So today I'm going to be sharing a story, my story, about self-neglect. About a week ago, I started having some heartburn episodes. Always at night when I'm attempting to sleep. And Monday night was the first time. And it was enough to wake me up. And then Wednesday night was the second time. And then Friday night was the third time. Just in this past week, it's been years since I've had heartburn. But because I have a history of an eating disorder, every time heartburn happens, fearful thoughts come to the surface. Like, oh my God, did I cause this? Have I caused irreparable harm to my body? My mind thinks it's like cancer in the making, esophageal cancer, something. But in this case, Friday night, I barely slept. It got so bad that I almost called my daughter, who's becoming a doctor, to have her take me to the emergency room. Because I thought maybe I was dying. I thought, am I being willful here? Am I being dramatic here? What's going on? I didn't know. But it was enough to really scare the shit out of me. And eventually my body settled down. And eventually I was able to sleep. And eventually my nervous system calmed down. And so when I got out of bed on Saturday morning, I took time to meditate and think about what this three experiences were really about. And so what I wanted to do today is have a conversation about what those experiences really taught me. Because I think that's how we grow, right? If we got to go through it, we want to grow through it. So we've got to begin today by just realizing that what I wondered, was this because of self-neglect? And that may seem extreme to you because who thinks like their neglect is going to lead to heartburn? Yet I don't know. But self-neglect for me isn't a one-off. These episodes weren't just a happenstance. They're a sign, I fear, of a much bigger picture of self-neglect. And what came up for me was that I realized that these episodes wasn't random. It was so familiar enough to get me curious. I didn't want to turn on myself. I was aware, like I'm going to immediately go to these fearful thoughts, or at least my mind. I'm going to think that I caused this. I knew that. It's just that I didn't want to turn on myself. I know I've gone through too much healing to know better than that. So I got curious. And as I got curious, I wondered, where did I learn this? This behavior of self-neglect. And what I came up with was my mother. Because the thing about self-neglect is it's quiet, it's subtle, and it's insiduous. Meaning it's a lot like an addiction. Like it can go on beneath the surface. It can pass as just maybe forgetfulness or putting something off. But I know better. I learned this from my mother. And before I describe that pattern to you and where I learned it, I want you to know, like I started really considering where in my life have I been self-neglectful. And I realized in my body by putting off doctor's appointments, remember, I just lost one of my sisters to cancer this past December. And I am the only one in my family who, the ones that are still alive, that hasn't had a scan of their lungs to make sure there's nothing going on in my body that I don't know. Neglectful? Maybe. Also, with my finances, avoiding some responsibilities. I'm fine financially. However, what I'm not doing is I haven't put together a retirement investment plan. I haven't put together my end-of-life financial documents. I haven't done that. Why? I thought. My gifts, I know that I've been holding back my voice. This podcast is one of the expressions in which I share my gifts to the world. But I could be doing this in a much bigger way, and I'm not yet. And I'm curious about why that what is in the way of that. In my relationships, the ones that I say that matter most, there are a lot of examples in my life where I'm not fully connected. I almost turn away from connection and choose isolation. Why is that? I could lean into that a little bit more. And then even in the realm of love in my life, I announced here that a year ago, almost over a year ago, I chose consciously to stop dating. Yet I don't want to stay on my own forever, and yet I haven't done any work there lately. Why is that? It's how familiar it felt. And I know that it was something that I didn't choose consciously. It's just what I was doing. It's a pattern. And I wasn't paying enough attention, and I wasn't really asking enough questions to help lead me towards a better understanding of where it comes from. So remember that once we see something, once we wake up to something, we can't unsee it. We can't unlearn it. Maybe we could, but I don't know how to be that way. So I got more curious. As I said, I mentioned that it I knew I had seen this, learned this from my mother. And so I started remembering in what ways I remembered this about her. And I could go back as young as seven years old when I kept noticing the light in her eyes getting dimmer and dimmer. And by that point of my life, she had become an active alcoholic. And as her alcoholism grew, her self-connection faded. And there were many examples where she would be giving up on her voice, where she would give in to my father a little bit more, where she would just stop trying to be the big life person that we all knew. And I know looking back, she was. My mother wasn't always that way. She was a fierce, incredible woman who fought really hard to have her freedom. Her immigration story is fierce and amazing. And I wondered, how does somebody go from that to become a virgin that leaves all that resilience, amazement behind? Now, I want to be clear, it wasn't like she stopped living and she didn't become a hermit. She had 11 children. It was that she wasn't really showing up the way that she was noted to being. She would always talk about all these things she had done with me, yet she wasn't doing it. It became very disconnected for me. This is who you say you are, yet this is who I see. So I began asking, when did this begin for her? What happened that made her turn away from herself? What pain made self-neglect more important to her than the version of her that she had been up to that point? And then I started turning the questions back to myself. What did I take on just by watching her? Because that's the thing about something like self-neglect, is that we don't learn it by lectures or by words. We learn it by watching, observing behavior. And I was such a great student of my mother's, more than I would like to admit. I was like her mini-me in so many ways. The only thing I didn't take on was alcoholism. About everything else, was almost a mirror of her. Because here's what I believe self-neglect is not personal, it's generational. Meaning we learn it from our caregivers. So if I learned it from her, who did she learn it from? Where did it come from? She learned it from the environment in which she came from, that she fought so hard to get out of and break free from. Yet because she didn't really do any healing work, I think, it was just always within her nervous system, within her behavior patterns, within her consciousness, at a very deep level. So when we grow up watching someone behave this way, this is what happens. We take on a belief system like this, like some of this anyway. We begin to ignore our needs. Everyone else is more important than me. I gotta take care of them, and I'll eventually get to myself. We disconnect from our body, like we put off self-care, or we don't have any self-care. We avoid accountability. We say things like, do as I say, not as I do. We don't notice the difference. We even numb or withdraw. And that can look like addiction or even isolation. Both are synonymous. And my mother was someone who very much was a homebody, very much hid behind the doors, didn't have active friendships, and I was watching all of this very closely as I was growing up. Because we don't just witness it, we internalize it. When we internalize it, we then inherit a belief system that goes something like this my needs can wait, my body isn't urgent, I'll deal with it later. Connection is complicated, but love may not be safe. All of this is what I started to take on. Like it was about me. And these beliefs don't announce themselves, they show up though, in the way, in what we say, and most importantly, in what we do. This is where I want to get really honest with you about me. Because this may seem odd to you. If you know me at all, you might think, just like my daughters said to me when I talked to them about it this weekend, but mom, you are so good at taking care of yourself. You're always going to this practitioner or that practitioner, or you're always taking care of your body, you're very fit, you work out constantly, you eat well, you're worried about all this stuff. And all of that may be true. However, I'm talking about the stuff that nobody sees. The way I am when the door is shut and nobody's watching. But I know that I don't always have the best self-care practices, particularly when I note the fact that one of my sisters just passed away from cancer, and I have yet to get to my lung scan. It's coming up. Yet I haven't done it yet, and that's the honest truth. I also have this behavior pattern of avoiding really dealing with my finances. And I know some of the reasons why what's behind it, the narratives that are behind it, yet I haven't acted on it yet. Just like the connection or disconnection with relationships that matter most to me, or the parts of really being seen with my gifts or actively speaking up for them or sharing them. And then most importantly, my recreation of my love life, which right now is non-existent. And if it is true, and I believe it is, I don't want to be alone for the rest of my life. There are things I could actively be doing to make that so. So this is the level of transparency that I wanted this episode to be about because I know I'm not unique that way. I know that there are other women, maybe you're one of them, who tune in and listen that might also share in this behavior pattern. And I want to invite you to start asking yourself real questions and spend time like I did over this past weekend and every day since, really checking in with myself and holding myself accountable because I am accountable to me. This is my life. No one's gonna sweep in and fix this for me. Only I can do that. And this is where I want you to know. Like, I've become my own case study, right? I want to say to you, like, I'm not sharing all of this as though I have figured this out, that I fixed it, that I'm done. I'm sharing this with you as someone who is in it right now. I am in the process of retreat, reflection, and then this recreation of this narrative within me, because I had to get clarity about what it is that I was telling myself that is keeping me stuck in this behavior pattern, in this self-neglect behavior pattern. And I started looking at my life like a mirror, not as a mystery, not as a victim, not as somebody that is a character that I can't do anything about it. I knew and know I am the author, or at least co-author of my life, and so I can take a more active role, and I do want to make sure that I start making some changes and I start writing new chapters and I start creating new beliefs, new narratives, new behavior as a result of that. I know how to do this, I work with people on this. I just have to always be aware and vigilant that when I might be not doing that myself, authenticity matters to me. So here I am, my own case study, and I want to share with you some of the things that I have learned. Instead of asking myself what's wrong with me, I ask myself, what is the story that I've been telling myself that makes all this possible? What is that narrative? Because that is where I can make some changes. And there are many steps to this, but I'll just cut through to the chase of it. And that is that I was aware that I learned this from my mother. I inherited many beliefs from her, and a lot of them were self-neglecting. I also spent some time looking at in what ways currently am I not following through and taking care of myself in the areas of my life. I've mentioned them: my body, my finances, my relationships, my gifts, my love life, right? And so I got really clear about the ways in which a storyline maybe had been created there and how it's showing up in real life. When we look at it from a distance, it makes it a little bit easier because remember, that's what an author can do. An author can look at what's written or what's going on with a detached point of view, and then say, how can I make this better? How could I shift, change, behave in a way that might free me from self-neglect? So this is where something shifted inside of me. I got excited. It was like a little mini retreat I created for myself on Saturday and Sunday, and not through force, not through discipline, but through this curious retreat and asking better questions. And here are some of the ones I asked. What am I postponing in my life? What am I avoiding? And why? And what did I learn about my self-worth growing up in the family that I did? And what am I ready to do differently? Not someday, but today. So I looked at all those areas that I mentioned with those questions, and I came up with some good answers because I am accountable to myself. If I want to take action, I have to be clear about what's going on, what's behind it, and what am I gonna do about it. Now keep in mind, you don't have to have answers for all of them, but just let one of them open up something within you. And what opened up for me was that I realized that what I had learned, I can unlearn. And what helped my mother survive and also helped me survive, is something that I can share. Shift a bit in, make peace with, maybe let go of, or rewrite enough so that I can begin thriving and growing and becoming the version of me that I know, at least for now, I'm meant to be, which is much bigger, much brighter, and much healthier. And the health is really not in, let's just say, a certain number in the bank or a certain number in my medical screening, nothing like that. I think it's really more reflective of just what I am willing to face, what I'm willing to take action on, and little by little keep walking in the direction of better health, better growth, better version of me. And this is why I feel so deeply about the work that I'm doing with myself and with others, because I really do believe that there is medicine that is to be received, therefore healing that can come from rewriting your narrative. And this is why I created a retreat towards this. Because spring for me is not just a season, it's a metaphor, it's medicine. And there is many things that we can get from spring, right? There's renewal, there's rebirth, clearing out what is stagnant, maybe, and reawakening what may have become dormant. And when I look at myself neglect, this whole experience that I described and the history behind it, I realize that when I look through the lens of spring, that it wasn't about punishment, it wasn't about anything like that. It was really about things that had gone dormant. Because there was a time in my life before I became my mother's mini-me that I also showed signs of such fierceness, such excitement. And it's not like it all died at that age, that tender young age of either seven, eight, nine, twelve, thirteen. It was that over time the weight of what I was watching, what I was observing, what I was copying, in other words, became bigger than the light in my eyes that happened when I talked about all my dreams. And so the light in my eyes started to dim. I have a friend who told me once, and I was not happy with him when he said it, but I don't think it was inaccurate. He said, You're like a dead girl walking. And I was taken back. I was like, who wants to be described like that? He was like, the light in your eyes has gone dim. And I've never forgotten that description. And I look back at that time that he was knowing me to be like that, and he was right. Much like my mother, the light in my eyes, the joy for my life, the joy towards my gifts, my passions, my version of me I always dreamt of becoming was start was fading. And I believe I've made my way back, but there's still these notes of self-neglect that left unattended could become bigger and could almost take me backwards. And I don't want that to happen. So I lean into this work, I lean into discovering ways in which I could be more aware, more attentive, more self-caring than self-neglectful. And this is where the work becomes embodied. So, which is why we created this retreat called the Medicine of Spring, in which I'm partnering up with one of my good friends, Rima Shaw, who was an Ayurveda practitioner and someone that I've known for over a decade. We've studied together, we went to India together, and now we're coming back together to co-host this retreat in Hunter Mountain, New York. And this retreat is coming up at the end of May, May 29th through the 31st, to be exact. In the show notes, you'll see the links for the retreat. But I want you to think about it. If you're someone who's listening that feels maybe she's you've lost your way or you need some help, like to step out of the noise of your life and gain clarity around a narrative of your life or an area of your life that's out of balance, out of order, or not fully aligned with who you want to become. This retreat is for you. Because Ayurveda teaches us many lessons, this one primarily, that self-care is not an indulgence, it is alignment. And when you pair Ayurveda practices with rewriting your narrative, it is medicine, it is a way for you to heal and build in the practices that are going to support you becoming the version that you want to become. And the whole idea of putting these together is it will help you change your narrative and therefore change your life. This work is also about my children, to be honest. When I go through these moments where I think I'm maybe dying, I think of them because I have three children, and I know there are other mothers out there that are watching this that may feel the same way, that when you go through some pain in your life, you're wondering, you know, about them. And so what I got curious about is I was wondering is what did they learn from me? Just like I learned it from my mother, what self-neglect practices did they learn from me? And although I can heal them, although I can fix it for them, I can be observant and I can be transparent and communicative of what I am working on for myself so that they can learn from that example. So I've already begun the conversations with my daughters, and I plan to do it with my son eventually, about this idea of self-neglect and how it might be showing up in their life so that they can get curious and make some shifts, so that they can be free of self-neglect and really have the life that they want. So if something in you is stirring as a result of everything I've shared on today's episode, I want to invite you into the space of consideration of the retreat, of possibly working on these narratives, maybe with me one-on-one or in a group setting, whatever is calling to you. Because if not now, when this is your life also, and it matters, and what we choose to put our attention on will grow and expand. And what we neglect might wither and die. And I don't want to have a life of regret. I want to have a life that is so amazing that when I take my last breath, it is saying, Wow, wow, that's everything I ever hoped for. So this space that we have for the retreat is going to be about hopefully creating some curiosity instead of judgment, rewriting narratives that are living inside you and really running your life, supporting your body through the stage of your life that you're in right now towards better health, and returning to yourself. Because healing doesn't begin with perfection, it begins with awareness and a willingness to choose differently. So I'm going to leave you with this. If you truly believed you were worthy of care, what would you do differently today? Start there. You've been listening to She Ask, where healing meets hope. I'm your host, Anna McBride, and I am so glad you were here with me today. If this episode spoke to you, if it resonated in your life, or if you know someone that you can think of that might resonate with them, share it with someone that you care about. And if you feel called, look in the show notes for information about the retreat or working with me one-on-one, because we have to start looking at these narratives if we want to make the changes that are lasting in our lives. So until soon, register for the retreat or think about working on these narratives and keep asking yourself these deeper questions. And of course, as always, be well.