When Self-Editing Becomes Self-Abandonment
A story aboot social adaptation, losing myself, and reclaiming belonging.
It took just one word for me to forever change the way I speak: about.
When I first moved to British Columbia from Newfoundland, I landed in a journalism school class where I was the only person from east of Alberta.
A couple of classmates took to gently teasing me about being a “Newfie.” I specifically remember them calling out the way I pronounced the word: “a-boot.”
I was accustomed to this kind of antagonism, and I’d move to the other side of the country partly to get away from it.
So I did what many of us do when we find ourselves in a situation where our differences make us stand out in uncomfortable ways.
I tried to fit in.
Fitting in is a survival strategy.
Fitting in means changing or hiding parts of ourselves to meet others’ expectations and gain acceptance.
In other words, we edit ourselves.
Editing might look like:
Laughing at a joke you didn’t find funny.
Agreeing in a meeting, then realizing you signed up for the assignment from hell.
Changing how you speak depending on who’s in the room.
Most people can relate to this because social adaptation is a hard-wired evolutionary default.
How do you self-edit? Where in your life does this show up the most?
And, like so many of our behaviours, it’s designed to keep us safe.
For most of human history, we lived in small, close-knit groups. Being accepted ensured access to food and protection.
Being excluded could mean death.
So, survival of the fittest for humans meant being highly attuned to social cues and quickly adjusting our behaviour to match the group’s.
In other words, we took a master class in reading and mirroring others.
When editing becomes erasure
On its face, fitting in acts like a kind of social glue. It helps us connect, cooperate, and avoid unnecessary conflict.
But it gets problematic when it costs us our sense of self.
For the average person, fitting might involve constantly making small adaptations: softening opinions, reading the room, or going along with things that don’t feel good.
These changes may seem minor, but over time, they can separate us from who we truly are.
Over time, chronic self-editing can become self-abandonment.
For some people, fitting in can be less of a social habit and more like a full-time job.
We edit ourselves in significant ways by anticipating others’ needs, adjusting our behaviour to fit and trying to avoid drawing attention to ourselves at all costs.
This kind of self-editing is often rooted in early experiences: family-of-origin dynamics, bullying, social exclusion or life in environments where being yourself didn’t feel safe.
Over time, chronic self-editing can become self-abandonment.
The costs of self-abandonment
We edit ourselves to meet others’ expectations because it works. At first.
We might be accepted, included, or praised for being flexible, agreeable, or easygoing.
But over time, it can disconnect us from ourselves.
People respond to the version of us we present for their approval, not our authentic selves. We end up performing instead of truly connecting.
Nothing feels lonelier than being accepted for a version of yourself you don’t recognize and maybe never wanted to be.
The costs of self-abandonment tend to live in the background:
You rehearse every interaction so much that you feel drained afterward.
You adapt so much and so often that you lose track of what feels natural.
You feel resentment build as you continually bend to keep the peace.
Over time, we also might completely lose touch with parts of ourselves that are really important and make us who we are.
Nothing feels lonelier than being accepted for a version of yourself you don’t recognize and maybe never wanted to be.
A version of this happened to me when I made the decision (whether conscious or not) to edit out my East Coast accent.
I started talking like everyone around me. I dropped my Newfoundland colloquialisms in favour of local expressions. I adopted “a-bowt.”
Looking back, it was like squeezing into a shoe that was just a bit too small and pretending it felt right.
Belonging: The freedom to be yourself
Then I discovered the concept of belonging. (Thanks to Sebene Selassie, and her book You Belong.)
Unlike fitting in, belonging happens when we feel accepted and appreciated for just being who we are—no major edits required.
It means no constant monitoring. We can disagree. Be weird. Be quiet. Be intense. Tell Dad jokes with abandon. Stop rehearsing every sentence before speaking.
We can show up—however we naturally are in the moment—and still feel safe and connected with both ourselves and those around us.
Belonging isn’t about being liked. It’s about being known and still accepted.
Speaking from experience, belonging can feel intensely liberating.
If fitting in is like wearing a tight shoe, belonging feels spacious and comfortable—like wearing a sandal custom-moulded for your foot.
And it can be a little scary at the outset.
Realizing you’re being seen can feel really risky when you’re used to habitually hiding.
The way I got going with this, and how I introduce it to clients, is: Start slowing down and noticing natural moments of belonging in your life.
Who in your life can you be your full self around?
Where can you stay in connection without self-protection?
Pay attention to how it feels in your mind and body.
(Mindfulness practice, again, is helpful for this because it gives us better access to our moment-to-moment experience.)
When you notice it, stay with the feeling for 30-60 seconds, letting it register in your implicit memory. (This practice is called positive neuroplasticity.)
As you learn to notice these states, you can, over time, orient your life more towards the people and places that inspire them.
For some, sources of belonging might be easy to find. Others might need to dig deep.
If you’re in the second group, it can help to start noticing where even small amounts of that feeling show up. It might be in a close relationship, a shared identity or cultural space, a creative or intellectual community, or a group with shared values.
Belonging might also show up in nature, or moments when you simply feel at home in your body.
It’s also possible you might not feel belonging anywhere, and that’s OK. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong.
If belonging seems out of reach right now, you might start by noticing when even a small sense of it shows up. Over time, that awareness can become a point of entry.
Alongside that, it can help to start gentle therapeutic work on boundaries, identity rebuilding and attachment repair.
Healthy adaptation vs. self-erasure
To be clear, belonging isn’t about never adapting yourself. We do this constantly, often without thinking about it.
We speak differently with friends than with our bosses. We might act differently around our parents than our partners.
Most of this isn’t a problem. It’s part of how we connect, communicate and move through different social spaces. As mentioned above, we do this for good reasons.
The difference rests on whether the adaptation feels expressive or erasing.
Healthy relationships require flexibility, tact, compromise and growth. But they don’t ask you to become a different person to keep the connection.
Belonging doesn’t mean showing up exactly the same everywhere. It means you don’t have to abandon parts of your core self to be accepted.
Finding my way back
I didn’t realize how much I’d been editing out until I got married and had kids.
My wife would point out that when I talked to my parents back home on video calls, my accent would come back. My young kids got disoriented when Daddy was doing “Newfoundland talk.”
It was painful to realize how disconnected with that part of myself I’d become.
Since that realization, I’ve worked to reclaim what I can of my native dialect. I also try to celebrate what’s become a blend of dialects that is uniquely my own.
But I still live with the sense of having lost part of myself that I’ll never truly get back.
Editing was a survival strategy. And, despite the costs, it was a smart move at the time.
These days, I try to notice when speaking feels natural and I’m not monitoring myself as much. It happens more often now that I’m back on the East Coast.
When the feeling of ease comes up, I practice pausing to notice how it feels in my body.
I still make major edits sometimes. The difference is, now I’m aware of them. And that awareness is how I keep finding my way back.