When Compassion becomes Self-Abandonment: Love without Boundaries Lead to Burnout

Many teachers talk about the importance of connecting with yourself, and truly I couldn’t agree more. It’s especially important after periods of prolonged emotional, mental and physical exhaustion. Those stretches when external demands dominate your attention, and access to your deeper sense of self feels out of reach.

What’s happening in those moments is largely chemical. Under sustained stress, the body releases stress hormones and the brain attempts to resolve them through thought. This is experienced as repetitive mental loops, replayed triggering scenarios without resolution.

The body responds by producing more stress hormones, while the mind escalates into hypervigilance. In that state, any energetic or emotional discord is interpreted as personal, further compounding stress. It becomes a self-perpetuating cycle with no clear exit, only increasing strain.

Stressed - Wires Crossed

Sometimes, the way to out isn’t instantaneous. Sometimes, it begins with extending compassion inward, especially if you’re someone who habitually offers it to others. Sometimes it starts at the most basic level with taking care of your physical vessel. Supporting yourself with movement and nourishing foods, and care, particularly when rest and sleep elude you. It’s a quiet practice of doing what you can with what you have, exactly where you are.

Over time, with consistent signals of safety your body responds. It becomes more willing to remain present with intensity rather than bracing against it. Sleep eventually provides the reset your system needs. From there, you are able to connect with the part of yourself that typically recedes during periods of overwhelm. This is where clarity emerges, not by force but through availability. What you’ve been searching for has never been external. It has always lived within.

For example, you are compassionate by nature especially toward those you care about. This means you likely give generously and almost always say yes, believing it’s an expression of love. As time goes on, repeated self-sacrifice can quietly give rise to feelings of resentment, fatigue, and emotional depletion. At some point, you’re forced to confront the truth that love alone cannot sustain what self-abandonment has eroded.

This is often when compassion becomes self-abandonment, when love without boundaries lead to burnout.

Clear Brain Connection

Compassion isn’t meant to flow in only one direction. While it can feel fulfilling to give it, it’s equally important to receive it, beginning with yourself. When compassion is directed inward, it settles into the body effortlessly, creating space that allows you to genuinely receive it from others.

That can mean establishing clearer boundaries, allowing yourself time alone without guilt, or choosing rest and pleasure without justification. It may mean having your favorite meal, buying yourself something meaningful, and simply stepping out of roles and expectations. In other words, stopping the performance.

These moments of self-honoring relax the nervous system enough to create the space necessary to reconnect with your own deeper intelligence.  And this is where honesty becomes unavoidable. When you’re truly grounded, truths that surface may not always be the ones you want to hear. However, responding from those truths is where real growth and long-term sustainability are born.

Putting yourself second serves no one. Love and relationship are reciprocal by nature. There MUST be balance between giving and receiving, with others but most importantly with yourself. You can’t pour from an empty cup, and you shouldn’t pour from a half-filled one either. When you fill your own cup first, you give from overflow, not depletion. Generosity no longer has a limit.

As always, courage is required. Many of us were taught that prioritizing ourselves is selfish. In reality, it allows us to show up more grounded, present, and resourced for the people we love. No one knows how to take care of you better than you do.

So, where in your life are you still calling it love, when it’s actually self-abandonment?