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When I hear clients say they feel lost in their significant relationships, I get more confused looks when I reply, “You might consider choosing yourself.” Self-neglect, or not choosing yourself, is an insidious dynamic, often camouflaged by hard work and helping others. Before exploring what choosing yourself actually is, it might be helpful to say what it’s not. It isn’t excessive narcissism, which is the desperate search for the self, an obsession with acquiring a valued sense of self.

What Choosing Yourself Looks Like

Choosing yourself is similar to choosing anything. Here are some characteristics of choosing ourselves.

• Worth your attention. Like most things we choose, when we choose ourselves, we believe we are worth our attention.
• Attending. Several aspects of our character are waiting for our attention. We can consider our emotions by feeling them, naming them, and talking about them. Needs and desires also wait to be realized. We also create stories about ourselves, others, places, and things. There are actions to consider.
• Allow attention to generate intention. When we give ourselves attention, we begin to intend some form of action that we likely believe will benefit us.

Signs That You’re Not Choosing Yourself

Some degree of self-neglect is inevitable, especially when parenting young children or building a career. The hope is that we don’t lose so much connection with ourselves that we develop a medical condition or lose someone we love. We can experience the following signs of not choosing ourselves.

• Burnout. Severe self-neglect can deplete energy and be accompanied by poor sleep and poor nutrition.
• Confusion. It’s easy to lack clarity about what you need and want, and what will truly serve you.
• Blame. It can be easy to hold others responsible when we feel expended.
• A tendency to be impetuous. We can overreact as we try to show confidence when we actually feel insecure.

Choosing Yourself and Being Chosen by Others

I recently worked with George, a 48-year-old entrepreneur who felt neither chosen by his wife nor by his children. It became clear that George expected his family to choose him instead of choosing himself. He began to identify ways in which he did not choose himself. The list included diet, sleep, exercise, dental check-ups, time with friends, and not making business contacts that would likely support his work. Finally, he took responsibility for choosing himself personally and professionally. Soon, George reported that his wife seemed more affectionate and his teenage sons wanted to spend time with him.

Essentially, George was communicating: “I’m worth my own attention and yours.” He experienced renewed respect and involvement. He communicated to his family that he was primarily responsible for choosing himself. He put responsibility in the right place, alleviating others from having to save him.

George’s story is a good example of how much building relationships with others is an inside job. Choosing ourselves is one of the only aspects of relationships that is in our control. How we treat ourselves as we relate to others is what we bring to the relationship. Our presence can be an invitation to joy, peace, and kindness, or a message that we don’t deserve such things. It doesn’t mean we need to remain on top of the world; it’s only about being honest when we feel stuck. The key is that we’re responsible for choosing ourselves, and that may require asking for help. Also, we don’t fall into excessive people-pleasing as a nonverbal contract that makes the other person responsible for choosing us. We simply commit to do our best, not to abdicate our responsibility, and to choose ourselves.