"The moment you stop asking, 'Am I worthy of being chosen?' and start asking, 'Is this person actually showing me they're worthy of me?' everything changes." - Anat Peri

In this episode of The Way Back to You, I sit down with Becca, who came into our session after one incredible first date left her nervous system completely activated.

When the man she felt so excited about stopped taking initiative, it wasn't just disappointing.

Suddenly, she was questioning everything.

Was I too much? Was I too serious? Did I do something wrong? Why doesn't he want me?

What looked like anxiety about one man quickly revealed something much deeper: an old wound around not being chosen, not feeling worthy, and believing that someone else's interest, or lack of it, said something about her value.

And underneath that was another pattern Becca hadn't realized she was caught in: trying to stay positive, "high vibe," and aligned instead of allowing herself to actually feel what was happening inside her.

This session is about what happens when dating activates an old wound, and how quickly everything can shift when, instead of abandoning yourself inside the discomfort, you finally turn toward the part of you that needs you.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why someone pulling away can trigger a much older "I'm not enough" wound
• The subtle moment when dating shifts from Do I actually want him? to How do I get him to choose me?
• Why chemistry and potential aren't the same thing as someone consistently showing up
• How to identify the values and "gatekeepers" that actually matter in a relationship
• Why forcing yourself to stay positive can actually keep your nervous system activated
• The difference between spiritually bypassing an emotion and actually processing it
• What it means to stop waiting to be chosen and begin choosing yourself
• How loving yourself can look much less like affirmations, and much more like staying with yourself when the uncomfortable feelings come

Because choosing yourself doesn't mean you stop wanting partnership. It means you stop abandoning yourself while you wait for it.

And from that place, dating becomes less about proving that you're worthy of love, and more about noticing who is actually capable of meeting you there.

Your practice this week

This week, when a feeling rises and you catch yourself rushing to fix it, reframe it, or push it down to stay positive, try the opposite. Put a hand on your heart, name what you feel, and let it move through you for about ninety seconds. That is what it looks like to stop abandoning yourself and choose you.

To make it easier, I made you a free guided practice called Cultivating Safety, the exact somatic tool I use to help my own nervous system feel safe enough to actually feel.

→Cultivating Safety: Guided Breathwork & Somatic Practice

Want to be coached on the show?

I open a few spots to work through a real pattern live on the podcast, exactly like this session with Becca. If something in you leaned in while you listened, that is your yes.

→ Apply to be coached on the show

→ Follow Anat on Instagram

“Silence is not safety. Silence is the sound of you leaving yourself.” - Anat Peri

Self abandonment does not always look like losing yourself.

Sometimes it looks like being easygoing. Keeping the peace. Going along with what they want. Staying quiet because speaking up feels harder than swallowing what is true.

And sometimes it looks like the opposite: getting louder, more controlling, or blaming because the vulnerable truth underneath feels too scary to say.

In this episode of The Way Back to You, Anat shares the moment her husband told her, “You are the one keeping yourself in this box,” and she finally saw how she had been quietly disappearing inside a relationship with a man who adored her.

She unpacks the kind of self abandonment that hides in plain sight, the difference between a yes that comes from freedom and one that comes from fear, what vulnerability actually looks like in a real relationship, and how to begin speaking the truths, wants, needs, and no’s you have been swallowing.

Because keeping the peace is not always peace.

Sometimes it is the quietest way you leave yourself.

• Why self abandonment is so difficult to recognize when it looks like getting along, keeping the peace, being a good partner, or staying in control

• The difference between an easygoing yes that comes from freedom and a yes that comes from fear, pleasing, or avoiding discomfort

• What vulnerability actually means: saying the scary thing, allowing yourself to be seen, and asking for what you need without controlling the answer

• Why blame is often a need in disguise, and how shifting from “you never” to “I feel” and “I need” changes the conversation

• Why someone being triggered by your honesty does not automatically mean you did something wrong

• How to let another person have their reaction without abandoning yourself to make them comfortable again

• The simple practice Anat’s mentor taught her for saying something that feels too scary to speak in the moment

Find one true thing you have been swallowing.

Just one.

A want. A need. A no. A fear. Something you have not been saying.

Before you bring it to anyone else, give yourself some time with it on paper.

Ask yourself:

If I knew I was completely safe no matter how they reacted, what would I say?

What do I actually need?

What am I afraid would happen if I asked for it out loud?

Then, when you are ready, say the true thing to the person it belongs to.

And if saying it in the moment feels too scary, write it down first and read it to them.

Messy and true beats smooth and absent every time.

You have a specific way you abandon yourself, and you cannot change a pattern you cannot see.

→ The Hidden Defense Patterns Quiz

And before you have the conversation, regulate your body so you can speak from safety instead of flooding.

→ Cultivating Safety: Guided Breathwork & Somatic Practice

Follow Anat on Instagram

If this episode reached something in you, share it with one person you love who needs to hear it. That is how this work travels, heart to heart, one honest conversation at a time.

Follow The Way Back to You so the next episode finds you. And if the show has supported you, leave a rating and review. It helps more big hearted humans find their way back to themselves.

"You are not disappearing when you choose yourself. You are finally showing up."

-Anat Peri

In this episode of The Way Back to You, Anat guides Jessica, a new mom who gives everything to everyone and cannot find herself anywhere on her own list. Jessica already knows she is a people pleaser. What she does not yet see is why choosing herself sets off a wave of guilt she cannot think her way out of. Anat traces the pattern back to where it began, the comparison and the never good enough that shaped it, and then does the part most conversations never reach. Together they move it, in real time, in the body, and you get to hear a lifetime of guilt release in about ninety seconds. Anat unpacks why you cannot think your way out of a pattern that lives in your nervous system, what it really means to cut the cord without abandoning the people you love, and how to feel a hard emotion all the way through instead of carrying it for years.

Takeaways

• Why you cannot think your way out of people pleasing, and what actually shifts it
• The hidden script running underneath the guilt: your needs come last
• How childhood comparison quietly becomes "I am never good enough"
• What cutting the cord really means, and why it is not abandoning the people you love
• The two bodyguards we use to avoid a feeling, and how to catch yours
• The practice that moved a lifetime of guilt in ninety seconds: regulate, name it, let it move

Your practice this week

This episode asks you to stop running from the guilt that rises when you choose yourself, and to feel it all the way through instead. Cultivating Safety is my free guided breathwork and somatic practice to help your nervous system settle enough to do exactly that.

→ Cultivating Safety: Guided Breathwork & Somatic Practice

Want to be coached on the show, like Jessica?

The application takes a few minutes, and I read every one.

→ Apply to be coached on the show

→ Follow Anat on Instagram

"Secure is not calm. Secure is who you let steer." - Anat Peri

In this episode of The Way Back to You, Anat tells the story of the ten days that changed everything. Two and a half months into dating the man who is now her husband, he asked her for space, with no promise of when, or if, he would come back. Instead of chasing him, texting him, or making his silence mean something about her, she poured all that love back into herself. She unpacks what it really means to move from anxious to secure, why giving someone space is not the same as waiting on them, and how tending your own fear instead of handing it to him is the thing that makes you magnetic.

Takeaways

- Why the first months of dating reveal your attachment pattern more than they reveal him

- The difference between someone pulling away from you and someone moving toward themselves

- What secure actually is: holding fear and trust in the same hand, not the absence of fear

- Why "chasing dressed up as being sweet" keeps you stuck in the courting stage

- How to tell the space of a proven partner from the pattern of someone who was never consistent

- The one practice that carried her through those ten days: feel it fully, act on it never

Your practice this week

This episode asks you to stay present with the fear of losing someone, instead of reaching out to make it stop. Cultivating Safety is my free guided breathwork and somatic practice to help your nervous system settle enough to do exactly that.

Cultivating Safety: Guided Breathwork & Somatic Practice

Follow Anat on Instagram

If this episode landed for you, send it to someone who has been chasing and calling it love. Follow The Way Back to You so you do not miss what is next, and if the show is helping you come home to yourself, a rating and review helps another big-hearted human find it.

Sara came to this session three days after a breakup, trying to do something she had never really done before: stay with herself instead of reaching for someone else to make the feeling go away.

If you lose yourself in relationships, abandon your own needs to keep everyone else happy, or feel panic at the thought of being alone, this live coaching session is your way back to you.

Losing yourself in a relationship is one of the quietest kinds of heartbreak.

You look up after it ends and you're not quite sure who's left.

This episode is for you if:

You lose yourself in relationships and struggle to find your way back.

The fear of being alone feels less like peace and more like panic.

You abandon your own needs to keep everyone else happy.

You want to stop abandoning yourself and start choosing yourself.

At one point in the session, Sara says the thing so many people have felt but never said out loud:

“I don't even know who I am.”

This is not a talk about self-love.

It is self-love happening in real time.

You will hear Sara's nervous system settle right there on the recording, and if you listen closely, you might feel your own do the same.

In this session:

The little girl in the trunk. Why the part of you that panics when you're alone may be a younger part of you who learned to take care of everyone else instead of staying connected to herself, and what it means to finally bring her up into the front seat.

Do not buy the chicken. The simple reframe that turns “I can't call them” into “I choose me,” and why telling yourself what not to do can keep you focused on the very thing you're trying to move away from.

Surfing the wave. A live somatic practice for meeting a hard emotion in the body, breathing through it, allowing it to move, and returning to calm so your nervous system begins to learn that it is safe to stay with you.

What was never modeled. How the way we learned to be with emotion as children can shape the way we abandon ourselves as adults, and how you get to begin reparenting that part of yourself now.

Choosing yourself is a practice. You are learning something you may never have been taught.

But the love you have been chasing out there has been inside you the whole time.If you want support while you find your way back in, the Cultivating Safety guided audio is here for you, so you never have to do this alone:Cultivating Safety: Guided Breathwork & Somatic Practice

Want to be coached on a future episode? You can apply here: Apply to be coached on the show

Come find me on Instagram:

Follow Anat on Instagram

What are you holding onto because having fifty percent feels safer than having nothing?

Maybe it’s a relationship you already know isn’t right. A situationship you keep returning to. A job that’s fine. A friendship you’ve outgrown. The “good enough” version of something because letting it go means facing the fear of what happens next.

Nine years ago, I was thirty-seven, sitting alone in a room in Maui, terrified I had missed my window for love.

Instead of distracting myself, thinking positively, or trying to make the fear go away, I let myself feel it all the way through.

And at the bottom of that fear was a question that changed everything:

Where am I in my own way?

The answer was a fifty percent relationship I was holding onto because having something felt safer than having nothing.

So I let it go, with no guarantee of what would come next, and made myself a promise:

I get to have one hundred percent now.

What happened next changed my life.

But this is not a “manifest your soulmate in two weeks” story.

The timing is not the teaching.

This episode is about what happens when you stop running from the fear, clear the space occupied by what you already know isn’t right, and hold the bar long enough for something different to become possible.

Inside the episode, I’ll walk you through three moves:

1. Feel it through.

Fear has a bottom. When you stop running from it, clarity can finally meet you there.

2. Clear the space.

The relationship that’s fine. The comfortable situationship. The safe job. The draining friendship. Sometimes you have to release the fifty percent before you have any proof the hundred percent is coming.

3. Hold the bar.

Don’t clear the space only to fill it with a new fifty percent wearing a different outfit. Maybe means no. Obvious is the standard. Peace, not anxiety. Reaching toward you, not keeping you guessing.

A line to take with you:

“Don’t be upset about the 50%. Get excited for the 100%.”

This episode asks you to feel the fear you’ve been avoiding.

And sometimes your nervous system needs support to feel safe enough to do that.

I created Cultivating Safety: A Guided Breathwork & Somatic Practice to help your body settle enough to stay present with what you’re feeling instead of running from it.

• Cultivating Safety: Guided Breathwork & Somatic Practice

If this episode landed for you, send it to someone who’s been settling and calling it realistic.

Follow The Way Back to You so you don’t miss what’s next. And if the show is helping you come home to yourself, leaving a rating and review helps another big-hearted human find it.

My friend Nikki is forty-eight. She drove hours to visit her mom and stepdad and walked into a house where she felt completely invisible. No questions, no eye contact, just "there's food in the fridge" and a door closing behind it. By the time she called me, she was crying like she was five years old.

In this session we follow it all the way back to one moment. Nikki at four, asking her overwhelmed young mom to play and being told no. She gathered up every stuffed animal she owned, set them in the back seat of the family station wagon, climbed into the driver's seat, and pretended to drive them all away. That was the moment she decided she was on her own. And she has been driving off first, leaving before anyone can leave her, ever since.

This is an episode about the filter we build as children and then see everyone through for the rest of our lives. About the people we quietly cast to play a role, a mother, a father, an ex, our own kids, and how we relate to the character instead of the person actually standing in front of us. And about what opens up the moment you take those glasses off, not to excuse anyone, but to stop missing the people who are still here while they are still here.

One gentle note before you listen. Nikki shares real and painful history, including childhood abuse and being rejected when she came out. If that is tender ground for you, go easy on yourself as you listen. Reframing the story you carry is never the same as excusing what was done to you, and we say so plainly in the episode.

Follow Anat on Instagram

Apply to Work with Anat

The Hidden Defense Patterns Quiz

In 1997, I found my ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend's phone number. I would block my number and call her. Not to say anything. Just to hear her voice. I did that for the better part of a year, and I was seventeen.

I promise you have your own version.

This episode is about why we keep looking when we know it's going to hurt. The midnight scroll. The drive past their street. The mutual friend you casually ask for information. I call all of it "driving by his house," and by the end you'll know exactly whose house you're really driving by, and why the person was never the wound.

I walk you through every man I did this with, Ross, Tom, Raffaello, Gabe, and Matt. Not because this is a memoir, but because every story is a mirror. The pattern is always older than the person you're pointing it at. And I'll show you where it ends, because it does end. Not managed, not white-knuckled. Gone.

Somewhere in the middle, we do a small practice together. Ten seconds. Bring yourself to it.

In this episode:

• Why we look when we know it will hurt
• The phrase that will follow you all week: "driving by his house"
• The proof that it was never about love
• Reading his email from inside the house
• Why healing is not a single moment
• The little girl standing in her father's office
• The one thing to try this week

A gentle note: This episode includes a brief, caring reference to self-harm used as an analogy for emotional avoidance. If that is something you have lived, please take care of yourself while listening.

Free practice mentioned in this episode:

Cultivating Safety: Guided Breathwork & Somatic Practice that teaches your body it is safe to feel what you have been driving past.

Want to name your own pattern?

Take the free three minuteThe Hidden Defense Patterns Quiz

If this episode cracked something open for you, share it with someone who has been doing their own version of this.

The Permission to Stop Abandoning Yourself — with Evelyn

Evelyn has done years of inner work. She meditates, she feels her feelings, she shows up. And still the exhaustion won't lift. Still the hollow feeling. Still the sense that no matter how much she gives to her mom, her son, everyone around her, she's falling short.

What we find underneath surprises even her.

This is a live, unscripted coaching session... the real thing. No highlight reel. Just a woman brave enough to lie down on her yoga mat, follow the thread beneath the pattern, and discover what's actually been missing from her healing.

What's missing isn't more work. It's not more meditation or more feeling. It's the two stages most of us skip: getting to the root of the belief, and actually reparenting the part of us that learned to abandon herself in the first place.

Evelyn grew up in a home where emotions weren't welcome. Dad said wait till we get home. Mom stayed quiet. And so Evelyn learned to hold it all together...in the car, in public, in life. She learned to show just enough, never all of it. She learned that other people's needs come first, that love and freedom have to be earned, that happiness might just not be for her.

She's been unlearning that. Slowly, steadily. And in this session, something breaks open.

By the end, she says something that stopped me cold: "I hadn't realized I was looking for permission."

That's it. That's the whole thing. And if you've ever felt it too...that quiet waiting for someone to finally say it's okay to choose yourself... this episode is for you.

In this episode:

• Why years of inner work can still leave you feeling hollow and what's actually missing
• The childhood scene that taught Evelyn to hold it all together (and how we rewrite it)
• What reparenting looks and feels like in real time
• The bamboo principle and why internal peace coming before external results is not a sign you're failing
• How to set a boundary with yourself before you ever set one with anyone else
• The one line that gave us both full body goosebumps

🔗 Learn more about Training Camp for the Soul

🔗 Ready to go deeper? Apply to Work with Anat

🔗 Connect with me: Follow Anat on Instagram

If something moved in you today, that's little you tapping you on the shoulder. Follow that. Subscribe, leave a review, and share this with someone who's ready to find their way back.

What are your three memories with your father? Just you and him. If you can't find three, or they all have other people in them, this episode is going to explain more about your relationships than years of talking about them ever has.

Anat Peri tells the story of the phone call that cracked her life open: asking her father what he remembered of their time together, hearing the same three memories she'd found, word for word, and then his shaken question, "Was I a bad father?" What follows is the trail of a wound that ran her life for thirty years without announcing itself: the hundred days of dating herself that changed nothing, the ceremony grief that wasn't healing, and the man whose kiss felt like chemistry but was something much older.

• You'll learn: the ladder of healing (why awareness isn't healing, why willpower isn't healing, why even feeling isn't healing, and what actually is), how to spot a wound disguising itself as attraction, and the one question that reveals the blueprint underneath every relationship you've had.

Follow Anat on Instagram

The Hidden Defense Patterns Quiz