EP182: What Self Abandonment Costs You Under Pressure with Suzi Cuthbertson

There’s a point where survival stops working.

Not because you’re weak.
But because the level you’re operating at exposes the cracks in how you’ve learned to cope.

In this episode of Confessions of an Unapologetic Rebel, Emma sits down with Suzi to examine one of the most overlooked pressure patterns in high-functioning women: self abandonment.

Not as a personal flaw.
But as a system that once kept you safe and now quietly limits how much pressure, visibility, and responsibility you can hold.

This conversation isn’t about healing for healing’s sake.
It’s about what breaks first when the internal system hasn’t kept pace with the external demands of your life.

What This Conversation Actually Explores

• Why self-abandonment is a common survival pattern in capable, high-responsibility women
• How the body carries unresolved pressure long after the mind has “moved on”
• Why truth feels destabilising when your system is built on control and function
• The cost of staying operational while disconnected from yourself
• How suppressed internal patterns show up as emotional volatility, physical symptoms, or identity strain
• Why avoidance eventually collapses under visibility, leadership, or scrutiny
• What changes when self-loyalty becomes a non-negotiable operating principle

This isn’t introspection for comfort.

It’s pressure literacy.

In this conversation, shadow work isn’t treated as a healing modality.

It’s examined as a mechanism for exposing what a system has been avoiding in order to keep functioning.

What’s avoided doesn’t disappear.
It shows up later under pressure, exposure, leadership, or responsibility.

The question isn’t whether you have shadow patterns.

It’s whether your current life is now demanding more internal coherence than your old coping strategies can provide.

Who This Episode Is For

This episode is for you if:

• You’re successful, capable, and relied upon but feel internally strained
• You’ve learned to function at a high level by overriding yourself
• Pressure exposes reactions you don’t recognise or like
• You sense that “coping” isn’t enough for the level you’re operating at now
• You want internal stability, not surface-level optimisation

Why This Episode Matters

Public-facing lives don’t break people.

Unexamined survival systems do.

This episode speaks to the internal cost of staying functional without self-loyalty — and why that cost increases as visibility, leadership, or responsibility expands.

It’s not about fixing yourself.

It’s about understanding what your system can no longer afford to ignore.

About the Guest

Suzi works with subconscious patterns and internal systems that shape how people respond under pressure, particularly when old survival strategies stop scaling with life.

You can find her on Instagram at Instagram

Share This Episode

If you know someone operating under pressure who is still surviving instead of stabilising share this episode.

Confessions of an Unapologetic Rebel
A public decoding of the internal pressure patterns behind high-functioning lives.