Returning to Yourself | What Does it Mean?

Who are we beneath the expectations we’ve learned to carry? An exploration of self-worth, self-advocacy, and returning to yourself. Created by and for women within the African diaspora.

How much of our relationship with ourselves has been shaped by the environments we’ve learned to navigate? Let’s consider the ways we learned to communicate, respond to discomfort, establish boundaries, express emotions, and understand our own worth. These interpersonal and intrapersonal dynamics did not develop in isolation.They emerged through experiences, relationships, cultural expectations, and the conditions in which we have learned what it means to belong.

We learned to recognize the emotional atmosphere of a room and anticipate expectations. We strived to make ourselves understood and found ways to remain connected within environments that may not always understand us. These adaptations can become so intimately woven into our everyday lives that we begin to see them as natural expressions of our personalities. Some could say this a beautiful expression of our human adaption.

However, as women of the African diaspora, our capacity to adapt to our environment and others can erode our unscathed sense of self.

Returning to Yourself: Self-Worth & Healing

While working on the Returning to Yourself workbook I found myself pondering the relationship between who we are, who we have learned to become, and the parts of ourselves that could not exist freely. For women within the African diaspora, this relationship can become particularly layered. Our experiences are shaped by personal histories, ancestral and cultural knowledge, and relationships.

The social conditions influencing how our identities are perceived and received also play a critical role. Within workplaces, families, and communities, we encounter expectations surrounding strength, composure, responsibility, productivity, and emotional availability. These factors significantly influence how we learn to care for ourselves.

Over time, we can become familiar with what the world requires from us while growing increasingly distant from what we need within it. I wonder how often we have mistaken our ability to adapt for evidence that an environment was supportive of our existence.

This is one of the places where Returning to Yourself begins. In the space between recognizing what we have learned to do and becoming curious about what those experiences have taught us to believe about who we are.

When Survival Becomes Familiar

For instance, an individual who has repeatedly experienced criticism may become exceptionally attentive to how others perceive them. Someone whose boundaries have been dismissed may learn to anticipate the needs of others before recognizing their own. A person who has encountered oppressive racialized or gendered scrutiny in professional environments may become increasingly conscious of their tone, expression, appearance, or emotional responses.

These adaptations are not inherently evidence of something being wrong with us. They can reflect intelligence, creativity, discernment, and the remarkable capacity of human beings to respond to their surroundings. There is a difference between developing these discerning qualities because it reflects our nature and developing a behavior because our circumstances required this protective mechanism from us.

Communicating with our Nervous System

Our nervous systems continually interpret information about safety, connection, and the demands of our environments. Through experience, we develop patterns of attention, emotional response, and behavior that can become familiar even after the circumstances that shaped them have changed.

What interests me is the moment when a protective adaptation becomes so familiar that we no longer recognize its origins.

Here are a few examples of what protective adaption can express itself as:

• We describe ourselves as fiercely independent without considering how often depending on others felt unavailable.
• We identify as naturally accommodating without examining the experiences that taught us disagreement could threaten connection.
• We understand ourselves as highly productive while remaining unfamiliar with what it feels like to exist without an expectation to perform.

These qualities may genuinely belong to us. They may also carry the histories of environments we have survived. Both realities can exist together. Returning to Yourself invites us to explore that complexity with curiosity, recognizing that our adaptations deserve understanding even as we consider whether they continue to serve us.

Remembering Our Worth Beyond What We Provide

One of the foundations of Returning to Yourself is divinity, the understanding that our worth exists beyond what we accomplish, contribute, endure, or make possible for other people. I find this particularly meaningful when considering how frequently we are encouraged to understand ourselves through our usefulness.

We are celebrated for our resilience, admired for our capacity to manage competing responsibilities, and recognized for our ability to remain composed through circumstances that may require extraordinary emotional labor.

Within professional environments, our value can become closely associated with productivity, availability, advancement, and the willingness to accept more responsibility. These expectations may gradually influence the way we define success, even when the lives we are pursuing have become disconnected from the experiences we actually desire.

Creating Room For Yourself

There is an important distinction between wanting to contribute meaningfully and believing our worth depends upon our contributions.

• What happens when we begin to recognize that our existence has value even when we are resting, uncertain, changing direction, or choosing a life that others may not understand?

For me, returning to ourselves involves creating room for questions that do not immediately demand an answer.

• What does a meaningful life feel like in my body?
• Which expectations have I inherited from ancestors without consciously choosing them?
• What parts of myself become more present when I am no longer turning my attention towards being understood, accepted, or useful?

These reflections invite us to develop a relationship with ourselves that extends beyond the roles we fulfill. Remember that our worth does not begin when we become successful enough to deserve it.

Understanding Our Experiences Without Turning Against Ourselves

The stories we carry about ourselves are not always accurate reflections of what we have experienced. They are also interpretations shaped by emotion, memory, relationships, and the meanings we have learned to associate with particular events.

For example, an interaction at work may last only a few minutes, while the meaning we attach to it can remain with us for days. Perhaps someone questioned our competence, dismissed an observation, or communicated in a way that left us feeling unseen. Long after the interaction has ended, we may find ourselves revisiting the experience, questioning our response, or imagining what we could have done differently.

For neurodiverse people this is especially enhanced as we have different communication styles that can be misread or our intentions are misunderstood. Awareness of the conscious and unconscious layers of interpersonal exchanges are dependent on a co-created space.

Specifically, in the workplace, not everyone is attuned to the layers of interpersonal exchange required in an environment that brings together diverse neurotypes, skills, and lived experiences. Introspective reflection can support understanding. However, when our reflections in the work space repeatedly return to what must be wrong with us, we may begin transforming an experience of discomfort into a judgment about our identity.

Separate what happened (event) from what we believe it says about us (meaning-making).

Practicing Narrative Reflection in Real Time

Exteranlizing allows us to create distance between the event and the meaning created associated to the event. Gives us room to analyze our relationship to the narratives we have deemed as true.

This process allows us to slow down, clarify, ask questions, and possible communicating in a different way.

Examples include acknowledging that an experience was painful without concluding that we were inadequate; recognizing that our responses were influenced by previous experiences without reducing ourselves to those experiences; and holding ourselves accountable for our choices while remaining attentive to the circumstances in which those choices occurred.

This is where narrative reflection becomes meaningful.

When we examine the stories we have inherited, repeated, or developed to make sense of our lives, we create opportunities to understand their origins and consider whether they continue to reflect our experiences.

There is dignity in allowing an experience to be what it was while recognizing that it does not have to become the entirety of who we are. Healing does not require us to deny what happened or reinterpret every difficult experience as something beneficial.

Metacognitive questioning to support narrative reflection:

• What did I notice about my narrative?
• How has this changed?
• What might I have done differently?

Self-Advocacy Begins With Listening to Ourselves

We often associate self-advocacy with the ability to communicate a boundary, request support, express disagreement, or speak confidently on our own behalf. I believe the process begins in a quieter place.

Before we can communicate what we need, we must develop enough familiarity with ourselves to recognize that a need exists.

This can be especially complex when our experiences have taught us to prioritize keeping the peace, maintaining connection, anticipating expectations, or minimizing discomfort for the people around us.

Relationship between Self-Advocacy and Self-Awareness

We may understand another person’s emotional needs with remarkable clarity while struggling to identify our own. We may recognize when someone else has been treated unfairly while questioning whether our own experiences deserve the same consideration. For some people this can look like hyper-vigilance, camouflaging, or can manifest itself as people pleasing, over-intellectualizing, over-explaining

There is a relationship between self-awareness and self-advocacy that deserves our attention.

Our bodies may communicate discomfort before we have the language to explain it. We may notice changes in our breathing, muscle tension, energy, or emotional responses during interactions that challenge our boundaries. These sensations are data based information points that are worthy of our curiosity, even as we consider the broader context of what we are experiencing.

Within Returning to Yourself, I introduce the CARE framework as a way of exploring this relationship through checking in with ourselves, acknowledging our experiences, requesting or restating boundaries, and recognizing when it may be appropriate to exit an interaction.

These practices create opportunities to become more intentional about how we respond to our experiences. The connection between our self-advocacy and self-awareness is the bridge to our transformation.

The transformation extends beyond becoming more assertive or learning how to say no. It involves developing a relationship with ourselves in which our needs, perceptions, and experiences are worthy of consideration before they have been validated by someone else.

The Quiet Practice of Self-Kindness

Returning to Yourself Through Practices of Self-Kindness

Self-kindness begins with becoming aware of the language we use internally, especially when we are moving through experiences that require significant emotional energy. Self-criticism can feel productive because we may believe it keeps us accountable, motivates improvement, or protects us from future disappointment. However, accountability does not require us to be unkind to ourselves. We can acknowledge our choices, learn from them, and make changes without attacking our character.

Self-kindness develops through the ordinary moments of daily life. It helps us recognize that being disappointed in a decision does not mean something is wrong with us, that needing support does not diminish our abilities, and that rest is a form of care rather than a reward we must earn through exhaustion. It also encourages us to notice how we respond when plans change, our capacity shifts, or we are learning something unfamiliar.

Practicing self-kindness may involve:

• Speaking to ourselves with patience after making a mistake
• Pausing before responding when we feel overwhelmed
• Asking for help without apologizing for having needs
• Taking a break before reaching burnout
• Recognizing and celebrating small signs of progress
• Setting boundaries without excessive guilt
• Allowing ourselves to change direction when something no longer serves us
• Reconsidering a commitment when our circumstances or capacity change

These actions may seem small when viewed individually, but they shape the emotional environment we create within ourselves. Over time, choosing patience over criticism helps us build a more supportive relationship with ourselves. A relationship that encourages accountability, growth, and care.

Integration: Allowing What We Understand to Become Part of How We Live

Understanding something intellectually is only the first step. To let that understanding shape the way we live, we need to practice applying it intentionally.

For example, we may understand that boundaries are important, yet still hesitate to speak up during an uncomfortable conversation. We may also recognize the value of rest while continuing to feel responsible for every unfinished task.

Becoming aware of a protective pattern does not always make it disappear. When we face situations that remind us of the past, that pattern may still feel familiar and automatic.

Awareness opens the door to new choices. Integration means practicing those choices in everyday life until they become part of how we respond.

This process can begin by noticing how our bodies respond to different environments. It may also mean giving ourselves time to recover after emotionally demanding interactions, rethinking responsibilities that no longer fit our current capacity, or finding clearer ways to communicate what we need.

How can these practices become sustainable in everyday life?

Our capacity is shaped by many factors, including our resources, responsibilities, health, relationships, and surroundings. A practice that supports us during one season of life may need to change in another.

Returning to Yourself is not a straight path toward perfect wellness (there is no such thing as perfect wellness).

It is an ongoing relationship with our experiences. It invites us to stay curious about who we are becoming while honoring the different versions of ourselves that have helped us get here.

Returning to Yourself: A Creative Self-Therapy Journey

Returning to Yourself is as a 34-page digital self-therapy workbook for women within the African diaspora navigating workplace, relational, and systemic stress.

The workbook emerged from my interest in the relationship between psychological awareness, cultural experience, creativity, and the ways we develop meaning through our interactions with the world.

Informed by somatic practices, phenomenological self-exploration, narrative therapy reflection, self-advocacy, and self-kindness, I wanted to create a resource that allows readers to explore their relationship with themselves.

I do not see Returning to Yourself as discovering one fixed, untouched version of who we were before life happened. We are shaped by our experiences, and there is meaning in acknowledging the ways we have grown, adapted, transcended, and changed.

For me, Returning to Yourself is an invitation to develop a more conscious relationship with the person you have become. To recognize the histories that live within your responses, the values that continue to guide you, and the parts of yourself that may be asking for more room to exist.

There is no requirement to have everything understood before beginning.Trust that the transformation begins with recognizing that your experiences are worthy of your own attention.

You are the center of your wellness.

Continue Your Journey With Returning to Yourself

Returning to Yourself offers guided psychological reflections, somatic practices, and self-advocacy tools to help you begin applying these insights to your own life, at your own pace.

An instant digital download: Purchase the Returning to Yourself Workbook and take a powerful step toward reconnecting with yourself.

Looking for More Personalized Support?

Self-exploration can bring forward questions, experiences, and patterns that deserve additional attention. If you would like support navigating these discoveries, I invite you to schedule a complimentary consultation with me to explore how our wellness-based therapy and creative psychological approaches may support your individual needs.

Schedule a Consultation

Explore Returning to Yourself, a creative self-therapy workbook available through Intentional Simplicity LLC.