|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
How Nursing Taught Me to Abandon Myself (And Why I Had to Unlearn It)
I spent 26 years as an ICU nurse. Twenty-six years of carrying the hospital on my back, making sure everything and everyone was okay—except me.
How Nursing Taught Me to Abandon Myself (And Why I Had to Unlearn It)
By Marquita Etter
I spent 26 years as an ICU nurse. Twenty-six years carrying the hospital on my back, making sure everything and everyone was okay—except me.
When I finally left, people asked, “How could you walk away from nursing? You were so good at it.”
Here’s what I couldn’t say then but I’ll say now: I didn’t leave because I stopped caring. I left because my body was done abandoning itself to keep a broken system running.
The Day I Realized What We Were Really Doing
Picture this: You’re three patients deep into a 12-hour shift. One is circling the drain, one is stable but needy, and one just came back from surgery and needs constant monitoring. You haven’t peed in six hours. You haven’t eaten. You’re running on fumes and adrenaline.
The family of your stable patient keeps calling you to the room every 15 minutes with questions that could wait. The other department still hasn’t shown up to do the thing they were supposed to do two hours ago, so you call them. Again. The third time today. A fellow nurse asks if you can help her turn her patient, and you say yes even though you’re drowning. Because that’s what we do.
Your back hurts. Your feet hurt. Your bladder is screaming. But there’s no time. There’s never time. You push through.
And at the end of your shift, when you finally clock out, you realize something. You just spent 12 hours taking care of everyone except yourself. Not once did you stop and ask, “What do I need right now?” Not once did you say, “I can’t take on one more thing.” Not once did you prioritize your own body, your own needs, your own humanity.
And nobody noticed. Because that’s just what nurses do.
What They Don’t Tell You in Nursing School
They teach you assessments, medications, interventions. They teach you how to save lives, manage crises, think critically under pressure. What they don’t teach you is that the job will require you to abandon yourself—daily, hourly, constantly. And they’ll call it “professionalism.”
Here’s what nursing actually trained me to do:
- Ignore my body’s signals. Hunger? Push through. Thirst? Later. Need to pee? Hold it. Exhausted? There’s no time for that. Your body’s needs don’t matter when someone else’s life is on the line.
- Manage everyone else’s emotions. The grieving family. The angry patient. The stressed coworker. It’s your job to keep everyone calm, comfortable, and reassured—even when you’re barely holding it together yourself.
- Remind other adults to do their jobs. Lab still hasn’t drawn that blood. Transport still hasn’t picked up the patient. Another department still hasn’t called you back. So you follow up. Again. And again. Because if you don’t, it won’t get done. And it’ll be your problem.
- Say yes when you mean no. Can you stay late? Can you pick up an extra shift? Can you take another patient? Can you help with this? The answer is always yes. Because saying no feels selfish. Because “we’re a team.” Because “patients need us.”
- Keep the entire system running—while the system barely keeps you. You orchestrate everything. You’re the hub, the glue, the one making sure everything doesn’t fall apart. And when it’s time to ask for a raise? When it’s time to advocate for safe staffing? You have to picket for a few extra dollars while wearing the hospital on your shoulders.
What the actual fuck.
This Isn’t Professionalism—It’s Fawn State
Here’s what I didn’t realize for 26 years: I wasn’t being professional. I was living in a constant state of fawn response.
Fawn is one of the nervous system’s survival states. It’s the “keep everyone happy so I stay safe” response. And nursing doesn’t just tolerate fawn state—it requires it. It rewards it. It calls it “being a good nurse.”
Fawn state looks like prioritizing everyone else’s comfort over your own needs. It looks like over-functioning to keep the system running, saying yes when your body is screaming no, managing other people’s emotions at your own expense. It means feeling responsible for things that aren’t your responsibility and being unable to set boundaries without guilt.
Sound familiar?
That’s not nursing. That’s your nervous system trying to survive by making everyone else okay—even when you’re falling apart. And the worst part? The system relies on it. Hospitals run on nurses’ willingness to abandon themselves, to override their needs, to keep giving when there’s nothing left. And they call it dedication.
Why Nurses Are Quitting at Record Rates
People say it’s burnout. They say it’s staffing ratios, poor pay, lack of support. And yes, those things are real. But here’s what nobody’s saying: Nurses are quitting because their bodies can’t sustain fawn state anymore. Your nervous system can only override your needs for so long before it starts screaming, “WE ARE NOT SAFE HERE.”
And when that happens, you have two choices. Keep pushing through and destroy yourself, or leave. Most people choose to leave. Not because they don’t care. But because their body is finally saying, “Enough.”
The Moment I Knew I Had to Walk Away
The real moment I knew I had to walk away came during a personal development course I was taking. The instructor was talking about how he and his wife intentionally created every area of their lives. And it hit me: I was sleepwalking. Self-abandonment had become so normal I didn’t even see it anymore. I knew I wanted more—but who doesn’t? The thing I didn’t know was the programming underneath that was running my life. Looking back, I could see it everywhere in nursing. We were all trying something—vacationing, buying houses, going back to school. But in my opinion, those were just coping mechanisms for self-abandonment. We lacked the skill of knowing how to intentionally create our lives, so we just recycled the same life experiences to one another.
Then two of my coworkers passed away, maybe a year or two apart. Both were near retirement. That’s when I realized the golden handcuffs had a hold of me. I wasn’t just abandoning myself—I was abandoning my life and what I had to offer the world. The bonus pay kept coming. There were always more than enough hours to work. It would have been so easy to just keep going. Around the time my last coworker passed, the nurses were striking. One of the flyers from the union showed that someone in the C-level of the hospital had a house in the Pacific Palisades—all the while nurses were asking for just a few more dollars.
I decided at that moment I was on the wrong side of the fence.
So instead of striking, I went home to think about my life. Really think about it. And I realized: I had trained my body to ignore every signal it sent me. Hunger, exhaustion, pain, sadness—none of it mattered. The job came first. The patients came first. Everyone came first. Except me. And my body was done.
What I Had to Unlearn
Leaving nursing didn’t fix me. Because the pattern didn’t live in the job—it lived in my nervous system.
- I had to learn that my needs matter. Not after everyone else’s needs are met. Not when it’s convenient. Now. Always.
- I had to learn that saying no isn’t selfish—it’s self-preservation. And without it, I have nothing left to give.
- I had to learn to stop managing other people’s emotions. Their discomfort isn’t mine to fix. Their feelings aren’t my responsibility.
- I had to learn that I can’t keep a broken system running by sacrificing myself. If the system only works when I’m abandoning my needs, the system is broken. And it’s not my job to hold it together.
- I had to learn to recognize when I’m in fawn state and to ask myself: “Am I doing this because it’s right? Or because I’m afraid of what happens if I don’t?”
- I had to learn that overfunctioning isn’t the same as being capable. Just because I can do it doesn’t mean I should. Just because I’m good at carrying everything doesn’t mean I have to.
This Isn’t Just About Nursing
If you’re reading this and you’re not a nurse, you might still see yourself here. Because fawn state doesn’t just live in hospitals. It lives in teachers managing chaotic classrooms and emotionally dysregulated students. It lives in therapists holding space for everyone’s pain while ignoring their own. It lives in moms orchestrating the entire household while running on empty, in social workers keeping systems afloat with no support, in anyone who’s been trained to prioritize everyone else’s needs over their own.
Overfunctioning is epidemic in caregiving professions. And it’s not a badge of honor. It’s a survival strategy that’s costing you everything.
The Question That Changed Everything
I finally asked myself: “What would happen if I stopped abandoning myself to keep everyone else okay?” And you know what? The world didn’t fall apart. The people who actually valued me adjusted. The people who only valued what I could do for them? They left. And that was the clearest answer I could’ve gotten.
I wasn’t being selfish. I was finally being honest.
If You’re Still in It
If you’re still nursing—or teaching, or caregiving, or overfunctioning in any capacity—I see you. I know what it costs. I know what it feels like to give everything and still be told it’s not enough. I know what it’s like to ignore your body’s signals until your body stops asking and starts shutting down. I know what it’s like to be so good at taking care of everyone else that you forget how to take care of yourself. And I need you to hear this: You are not required to abandon yourself to be good at your job.
Professionalism without self-preservation is just self-destruction with better branding.
You Don’t Have to Leave—But You Do Have to Notice
I’m not telling you to quit your job. But I am telling you to start noticing. Notice when you’re in fawn state. When you’re overriding your needs. When you’re managing other people’s emotions at your own expense. When you’re saying yes and your body is screaming no. When you’re overfunctioning to keep a broken system running. Because you can’t change what you can’t see. And once you can see it, you get to choose: Do I keep doing this? Or do I start reclaiming myself?
Ready to Stop Abandoning Yourself?
If you’re realizing you’ve been living in fawn state—if you’ve been trained to override your needs, manage everyone else’s emotions, and keep everything running at your own expense—NOTICE IT will help you see what’s been happening. It’s designed specifically for people who’ve been taught that their needs don’t matter. People who’ve been trained to overfunction. People who are exhausted from carrying everyone else. You’ll learn to recognize when you’re in fawn state so you can choose differently. You’ll identify where you’re overfunctioning and start pulling back. You’ll understand what your nervous system is doing and why it feels impossible to stop. You’ll reclaim your energy so you can finally take care of yourself without guilt.
This isn’t about being selfish. It’s about finally being honest.
Start noticing with NOTICE IT →
Or discover which nervous system state you’re living in with the free SHIFT IT Archetype Quiz →
The bottom line: Nursing taught me to abandon myself. It rewarded me for it. It called it professionalism. But my body knew the truth—and eventually, it refused to keep going. If you’re still in it, you don’t have to leave. But you do have to start noticing. Because you can’t pour from an empty cup. And you’ve been empty for way too long.
