Abandonment

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Picture by sp3c7rm @ Deviant Art

Sometimes we may experience a fear being abandoned. This could be by being left by those we love because they may die, or leave us, or we may just feel that we aren’t good enough for them.

So, what are the signs that we may have abandonment issues? The first one is how quickly we attach to a relationship starting from meeting over a coffee to being in the relationship within days. A big fear is that anyone you meet could be the one who ‘got away’. We move too quickly and commit without thinking or rationally without looking at the ‘relationship’ we have created.

We become the ultimate people pleaser for our new partner, saying goodbye to our boundaries, putting our needs last until we feel resentful and angry which possibly results in us being back where we feel we always end up.

With abandonment issues we will stay in bad relationships, or even abusive ones, because it’s never quite bad enough to leave. Or worse still, we believe it’s our fault that our partner behaves this way.

On the other hand, we can go and look for faults in our partner which are either real or imagined. It becomes a confirmation bias, and all positives are ignored. We look for an ideal that is unobtainable and end the relationship because our partner cannot be perfect.

We will not invest the time and energy in a relationship to make it work and run for the hills at the word ‘commitment’. If someone speaks about commitment we become uncomfortable and have a ready excuse as to why we cannot commit. There is no real intimacy or vulnerability, and we feel we must remain protected from others.

We don’t feel worthy of love and no amount of reassurance will work for us. We are jealous of every friend, colleague or relationship our partner has as they are all perceived as threats to us because we don’t believe we are worthy of love. But this feels like control to those people we love.

Our anxiety creates an overthinking of everything that our partner does and inevitably it ends up with the images of them leaving us. It also makes us sensitive and on the lookout for criticism which we need to defend against and be ready for.

Abandonment issues can lead us to pick the unavailable partners, cold partners or even the abusive ones. Which means that we can then create self-fulfilling prophesies.

And, of course, when a relationship breaks down, we move on at speed to the next one as we fear being alone for a long period.

Why can we be like this? It’s all about attachments and/or losses from childhood. The attachment to our caregivers can be secure or insecure, and an insecure attachment can be anxious, avoidant or disorganised.

Disorganised attachment happens when a parent or care giver cannot give a small child consistent warm, safe and attentive interactions and so the child is stressed and fearful. Anxious attachment makes us attach too quickly, our concerns become conflict, and there is an ongoing fear that our partner will leave. Avoidant attachment makes us unable to trust anyone and keep our distance in a relationship. Disorganised attachment makes us inconsistent and our partners do not know how we will be in the relationship from one day to the next. We then take this attachment style into our relationships .There is a really great self help book called  ‘Attached’ by Levine & Heller that can help us work out our style and how we can move away from our insecure attachment style here

Add to this, losses such as death, or the disappearance of key figures in our childhood and we then have a real fear of people leaving us. So, what can we do?

The issues we had as a child were usually not expressed, so now it’s time for us to talk, either in therapy, with a friend or even with our parents if they are open to it.

There will be a lot of shame about being abandoned or not being securely attached to our caregivers. As children we are too young to believe that the issues could be the fault of our parents. It’s too dangerous for us to think that as we are so dependent on them, so we internalise that as being our fault and that there is something wrong with us. Shame is diluted by self compassion, and a practice for being kind to ourselves - https://self-compassion.org/.

Along with being brave and letting ourselves not be the ‘good child’ we desperately wanted to be as a child we need to look at perfectionism, ambition and fear.

Practicing rationalising fears which means take a breath before expressing your anxiety in a relationship and check out whether this is this from a childlike place or if it is real? We can even get a second opinion from a trusted friend or therapist.

Checking out our fears can be helpful by trying to work out if these are our fears or are they ones we were brought up with. E.g. was one parent always worried that the other wasn’t coming home after a night out, or was one of our parents always away working so the other was scared of what was happening. Have we absorbed these fears and they are not really ours?

But, often the fear of abandonment needs some therapeutic work in a safe place where we can look at our childhood and how the past impacts the present.