To this day, I still have abandonment problems.
I never know when the wave of activation will hit or what exactly will trigger my fear of abandonment. It may be a song, a voice, a person, a laugh, a circumstance, an event, a photo, a street intersection, or the smell of a cup of coffee or cologne. It can be almost anything wave and the wave comes crashing.
I am suddenly, treading water for dear life without remembering how to swim; trying to hold on to everything that is left of the wreckage.
The common denominator of abandonment issues is loss.
Although we have all experienced loss, we all process it differently. Our unique coping mechanism is formed depending on how young and impressionable we were during the first time we suffered a terrible loss.
There is nothing black and white about abandonment issues. You may not even be able to identify any specific abandonment. You could have been raised in a healthy home and have more fear of abandonment than someone who was physically abandoned by his parents.
Although my parents never physically abandoned me, they divorced and remarried, which gave rise to a great fear of abandonment. I was also an emotional orphan. One of my parents inadvertently abandoned me emotionally. For years, I mourned their emotional deaths by trying to revive them through romantic partners who were unavailable.
This does not mean that I have bad parents or that I am unjustified in the fear of abandonment. It just means that I have a scar from a wound scar that is still very delicate and I think, to some extent, will always be. And that’s okay.
Awareness has certainly deactivated a great deal of sensitivity.
Abandonment issues can come from any kind of loss that at the time was heavier than your emotional ability to conceive/process could absorb.
He could grow up with parents who excelled at paying attention one way but were careless the other way. It may be the presence of emotionally unavailable and/or narcissistic parents/caregivers, being exposed to death, being rejected by friends, coaches, or teachers at school, not being chosen, emotionally abandoned/orphaned by someone you trust, a parental figure, etc.
Not everyone who has experienced abandonment will experience abandonment problems that paralyze their emotional functions when turned on. The symptoms of abandonment problems are very different.
I still struggle to this day with my fear of abandonment. But because of my awareness and my ability to communicate my weaknesses (both to myself and, if necessary, to others), there is a space around my trigger. I have stopped forming my identity around my fear. I have forgiven my “abandoned” past, and also, I have also forgiven myself for revisiting the emotional crime scene again and again through toxic relationships in the past.
As a result, I am no longer doomed by my past or afraid of my future. When they are turned on, I no longer retreat into the emotional paralysis of the era when I had the first taste of abandonment. I’m no longer looking for lovers and friends to give me what was withheld at some point in my childhood and I’m no longer giving others what was withheld from me, hoping for reciprocity that never comes.
How?
I am my soulmate; my own best friend and there is no person out there who can ever understand or care for me better than I do myself. And to the right lovers and friends, this is an attractive trait because they possess the same.
Yes – I still have an intense fear of abandonment but my triggers are no longer my reality. The activation of these 10 has eliminated the symptoms of abandonment problems that I used to personify.
Here are 10 signs of abandonment issues and how to get out of self-imposed imprisonment for good.
Related : How To Say No + 10 Things To Say No To Now
Before we get into these 10 Symptoms of abandonment issues, I want you to keep this in mind:
You will never be able to fully understand or understand your abandonment issues – why they happened, why you are being motivated to the extent that you are, and what the other person was thinking.
By choosing to surrender to this realization, you can now focus more on disruption rather than unrealistic excision.
How do you know if you have abandonment issues?
Here are 10 signs of abandonment problems in adults:
- Stage 5 Klinger.
Whether you are completely clingy or you are as I used to be and have clingy relational tendencies, you are always the one who puts effort, bending, sympathy/exemption to the detriment of your sanity (and then, being crazy is blamed for you-well, you act that way). You feel like no one is ever trying as hard as you do. Everyone ends up thinking that you are desperate, too intense, and conveniently ignoring as far as texts go, calls, and calls. If you have abandonment problems, you will attack the road very soon, think about the road a lot, and take everything the way very personally.
- Dependence on others is a common theme in your relationships.
Just like a magnet, you attract lovers and friends who seem to exploit your fear of abandonment with a psychic ability and emotionally blackmail you with it through triangulation, incitement to jealousy, and/or deception. This generates dependence on others – they depend on the presence of a mop (you), and you depend on the dirt from their emotional shoes (so you feel useful).
- You reject people (and yourself) before they can reject you.
- Fraud as an insurance policy.
Whether it’s emotional or physical cheating, you’ll get an insurance policy against pain and try to overcome abandonment through infidelity. You will justify this by saying to yourself,” If they hurt me or left me, at least I have this on them, ” believing that it will not hurt as bad. It always happens, it’s karmically corrupt, and cheating/ “keeping your options open”, is just a totally bad idea. It is also one of the most common ways to deal with low self-esteem, control problems, loss, and fear of abandonment. There is no judgment here – we have all been either in the act or receiving an ending at one point or another.
- Fear of being cheated on.
You are paranoid that your partner is cheating on you. In friendships, you want to be the number one best friend and are always worried that someone will take your place.
- Extreme jealousy and private investigator behavior.
These two things are the fastest way to kill any joy in your life. We all do a little “due diligence”, here and there, but if your investigative skills are starting to one-up the FBI and you are constantly comparing, competing, and paralyzed by jealousy then you enjoy emotional and sexual contact fear of abandonment outweighs the trust-of your instinct and your partner. You feel the need to control your partner and always want to wonder what he is doing and who he is talking to.
- Social anxiety, insecurity, feeling like you’re always walking on eggshells.
- It’s hard to be vulnerable.
You feel like you can’t express yourself to anyone. They just judge, ignore and forget about you like everyone else has. Your Standby mode is: “waiting patiently to find out what the other person wants to do/thinks about me.”And because of the constant cleaning under the rug, anger begins to build up. You never feel comfortable enough to fully express yourself, so you’re just wading into a childish pool of avoidance and denial.
- You are engaged in relational self-sabotage.
And throw grenades in the way of your happiness before anyone or another force can. I used to do this without being aware of it.
- A disease to please, a perfection, a magnifying glass.
You suffer from illness to please. And because you bend too much to everyone else, you have unrealistic expectations for your partner. You expect perfection from your partner and assume that they are a mind reader. You absorbed everything the day the abandonment happened when you were a child and as a result, you feel guilty for everything. If you are not in a relationship and are just dating, you make a choice and find flaws (illogical/superficial) in the other person so that you can position yourself (after another insurance policy is taken out of possible abandonment).
What to do if you have abandonment problems:
As a child, it is impossible to rationalize and logically perceive loss and abandonment-especially if it cannot be seen with the eyes (emotional abandonment). It is also impossible, when we are children, to realize that our parents are infallible, human beings, Sexual who can be emotionally unavailable, and narcissistic, and they made a huge number of mistakes with a load of baggage before they even had them.
No one has had the perfect parent and no one will be the perfect parent. We all inevitably fail our parents at some point, and they will fail us.
Forgive your parents and forgive yourself for not having the emotional tool belt of an adult when you were a voiceless, impressionable, and innocent child.
As children, we don’t have the emotional tools to process abandonment. For this reason, we personalize the loss and begin to think that we are unloved and flawed.
Related : How To Apologize To An Ex & What To Do With An Apology From An Ex
Even as adults, we strive to verify that we are ” enough.”We associate our value with partners (versions of our parents) and do not abandon us so that, once and for all, we can nullify mom, dad, or anyone who made us feel so easily alienated from and difficult to love us.
I have learned that no matter how much I try to revisit the past through my romantic relationships and friendships, I can never change the past. I can only change the narrative; the way I choose to watch it.
The waves will never stop coming. One wave, no matter how small, may remind us of a much larger wave in the past and motivate us to feel that we cannot make it; and that we will not survive this time. But we will because we have.
It’s not your fault. You are and always will be, regardless of your age, the child of your parents.
You don’t need to raise your parents emotionally and you don’t need psychoanalysis for them either-it won’t bring you the closure you’re looking for, it won’t give them a sympathetic personality or transplant, it won’t be a time machine. If your parents can not give you the closure that you are looking for you can decide to do it now.
I have been plagued most of my life by abandonment issues. The last few years have been dedicated to the emotional defibrillation of that little girl; separating her from a narrative that she never asked for and had no choice to be part of.
And because I returned and gave birth to my younger self to the extent that I have (and still do), I no longer look for the world to notice her, understand her needs, and provide. She’s got her back. I never left anyone with her, and because of that, I was also able to make peace with a past that was very difficult for this little one.
