I have accepted fear as a part of life – specifically the fear of change…. I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back. ~Erica Jong
Emotional abandonment wounds are some of the most painful mental wounds to carry around. They can cause people to stay in unhealthy or hopeless relationships with unworthy or incompatible significant others. They can cause people to chase after potential mates who would not be given a second glance if the abandonment wounds were not aching. They can cause people coming out of relationships to rebound into crazy or unsatisfying relationships. Sometimes abandonment wounds can cause people to jump in full force into a relationship without standing back to see who the other person really is, and when the truth comes out that the two are incompatible, so much mental and emotional self has already been invested and the abandonment wound scares one or both to do whatever they can to stay in. Finally, often abandonment wounds result in a person who has lost a good friend, significant other, spouse, or family member feeling like a baby- with the same sense of time (this is forever), desperation (I cannot survive on my own), loneliness (it hurts to be alone), and hopelessness (I cannot do anything about it, I’m just a baby).
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.- Eleanor Roosevelt
Good news. You CAN do something about it. However, this is not a “McDonald’s Fix”. You cannot just order your healing and have it in ten minutes or less. And odds are, if you do nothing about the emotional reaction (your abandonment wound) that comes up from abandonment for you, you will continue to carry it around.
Fear
A cat bitten once by a snake dreads even rope. ~Arab Proverb
Some people argue that when you have fear, it is less important to know where the fear was developed than what to do to get over it. Personally, I think knowing where the fear began is one way to self-talk yourself into a better frame of mind to deal with the fear in the first place. Abandonment wounds are basically rooted in the emotion of fear.
You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind. -Dale Carnegie
Different experts root abandonment wounds in childhood. Particularly in times before the age of five, when the amygdala part of the brain, which will later record events, is not completely formed. We all can easily imagine not remembering events before the age of three; the suggestion that the development of the amygdala continues development up until around five means that memories from three to five are sketchy and often holed like Swiss cheese. In any of this non-remembering time or Swiss cheese time, events that adults do not remember or do not remember clearly may be the origins of abandonment wounds. For example, some child raising experts suggest that putting babies to sleep and then leaving them alone and letting them cry themselves to sleep may result in stronger unconscious feelings of abandonment. If the main caretaker for a baby is hospitalized for a time and the baby is put with someone new for a time, a situation like this may result in a strong underlying fear of abandonment.
Some situations in childhood may also result in planting abandonment fears or creating abandonment wounds. When I was two years old, my parents took a short skiing vacation. I still have a strong memory of hiding behind a couch at my father’s cousins house. It is my only clear memory before three years old. I could not understand where my parents were (my mother was a doting mother and I was her ‘only’ at the time), and I really did not have a close or good relationship with my father’s cousin (I have NO idea what wen through their minds to leave me with her). This is one incident that I know contributed toward my fear of abandonment.
Another issue is siblings. When new siblings are born and a mother needs to attend to others, a young child or baby may feel very sad and abandoned. Despite the fact that no one is really abandoning anyone in such a case, individual internal repercussions may echo down the years.
Healing
What is the answer to abandonment wounds?
Becoming complete as an individual, feeling safe, and developing healthy social relationships with a wider group of people.
Instead of self-healing, many people jump into new romantic relationships. When that doesn’t work, they jump into newer romantic relationships. And the edge of desperation the abandonment wounds give them often make them “hungry shoppers”. The worst relationship I’ve ever had in my life came at the time when my abandonment wounds were aching the most, and the person who I allowed to push me fast into a relationship had his own desperate edge of abandonment driving him. Neither of us truly knew each other on more than a very superficial level, and we were completely incompatible emotionally and interest-wise.
It’s not having been in the dark house, but having left it that counts.- Theodore Roosevelt
Some Healing Ideas
1. Fear: One of the first things you can do is self-talk. Acknowledge that you feel fear and feel it. At the same time, reassure yourself that you are an adult, not a baby anymore, and you can survive and take care of yourself. You may want to try the Big-Little exercise to do this as explained in this posting.
2. Affirmations: Every day of your life you have thousands of thoughts. Consciously or unconsciously you say things to yourself. I’m sure of you can think of quite a few people that you have caught talking to themselves saying things like, “I can’t believe I did that”, “I’m so stupid”, or other negative self-talk like that. Affirmations are a conscious takeover, a proactive way of putting what could be a negative or neutral stream of consciousness to work for you in a positive way. Since abandonment wounds feed off of fearful self-talk, here is a strategy for creating affirmations that change the fear-loop fed by your thoughts. Immediately after my breakup with the relationship person I mentioned earlier, I was afraid to be alone in my own apartment. Three days of repeating, “I am relaxed and comfortable when I’m alone” brought about a self-soothed calm.
- Write down your fears, even the ones that seem foolish or baby-like.
- Either take them and state them in the affirmative (turn: I can’t survive alone into I can survive alone or I can thrive alone) or ask the four questions from “The Work” by Byron Katie on them first and then create affirmative statements that negate the fearful originals.
- Now it’s time to do the work with your affirmations. Write them on cards. Read and say them aloud every morning; you can write them ten times then if that works for you. Make sure they are simple and include nothing negative (you’re talking to the most primitive part of the brain where fear lives- it doesn’t know negative words). Say the affirmations any time in the day when you feel fear. You are in the process of shortcircuiting that child-installed voice that is repeatedly telling you to be scared. It is not based in a present reality- only in a past child-perceived world.
3. Develop a Wider Social Network with True Friends: Living in a world based almost completely on one person is not healthy. Humans were made to have a social network. I think the pace of modern life, the size of the country, and the nuclearization of the American family has helped loosen family attachments. Making a point to keep in touch with relatives and friends who are supportive and kind is one way to form a stronger base. Finding true and honest supportive people at work and in any interest groups you participate in (religious, sports-oriented, activity-oriented) is important. On the Bravo reality show, “The Real Housewives of New York City”, one couple was inseparable. And I mean that they felt as if they really had to do everything together. She was invited to a girls-night-out. She asked the women if he could go. It really was a big issue for her to not go without her husband. Later, he had to go out of town on a business trip. These two adults in their thirties then talked about how they were never apart from each other and how hard it was going to be. I think it is pretty sad that they can neither appreciate their own alone time nor appreciate anybody else other than themselves! I really felt sorry for their children.
4. Build A House: There is a healing exercise from Susan Anderson’s book “From Abandonment to Healing” that is based on visualization. This might work for you. A summary of the exercise is here. Reading the book is much recommended.
5. Self-Parenting: Many self-help books trumpet the action of “self-parenting”. Oprah Winfrey has been quoted as saying, “Our parents did their best. Now we know better so we can do better.” I think she was talking about parenting our own children, but even more importantly is re-parenting ourselves in the present! So, what the heck does that mean? It means that you use part of yourself to say the ENCOURAGING and SOOTHING things that a super-excellent-wonderful parent would say to you on a day to day basis!
- You could do this as part of the Little-Big exercise from Susan Anderson’s book.
- You could do this as part of self-talk.
- You could write the things you need most to hear as affirmations.
In Louise Hay’s book “Healing Your Life”, she has an exercise in which she asks people to write down all the negative things caretakers, teachers, or other important people in your life said about you as a child. After you do so, she says, now you have a list of where to start to heal your life. I would add to that, now you have a list of where you need to start to parent yourself lovingly, supportively, and enthusiastically. Take this list and do “The Work” on it and/or just turn the negatives into positives. Then add the new positive list to your life in affirmations, self-talk, post-its around your bedroom, whatever works.
6. Self-Parenting in a Visualized Creative Way: This is an exercise that I created myself. I wanted to extend the Little-Big exercise in a different way. So I created two me-parents in my mind and I used them for self-soothing when I felt upset. This has been very effective.
- First I chose three people I really admired to make up each parent. I visualized each me-parent in my head as a merging of all the looks and positive natures of those three people, and I created a name based on those three real people.
- Then I called up images of either me-parent when I felt upset and I had them say things to me that I needed to hear. Sometimes I called up my image of “Little” and had a parent comfort her.
- I almost felt some of the guilt that an adopted child feels when searching for her birth parents. But these me-parents ARE MADE OF YOU! They are created out of what is inside your mind. So you are in fact, truly truly parenting yourself in the perfect-best-exact way for yourself. And there is no one in the world who could ever do it as well but you. So no guilt is necessary!
- Sometimes I use my visualizations when I am trying to do a difficult task, such as meditate. I imagine my me- parents doing it with me.
Fear is the father of courage and the mother of safety. ~Henry H. Tweedy
Great post!! I believe that the work that you’ve shared here will help someone somewhere who is dealing with this very thing. Great advice and wonderful quotes!
Denise
http://www.successforrealpeople.com
http://www.successforrealpeople.wordpress.com
P.S. This is the third time this week I’ve come across the name Byron Katie. I may have to pick up one of her books 🙂
She has a pretty nice website. Her books are also available in most libraries too!
Great job. Very thorough my friend. In my experience I had to deal directly with debilitating shame and debilitating guilt. Several books that helped me tremendously are Shame and Guilt — Master’s of Disguise by Jane Middleton-Moz and Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller. I also benefited by listening to the 2 tape series — which I do not know if it is still available 0– Healing the Shame that Binds You by John Bradshaw. For me, I found that shame is a being wound and impacted me at the very core.
I had to do the work to identify with my wounded little kid. I had to reconnect to parts of me that I had discarded so as to not be abandoned emotionally and physically by the love objects and my caretakers. I had to find my true self and stop pretending to be something that I could not be — my false self. I had to come out of denial to begin to love and accept myself. As a traumatic brain injury survivor I had to work through similar issues.
I speak to these issues through out Second Chance to Live and welcome you or anyone that may read my comment to read from the articles that I have listed in my site map: http://secondchancetolive.wordpress.com/site-map/. In my experience I had to address my character defects through working a program of recovery. I have written a post Second Chance to Live and Action Steps that addresses those steps, the steps that have helped me.
I also believe that doing grief work is essential to the healing process which I also speak on my web site.
I do not share the above to contradict what you have share in you well written and informative post above. I share the above information to let you and your readers know what has helped me…my experience strength and hope.
Thank you again for taking the time to share what you have in your post above. God bless you my friend!
Please feel free to contact me and we can share ideas. Thank you my friend and have a simply phenomenal evening.
Craig
http://secondchancetolive.wordpress.com
Our circumstances are not meant to keep us down, but they are meant to build us up!
Thank you for your comment Craig. I absolutely agree with you that resolving grief that may have built up and building self-esteem from the inside out is a healing thing.
I agree with Bradshaw’s work, but I personally find his exercises unappealing because of how he comes at them. I prefer Susan Anderson’s approach to working with an “inner child”.
The best to you and your project.
Thank you Sserenity for your reply. Sorry that I have not responded until now. I did not know that you replied my friend. I forgot to check the box to notify me of follow-up comments via email.I saw that some one visited Second Chance to Live from your website here and was again reminded by the title of your article, Warning: No One is Coming to Rescue You from Abandonment. I need to remember that my friend, although at times I would like to believe that someone is going to do for me what I need to do for myself as an adult.
I am not a purist or dogmatic, but eclectic. I believe that wisdom comes from various sources and in various ways. Some speak to me, others remind me and still others challenge me. Thank you for what you do to enlighten and empower your readers — such as myself — with what you do my friend.
Have a great day. God bless you Sserenity.
Craig
Reblogged this on The Purple Dragon's Lair.