There’s this little game I like to play with people in therapy. I draw a continuum on the white board with -100 on one side and 100 on the other side. In the middle we have 0. The numbers correlate to positive or negative emotions that we might experience in response to a given situation. Some mild annoyance could classify as a -10 while a minor joy might be a 10. Having no reaction to something would be a zero.
I then ask them about either real or imagined circumstances and have them score each of them. I start off with something inconsequential like “What if I told you that I liked your shoes?” They usually respond with that might be a 5 or 10. I’ll then ask, “What if I told you those shoes don’t look good on you.” They usually give a similar score but on the negative side. I then begin to ask about more consequential events usually that impact their close relationships. I ask about when they met their romantic partner and where their wedding day ranks on the scale. We usually get a pretty high number from a question like this (90-100). I then ask about traumatic events that could occur, such as what if your current relationship ended because your partner decided to leave you to pursue a past relationship. Now we are on the -90 to -100 side.
You can probably see where I am going with this. Any time we decide to care about anything, we take a risk. You can’t be close with family members or have secure relationships if you do not sign up for the possible pain that would come along with losing that person. This is where fear of abandonment begins to enter the picture. Abandonment fears take root when we place our emotional needs in the hands of another person, which we have previously noted to be a good thing to do.
But what do we do when our fears of abandonment are beginning to have a negative impact on our relationships?
What if we have abandonment wounds from childhood trauma where a parent was either emotionally neglectful or absent all together?
Unfortunately, this is almost always the case. Nobody emerges from their family of origin unscathed and we find it rare that somebody does not bring one of the insecure attachment styles into therapy.
Most of the time in romantic relationships we see that there is one partner with an anxious attachment style and one with an avoidant attachment style. The anxious type is often referred to as the pursuer and the avoidant type as the withdrawer. I prefer to go with these terms for the sake of ease. You might ask, what if there is a relationship with both of those types? We don’t see it often. Pursuer/pursuer relationships tend to blow up as they tend to have two combative people who pursue conflict quickly and easily. Withdrawer/withdrawer relationships might go on for longer but lack immense emotional depth as both partners prefer peace and homeostasis even as the cost of intimacy.
Pursuers are probably more likely to be pegged with having signs of abandonment issues. They are often the ones checking if their partner is emotionally invested in the relationship and might even need constant reassurance that the basic needs of the relationship will be tended to. Thus it can be easier to see the pursuers abandonment anxiety, even though the withdrawer might come in with a similar level of abandonment trauma.
Withdrawers portray their abandonment issues in different ways than their pursuer counterparts. They are most likely to “shut down” or “stonewall” in conflict as a way of trying to minimize the conflict that is at play. The pursuer sees this as an indifference towards the relationship but this is for the most part its own form of anxiety that occurs about the safety of the relationship. For the withdrawer, they have learned from their own early childhood experiences that conflict is what happens in unhealthy relationships and they should seek out future relationships that are void of conflict. But this is also just a response to past trauma that their nervous system has held on to.
As we are discussing this, I want to be clear that all people in adult relationships have trust issues to some degree and carry a fear of rejection. This is not limited to people with personality disorders or those with complex traumatic experiences. It is healthy to place our own needs in the trust of another individual. However, since you are doing this with human beings, from time to time you are going to experience rejection in your attempts for emotional intimacy. Emotional abandonment comes with the territory of even just having close friends.
Know Your Story
Trying to address abandonment issues without professional help can be challenging. In other blogs we talk about tips and tricks you can use in order to better address a situation, and I am not saying you won’t be able to do it on your own. I don’t want to just recommend therapy every time an issue comes up. But without a clear organized understanding of how your attachment system formed, it can be difficult to know how to untangle. We have to always first honor and pay tribute to our story, understanding that the tools we gathered to navigate a situation make sense in the context of when we found them.
Perhaps it was beneficial to you to keep to yourself and stay meek in the midst of conflict. If you had an unpredictable parent who would threaten to leave the relationship or punish you for any misstep, it might make sense as to how you became a withdrawer. Once we have gained an understanding about how we developed these tools and what we have used them for, it can be a bit easier to set them down.
Practice being alone
If you are currently in the middle of a relationship, you can still do this. However, if you recently ended a relationship, use this as a time to heal and spend some time with yourself. We can recommunicate with our bodies that while it is good place some of our needs in the hands of others, it is also good to meet our own needs. Take yourself out on a date! You know, dinner and a show and recognize that even if you are not in the company of another person, you are deserving of feeling good.
If you are currently in a relationship, use your times of conflict with your partner to practice sitting in the discomfort of the situation. The way that you do this is going to depend on your attachment style. If you are a pursuer, give your partner some time to process the conflict. They process differently than you and pursuers can prioritize coregulating rather than regulating on your own. When we do not allow any time to pass between the onset of the conflict and the resolve, we do not give our bodies the opportunity to learn if we can sit in the distress of the situation and regulate on our own. If you are the withdrawer, challenge yourself to stay in the conflict when it occurs. If you feel yourself shutting down, ask for a 20 minute break and return when you have organized some more of your thoughts.
Journal
Journaling is one of our favorite tools when it comes to understanding how we are experiencing a relationship. And yes, you have to hand write in this instance. The writing process helps us to slow down our thoughts and gain a bit more space to recognize if what we are experiencing is actually true or just passed on a past experiences that didn’t work out the way that we wanted them to. Similarly to this, journal and remember the times that you were engaged in conflict or a relationship was not going well and you were able to recognize this on other side for what it was. Often our issues of abandonment come from a lack of trust that we have for ourselves. Either trust that the relationship is going to be okay or that we do in fact need to leave the relationship. Work on growing this trust in yourself.
Resources
Now that you have practiced being alone in a safe environment, I want to encourage you to take the next step. As you are looking to work on your abandonment fears, we have options for you at Thrive. We pride ourselves on offering a wide variety of services, and we have no doubt that we have a good place to start for you.
If you are ready to jump into your own, or even couples therapy if you are still in the relationship; take a look at our team and our Couples' Services.
We also feature a Trauma 101 in person group for you to being to practice skills to handle the trauma that stems from abandonment, really getting to the root of the fear. And our Emotions 101 group would be a great place to get the right words and understanding of how our emotions show up in our bodies.
Not in Phoenix, but ready to get to work? Our online membership is made for you! We feature an ever growing list of courses for you to dive into and work on your mental health in supplement to your therapy experience. The Gift of Emotions, Window of Tolerance, Anxiety 1, Boundaries, Attachment are just some of the courses waiting for you.
