Do You Have Abandonment Fear?
I was about six years old when from one day to the next I awoke and my father was not at home. Days passed, months passed, then years, and my dad did not come back. In fact I have not seen him since even though when I was married the first time I attempted to invite him to the wedding and into my new life. He was not receptive and in fact he did not recall my name. In that moment I knew that I would never think of him in the same way. Recently my step brother contacts me through FB because as it would turn out his brother named his child Elliott and when he was looking to friend him he saw my name. He sent me a message via filtered messages on FB and asked me if I was Frank's son and if I'd been born in Ohio. I responded with a yes and when I looked at his picture on FB he looked very much like my brother who was named after our dad, Frank. My story is long and a bit dramatic but when I was about 14 I ran away from my abusive home life and ended up in Ohio in my first year of college and a journey that led me to a marriage and two beautiful daughters. To day that abandonment was an issue in my life was really an underestimation when I think about the patterns that were constructed after that initial abandonment by my father and then subsequent abuse by my mother whom I have forgiven a long time ago. What I realized was that she and my father did their best with the knowledge that they had and the fact that they married much too young. Today I understand that my own abandonment issues created a life that was less than healthy when it came to relationships.
For years I had been in one relationship after the other where I made certain I would be abandoned even if I had to be the one to sabotage it. Consciously or unconsciously I made sure that every single person with the exception of a couple would abandon me and I would know that this was the way it would end, just as I had imagined it. In fact, I created it by chosing the people I selected and by allowing myself to be treated with a minimal amount of respect. For many years in my life I allowed others to stomp on me in emotional ways that were bullying and abusive, mostly verbally. I let others dictate how I felt and what I would do at any given time. Basically the abandonment issues were so deep that I was terrified to stick up for myself because someone who treated me badly would leave me and then I would have nothing, or so I thought. I would rather have an abusive relationship than to lose it and be alone and lonely. Abandonment for me was the worse thought I could have never mind the actual act and fact that I would be repeatedly left. I made sure to pick the most disrespectful and addicted and unstable people possible because those people would not leave-big mistake and big lie. It was not until I spent many years in the last relationship that I understood that what I had done was make the wrong choices for the wrong reasons and that I was with others in an intimate relationship that I did not enjoy. IN fact, I did not even like her. In all honesty I thought she was a jerk who thought herself better than anyone else but that did not stop me from a long and detailed abusive relationship where I allowed a lot of disrespect and more.
Fears of abandonment and the fears associated with being alone will keep us in truly horrific situations where we are not in loving awareness. We stay even if it means physical and mental abuse for years and years. In fact it seems that some of us become so use to the abuse that we don't seem to see how serious it really is. By the time we awaken from our own dream (really nightmare) we don't seem to be able to see an end to what has been self-hating behavior. It is not until the other person leaves us that we understand just how bad it was and even then we feel abandoned and fearful of that new life, sometimes sighting financial reasons to stay. Fear of abandonment is a co-dependent mental illness in my opinion, even if for some it is mild. For some people abandonment feels like the very end of their life as they know it and at times life does not seem worth living after someone leaves us. If we do not heal from our own issues of being left behind we will continue to find people who will be more than happy to use us until they are done or we have become exhausted and depleted.
Even though this subject is complex I will end this blog by saying that healing our own issues comes before we get involved with anyone else and their issues. Healing takes place by doing life work and that can take on many forms. For me it was about reading self-nurturing texts, prayer, meditation, silence, self=loving acts, and the realization that there is really only two choices. One: live the life you are living repeating the same mistakes and die unhappy or live the life you always wanted to live and die content if not elated. When we pick the later we are voting for ourselves and we are honoring our spiritual makeup, who we really are at the core. The more we work on our own joy the more likely we will be to attract others like us. When we let go of the fear of someone leaving us and understand it to be a part of living the better off we will be.
For years I had been in one relationship after the other where I made certain I would be abandoned even if I had to be the one to sabotage it. Consciously or unconsciously I made sure that every single person with the exception of a couple would abandon me and I would know that this was the way it would end, just as I had imagined it. In fact, I created it by chosing the people I selected and by allowing myself to be treated with a minimal amount of respect. For many years in my life I allowed others to stomp on me in emotional ways that were bullying and abusive, mostly verbally. I let others dictate how I felt and what I would do at any given time. Basically the abandonment issues were so deep that I was terrified to stick up for myself because someone who treated me badly would leave me and then I would have nothing, or so I thought. I would rather have an abusive relationship than to lose it and be alone and lonely. Abandonment for me was the worse thought I could have never mind the actual act and fact that I would be repeatedly left. I made sure to pick the most disrespectful and addicted and unstable people possible because those people would not leave-big mistake and big lie. It was not until I spent many years in the last relationship that I understood that what I had done was make the wrong choices for the wrong reasons and that I was with others in an intimate relationship that I did not enjoy. IN fact, I did not even like her. In all honesty I thought she was a jerk who thought herself better than anyone else but that did not stop me from a long and detailed abusive relationship where I allowed a lot of disrespect and more.
Fears of abandonment and the fears associated with being alone will keep us in truly horrific situations where we are not in loving awareness. We stay even if it means physical and mental abuse for years and years. In fact it seems that some of us become so use to the abuse that we don't seem to see how serious it really is. By the time we awaken from our own dream (really nightmare) we don't seem to be able to see an end to what has been self-hating behavior. It is not until the other person leaves us that we understand just how bad it was and even then we feel abandoned and fearful of that new life, sometimes sighting financial reasons to stay. Fear of abandonment is a co-dependent mental illness in my opinion, even if for some it is mild. For some people abandonment feels like the very end of their life as they know it and at times life does not seem worth living after someone leaves us. If we do not heal from our own issues of being left behind we will continue to find people who will be more than happy to use us until they are done or we have become exhausted and depleted.
Even though this subject is complex I will end this blog by saying that healing our own issues comes before we get involved with anyone else and their issues. Healing takes place by doing life work and that can take on many forms. For me it was about reading self-nurturing texts, prayer, meditation, silence, self=loving acts, and the realization that there is really only two choices. One: live the life you are living repeating the same mistakes and die unhappy or live the life you always wanted to live and die content if not elated. When we pick the later we are voting for ourselves and we are honoring our spiritual makeup, who we really are at the core. The more we work on our own joy the more likely we will be to attract others like us. When we let go of the fear of someone leaving us and understand it to be a part of living the better off we will be.
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