Healing the Abandonment Wound. Part 2

Some of us go our whole lives with deep wounds from childhood that never get resolved. I managed to make it to 32 when I was shunned by the Jehovah’s Witnesses. This is when the rug got pulled from under me and put all of my wounds up on a 3D display.

This experience activated my abandonment wound to such a degree that I tried to get back into the religion for 2 years.

All of us have faced the fear of abandonment at one point or another. Early childhood experiences are the biggest contributor to developing abandonment issues when you become an adult. Abandonment issues happen when a parent or caregiver does not provide the child with enough physical or emotional care, which leaves them feeling chronic stress and fear.

Abandonment issues don’t always come from childhood trauma. They can also develop after losing an intimate partner to divorce or death. Or in my case, both loss of emotional and physical connection from my caretakers as a child and getting shunned by the only community I ever knew as an adult.

How the abandonment wound acts out in life as an adult:

-Giving too much or being eager to please-Being a people pleaser

-Needing to control or be controlled by your partner

-Trust issues

-Settling in unsatisfactory relationships

-Ending relationships early before the other person has a chance to leave

-Anxiety and fear of the other person leaving

-Unstable moods

-Eating disorders, insomnia, anxiety attacks, obsessive thoughts or behaviors

Healing the Wound-The only way out is through

We can recover from these deep and painful wounds by offering ourselves self-acceptance, self-compassion, and self-forgiveness as we explore the source of our pain and responses to it.

Step 1 Acknowledgment: You may have been told that when life gets hard you just keep moving forward and leave the past in the past. Your first step in healing an abandonment wound is to forget all of that and acknowledge what’s left to be felt. We live in a world that teaches up to bury our pain and mask it with a smile. Throughout our lives and into our relationships, however, trauma remains alive in our minds and in our bodies even though we’ve made it invisible to the outside world.

Step 2 Feel to Heal: Take time and really feel your feelings. You can’t bypass feeling your anger, rage, pain, or grief and all of a sudden find yourself in the land of love and forgiveness. Emotions are the body’s way of keeping us out of danger and driving us to act. If you have responded to abandonment trauma by disconnecting from your feelings, relearning is possible. Be patient and kind to yourself.

Step 3 Self-Compassion: Looking at your experiences through the lens of self-compassion opens the path to healing. Self-compassion just means giving ourselves the same kindness and care we’d give to a good friend. Healing requires patience as much as determination. Self-hate will derail the recovery.

Step 4 Although you might feel alone, you never are: You are one human on a planet of billions of people who have unhealed wounds from the past. People who have been abused, mistreated, broken, and abandoned. It could also be helpful to talk through your original abandonment experience with someone you trust. A friend, therapist, counselor, or coach will be a good choice.

Step 5 Work on trusting others: If you’ve been cheated on or betrayed before, there’s always that anxiety that someone else will do it again. With this, you often find it hard to trust other people.

That’s why, if you want to heal your abandonment issues, you need to work on your trust issues first. Instead of doubting them right away, give people the chance to prove themselves. As you learn to trust people, you also slowly learn to open yourself up and become vulnerable.

While you can change your behavior and build healthier relationships, these changes won’t happen overnight. During exploration and healing, be sure to take care of yourself. Self-care is always important, but it’s even more imperative when you are on a journey toward healing abandonment issues in your relationships.