Abandonment and Neglect

As mentioned above, having issues with abandonment is also called fear of abandonment. It’s anxiety about people leaving or discarding us, and it can lead to a myriad of personal and relational problems.

Verywell Mind calls abandonment issues “the fear or anxiety of people you are close to leaving you.” When you’re close to someone, it’s natural to fear losing them. But the fear of abandonment becomes dysfunctional when it negatively impacts your relationships and functioning.

Sometimes, a fear of abandonment can even become a self-fulfilling prophecy. How does that happen? It depends on the way you tend to handle this anxiety. Sometimes attempts to cope with the fear can lead to reassurance-seeking behavior:

• This anxious drive can come across as micromanaging or controlling.
• Your loved one may then resist being controlled in any numbers, including distancing themselves from you.
• Then you sense the distance, which reinforces your original fear.

Other patterns can manifest instead of, or in addition to, the one just described. Other signs of the fear of abandonment may include:

Trouble with emotional self-regulation – depending on someone else to help regulate your emotions.

Codependent patterns – being locked in a dysfunctional relationship pattern of overdependence and rescuing.

Trust issues – difficulty trusting people you are close to, even when they’ve done nothing to break your trust.

Repeating childhood patterns – unhealthy patterns that may have led to a fear of abandonment, such as subconsciously seeking a partner who reminds you of a dysfunctional parent or caregiver.

Insecurity – feeling constantly insecure, never fully settled in your relationships or life.

People-pleasing behavior – an (often subconscious) attempt to keep others from leaving you.

While the fear of abandonment often manifests in marriages and romantic relationships, it can also show up in relationships with extended family and friends. In children, the fear of abandonment can manifest in separation anxiety, fear of being alone, and other signs of stress. (Verywell Mind)

Whether you are a child or an adult, the fear of abandonment doesn’t just arise from nowhere – it’s almost always related to negative past experiences, whether you’re aware of them or not. Counseling can help you begin to peel back the layers to the cause of your fear of abandonment, identify triggers that affect you now, and find healing one step at a time.

The fear of abandonment almost always begins in childhood. This doesn’t necessarily mean that it starts with a parent or caregiver, although that is often the case. Our attachment to our very first caregiver(s) impacts us in hugely significant ways, for better or worse. If this attachment did not form in a healthy way, it puts you at a higher risk of many problems later in life, including the fear of abandonment (more on this below).

Abandonment issues can also come from other adverse situations, including:

• Living in extreme poverty,
• Loss of a home, stability, etc.
• Loss of a loved one.
• Parental divorce or separation.
• Emotional neglect in a child, including ongoing, low-level neglect that leads to a child feeling unwanted or their feelings being continually suppressed and invalidated.
• Physical neglect, when a child’s basic needs are not met or are only met inconsistently.
• Emotional, verbal, or physical abuse.
• Parental instability, addiction, or mental illness.
• Living in an unsafe living situation, geographical location, warzone, etc.,
• Being a member of an oppressed people group such as a refugee or member of a minority race.
• Or other cultural and/or economic factors.

When a child experiences a deep sense of personal risk or a lack of safety on an ongoing basis, anxiety can develop, including the fear of abandonment, and of losing the people that mean the most to them. This fear often lingers into adulthood.

This doesn’t mean that the fear of abandonment is guaranteed to develop or become an ongoing problem in any of these situations, but if you’re seeing that fear in either a child or an adult, these are situations worth examining.

Whether the anxiety stems from hidden emotional trauma or a more evident cause, any or all of these factors should be addressed as part of examining possible abandonment issues.

We tend to repeat patterns that began in childhood if we don’t resolve them as adults, so if you’re an adult struggling with the fear of abandonment, and you’ve recently experienced the loss of your partner or other loved one, you may point to that as the cause of your abandonment issues.

But it’s worth looking a little deeper to examine whether childhood emotional neglect or other patterns may have subconsciously affected you as an adult. However, it is possible to develop the fear of abandonment as an adult based on things that have occurred in your adult life. The loss of a partner would be the most one of the most common scenarios for that to happen.

Attachment styles relate to the fear of abandonment and they, too, most often stem from childhood experiences. The relationships we form with our earliest caregivers can affect us throughout our lives. According to Verywell Mind:

“Attachment styles describe the motivation to form emotionally and physically significant relationships with caregivers. Attachment styles can also impact adult relationships.”

Although not everyone has a single, clear-cut attachment style, these are the most distinct categories:

Anxious attachment. A person with an anxious attachment style will seek consistency, closeness, and reassurance from their loved one.

Avoidant attachment. A person with this attachment style may have experienced the same troubled past, but instead of seeking closeness, they may struggle to be close to others, even a partner. They feel that closeness will lead to getting hurt, so they create distance and feel safer when they have a sense of independence.

Disorganized. This type of attachment style is often rooted in a chaotic past in childhood and can go back and forth between anxious and avoidant.

Healthy. This person can maintain stable relationships with others and although they may experience anxious or avoidant times in their relationships, these aren’t generally patterns that create problems.

In counseling, you can explore your attachment style(s) and how they relate to a fear of abandonment. Understanding your attachment style can help you heal childhood wounds, form healthier relationships and connections, and work toward healthy attachment with your loved ones.

If you struggle with a fear of abandonment, you’re probably tired of feeling insecure, overly dependent on others, and worried about being alone. There are many ways to address and combat this fear.

Taking care of yourself can help you feel less depleted and reliant on others. Simple lifestyle measures such as healthy eating, regular exercise, good sleep hygiene, and a balanced routine can lay the foundation for increasing your emotional health and independence.

Creating a balanced support system will be a huge key to overcoming the fear of abandonment. None of us are meant to live life alone, and we also can’t be healthy if we’re living in codependence or overdependence on others. We can’t control the actions of others or the support they offer us, but a counselor can help you take advantage of the support that is available to you, such as through willing family, friends, a church family, etc. Your counselor can also help you balance your approach to numerous relationships so that you don’t put all the pressure on one of them.

Taking time to self-reflect, to pause before engaging in reassurance-seeking, can be a valuable skill that you can practice between sessions.

Counseling for abandonment issues can help you grow in all of these areas and learn coping mechanisms to manage your fear and allow it to reduce over time, through known therapeutic methods and a reliance on the love of God as the only faithful one who will never leave us or forsake us.

If you’re interested in Christian counseling for abandonment issues, call us today at [phone #] or contact us here [link].

Resources:

https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/abandonment-issues-symptoms-signs

https://www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/issues/abandonment

https://www.verywellhealth.com/abandonment-trauma-5211575

https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/abandonment-issues