WHAT
IS ABANDONMENT?
Many people
ask me, "What is abandonment? Is it people in search of their
mothers? People left on the doorstep as children?"
I answer,
Everyday there are people who feel as if life itself has left
them on a doorstep or thrown them away. Abandonment is about
loss of love itself, that crucial loss of connectedness. It
often involves breakup, betrayal, aloneness. People struggling
with abandonment issues include those going through the ending
of a relationship as well as searching adoptees, recently widowed,
and those suffering the woundedness of earlier disconnections.
Abandonment
represents core human fear. We have all experienced it. When
a relationship ends, the feelings harken all the way back to
our lost childhoods when we were helpless, and dependent. Our
adult functioning temporarily collapses.We feel shattered, bewildered,
condemned to loneliness. As we apply the tools of recovery,
at the bottom of abandonment's pain, we discover a wellspring
of positive change.
Abandonment
is a cumulative wound containing all of the losses and disconnections
stemming all the way back to childhood. Abandonment
is:
•
A feeling
• A
feeling of isolation within a relationship
• An intense feeling of devastation when a relationship
ends
• An aloneness-not-by-choice
• An experience from childhood
• A baby left on the doorstep
• A woman left by her husband of twenty years for another
woman
• A man being left by his finance for someone 'more successful'
• A child left by his mother
• A friend feeling deserted by a friend
• A father leaving his marriage, moving out of the house,
away from his children
• A child whose pet dies
• A little girl grieving over the death of her mother
• A little boy wanting his mommy to come pick him up from
nursery school
• A child about to be 'replaced' by the birth of another
sibling
• A child needing his parents but they are emotionally
unavailable
• A boy realizing he is gay and anticipating the reaction
of his parents and friends
• A teenage boy with his heart twanging, but afraid to
approach his love
• A teenage girl feeling her heart is actually broken
• A woman who has raised a family now grown, feeling empty,
as if she has been deserted, as if the purpose of her life has
abandoned her
• A child stricken with a serious illness or injury watching
his friends play while he must remain confined to braces, wheel
chair, or bed
• A woman who has lost her job and with it her professional
identity, financial security, and status. Now she is left feeling
worthless, not knowing how to occupy her time - - feeling abandoned
by her life's mission
• A man who has been 'put out to pasture' by his company,
as if obsolete
• People grieving the death of a loved one report feelings
of abandonment
• The dying fear being abandoned by their loved ones as
much or more as they fear pain and death
• Suicide is an excruciating form of abandonment
• Abandonment is all of this and more. Its wound is at
the heart of the variety of human experiences, and is found
in the uniqueness of each person's life.
Abandonment
recovery reaches out to all abandonment survivors.
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HOW
IS ABANDONMENT DIFFERENT FROM OTHER TYPES OF GRIEF?
The
feature that distinguishes abandonment grief from all others
is the damage to self esteem. We turn our rage about being rejected
against ourselves. This accounts for the severe depression and
self-injury involved in abandonment.
Abandonment
overlaps with bereavement in that they both involve loss. For
the abandonment survivor, the loss is just as disruptive and
painful as it is for any other type of grief. Closure is incomplete
because the person has not died, but has chosen not to be with
you. Rejection, withdrawal-of-love, criticism, and desertion
create a devastating personal injury. 'Being left' cuts us all
the way to the core. We lose not only our loved one, we lose
our sense of self.
As abandonment
grief progresses, it burrows deep within where it can silently
leech away at our self esteem. But abandonment has not been
legitimized as its own special type of grief. Everybody seems
to know about the initial pain caused by abandonment. It is
the latter stages of its grief that have gone unrecognized.
Yet it endures, generating sadness, self doubt, insecurity,
and fear - - sometimes indefinitely. Unresolved abandonment
can interfere in future relationships.
Understanding
this grief and the wounding process you have been through helps
you assess damages from previous losses. The AKeRU exercises
help you put this awareness into practice. BLACK SWAN's Twelve
Lessons of Abandonment Recovery offer direction for emotional
and spiritual healing. JOURNEY provides in depth discussion
of Abandonment Grief. HELP is available.
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UNRESOLVED
ABANDONMENT
Unresolved
abandonment - - the source of our insecurities, addictions,
compulsions, and distress.
Unresolved
abandonment - - the insidious virus invading body mind and soul
- - the culprit for the anxiety we are forever trying to self-medicate
with food, alcohol, shopping, people and a host of other self
defeating behaviors.
Unresolved
abandonment - - the roadblock to reaching our potential - -
the invisible wound that drains self esteem from within - -
the hidden trap that keeps us stuck in patterns of self-sabotage.
Unresolved
abandonment - - the chronic insecurity that becomes the scourge
of human relationship. Unresolved abandonment - - the internal
barrier to fully connecting to others. Fear short-circuits our
attempts to find love - - we struggle to find and keep relationships.
We become abandoholics.
Unresolved
abandonment - - the elusive grief so many seek therapy for and
can't seem to overcome - - an undifferentiated emptiness often
mis-diagnosed as depression and inappropriately medicated. Sometimes
its stress and agitation are persistent enough to create chemical
imbalances that do, in fact, respond to drug therapy.
Unresolved
abandonment - - simplistic methods like 'positive thinking'
or just going to therapy do not deter it. Programs like Co-dependency,
Alanon, and Adult Child have attempted to assuage the erosion
of energy and self worth caused by unresolved abandonment. But
for all of their positive 'affirmations', they have not been
able to address the system of drainage that lies buried within.
Likewise,
Alcoholics Anonymous, Alanon, and Over-eaters Anonymous, etc.
have been extremely effective in dealing with the addictive
and co-addictive problems secondary to abandonment, but are
unable to go beyond the symptoms and treat the underlying abandonment
wound itself.
Self-help
books have tended to have a placebo effect. They offer reasonable
enough sounding advice, like "Find happiness from within." But
these truisms are easier said than done. Many abandonees feel
inadequate when they try to perform them and are not able to
"Just let go" and "Move forward."
Unresolved
abandonment - - people continue searching for one more tape,
one more lecture, one more book that will finally free them.
But all of the self-medicating and soothing words in the world
will not eradicate the distress, disturbance and dysfunction
caused by unresolved abandonment. For that you must go beyond
insight. You must take action.
Abandonment
survivors need more than symptom management and feel-good relief.
They need an approach that facilitates not the illusion of change,
but real change.
This can
only happen when you realize that the magic bullet is not in
any book or program. It is within you. It is you ability to
integrate awareness with action. AKeRU program and BLACK SWAN's
Twelve Lessons of Abandonment Recovery are action-oriented programs
which complement each other. Each is designed to help you get
to the taproot of abandonment, access its energy, and heal from
the inside out. Abandonment
Recovery resources are available through the HELP CENTER.
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WHAT
IS AN ABANDONMENT SURVIVOR?
Abandonment survivors are those who have experienced the anguish
of love-loss and have the courage to go on believing in life
and in their own capacity for love. This is a select group of
survivors, but membership is not restricted to those who have
achieved success in their relationships. On the contrary, it's
members are those who continue to struggle to remove obstacles
in the way of finding love. There are many crushing feelings
rising out of the unresolved abandonment wound that make it
difficult for many to get to a place of trust and security within
a relationship. The membership also includes those who become
securely and happily coupled. But for all abandonment survivors,
the impact of abandonments past or present, is evidenced by
the fragments of unlived life, unreached potential, and unfulfilled
dreams still waiting to be redeemed through abandonment
recovery. HELP is available.
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WHY
DO WE CARRY A TORCH FOR SO LONG
WHEN SOMEONE HAS BROKEN UP WITH US?
NEW
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH EXPLAINS WHY HEARTBREAK HURTS SO MUCH. Someone
who leaves you becomes very powerful to your emotional brain.
They become powerful simply by being able to inflict so much
pain. Being left is perceived by your mammalian brain as an
attack upon your personal being. It etches an indelible impression
in a primitive part of the brain that acts automatically to
protect you. It conditions your mammalian brain to react with
fear each time you encounter the person whom it perceives as
dangerous to your well being. Acting beneath your conscious
awareness, it maintains a constant vigil on your abandoner.
You experience this as being temporarily obsessed with the person.
Your nerves are set to 'go off' if you should unexpectedly bump
into them later on or see them with a new love. This enduring
emotional reactivity is known as 'carrying a torch.' You are
confused into thinking that if the pain can last that long and
feel so strong, the person must have been very special. But
this is not so. You can feel this way over anyone, even someone
who had nothing special to offer. It is just your mammalian
brain efficiently trying to warn you not to make the same mistake
again.
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WHAT
IS AN ABANDONER?
Abandoners come in every possible size, shape, shade, age, social
form, and disposition. It is often difficult to tell who is
safe to attach to and who is not capable of being emotionally
responsible - - who is worthy of trust, and who is an abandoner.
What complicates
the picture even more is that one person's abandoner might be
another's permanent partner. Also, many abandonment victims,
depending upon certain conditions, go on to become abandoners
themselves. The circumstances surrounding relationships are
so complex and variable, that it is neither wise nor fair to
make moral judgements, point fingers, nor draw generalizations.
But there
are serial abandoners - - abandoners who get secondary gain
from inflicting emotional pain on someone who loves them. For
them, creating devastation is their way of demonstrating power.
But even abandoners who are not motivated by this need, might
experience a heightened sense of self-importance as an unintentional
by-product. As regretful as they may feel about having to pull
away, they can't help but go on an ego trip as they witness
the protests and agony of the person who still wants to be with
them.
In the light
of the other person's pain, abandoners will not usually admit
to feelings of triumph. Instead they tend to speak about their
more humble feelings, like their regret over having caused another
person to be disappointed. They are usually easily distracted
from regret however, as they get caught up in their new lives
with greater sense of freedom, newness, and a larger ego than
before.
Many abandoners,
however, are able to by-pass regret by remaining oblivious to
what is going on for the other person. They blame the other
person for the break-up - - attempting to justify their actions
and avoid guilt. Their agenda is to sustain their image of themselves
as a decent, caring person. This denial and blame often come
across as callousness and cruelty to the one they left behind.
The abandonee must grapple alone with the pieces of a broken
relationship, further wounded by unjustified blame.
Let it
be said that many abandoners do not set out to abandon, to hurt-by-intention.
Many are just human beings struggling to find the answers to
life's difficult challenges along with everyone else. None-the-less,
to the extent that abandoners are able to blame, remain oblivious,
or stay in denial of the other person's pain, abandonment
recovery reaches out to them to increase their awareness
as well. The program is devoted to the growth and development
of all of those who struggle to sustain relationships - - abandoners
and abandonees alike. Journey and Black Swan are designed to
enhance this awareness. Help is available.
