Are you a Therapist?
It is true: Abandonment trauma and its aftermath of self-sabotage and shame have not been sufficiently studied or understood. Abandonment has the ability to implant its wound deep within the self that works insidiously to drain off self-esteem.
Our clients try to rebuild their self-esteem by doing ‘esteemable’ things, but the INVISIBLE WOUND OF ABANDONMENT is always working to siphon it away. The special type of grief unique to abandonment can burrow underground where it continues to generate low self-esteem, depression, obsession, shame, addiction, isolation, and self-defeating behaviors (outer child patterns).
As we have seen, many abandonment survivors have difficulty forming primary relationships. As therapists, we try to help them get to the root — the underlying abandonment wound – to gain self-acceptance, perspective, and emotional wisdom. Working from the inside out, we attempt to mitigate the impact of abandonment traumas from past and present wounds and promote significant personal growth – emotionally and behaviorally. (Get Professional Training and CEs)
The five Akeru exercises of the abandonment recovery program are a treatment protocol for haling Abandonment Trauma; 1) use of the moment, 2) imaginative use of “future, 3) separation therapy, 4) target of posttraumatic patterns of self-sabotage, 5) action steps toward greater life and love.
Training in Abandonment and Outer Child techniques is experiential. You learn by attending an Abandonment Recovery workshop and performing exercises and sharing feedback within a supportive group setting. Susan creates a safe, open, working, life-changing process within the group.
Abandonment Recovery Component Through training you learn how to:
· Help people through the five stages of abandonment (Shattering, Withdrawal, Internalizing, Rage, and Lifting (SWIRL).
· Practice techniques that heal abandonment survivor’s damaged relationship to self.
· Practice Akeru – a mental exercise program for each stage of the SWIRL process. (Get Professional Training and CEs)
Outer Child Component
· Target Outer Child patterns of self sabotage. Outer Child is an overarching concept that encompasses defense mechanisms, character traits, knee-jerk reactions, habits and compulsions – all of your maladaptive behavior patterns.
· Identify Outer’s emotional triggers.
· Connect dots between automatic defenses and primal abandonment fear.
· Learn exercises that redirect attachment energy toward learning healthy new behaviors.
· Practice using new power tools to break through obstacles, change behavior patterns, and propel you forward.
Advanced Clinical Training Through a combination of didactics and experiential training, you:
· Discern acute abandonment crisis from chronic patterns such as mood or anxiety disorders, as well as long standing outer child patterns of self-sabotage.
· Learn new information from neuro-science upon which new treatment approaches are built.
· Distinguish normal (albeit intense) abandonment grief from the onset of major depression
· Identify acute symptoms of the emotional crisis of abandonment, including:
Re-emerging symbiotic feelings
Increased risk-taking
Traumatic shame
Neglected self-care
Anorexia
Suicidality
Panic
Need to self-medicate
Borderline regression and other forms of acting out
· Identify chronic (versus acute) symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder of Abandonment. In “Journey from Abandonment to Healing” (pages 41-42) I outline a complete list of abandonment’s posttraumatic symptoms, which comprise what I have come to call the “outer child syndrome.”
(Get Professional Training and CEs)
Outer Child Syndrome (read Taming Your Outer Child)
Difficulty forming primary relationships
Rejection-sensitivity
Poor self-image
Addiction
Co-addiction
Chronic insecurity
Help clients work through tendency to get caught up in Outer Child patterns such as abandoholism or abandophobism, or stuck in one the five stages of abandonment grief.
Deal with the intense transference that our clients exhibit during their abandonment crises including (when their Outer Children are most triggered), i.e. Over-dependence upon therapist, Hostility, Hiding their shame, Missing appointments, Unrealistic expectations toward therapeutic process, etc.
· Discern client’s tendency to temporarily revert to default defenses, i.e. becoming over-controlling toward the abandoner, punitive, self-abdicating, and other Outer Child maneuvers.
· Help the still fragile, narcissistically injured abandonment survivor move beyond protest, blame, self-denial, and acting out, and on toward shame-reduction and emotional self-reliance, behavioral change, and increased capacity for love.
· Learn effective new tools experientially within the safety and open sharing of a supportive group process.
(Get Professional Training and CEs)
Psychobiology of Abandonment
In the early stages of abandonment, our clients are in an acute neuro-biological crisis. There is a rush of stress hormones: adrenaline (epinephrine) and norepinephrine (NE) surge, and a rise of glucocorticoids (as well as CRF and ACTH). Levels of serotonin and other brain chemistries shift in response to the body’s sustained perception of imminent danger. Our clients remain in a constant state of bio-chemical emergency – hyper-vigilant, obsessively focused, and on edge, as if prepared to sustain a life and death battle.
It is interesting to note that dominant baboons that have experienced a loss, have elevated glucocorticoid levels. As a result, they cease to exhibit dominant behaviors. Imagine the defeat and low self-esteem our clients are suffering during this sustained emotional crisis in which their stress hormones are surging for an extended period.
Control Issues and Traumatic Shame
For most abandonment survivors, the rug has been pulled from beneath them. They feel a total loss of control and deep shame for being rejected, left behind, dismissed – in short, abandoned.
Thanks to the increase in stress hormones, they are at loss of their sense of control. Nature has taken over. The life they want is not within their immediate power. Their primary connection has been severed; isolation has been foisted upon them by someone else’s choice.
Abandonment is a state of INVOLUNTARY SEPARATION. Our clients are shattered by an aloneness they did not choose. They feel deserted, dependent, ashamed and demoralized, having sustained a narcissistic injury. The lack of control makes them feel like a victim.
Emotionally, it feels like they’re in the recovery room having just had their Siamese twin severed from them. What makes the pain so unbearable for abandonment survivors, is that it wasn’t their idea to have the surgery; it was the OTHER person’s. Even worse, the OTHER person has (often) already re-attached to a new love-interest and doesn’t feel the intense pain of separation.
Abandonees versus Abandoners
The relationship is medicating the abandoner from feeling what the abandonee is faced with – rejection, isolation, and a profound loss of love. In other words, the Abandoners aren’t suffering in the recovery room, because for THEM the severing from their other half wasn’t major surgery. They’re ‘out and about’ in a new life.
Both sides – abandoners and abandonees alike – however, are on an emotional roller coaster; both feel regret, confusion, remorse, and anger. But the one who was left behind bears the brunt of the tear and the awful shame of rejection. The fact that it is more painful to be the abandonee than to be the abandoner is rarely acknowledged by the latter, because both sides want to be considered ‘the injured party.’
Long Term Relationships: If the couple’s lives had been intertwined for a long time and they had grown to count on each other for security and support, the one choosing to end the relationship will struggle with the agony of guilt. Abandoners are often themselves survivors of childhood losses and separations, and have their own abandonment issues to deal with. This makes it particularly difficult for them to acknowledge the full extent of the pain that is caused by their decision to end the relationship. It threatens their idealized self-images when they witness their former partners’ (understandable) reaction of anger and grief, and of not wanting to ‘let go.’ They feel they are being thwarted and mistreated by these reactions. They resent the ‘control.’ They feel ‘punished’ for trying to start a new life.
The abandoners begin to perceive their former partners as at fault, needy,’ bad mothers’, This development suggests that rather than feel less about themselves, abandoners have attempted to project rather than internalize their negative feelings, They’ve exercised the ‘victor’s option’ to blame the victim. Many begin to rewrite the history of the relationship, distorting facts, blocking out emotional memories, negating the original basis of the connection — all in an effort to justify their decision to leave someone who still wants and needs them. This causes abandonees to feel completely erased and even more isolated. They don’t even have memories to hold onto; their entire emotional reality has been disqualified. They lose not only the future, but the past.
At this stage both sides stand on opposite sides of an emotional chasm. Attempts at communication usually misfire into painful misunderstandings and explosions (and where divorce is involved, costly attorney fees).
It helps both sides to learn about the abandonment cycle (S.W.I.R.L.). Abandonees get to see where they are in the grief process, where they are going, and where they have work to do. Understanding the universality of the process relieves them some of the shame – a result of condemning themselves for feeling so much pain – preventing them from further self-injury. Abandoners, for their part, gain understanding with which to better handle their side of the separation. They also gain perspective on their own abandonment issues – connecting the dots between unfinished business from childhood and the issues of the relationship they are pulling away from. (Get Professional Training and CEs)
BLACK SWAN: The Twelve Lessons of Abandonment Recovery is a supplement to psychotherapy. It provides a clinically tested sequence of recovery tasks to promote spiritual and emotional healing.
The Five Akeru Exercises of the program are additional life-changing tools. There is a hands-on exercise for each stage of abandonment’s grief process. Through these exercises abandonment survivors regain a sense of control by empowering them to take action to change their lives. The Journey from Abandonment to Healing is a self-help and professional resource, helping clients and clinicians navigate the abandonment cycle, providing case examples and research information all along the way. Also see The Abandonment Recovery Workbook and Taming Your Outer Child
DEPRESSION: Being rejected by our primary love object causes tremendous rage which we turn against ourselves. This accounts for the intense depression that accompanies abandonment. Our clients are forced to go on with their lives with their wounds barely mended – still tender, sore to the touch. As the abandonment grief progresses, their depression becomes agitated depression. They are ready to strike out at anything that threatens their injured sense of self. This constant state of woundedness sometimes results in a chemical imbalance significant enough to warrant a trial on psychotherapeutic medication.
Some of our clients are more vulnerable to developing a clinical depression from abandonment than others. Research shows what we clinicians already know – that people who experienced traumatic separation in childhood are more prone to clinical states of anxiety and depression than those who did not. Information exploring the psycho-biology of abandonment is covered in JOURNEY. Visit our bookstore.
Psychodynamics
Without professional help, many of our clients tend to suppress, deny, or displace the feelings that spill over the edge from abandonment. These defenses become entrenched in personality and lead to the conditions we so often treat – chronic isolation, unsatisfying relationships ( many chose to stay with inappropriate partners), and other maladaptive behaviors. Abandonment can lead to a repetition compulsion in which our clients become ensnared in patterns of re-victimization.
PTSD of Abandonment
Besides this tendency toward RE-TRAUMATIZATION, additional posttraumatic features of abandonment include intrusive fear, separation anxiety, childhood memory blocks, social phobia, panic, excessive hidden shame, avoidance, volatility, self-sabotage and often reach the extreme of true borderline functioning in primary relationships. PTSD OF ABANDONMENT is a new diagnostic category introduced in JOURNEY.
Predisposing Factors
Our client’s response to loss varies according the duration and intensity of the relationship, the circumstances of the break-up, their prior abandonment history, and their bio-physiological constitution.
Childhood precursors to emotional reactivity can be any loss or disconnection ranging from death of a parent, to replacement by a rival sibling, to having suffered learning disabilities in school, to having a neuro-biological sensitivity to rejection or separation.
Children experience all loss and disappointment as abandonment. They don’t have the ability to distinguish personal rejection from external circumstances. They feel diminished, undeserving, helpless as a result of any slight or disconnection – the origins of self-depreciation. Children who have incurred intense, repetitive, or prolonged separations are particularly resonant to fears and self-injury in adult relationships, especially during the initial severing of a relationship. This explains why many cling to destructive relationships. They go to any extreme to avoid the agony of separation and being alone.
Adults who’ve had traumatic abandonments such as being left at the alter, fired from an important job, or where their rejections have been repetitive also need intensive support during the initial stages of abandonment grief.
These events comprise their ABANDONMENT PROFILES. Many clients benefit by ‘making a map’ of the events that helped to shape their current response. Making a connection between past and present helps them connect the emotional dots and regain a semblance of control during a turbulent time. Yet, insight and self awareness only go so far in getting underneath the problem of unresolved abandonment – and doing something about it. Significant change and recovery can only begin when our clients are willing to question their values and beliefs, and to take positive action. (Get Professional Training and CEs)
Abandonment Grief
Learning about the stages of abandonment grief provides some support and helps focus a therapist’s time and effort on where clients may be stuck. S.W.I.R.L. lays out the stages of the abandonment cycle – Shattering, Withdrawal, Internalizing, Rage, and Lifting. Those stuck in SHATTERING from earlier separation traumas tend to be chronically insecure, unstable, self-destructive, prone to addiction and borderline functioning in their object relationships, as well as other psychiatric conditions.
Those stuck in the WITHDRAWAL stage of earlier separations tend to suffer chronic feelings of emptiness and longing, exhibiting dependency and co-dependency disorders. Many seek mood altering experiences and substances. Palliatives range from food to people to drugs to self-help books – – anything to medicate the emotional urgencies impinging from within. The need for quick-fixes sabotages our clients’ ability to delay gratification and achieve long range goals.
Those stuck in INTERNALIZING have low self-worth, tend to turn anger toward themselves, are prone to self-doubt, self-depreciation, excessive shame, depression, dependency. They have feelings of worthlessness, difficulty making decisions, and a heightened need for immediate gratification. They have a constant need to assuage an emotional chasm of guilt and shame. They tend to idealize others (including the abandoner) at their own expense. They tend to create a caste system, positing themselves in the lower caste. This internal short-circuit causes them to underachieve, creating a vicious cycle of self-depreciation and unfulfilled life.
Those stuck in RAGE are plagued with emotional reactivity. They exhibit Outer child behaviors that sabotage primary relationships. Outer child, a new concept introduced in JOURNEY, represents the part of personality that acts out the fear and anger of the INNER CHILD. Outer child goes on the warpath for all of the cumulative losses and rejections going all the way back to childhood. Outer acts out against innocent bystanders — their significant other and sometimes, even against their own inner child. Outer child tends to take emotional hostages rather than form healthy relationships. Outer child is the self-centered nine year old in all of us. (A 100 item Outer Child inventory is included in JOURNEY.) The emotional numbing causes them to develop the pattern of abandoholism -- being “attracted to the unavailable”
Those stuck in LIFTING have lifted above their feelings from previous losses. They’ve disengaged from their most vulnerable feelings, creating a barrier between their internal and external selves. They’ve formed emotional calluses over their wounds and suffer problems of dys-intimacy, displaced emotional center, and feelings of detached isolation. They’re hard to reach emotionally. ‘Lifters’ sometimes cause their partners to feel isolated, unloved, or emotionally frustrated.
Adult Abandonment Triggers:
When our clients go through a current abandonment, they tend to have most difficulty with the stage in which they were stuck from previous losses. Helping them understand where their emotional ‘hot spots’ are, empowers them to focus their recovery effort where it is most needed. There is an Akeru exercise that corresponds to each stage of abandonment grief, that helps them work through their unfinished business.
I hope the tools of abandonment recovery help you in the work you are doing with your clients. Attend one of my trainings for additional support.
Get Professional Training and CEs
Additional information about Grieving A Death also Available