Posts belonging to Category abandonment recovery
Posted by Susan Anderson, Psychotherapist on April 19, 2022
Abandonment creates an emotional crisis of such intensity and duration that it mimics a full blown borderline episode. This has caused many a therapist to diagnose borderline personality disorder (BPD) in many a client in the throes of a painful separation. When a client presents with an emotional volcano of abandonment, it is easy to … read the full article
Categories: Abandonment, abandonment recovery, borderline and ptsd, borderline personality disorder, BPD, bpd and ptsd
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Posted by Susan Anderson, Psychotherapist on April 8, 2022
Susan Anderson © April 2022 Scrolling through this list, you recognize the universality of many of these features since we all experience birth trauma and separation traumas both large and small as we develop. It’s a matter of degree. PTSD of Abandonment is the underlying traumatic source of Complex PTSD (C-PTSD). Please see my additional … read the full article
Categories: abandonment recovery
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Posted by Susan Anderson, Psychotherapist on January 16, 2022
You don’t need to change something all the way to make a huge difference in your life. You don’t have to go all the way from being codependent to being non-codependent, or from low self-esteem to high self-esteem. You need only to be in the process of improving it – even if progress is slow … read the full article
Categories: abandonment recovery
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Posted by Susan Anderson, Psychotherapist on January 7, 2022
Someone wrote to me describing a dilemma that is very common. You finally realize that you’ve always been attracted to the wrong type of people, and now you’re attracted to a new person. The bind: Am I still in the pattern or is this one new? It’s hard to tell at the beginning of a … read the full article
Categories: abandonment recovery
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Posted by Susan Anderson, Psychotherapist on December 28, 2021
So many of us have dreams, hopes, and goals but we keep going in circles instead of taking productive steps toward achieving them. As time goes on, they seem to slip further and further into the distance. At some point, they seem all but lost – lost dreams, lost hopes, lost goals. This doesn’t have … read the full article
Categories: abandonment recovery
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Posted by Susan Anderson, Psychotherapist on December 8, 2021
When I’m not seeing therapy clients or writing, I go around the country promoting abandonment recovery. Next year, I’ll be giving an in-person Abandonment Workshop at two places: The Art of Living Retreat Center and Kripalu. I often feel like my participants are going to “shoot the messenger” when I’m imparting my message of abandonment … read the full article
Categories: abandonment recovery
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Posted by Susan Anderson, Psychotherapist on November 29, 2021
Someone wrote in and asked, “Is separation anxiety related to abandonment?” “Oh yes,” I resounded. Separation anxiety is the basis for all emotional distress – anxiety, depression, insecurity-in-relationships, fear-of-loss. Abandonment feelings trigger separation anxiety and separation anxiety trigger abandonment feelings. Let’s say you walk into a restaurant with your friends and you suddenly see your … read the full article
Categories: abandonment recovery
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Posted by Susan Anderson, Psychotherapist on November 22, 2021
Dear Susan, my boyfriend treats me badly. He makes promises but doesn’t show up. Then he showers me with passion, only to go online and talk with other women. When I catch him, he tells me it’s because I’ve been cold and angry lately. Sometimes he invites me over to his place to spend the … read the full article
Categories: abandonment recovery
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Posted by Susan Anderson, Psychotherapist on November 15, 2021
Someone wrote to me saying that it feels as if she will never get over “him”. She has been “hurting” for over 10 years – and she judges herself (and so do her friends) as being pathological for remaining stuck in the muck for so long. Well, it’s not pathological, it’s the way we are … read the full article
Categories: abandonment recovery
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Posted by Susan Anderson, Psychotherapist on October 25, 2021
The biggest turning point of my life came the day I realized that adults cannot be abandoned, they can only abandon themselves. The love of my life, my best friend, my marital partner of almost 20 years had just abandoned me to be with another woman (out of the blue and without warning) and I … read the full article
Categories: abandonment recovery
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Posted by Susan Anderson, Psychotherapist on October 18, 2021
You don’t even know it’s happening – it’s that subtle. Twelve principles for moving forward in your career and healing from the inside out at the same time. The raw human nerve of abandonment can tingle during the course of a normal workday – even when you’re unaware of it – when you feel ignored, … read the full article
Categories: abandonment recovery
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Posted by Susan Anderson, Psychotherapist on October 11, 2021
So many of you write about the pain you feel when someone you’re attached to turns out to be emotionally unreliable. So why is it so hard to leave these types of relationships? It seems that negative attractions can be more compelling than positive ones. Traumatic bonding, a highly prevalent condition of human relationships, has … read the full article
Categories: abandonment recovery
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Posted by Susan Anderson, Psychotherapist on October 4, 2021
Someone wrote to my (temporarily disabled) Forum about his partner of 20 years never being turned on by him. He claimed that she had been hot with other lovers outside of the marriage, but with him, there was “No Lubrication” (title of his post).” They are in therapy and he asked if there is hope. … read the full article
Categories: abandonment recovery
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Posted by Susan Anderson, Psychotherapist on October 2, 2021
Someone wrote in that his girlfriend has just pulled away after experiencing an emotional crisis in her family. The day before, they’d been like lovebirds, but she’s suddenly stopped showing affection and now wants her space. He writes, “I have been supportive and try to give her space, but I am fearful and alone and … read the full article
Categories: abandonment recovery
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Posted by Susan Anderson, Psychotherapist on September 20, 2021
Some people have written in this week about being in relationships where they feel painfully insecure. This kind of pain is different from that expressed by those who are lonely – folks who are emotionally alone because they can’t make a connection with anyone. Which pain hurts more? Most of us can identify with both … read the full article
Categories: abandonment recovery
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Posted by Susan Anderson, Psychotherapist on September 13, 2021
Sometimes you just can’t tell. Is it your old insecurity acting up again, or did you pick another emotionally unavailable lover? If the relationship doesn’t work out, you’ll say you should have trusted your gut. But wait a minute… you’ve already figured out that you can’t trust your gut because you’d feel insecure at the … read the full article
Categories: abandonment recovery
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Posted by Susan Anderson, Psychotherapist on September 6, 2021
This week my inbox is full of people complaining about their oppositional, obnoxious Outer Children. These hidden saboteurs have been wreaking havoc in people’s lives and making them look bad – making them fat, broke, pregnant, and lonely. It goes like this: Here you are, a perfectly decent well-adjusted person, but your Outer Child seems … read the full article
Categories: abandonment recovery
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Posted by Susan Anderson, Psychotherapist on August 23, 2021
I’m a therapist, a family member, and a friend, but no matter which role I’m in, I tend to empathize with the abandonee. That is the person who received the slight. The one who WASN’T invited to the special party. The one who did a great job but got fired. The loving partner left for … read the full article
Categories: abandonment recovery
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Posted by Susan Anderson, Psychotherapist on August 16, 2021
This happens a lot: The one who is left feeling abandoned has the hardest time moving on – precisely because of the primal pain unleashed by abandonment. The one who chose to end it has a much easier time moving on. Sometimes the original reason for the break-up was that your partner left you for … read the full article
Categories: abandonment recovery, Break Ups
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Posted by Susan Anderson, Psychotherapist on August 2, 2021
Trying to get over someone can be so arduous that it needs to become an ongoing project. And you can’t expect results right away. You have to be goal-directed, determined, and unbelievably patient. If you learn how to work WITH rather than AGAINST your feelings, you will come out of it sooner rather than later, … read the full article
Categories: abandonment recovery, Break Ups
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