September 14, 2023 • 46 mins
Many of us battle with a deep-rooted fear and anxiety that those we love will leave us. Maybe we have been hurt in a past relationship, or witnessed a messy divorce or the passing of ones we love and we have unconsciously learned to associated vulnerability, intimacy and love with pain and disappointment. This fear of abandonment can cause us to sabotage otherwise perfectly healthy relationships or to push people away out of an irrational fear they will leave us, only to end up just as alone as if they had. In this episode we explore the following:
- What is the root cause of the fear of abandonment?
- The different types of abandonment reactions - the saboteur, the clingy, the avoidant and the serial dater
- Links to codependency and emotional unavailability
- How to heal our abandonment wounds
We all want to accept others into out lives and trust the people we love will stay by our side so if you're struggling with an irrational fear or anxiety of abandonment, listen now.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
Welcome back to the podcast, Near listeners, old listeners, wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode. Today, we're tackling
a topic that I think many of us are struggling
with and maybe wouldn't even know it, and yet it
really does impact a lot of our relationships in such insidious,
(00:49):
often invisible ways. It is a very deep belief system
and anxiety that can really disturb our ability to form
meaningful connection, to love deeply, and to trust others. And
that is a fear of abandonment. I think all of
us feel that instinctual drive to avoid emotionally painful experiences
(01:14):
like being rejected or heartbroken or feeling forgotten about, and
naturally these events, the way people treat us or leave
us is quite devastating and it can leave some very
long lasting emotional scars. But it's also somewhat part of life, right.
We have to kind of come to peace with the
(01:35):
reality that not every relationship is going to last, that
people are going to leave, people are going to pass away.
So there is no way of controlling how your relationships
kind of pan out. But we can decide a how
we want to treat ourselves and be how we respond
to these unfortunate kind of events. For some of us, though,
(01:59):
we are so pa petrified of losing the ones we
love or feeling abandoned that we really cannot allow ourselves
to get close to other people. And for many of
us who are experiencing this, we know it only comes
from these experiences that we had in childhood or even
early in our romantic relationships, right when we were eighteen
(02:23):
nineteen dating for the first time, where we developed almost
an insecurity based on our experiences that everyone that we
love will leave us. And this feeling can really influence
how we approach not only our romantic connections, particularly the
people we're dating or even married to, but also our
(02:45):
interactions with people like friends, like family, like coworkers. There's
a few ways that this manifest that we're going to
speak about in this episode. I think if we have
developed this really intense fear of being abandoned by those
we love, and what the emotional consequences of that would be.
We can respond by becoming incredibly avoidant or self sabotaging
(03:09):
our relationships, becoming really emotionally numb to the world and
to opportunities for love and intimacy and connection. But then
on the flip side, a fear of abandonment is also
really closely linked to things like intense people pleasing tendencies
and clinginess and self abandonment, whereby we end up sacrificing
(03:34):
our own needs for others because we think that that
will keep them closer, that this will prevent our worst
fears from being realized, or confirming this really deep insecurity
that we are correct. People we love cannot be trusted,
We cannot trust them, they will inevitably leave us, and
(03:55):
we know that that is not true. We know that
there are so many people out there who stay in
the people's lives for decades. I feel like everyone has
at least someone like that, whether it is a parent
or a friend, or a family member or even a partner.
So I really want to break down where this unfortunate,
negative but also false belief system comes from and how
(04:17):
it's especially relevant for our twenties, because I think it's
often during this decade that we become a lot more
aware of how our past and certain events or in
some cases trauma, continue to influence us or manifest in
unhealthy relationship patterns, and that doesn't have to be our reality.
(04:38):
Often we engage in a lot of self blame for
what are very deeply ingrained emotional reactions that have emerged
from a lot of things that were beyond our control.
You know, we wonder why we can never let people
get close, or we always feel the need to start
a fight or sabotage our relationships when they begin to
(04:59):
feel too comfortable. So I really also want to provide
an explanation for why that is. You know, sometimes it's
really subtle things, or sometimes it's big things like witnessing
a divorce or having BPD early romantic experiences. But also
I think it's important that we acknowledge this anxiety, where
it comes from, and how to integrate it, how to
(05:21):
manage it. It is something that we can all definitely
heal from, So there is so much to discuss. If
you are someone who has been struggling with this and
you're trying to find a reason why you find it
so hard to trust others and connect with them. Hopefully
this episode provides you with an explanation, with some answers,
(05:42):
with somewhere to go. So without further ado, let's get
into it. Okay, So, first of all, as we do,
we need to get our basics down pat before we
jump into the theories and ideas that make up a
fear of abandonment. I think typical of psychology terms that
(06:05):
gain very general societal notoriety and popularity. Sometimes the truth
about ideas like a fear of abandonment can become misconstrued
and leading to people becoming also somewhat misinformed or at
times confused or excluded from a definition or from a
(06:26):
narrative around a certain issue. And that's really not ideal
because I think there are so many of us, especially
in our twenties, as we enter into our first really
serious long term relationships, or where we start to encounter
things like death for a lot of us, or friendship
groups falling apart. Often what we do is we question
some of our past experiences. We are undergoing this very
(06:50):
real emotional battle at times between our primary instinct for
love and security and a much deeper fear of being
hurt or discarded by someone we feel really connected to.
So firstly, it's important to note that a fear of abandonment,
(07:10):
it's not a recognized mental health condition. You know, your
doctor unfortunately is not going to be able to give
you a diagnosis and a cure and send you on
your way, because it's a lot more nuanced than that. Instead,
psychology has kind of come to see this as a
type of anxiety in which we feel this overwhelming yet
(07:34):
often unwanted and unwarranted fear that the people we love
will leave us, and so we react in somewhat irrational ways,
perhaps sabotaging our relationships, pulling away so that people don't
have the chance to hurt us, or feeling a really
(07:54):
intense need to be close to people at all times,
perhaps sometimes also transforming into codependency. Actually, the thing is
that a fear of abandonment, although it's not a recognized
mental health condition, it's really really closely linked to a
bunch of other concepts that we have discussed on the show,
(08:16):
things like emotional unavailability and hyperindependence, even a social phobia.
But it differs in that it's primary function on an
emotional level. The primary function of this fear of abandonment
is to help us avoid the pain of being rejected, dismissed,
(08:37):
or let down. And it's not so much a fear
of general social interaction or even intimacy, but a fear
of what will happen when these things we deeply value
are taken away, What is going to occur in their absence.
Another distinction is that this fear of abandonment it shows
(08:58):
up in all of our relations, not just our romantic ones.
I think we typically think about abandonment issues when it
comes to dating, but people will experience this type of
anxiety and worry for their friendships as well. They'll worry
that their friends will leave them, they worry about what
will happen if their family members, something happens to their
(09:20):
family members or even co workers or acquaintances, or being
rejected or abandoned by entire social circles, which we know
is quite irrational. But I would say the reason that
we think about it a lot in terms of romantic
connections is because for many of us, these fears of
(09:41):
being abandoned aren't really fully realized until we enter into
our first or second romantic relationship. That's because I think,
unlike friendships or family, romantic relationships really take on this
whole new level of of emotional closeness and expected intimacy
(10:04):
and vulnerability. The stakes are a lot higher. The risk
of being hurt really increases with each kind of moment
and memory where you get closer. Typically also because we
often have more than one friend or more than one
family member, but we only have one partner, and we
are often naturally incredibly bonded to the people who fill
(10:27):
this role in our life. And so I think everyone
is going to experience this fear on some level that
one day they may find this person they love drifting
away or outright, you know, leaving them having to mend
a broken heart. And as humans, like I mentioned before,
one of our primary instinctual drives is to avoid pain,
(10:51):
and often we think of that selectively to just mean
physical pain or injury. But we know from countless countless
study is that certain emotional experiences can also manifest in
the body. And it's a concept known as psychogenic pain,
whereby when we are exposed to psychological distress or emotional
(11:13):
distress that can actually manifest in very real physical discomfort
and suffering. So I think that reason is why a
lot of us do relate to having a heightened anxiety
over the possibility of being abandoned or left by someone.
And I think if you don't have that anxiety at times,
(11:34):
if you're someone who you know kind of approaches your
relationships like everyone is replaceable, no one can ever hurt me,
that is equally as unhealthy. I also want to say
that this reaction, especially when it gets to a really
intense fear of abandonment, it is neither intentional, nor is
it voluntary. It is not an opt in situation. No
(11:57):
one is looking to experience. It's more anxiety than they
already are. But also it almost consistently emerges from situations
that are outside of our control, that have influenced us
on a somewhat unconscious level, and then begin to manifest
in certain behaviors and tendencies that really interrupt our ability
(12:20):
to connect people with abandonment issues, fears, whatever we want
to call them, They're not going to experience that in
the same way. It's not always going to be identical.
So there are actually four different types of profiles or
archetypes of people who are experiencing abandonment wounds, or who
are fearful of abandonment. So there's the saboteur, the needy,
(12:44):
the avoidance, and the serial data. And sometimes all of
these can operate within one person, but let's break them
down one by one. So the saboteur is someone who
undermines their own relationships to try and identify faults and
push people away before they get hurt. Often when that happens,
they'll blame the other person. They'll blame their friends or
(13:07):
their string of partners. They'll say that they're toxic or problematic,
rather than really closely examining what this pattern of behavior
says about their own emotional wounds. Right that they're actually
sabotaging these relationships, perhaps subconsciously, because that way these people
can never leave them if they leave first. So the
(13:28):
next is the needy or the clingy, and this is
someone who often displays behavior that is very similar to
someone in the early stages of codependency. Right, so getting
close to someone incredibly quickly, perhaps sharing too many intimate
details about themselves too soon, or really wanting to reach
certain milestones like exclusivity or applying labels really early on.
(13:52):
And they do this in hopes of kind of fast
tracking a relationship to provide them with the sense of
security before they truly do actually start to trust this person.
It's kind of like the false pretense of okay, well,
if we have this label, if they have reassured me
that we're exclusive, if they're not sleeping with other people,
they're not going to leave me. And this will provide
(14:16):
me kind of with the structure in which I can
actually start to build a relationship with this person after
they've already provided me the reassurance that we are in
that point. The next is the avoidant, and the avoidant
will almost abstain, particularly from intimate, vulnerable relationships, or close
friendships entirely. They may pull away from family members or
(14:38):
certain social circles because they are so fearful of being
hurt or disappointed. If they pull away first, much like
the saboteur, then they will have the power and agency.
That's kind of what they're telling themselves. Basically, they're saying,
what you know, very similar to the saboteur, I cannot
be abandoned if I make the decision first. So therefore,
(15:00):
although it's going to leave me in the same position
of not having these people around or feeling lonely. At
least I'm in control here. At least I'm not going
to be surprised. And finally we have the serial data.
Also similar to the saboteur, this person will cycle through
relationships friendships quite quickly, but they'll find themselves not really
(15:26):
getting attached in the same way that the saboteur does. Instead,
what they're really choosing to do is soothe their abandonment
wound with new people, right, so they might fall in
love pretty quickly. The relationship ends, perhaps because of sabotage,
perhaps because of something else, and instead of really acknowledging
(15:47):
that that really hurts, instead of acknowledging that perhaps this
is really unfortunate and really deeply painful, they will find
someone else to heal them rather than really acknowledging why
they find this so particularly distressing. So I would say
that something that's really important is that none of these
(16:08):
types of individuals associated with abandonment issues are bad people.
It's really important to remember that there should be really
no shame in admitting that perhaps you have historically approach
relationships like this, or that this is how you continue
to approach relationships. Because I would say A, so much
(16:29):
of why you are this person is out of our control,
which we'll discuss in a second. But B I think
if you're afraid to correctly identify ways in which your
actions are perhaps maladaptive, you'll actually just prolong these experiences
and it's not going to lead to any changes. Outside
of these very high level archetypes, there are some other
(16:50):
core behaviors that I just want to quickly dive into
a little bit deeper. So we spoke about cycling through relationships.
Some of us who are facing a fear of abandonment
may want to engage in numerous, consistent, shallow relationships. We're
afraid to ever let someone truly see the ugly, vulnerable,
(17:10):
scared side of us, so we protect this part of us.
We never let anyone see that, because if they do
leave us, we can always comfort ourselves with the knowledge
that this person really never really knew us that deeply.
So that is very similar to a fear of intimacy.
And often the reason we cycle through relationships, particularly shallow ones,
(17:33):
is because we find a reason to leave them before
the other person can leave us. We talked about sabotaging relationships,
but there's this other interesting term called emotional baiting. So
this is where we attempt to create situations that elicit
a particular emotional reaction from a partner, either positive or negative. So,
(17:54):
in psychology, emotional baiting is actually used to describe certain
narcissistic tendencies that are inherently very manipulative and attention seeking.
But in this case that is not accurate, right, That
is not why people are beating their partners or beating
someone in their life. This behavior actually represents something a
lot more vulnerable. It reveals a part of us that
(18:16):
really needs love. So what we're doing when we emotionally
bait people in our lives, you know, by starting fights,
by withdrawing, by saying things we don't mean, is we're
really testing them to see if they will leave us.
So for people with the fear of abandonment, this is
a slightly counterintuitive way of building trust. It's interesting because
(18:40):
in these moments, we're not trying to endanger our relationship, right,
It's not all about self sabotage. In fact, I think
these behaviors are almost a sign of how much we
want these relationships to last. Hence why we're really subconsciously
testing them to see if the other person is genuine
and if they will stay, and if what they're saying
(19:01):
is true. We really want to entrench ourselves further and
feel that deeper level of vulnerability and intimacy. But before
we can do that, we need to be like one
hundred percent short that this is not going to end badly,
that this person is not going to withdraw from us.
(19:21):
So we kind of become our worst selves to test them,
to really push them and then closely watch their response.
The next thing is clinging to unhealthy relationships. Some people
with abandonment issues, there's been research to show that they
might stay in relationships that aren't good for them even
when they have a desire to leave. I think that's
(19:43):
because the fear of being alone is a lot more powerful,
and they often perceive it to be safer to pursue
someone who cannot provide them the emotional connection that they need,
because instinctually they know that they'll never get too close.
I would say that this is actually really it's kind
of a way that our brain, or our fear of
abandonment tricks us because we know, based on principles of
(20:07):
attachment and familiarity and proximity. That the more time we
spend with someone, even if we are trying our hardest,
the more bonded we will become. So it's actually quite dangerous,
I think, to pursue relationships with people you think won't
hurt you in order to protect yourself, because that might
actually really backfire and further entrench your fear around abandonment. Finally,
(20:30):
we have needing constant reassurance. This is what I've experienced
a lot, especially in my current relationship who and you know,
my partner is incredible, he is beautiful. But no matter
how much I think love and attention you give someone,
especially someone who's maybe had past experiences where they've been
let down, you kind of always have this fear that
(20:53):
they're lying to you or that they're going to change
their mind. So you really consistently regularly require them to
confirm and reassure you that they're not going anywhere, that yes,
they still love you, No, they're not annoyed, they're not
mad at you, they're not going to leave you. It
kind of also can sometimes result in what we call
fawning behavior, right, So that's also really closely related to
(21:16):
people pleasing tendencies where when we fawn. When we try
and please someone, what we're doing is constantly trying to
make this person happy, sometimes at our own expense, by
being really excessively generous, affectionate, or passive or agreeable as
do not give them a reason to leave us, and
that can often result in us actually neglecting our own
(21:40):
needs or becoming really hyper sensitive to things like conflict
or criticisms, small disagreements that are really natural in any relationship,
but we see them as a thread because they undermine
our sense of security. Small things like that if you
are someone who has previously been in relationships where people
have given a taken love very inconsistently, or you've been
(22:03):
raised with very inconsistent parents, small things like arguments, like
little disagreements, they trigger an alarm in our brain, one
that has a very low threshold, because we have become
hypervigilant towards anything that may indicate that the other person
has a reason to disappear. That is why we need
that reassurance. That is why we may become quite passive,
(22:25):
because we want to keep the peace. We really want
to make sure that they have no reason to need
to walk away, and if they do that would be
our fault. One thing that's really interesting to me is
how some of these behaviors that are very deeply associated
with a fear of abandonment have become kind of romanticized
(22:46):
in society, especially around pop culture and places like TikTok
or Instagram. Particularly. What we're seeing is this like idealization
of a very avoidant, detached approach to romantic connection. So
trends around being heartless or how to stay detached and
cold in the early stages of relationship, how to get
(23:07):
people obsessed with you, to appear emotionless and untouchable, you know.
The heartless one in particular, really really worries me because
when we examine that deeper, I don't actually think that
having no emotion towards people at all is a particularly
healthy thing. It also, in some ways is very thinly
veiled abandonment issues. I think that if you've been through
(23:30):
an experience where you've been left really like absolutely demolished
and heartbroken or just so hurt and betrayed by someone,
we kind of go the complete opposite way, and we
like to appear emotionless or in some ways convince ourselves
that this is a person we can be when really
what it is manifesting is our fear of abandonment. Subconsciously,
(23:54):
our minds want to avoid another situation like that, so
they take the experience and they reverse all the behaviors
that perhaps put you in that previous situation, so that
you act differently, and sometimes you act in a way
that's really counter to your desires or even your overwell
well being. This really links to where a fear of
abandonment comes from, which is what I want to discuss next.
(24:17):
So generally psychologists attribute a fear of abandonment to the
experiences and beliefs that we have internalized as children. So
as a child, if you are denied really basic fundamental
comforts like physical affection, emotional connection, and safety, we learn
not to trust the permanence of these things in adulthood,
(24:39):
and what that results in is a very dysfunctional and
insecure attachment style. In this case, often it's an avoidant
or anxious attachment style. We're worried people will withdraw their love,
so we become extremely stressed and panicked either drawing them
in and really wanting to hold onto them or completely
(25:00):
removing ourselves. First traumatic events in childhood as well can
really disrupt this sense that our relationships with people will
be sustained even if there's distance. That is something that
a child has to learn. It's called object constancy. Basically,
what that means is that even if your parent leaves
you at daycare or leaves you at school for the afternoon,
(25:22):
they are a going to come back and be the
relationship is going to be the same. But you know,
events like a divorce or injury, or the death of
a parent or a caregiver, they're really significant and they
really disrupt the development of this really fundamental cognition. So
although we know that this person didn't intentionally leave us
(25:43):
or mean to hurt us, we still really feel the
intensity of their absence, and we rationalize that if we'd
just been a lot less closer to them, if we
had loved them less, we would be in less pain.
And so the logic follows that to avoid future pain,
avoid future connection. So that's one of the origins because
(26:03):
as we know, healthy human development really requires those physical
and emotional needs being met, and during childhood that often
comes from our parents, but during adulthood it can come
from a broader range of personal and romantic relationships. I
say this all the time, but something that I think
psychology as a field really needs to investigate more is
(26:26):
the impact of early romantic experiences on later romantic and
emotional wellbeing and also dating specifically, how do we go
on to form healthy relationships and seek out the right
people based on what we were kind of taught that
love was. I think often the research and attachment style
really only goes one way. But I also think that
(26:49):
it's really important to acknowledge that, you know, although maybe
your first relationship was when you were young, maybe seventeen eighteen,
even younger, that's still going to have a really, really
foundational impact. That is because, as these cognitive scientists at
MIT have explained, we experience peak mental processing and memory
(27:09):
power at around eighteen to nineteen, and that kind of
tapers off the older we get, but it is around
that time I'm going to say, like a bracket of
seventeen to twenty one, that we experience a lot of
first you know, our first love, our first breakup, our
first kiss, and that's all occurring during a period where
(27:30):
we are still developing but also absorbing information and memories
at a crazy pace. So for some people, a particularly
painful relationship. Perhaps you dated someone who cheated on you
or treated you poorly, or lied or left suddenly. That
is going to be a core experience that makes you
(27:51):
really fearful of situations that could recreate that pain in
the future. And from that we see abandonment issues being born,
and they're really maintained by that cycle we spoke about
before of hypervigilance of self sabotage of avoidance. Abandonment issues
can also stem from a really intense fear of loneliness.
(28:12):
But also it's quite closely linked to borderline personality disorder. Now,
this podcast is not a place for self diagnosing mental
health conditions, so I just want to make that really
really clear. But I think that we cannot talk about
abandonment issues without talking about BPD because they are so
closely aligned in a lot of people's minds. So BPD,
(28:35):
if you haven't heard about it before, it's a mental
health disorder characterized by a lot of symptoms, mainly really
chronic challenges with maintaining healthy relationships, feelings of low self worth, impulsivity,
really volatile moods. This disorder is often really hallmarked by
a pattern of very unstable personal relationships, and what that
(28:58):
means is that a fear of abandonment is also often
a really big part of the lives of those who
are impacted by BPD. It's also really one of the
most common symptoms that we will see. There's really no
kind of solid explanation that can be given as to
why this is, but according to a number of psychologists
and psychiatrists, the fear of being abandoned often causes people
(29:22):
with BPD to form unhealthy attachments. Sometimes they can abruptly
cut off these relationships, effectively abandoning their partners, and other
times they make really frantic attempts to hold onto the relationship.
And it's this overly, I think it's quite intense or
erratic behavior that is what causes them to push loved
(29:44):
ones away, makes it harder to have those stable relationships
like we talked about, but also heightens that fear around
abandonment because there is a cycle of perhaps very difficult
interpersonal connections, interactions and experiences. Everyone with abandonment issues, though,
has BPD. Let's really make sure that's quite clear. BPD
(30:06):
is a separate condition that just has some overlap with
this unique type of anxiety, and like we said, before
fearing abandonment. It's going to show up very differently. It's
going to come from very different experiences. But what I
want to talk about is what is kind of the
long term prognosis here, and how can we push past
(30:26):
our fear of being rejected or disappointed or abandoned. How
can we kind of break out of our self sabotaging
patterns or our avoidant behaviors to really trust and to
really love people. So we're going to talk about all
of that and more after this short break. I think
(30:51):
a lot of us are struggling with this in very
invisible ways, often because I really don't think we want
to admit this very vulnerable in security, this really vulnerable
belief that we don't think anyone will ever stay, or
anyone will ever love us enough to not abandon us.
I think the reason we don't want to admit that
is because we think that that says something about us,
(31:14):
And we also are worried that what if we continue
to be proven right? What if we admit this to someone,
maybe a friend or a partner, whoever it may be,
and they still leave. The thing is something I really
want to make quite clear. A fear of abandonment has
nothing to do with your quality and beauty as a
human or the kind of depth of your soul of
(31:36):
what you bring to other people. It really has no
correlation with how people choose to treat you or have
treated you in the past. Often, I think if we've
experienced a number of really painful events or instances of
withdrawal or where someone we thought would love us forever
has abandoned us, we convince ourselves that we must be
(31:56):
the common denominator, that there is something that we are
doing wrong, and that can become like we've explored a
bit of a self fulfilling prophecy, whereby the behaviors we
adopt to seemingly protect us, or the ones that we
use as defense mechanisms, have an opposite effect of actually
further removing us from situations in which someone could maybe
(32:19):
prove you wrong. A fear of abandonment in that way
is so subconscious, and so it's going to continue to
operate unless we a acknowledge it and be really get
to the root cause or address this pattern so that
we don't see that typical repeated timeline in relationships. This cycle,
this timeline it's characterized by a few major things right
(32:42):
that inability to fully commit. The heightened emotions and anxiety
is the relationship becomes more serious. Sometimes we have that
emotional baiting or testing and finally self sabotage or withdrawal.
There was this really good example that I found which
I think some this up really well, and I think
a typical relationship of involving someone with abandonment issues might
(33:06):
go through some of the following stages. So you start
off in the early days. At this point, it's all
really fun, you feel really safe, You're not really emotionally
invested yet, so you kind of continue to live your
life whilst also really enjoying time with them. I think
at this point we're not worried about abandonment, we're not
(33:26):
really in that mind frame yet. Then we have a
honeymoon phase, and this is where you choose to commit.
You kind of maybe overlook some of your anxiety, You
overlook some of the red flags. You suppress some of
those emotional wounds because you feel embarrassed by them. You
don't want to admit them to your new partner, your
new boyfriend or girlfriend, and you do in some ways
(33:48):
feel really secure because this person has offered you exclusivity
or a commitment, and you're not yet so emotionally invested
that those fears are starting to really bubble up. And
then you become partners. As things get more serious, things
get in the way. You know, relationships are sometimes quite hard.
(34:08):
People have bad days, work gets really annoying, you have
to cancel plans, you worry about money, and something really
small might occur. And an example of this is, for example,
an unanswered text message or an unreturned phone call. To
most people, I think that this is really normal, right,
they might find a different reason. They might give themselves
(34:32):
a rational explanation for why this is happening. They're at
work their phone instead, they just haven't gotten around to
replying to me. They're busy. But if you're someone who
already has that initial anxiety or bias that this person
is going to leave you, you're probably really going to
battle really hard internally about how to respond, because to you,
(34:52):
in your state of hypervigilance, that is a really big
sign that they might be going to leave you. That
is a sign that they pulling away. And although quite
rationally and objectively, someone else might look at that and say, well,
that's ridiculous. You have this fear response that's become deeply ingrained.
So some people handle that by becoming really clingy, really
(35:13):
insistent and demanding, and other people also just withdraw at
that first sign of difficulty or what they interpret to
be a sign that they're about to be left or
broken up with. They make the first move, but they're
making the first move with false information, with information that
is coming from a subjective bias or a place of fear.
(35:37):
So how do we prevent our fear of abandonment from
doing this from really interrupting these healthy, beautiful connections. I'm
going to give you a few tips, both from personal
experience and then some more clinical advice that you know
a therapist or a psychologist might give you. Number one,
and I think this is something everyone listening is already doing,
(35:57):
but you kind of need to shake hands with who
you are at this point and where you're at and
acknowledge that this is something that you're dealing with. I
think you need to approach it really objectively, so no
self pity, try not to fear what this means, or
look for blame or back in the past for something
you could change. Sadly, that's one of the realities of time.
(36:19):
We can't change what brought us here. However, I do
believe in our ability to control how we interpret and
deal with our fear. So if you have acknowledged that
you may be dealing with this fear of abandonment, you've
acknowledged that or looked back at past relationships and said,
oh my god, I can clearly see now where I
(36:39):
have self sabotaged, or where I have been avoidant, or
where I have been fawning or people pleasing. That is
really valuable information, and that is information that can only
help you be better. So that first thing, acknowledge that
this is where you're at, and then examine why you
believe this. Where did you learn this belief? Where did
(37:00):
you learn this idea that everyone who loves you will leave?
So examining like the origin story, that's often a technique
used in psychotherapy where it is really useful to talk
through our current experiences and trace them back to where
they may have began and how they're still influencing what
(37:20):
is currently happening in your life. Maybe it was you
witnessed a really terrible divorce between your parents and that's
taught you that love does not last, or you found
out that your partner was cheating, and now you can't
trust people anymore. You're so fearful of this abandonment, whatever
it is. What I want you to realize is that
it is not your fault. You did not choose that
(37:43):
experience and it doesn't say anything about you either. And
more importantly, you get a decide where you go to next.
And we do this by identifying why, when, and what
triggers this reaction. In psychology, triggers are essentially events, situations,
(38:04):
things in the environment that elicit a really intense or
unexpected emotional response. So when we're talking about a fear
of abandonment, one that is common is, as we spoke
about before, a partner maybe not replying to your messages
or perhaps asking for a lone time. So the reason
that this triggers this anxiety around them leaving you is
(38:25):
because your brain is searching for patterns that serve as
warning signs based on past experiences and is telling you
to react in a certain way. That is why this
thing has so called triggered you to have this really
unexpected response. This perhaps desire to run away or to
pull this person in really closely and be really needy.
(38:48):
In that moment, you really need to stop, pause, feel,
and then rationalize is this really what's happening? Has this
person really given me any other indicator that this is
how they're feeling that they are going to leave me?
And then ask for reassurance. Instead of testing your partner
(39:09):
with emotional baiting, test them, I would say, through vulnerability
and honesty. And maybe test isn't the right word, but
I think asking for clarity and pursuing open communication seeing
how you're a partner responds to that is going to
tell you a whole lot more about the future of
your relationship or whether they're going to leave you. Then
(39:29):
withdrawing or starting a fight or pushing them away, just
have a sit down and say, hey, it makes me
really anxious when you don't reply during the day. Can
you just check in with me every now and again?
And maybe they can't do that for some reason, and
they tell you why, And the thing is is that
their reason, it's going to be much more valid and
(39:52):
much more real than the one that you're probably making
up on your head. So I think it's really important
to just tell them, tell them how you're feeling Secondly,
often a fear of abandonment can result in self abandonment.
When you are afraid of being left or dismissed, you'll
kind of do anything to make the relationship work no
matter the cost, even if this person is bad for you.
(40:14):
As a result, we can sometimes really neglect our own physical, mental, emotional, social,
spiritual needs when you meet someone. If you find you
have abandonment issues, maybe you will stop taking care of
yourself and doing the things that bring you joy and
help you live to balance life because you're prioritizing them
(40:35):
and making sure that you're not giving them any reason
to back away. So some examples are, you stop spending
time with your friends even if they're not asking you
to do that. You give up on your hobbies or
your free time for them. You neglect things like working out,
or your sleep or your self care practices. Here's the thing, though,
when you stop taking care of yourself or you engage
(40:57):
in what we call self abandonment, that really just increases
the stakes of your relationship and it makes you feel
more insecure about what might happen if the relationship were
to end, because you have nothing you care about to
fall back on. If You've sacrificed it all for maintaining
this connection. So I would say, try not to let
(41:17):
a person or a new spark overwhelm what's important to
you on an individual level. Make a really deliberate effort
to maintain the life that you love. I think additionally,
this also means that you just have less time to
worry about what they might be thinking, or to ruminate
unnecessarily on your relationship and all the things that might
(41:40):
be scary or worrying. You think. Feeling secure in the
relationship you have with yourself really allows you to feel
more secure in the bonds and the connections that you
have with others. Thirdly, remember that your feelings are not reality.
They are just feelings. Your fear is just your mind
trying to help help you out by avoiding a pain
(42:02):
you've experienced in the past. But your brain, your mind,
it can't predict the future. It's just serving as a guide.
So although you might be scared, you might feel a
lot of fear right now, Challenge those negative beliefs that
no one will ever love you. Challenge that belief that
everyone will leave you by changing the narrative and questioning
(42:24):
the evidence. Where is that feeling coming from Why do
I think this? Why do I think they don't love me?
Have they told me something that has told me this?
Has someone else told me? Have you seen it? If not,
try and realize that it's not a problem until it is.
And I know it's hard to lean into that discomfort
and the reality of not knowing, But what I always
(42:45):
say is that it's better to see what happens than
to be left with the what if of pulling away
before the relationship has had a chance to prove you
wrong or really live out its storyline. I think the
reality is is that you can't avoid being heard every
now and again, no matter how much you might try
and test people or practice avoidance or cling onto them
(43:07):
for dear life. It's kind of just part of the journey.
But I think you really need to let life surprise
you sometimes and know that whatever happens, you gave it
your best. You took a chance, you let yourself be vulnerable,
and you felt the fear and did it anyways, And
I think that is so worth it every single time. Finally,
(43:28):
I'm going to give you one more tip because this
is something that has really helped me. That is to
over communicate. Often your perception of a situation or an
event or something your partner or a friend has done
is going to be really disturbed by your own cognitive
biases and anxiety and so over communicating what you need.
(43:52):
Telling people how you feel, how you interpreted a situation
is really really important. And obviously you don't need to
jump right into your past trauma on the first date,
because we know that that is really your fear of
abandonment being activated by oversharing. But what you should do
is really reveal, with time, perhaps why you might react
(44:13):
in a certain way, why you maybe need a little
bit more reassurance than the average person, ways that your
partner can make you feel safer, And if they're a
good person, they will respond to that. I've seen it happen.
It's beautiful. They'll understand, and they'll really want to give
you that sense of security and safety. I really hope
(44:34):
that this has helped you if you've been questioning this.
There is also, I'm just going to say it, so
much that therapy can do for integrating past trauma that
might be manifesting in a fear of abandonment. I think
that therapy is amazing because there is a third party
there who can really be so valuable and interrupt that
pattern of negative and harmful beliefs or assumptions. As someone
(44:57):
who is not involved, as someone who is unbiased, so
definitely something else to think about, but as someone who
has dealt with this previously and has had really open
discussions about this in my current relationship, I'm telling you now,
it does get a lot easier, and there is someone
out there who will stay, who will meet you in
the middle, who will kind of prove that consistent love
(45:19):
and companionship does exist. So I hope that that is
a really solid, helpful, comforting reminder to finish off this episode.
I think that that is all we have time for.
But I really do hope that you enjoyed. It was
a bit of a scientific one, a little bit of
a roller coaster, but also so valuable. I think that
this is something that I hope people can come back
to if you're anxious or worried about these things, perhaps
(45:42):
again in the future. As always, if you enjoyed this episode,
please feel free to leave a five star review on
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you are listening, Go and follow
us at that Psychology podcast on Instagram if you want
to see behind the scenes or have an episode suggestion,
and you can follow me at Jemma speG if you
just want to see more personal content. We also have
(46:04):
a Patreon. It's linked in the episode description. It's a
lot of work doing this podcast, and I really do
appreciate all the support. If you do get value from
these episodes, and you're not already paying for it or
contributing or showing your support in other ways, it's just
a small way to help me out if you feel
cool to do so. So thank you so much for
tuning into this episode, and we will be back next
(46:26):
week with another one.
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
Welcome back to the podcast, Near listeners, old listeners, wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode. Today, we're tackling
a topic that I think many of us are struggling
with and maybe wouldn't even know it, and yet it
really does impact a lot of our relationships in such insidious,
(00:49):
often invisible ways. It is a very deep belief system
and anxiety that can really disturb our ability to form
meaningful connection, to love deeply, and to trust others. And
that is a fear of abandonment. I think all of
us feel that instinctual drive to avoid emotionally painful experiences
(01:14):
like being rejected or heartbroken or feeling forgotten about, and
naturally these events, the way people treat us or leave
us is quite devastating and it can leave some very
long lasting emotional scars. But it's also somewhat part of life, right.
We have to kind of come to peace with the
(01:35):
reality that not every relationship is going to last, that
people are going to leave, people are going to pass away.
So there is no way of controlling how your relationships
kind of pan out. But we can decide a how
we want to treat ourselves and be how we respond
to these unfortunate kind of events. For some of us, though,
(01:59):
we are so pa petrified of losing the ones we
love or feeling abandoned that we really cannot allow ourselves
to get close to other people. And for many of
us who are experiencing this, we know it only comes
from these experiences that we had in childhood or even
early in our romantic relationships, right when we were eighteen
(02:23):
nineteen dating for the first time, where we developed almost
an insecurity based on our experiences that everyone that we
love will leave us. And this feeling can really influence
how we approach not only our romantic connections, particularly the
people we're dating or even married to, but also our
(02:45):
interactions with people like friends, like family, like coworkers. There's
a few ways that this manifest that we're going to
speak about in this episode. I think if we have
developed this really intense fear of being abandoned by those
we love, and what the emotional consequences of that would be.
We can respond by becoming incredibly avoidant or self sabotaging
(03:09):
our relationships, becoming really emotionally numb to the world and
to opportunities for love and intimacy and connection. But then
on the flip side, a fear of abandonment is also
really closely linked to things like intense people pleasing tendencies
and clinginess and self abandonment, whereby we end up sacrificing
(03:34):
our own needs for others because we think that that
will keep them closer, that this will prevent our worst
fears from being realized, or confirming this really deep insecurity
that we are correct. People we love cannot be trusted,
We cannot trust them, they will inevitably leave us, and
(03:55):
we know that that is not true. We know that
there are so many people out there who stay in
the people's lives for decades. I feel like everyone has
at least someone like that, whether it is a parent
or a friend, or a family member or even a partner.
So I really want to break down where this unfortunate,
negative but also false belief system comes from and how
(04:17):
it's especially relevant for our twenties, because I think it's
often during this decade that we become a lot more
aware of how our past and certain events or in
some cases trauma, continue to influence us or manifest in
unhealthy relationship patterns, and that doesn't have to be our reality.
(04:38):
Often we engage in a lot of self blame for
what are very deeply ingrained emotional reactions that have emerged
from a lot of things that were beyond our control.
You know, we wonder why we can never let people
get close, or we always feel the need to start
a fight or sabotage our relationships when they begin to
(04:59):
feel too comfortable. So I really also want to provide
an explanation for why that is. You know, sometimes it's
really subtle things, or sometimes it's big things like witnessing
a divorce or having BPD early romantic experiences. But also
I think it's important that we acknowledge this anxiety, where
it comes from, and how to integrate it, how to
(05:21):
manage it. It is something that we can all definitely
heal from, So there is so much to discuss. If
you are someone who has been struggling with this and
you're trying to find a reason why you find it
so hard to trust others and connect with them. Hopefully
this episode provides you with an explanation, with some answers,
(05:42):
with somewhere to go. So without further ado, let's get
into it. Okay, So, first of all, as we do,
we need to get our basics down pat before we
jump into the theories and ideas that make up a
fear of abandonment. I think typical of psychology terms that
(06:05):
gain very general societal notoriety and popularity. Sometimes the truth
about ideas like a fear of abandonment can become misconstrued
and leading to people becoming also somewhat misinformed or at
times confused or excluded from a definition or from a
(06:26):
narrative around a certain issue. And that's really not ideal
because I think there are so many of us, especially
in our twenties, as we enter into our first really
serious long term relationships, or where we start to encounter
things like death for a lot of us, or friendship
groups falling apart. Often what we do is we question
some of our past experiences. We are undergoing this very
(06:50):
real emotional battle at times between our primary instinct for
love and security and a much deeper fear of being
hurt or discarded by someone we feel really connected to.
So firstly, it's important to note that a fear of abandonment,
(07:10):
it's not a recognized mental health condition. You know, your
doctor unfortunately is not going to be able to give
you a diagnosis and a cure and send you on
your way, because it's a lot more nuanced than that. Instead,
psychology has kind of come to see this as a
type of anxiety in which we feel this overwhelming yet
(07:34):
often unwanted and unwarranted fear that the people we love
will leave us, and so we react in somewhat irrational ways,
perhaps sabotaging our relationships, pulling away so that people don't
have the chance to hurt us, or feeling a really
(07:54):
intense need to be close to people at all times,
perhaps sometimes also transforming into codependency. Actually, the thing is
that a fear of abandonment, although it's not a recognized
mental health condition, it's really really closely linked to a
bunch of other concepts that we have discussed on the show,
(08:16):
things like emotional unavailability and hyperindependence, even a social phobia.
But it differs in that it's primary function on an
emotional level. The primary function of this fear of abandonment
is to help us avoid the pain of being rejected, dismissed,
(08:37):
or let down. And it's not so much a fear
of general social interaction or even intimacy, but a fear
of what will happen when these things we deeply value
are taken away, What is going to occur in their absence.
Another distinction is that this fear of abandonment it shows
(08:58):
up in all of our relations, not just our romantic ones.
I think we typically think about abandonment issues when it
comes to dating, but people will experience this type of
anxiety and worry for their friendships as well. They'll worry
that their friends will leave them, they worry about what
will happen if their family members, something happens to their
(09:20):
family members or even co workers or acquaintances, or being
rejected or abandoned by entire social circles, which we know
is quite irrational. But I would say the reason that
we think about it a lot in terms of romantic
connections is because for many of us, these fears of
(09:41):
being abandoned aren't really fully realized until we enter into
our first or second romantic relationship. That's because I think,
unlike friendships or family, romantic relationships really take on this
whole new level of of emotional closeness and expected intimacy
(10:04):
and vulnerability. The stakes are a lot higher. The risk
of being hurt really increases with each kind of moment
and memory where you get closer. Typically also because we
often have more than one friend or more than one
family member, but we only have one partner, and we
are often naturally incredibly bonded to the people who fill
(10:27):
this role in our life. And so I think everyone
is going to experience this fear on some level that
one day they may find this person they love drifting
away or outright, you know, leaving them having to mend
a broken heart. And as humans, like I mentioned before,
one of our primary instinctual drives is to avoid pain,
(10:51):
and often we think of that selectively to just mean
physical pain or injury. But we know from countless countless
study is that certain emotional experiences can also manifest in
the body. And it's a concept known as psychogenic pain,
whereby when we are exposed to psychological distress or emotional
(11:13):
distress that can actually manifest in very real physical discomfort
and suffering. So I think that reason is why a
lot of us do relate to having a heightened anxiety
over the possibility of being abandoned or left by someone.
And I think if you don't have that anxiety at times,
(11:34):
if you're someone who you know kind of approaches your
relationships like everyone is replaceable, no one can ever hurt me,
that is equally as unhealthy. I also want to say
that this reaction, especially when it gets to a really
intense fear of abandonment, it is neither intentional, nor is
it voluntary. It is not an opt in situation. No
(11:57):
one is looking to experience. It's more anxiety than they
already are. But also it almost consistently emerges from situations
that are outside of our control, that have influenced us
on a somewhat unconscious level, and then begin to manifest
in certain behaviors and tendencies that really interrupt our ability
(12:20):
to connect people with abandonment issues, fears, whatever we want
to call them, They're not going to experience that in
the same way. It's not always going to be identical.
So there are actually four different types of profiles or
archetypes of people who are experiencing abandonment wounds, or who
are fearful of abandonment. So there's the saboteur, the needy,
(12:44):
the avoidance, and the serial data. And sometimes all of
these can operate within one person, but let's break them
down one by one. So the saboteur is someone who
undermines their own relationships to try and identify faults and
push people away before they get hurt. Often when that happens,
they'll blame the other person. They'll blame their friends or
(13:07):
their string of partners. They'll say that they're toxic or problematic,
rather than really closely examining what this pattern of behavior
says about their own emotional wounds. Right that they're actually
sabotaging these relationships, perhaps subconsciously, because that way these people
can never leave them if they leave first. So the
(13:28):
next is the needy or the clingy, and this is
someone who often displays behavior that is very similar to
someone in the early stages of codependency. Right, so getting
close to someone incredibly quickly, perhaps sharing too many intimate
details about themselves too soon, or really wanting to reach
certain milestones like exclusivity or applying labels really early on.
(13:52):
And they do this in hopes of kind of fast
tracking a relationship to provide them with the sense of
security before they truly do actually start to trust this person.
It's kind of like the false pretense of okay, well,
if we have this label, if they have reassured me
that we're exclusive, if they're not sleeping with other people,
they're not going to leave me. And this will provide
(14:16):
me kind of with the structure in which I can
actually start to build a relationship with this person after
they've already provided me the reassurance that we are in
that point. The next is the avoidant, and the avoidant
will almost abstain, particularly from intimate, vulnerable relationships, or close
friendships entirely. They may pull away from family members or
(14:38):
certain social circles because they are so fearful of being
hurt or disappointed. If they pull away first, much like
the saboteur, then they will have the power and agency.
That's kind of what they're telling themselves. Basically, they're saying,
what you know, very similar to the saboteur, I cannot
be abandoned if I make the decision first. So therefore,
(15:00):
although it's going to leave me in the same position
of not having these people around or feeling lonely. At
least I'm in control here. At least I'm not going
to be surprised. And finally we have the serial data.
Also similar to the saboteur, this person will cycle through
relationships friendships quite quickly, but they'll find themselves not really
(15:26):
getting attached in the same way that the saboteur does. Instead,
what they're really choosing to do is soothe their abandonment
wound with new people, right, so they might fall in
love pretty quickly. The relationship ends, perhaps because of sabotage,
perhaps because of something else, and instead of really acknowledging
(15:47):
that that really hurts, instead of acknowledging that perhaps this
is really unfortunate and really deeply painful, they will find
someone else to heal them rather than really acknowledging why
they find this so particularly distressing. So I would say
that something that's really important is that none of these
(16:08):
types of individuals associated with abandonment issues are bad people.
It's really important to remember that there should be really
no shame in admitting that perhaps you have historically approach
relationships like this, or that this is how you continue
to approach relationships. Because I would say A, so much
(16:29):
of why you are this person is out of our control,
which we'll discuss in a second. But B I think
if you're afraid to correctly identify ways in which your
actions are perhaps maladaptive, you'll actually just prolong these experiences
and it's not going to lead to any changes. Outside
of these very high level archetypes, there are some other
(16:50):
core behaviors that I just want to quickly dive into
a little bit deeper. So we spoke about cycling through relationships.
Some of us who are facing a fear of abandonment
may want to engage in numerous, consistent, shallow relationships. We're
afraid to ever let someone truly see the ugly, vulnerable,
(17:10):
scared side of us, so we protect this part of us.
We never let anyone see that, because if they do
leave us, we can always comfort ourselves with the knowledge
that this person really never really knew us that deeply.
So that is very similar to a fear of intimacy.
And often the reason we cycle through relationships, particularly shallow ones,
(17:33):
is because we find a reason to leave them before
the other person can leave us. We talked about sabotaging relationships,
but there's this other interesting term called emotional baiting. So
this is where we attempt to create situations that elicit
a particular emotional reaction from a partner, either positive or negative. So,
(17:54):
in psychology, emotional baiting is actually used to describe certain
narcissistic tendencies that are inherently very manipulative and attention seeking.
But in this case that is not accurate, right, That
is not why people are beating their partners or beating
someone in their life. This behavior actually represents something a
lot more vulnerable. It reveals a part of us that
(18:16):
really needs love. So what we're doing when we emotionally
bait people in our lives, you know, by starting fights,
by withdrawing, by saying things we don't mean, is we're
really testing them to see if they will leave us.
So for people with the fear of abandonment, this is
a slightly counterintuitive way of building trust. It's interesting because
(18:40):
in these moments, we're not trying to endanger our relationship, right,
It's not all about self sabotage. In fact, I think
these behaviors are almost a sign of how much we
want these relationships to last. Hence why we're really subconsciously
testing them to see if the other person is genuine
and if they will stay, and if what they're saying
(19:01):
is true. We really want to entrench ourselves further and
feel that deeper level of vulnerability and intimacy. But before
we can do that, we need to be like one
hundred percent short that this is not going to end badly,
that this person is not going to withdraw from us.
(19:21):
So we kind of become our worst selves to test them,
to really push them and then closely watch their response.
The next thing is clinging to unhealthy relationships. Some people
with abandonment issues, there's been research to show that they
might stay in relationships that aren't good for them even
when they have a desire to leave. I think that's
(19:43):
because the fear of being alone is a lot more powerful,
and they often perceive it to be safer to pursue
someone who cannot provide them the emotional connection that they need,
because instinctually they know that they'll never get too close.
I would say that this is actually really it's kind
of a way that our brain, or our fear of
abandonment tricks us because we know, based on principles of
(20:07):
attachment and familiarity and proximity. That the more time we
spend with someone, even if we are trying our hardest,
the more bonded we will become. So it's actually quite dangerous,
I think, to pursue relationships with people you think won't
hurt you in order to protect yourself, because that might
actually really backfire and further entrench your fear around abandonment. Finally,
(20:30):
we have needing constant reassurance. This is what I've experienced
a lot, especially in my current relationship who and you know,
my partner is incredible, he is beautiful. But no matter
how much I think love and attention you give someone,
especially someone who's maybe had past experiences where they've been
let down, you kind of always have this fear that
(20:53):
they're lying to you or that they're going to change
their mind. So you really consistently regularly require them to
confirm and reassure you that they're not going anywhere, that yes,
they still love you, No, they're not annoyed, they're not
mad at you, they're not going to leave you. It
kind of also can sometimes result in what we call
fawning behavior, right, So that's also really closely related to
(21:16):
people pleasing tendencies where when we fawn. When we try
and please someone, what we're doing is constantly trying to
make this person happy, sometimes at our own expense, by
being really excessively generous, affectionate, or passive or agreeable as
do not give them a reason to leave us, and
that can often result in us actually neglecting our own
(21:40):
needs or becoming really hyper sensitive to things like conflict
or criticisms, small disagreements that are really natural in any relationship,
but we see them as a thread because they undermine
our sense of security. Small things like that if you
are someone who has previously been in relationships where people
have given a taken love very inconsistently, or you've been
(22:03):
raised with very inconsistent parents, small things like arguments, like
little disagreements, they trigger an alarm in our brain, one
that has a very low threshold, because we have become
hypervigilant towards anything that may indicate that the other person
has a reason to disappear. That is why we need
that reassurance. That is why we may become quite passive,
(22:25):
because we want to keep the peace. We really want
to make sure that they have no reason to need
to walk away, and if they do that would be
our fault. One thing that's really interesting to me is
how some of these behaviors that are very deeply associated
with a fear of abandonment have become kind of romanticized
(22:46):
in society, especially around pop culture and places like TikTok
or Instagram. Particularly. What we're seeing is this like idealization
of a very avoidant, detached approach to romantic connection. So
trends around being heartless or how to stay detached and
cold in the early stages of relationship, how to get
(23:07):
people obsessed with you, to appear emotionless and untouchable, you know.
The heartless one in particular, really really worries me because
when we examine that deeper, I don't actually think that
having no emotion towards people at all is a particularly
healthy thing. It also, in some ways is very thinly
veiled abandonment issues. I think that if you've been through
(23:30):
an experience where you've been left really like absolutely demolished
and heartbroken or just so hurt and betrayed by someone,
we kind of go the complete opposite way, and we
like to appear emotionless or in some ways convince ourselves
that this is a person we can be when really
what it is manifesting is our fear of abandonment. Subconsciously,
(23:54):
our minds want to avoid another situation like that, so
they take the experience and they reverse all the behaviors
that perhaps put you in that previous situation, so that
you act differently, and sometimes you act in a way
that's really counter to your desires or even your overwell
well being. This really links to where a fear of
abandonment comes from, which is what I want to discuss next.
(24:17):
So generally psychologists attribute a fear of abandonment to the
experiences and beliefs that we have internalized as children. So
as a child, if you are denied really basic fundamental
comforts like physical affection, emotional connection, and safety, we learn
not to trust the permanence of these things in adulthood,
(24:39):
and what that results in is a very dysfunctional and
insecure attachment style. In this case, often it's an avoidant
or anxious attachment style. We're worried people will withdraw their love,
so we become extremely stressed and panicked either drawing them
in and really wanting to hold onto them or completely
(25:00):
removing ourselves. First traumatic events in childhood as well can
really disrupt this sense that our relationships with people will
be sustained even if there's distance. That is something that
a child has to learn. It's called object constancy. Basically,
what that means is that even if your parent leaves
you at daycare or leaves you at school for the afternoon,
(25:22):
they are a going to come back and be the
relationship is going to be the same. But you know,
events like a divorce or injury, or the death of
a parent or a caregiver, they're really significant and they
really disrupt the development of this really fundamental cognition. So
although we know that this person didn't intentionally leave us
(25:43):
or mean to hurt us, we still really feel the
intensity of their absence, and we rationalize that if we'd
just been a lot less closer to them, if we
had loved them less, we would be in less pain.
And so the logic follows that to avoid future pain,
avoid future connection. So that's one of the origins because
(26:03):
as we know, healthy human development really requires those physical
and emotional needs being met, and during childhood that often
comes from our parents, but during adulthood it can come
from a broader range of personal and romantic relationships. I
say this all the time, but something that I think
psychology as a field really needs to investigate more is
(26:26):
the impact of early romantic experiences on later romantic and
emotional wellbeing and also dating specifically, how do we go
on to form healthy relationships and seek out the right
people based on what we were kind of taught that
love was. I think often the research and attachment style
really only goes one way. But I also think that
(26:49):
it's really important to acknowledge that, you know, although maybe
your first relationship was when you were young, maybe seventeen eighteen,
even younger, that's still going to have a really, really
foundational impact. That is because, as these cognitive scientists at
MIT have explained, we experience peak mental processing and memory
(27:09):
power at around eighteen to nineteen, and that kind of
tapers off the older we get, but it is around
that time I'm going to say, like a bracket of
seventeen to twenty one, that we experience a lot of
first you know, our first love, our first breakup, our
first kiss, and that's all occurring during a period where
(27:30):
we are still developing but also absorbing information and memories
at a crazy pace. So for some people, a particularly
painful relationship. Perhaps you dated someone who cheated on you
or treated you poorly, or lied or left suddenly. That
is going to be a core experience that makes you
(27:51):
really fearful of situations that could recreate that pain in
the future. And from that we see abandonment issues being born,
and they're really maintained by that cycle we spoke about
before of hypervigilance of self sabotage of avoidance. Abandonment issues
can also stem from a really intense fear of loneliness.
(28:12):
But also it's quite closely linked to borderline personality disorder. Now,
this podcast is not a place for self diagnosing mental
health conditions, so I just want to make that really
really clear. But I think that we cannot talk about
abandonment issues without talking about BPD because they are so
closely aligned in a lot of people's minds. So BPD,
(28:35):
if you haven't heard about it before, it's a mental
health disorder characterized by a lot of symptoms, mainly really
chronic challenges with maintaining healthy relationships, feelings of low self worth, impulsivity,
really volatile moods. This disorder is often really hallmarked by
a pattern of very unstable personal relationships, and what that
(28:58):
means is that a fear of abandonment is also often
a really big part of the lives of those who
are impacted by BPD. It's also really one of the
most common symptoms that we will see. There's really no
kind of solid explanation that can be given as to
why this is, but according to a number of psychologists
and psychiatrists, the fear of being abandoned often causes people
(29:22):
with BPD to form unhealthy attachments. Sometimes they can abruptly
cut off these relationships, effectively abandoning their partners, and other
times they make really frantic attempts to hold onto the relationship.
And it's this overly, I think it's quite intense or
erratic behavior that is what causes them to push loved
(29:44):
ones away, makes it harder to have those stable relationships
like we talked about, but also heightens that fear around
abandonment because there is a cycle of perhaps very difficult
interpersonal connections, interactions and experiences. Everyone with abandonment issues, though,
has BPD. Let's really make sure that's quite clear. BPD
(30:06):
is a separate condition that just has some overlap with
this unique type of anxiety, and like we said, before
fearing abandonment. It's going to show up very differently. It's
going to come from very different experiences. But what I
want to talk about is what is kind of the
long term prognosis here, and how can we push past
(30:26):
our fear of being rejected or disappointed or abandoned. How
can we kind of break out of our self sabotaging
patterns or our avoidant behaviors to really trust and to
really love people. So we're going to talk about all
of that and more after this short break. I think
(30:51):
a lot of us are struggling with this in very
invisible ways, often because I really don't think we want
to admit this very vulnerable in security, this really vulnerable
belief that we don't think anyone will ever stay, or
anyone will ever love us enough to not abandon us.
I think the reason we don't want to admit that
is because we think that that says something about us,
(31:14):
And we also are worried that what if we continue
to be proven right? What if we admit this to someone,
maybe a friend or a partner, whoever it may be,
and they still leave. The thing is something I really
want to make quite clear. A fear of abandonment has
nothing to do with your quality and beauty as a
human or the kind of depth of your soul of
(31:36):
what you bring to other people. It really has no
correlation with how people choose to treat you or have
treated you in the past. Often, I think if we've
experienced a number of really painful events or instances of
withdrawal or where someone we thought would love us forever
has abandoned us, we convince ourselves that we must be
(31:56):
the common denominator, that there is something that we are
doing wrong, and that can become like we've explored a
bit of a self fulfilling prophecy, whereby the behaviors we
adopt to seemingly protect us, or the ones that we
use as defense mechanisms, have an opposite effect of actually
further removing us from situations in which someone could maybe
(32:19):
prove you wrong. A fear of abandonment in that way
is so subconscious, and so it's going to continue to
operate unless we a acknowledge it and be really get
to the root cause or address this pattern so that
we don't see that typical repeated timeline in relationships. This cycle,
this timeline it's characterized by a few major things right
(32:42):
that inability to fully commit. The heightened emotions and anxiety
is the relationship becomes more serious. Sometimes we have that
emotional baiting or testing and finally self sabotage or withdrawal.
There was this really good example that I found which
I think some this up really well, and I think
a typical relationship of involving someone with abandonment issues might
(33:06):
go through some of the following stages. So you start
off in the early days. At this point, it's all
really fun, you feel really safe, You're not really emotionally
invested yet, so you kind of continue to live your
life whilst also really enjoying time with them. I think
at this point we're not worried about abandonment, we're not
(33:26):
really in that mind frame yet. Then we have a
honeymoon phase, and this is where you choose to commit.
You kind of maybe overlook some of your anxiety, You
overlook some of the red flags. You suppress some of
those emotional wounds because you feel embarrassed by them. You
don't want to admit them to your new partner, your
new boyfriend or girlfriend, and you do in some ways
(33:48):
feel really secure because this person has offered you exclusivity
or a commitment, and you're not yet so emotionally invested
that those fears are starting to really bubble up. And
then you become partners. As things get more serious, things
get in the way. You know, relationships are sometimes quite hard.
(34:08):
People have bad days, work gets really annoying, you have
to cancel plans, you worry about money, and something really
small might occur. And an example of this is, for example,
an unanswered text message or an unreturned phone call. To
most people, I think that this is really normal, right,
they might find a different reason. They might give themselves
(34:32):
a rational explanation for why this is happening. They're at
work their phone instead, they just haven't gotten around to
replying to me. They're busy. But if you're someone who
already has that initial anxiety or bias that this person
is going to leave you, you're probably really going to
battle really hard internally about how to respond, because to you,
(34:52):
in your state of hypervigilance, that is a really big
sign that they might be going to leave you. That
is a sign that they pulling away. And although quite
rationally and objectively, someone else might look at that and say, well,
that's ridiculous. You have this fear response that's become deeply ingrained.
So some people handle that by becoming really clingy, really
(35:13):
insistent and demanding, and other people also just withdraw at
that first sign of difficulty or what they interpret to
be a sign that they're about to be left or
broken up with. They make the first move, but they're
making the first move with false information, with information that
is coming from a subjective bias or a place of fear.
(35:37):
So how do we prevent our fear of abandonment from
doing this from really interrupting these healthy, beautiful connections. I'm
going to give you a few tips, both from personal
experience and then some more clinical advice that you know
a therapist or a psychologist might give you. Number one,
and I think this is something everyone listening is already doing,
(35:57):
but you kind of need to shake hands with who
you are at this point and where you're at and
acknowledge that this is something that you're dealing with. I
think you need to approach it really objectively, so no
self pity, try not to fear what this means, or
look for blame or back in the past for something
you could change. Sadly, that's one of the realities of time.
(36:19):
We can't change what brought us here. However, I do
believe in our ability to control how we interpret and
deal with our fear. So if you have acknowledged that
you may be dealing with this fear of abandonment, you've
acknowledged that or looked back at past relationships and said,
oh my god, I can clearly see now where I
(36:39):
have self sabotaged, or where I have been avoidant, or
where I have been fawning or people pleasing. That is
really valuable information, and that is information that can only
help you be better. So that first thing, acknowledge that
this is where you're at, and then examine why you
believe this. Where did you learn this belief? Where did
(37:00):
you learn this idea that everyone who loves you will leave?
So examining like the origin story, that's often a technique
used in psychotherapy where it is really useful to talk
through our current experiences and trace them back to where
they may have began and how they're still influencing what
(37:20):
is currently happening in your life. Maybe it was you
witnessed a really terrible divorce between your parents and that's
taught you that love does not last, or you found
out that your partner was cheating, and now you can't
trust people anymore. You're so fearful of this abandonment, whatever
it is. What I want you to realize is that
it is not your fault. You did not choose that
(37:43):
experience and it doesn't say anything about you either. And
more importantly, you get a decide where you go to next.
And we do this by identifying why, when, and what
triggers this reaction. In psychology, triggers are essentially events, situations,
(38:04):
things in the environment that elicit a really intense or
unexpected emotional response. So when we're talking about a fear
of abandonment, one that is common is, as we spoke
about before, a partner maybe not replying to your messages
or perhaps asking for a lone time. So the reason
that this triggers this anxiety around them leaving you is
(38:25):
because your brain is searching for patterns that serve as
warning signs based on past experiences and is telling you
to react in a certain way. That is why this
thing has so called triggered you to have this really
unexpected response. This perhaps desire to run away or to
pull this person in really closely and be really needy.
(38:48):
In that moment, you really need to stop, pause, feel,
and then rationalize is this really what's happening? Has this
person really given me any other indicator that this is
how they're feeling that they are going to leave me?
And then ask for reassurance. Instead of testing your partner
(39:09):
with emotional baiting, test them, I would say, through vulnerability
and honesty. And maybe test isn't the right word, but
I think asking for clarity and pursuing open communication seeing
how you're a partner responds to that is going to
tell you a whole lot more about the future of
your relationship or whether they're going to leave you. Then
(39:29):
withdrawing or starting a fight or pushing them away, just
have a sit down and say, hey, it makes me
really anxious when you don't reply during the day. Can
you just check in with me every now and again?
And maybe they can't do that for some reason, and
they tell you why, And the thing is is that
their reason, it's going to be much more valid and
(39:52):
much more real than the one that you're probably making
up on your head. So I think it's really important
to just tell them, tell them how you're feeling Secondly,
often a fear of abandonment can result in self abandonment.
When you are afraid of being left or dismissed, you'll
kind of do anything to make the relationship work no
matter the cost, even if this person is bad for you.
(40:14):
As a result, we can sometimes really neglect our own physical, mental, emotional, social,
spiritual needs when you meet someone. If you find you
have abandonment issues, maybe you will stop taking care of
yourself and doing the things that bring you joy and
help you live to balance life because you're prioritizing them
(40:35):
and making sure that you're not giving them any reason
to back away. So some examples are, you stop spending
time with your friends even if they're not asking you
to do that. You give up on your hobbies or
your free time for them. You neglect things like working out,
or your sleep or your self care practices. Here's the thing, though,
when you stop taking care of yourself or you engage
(40:57):
in what we call self abandonment, that really just increases
the stakes of your relationship and it makes you feel
more insecure about what might happen if the relationship were
to end, because you have nothing you care about to
fall back on. If You've sacrificed it all for maintaining
this connection. So I would say, try not to let
(41:17):
a person or a new spark overwhelm what's important to
you on an individual level. Make a really deliberate effort
to maintain the life that you love. I think additionally,
this also means that you just have less time to
worry about what they might be thinking, or to ruminate
unnecessarily on your relationship and all the things that might
(41:40):
be scary or worrying. You think. Feeling secure in the
relationship you have with yourself really allows you to feel
more secure in the bonds and the connections that you
have with others. Thirdly, remember that your feelings are not reality.
They are just feelings. Your fear is just your mind
trying to help help you out by avoiding a pain
(42:02):
you've experienced in the past. But your brain, your mind,
it can't predict the future. It's just serving as a guide.
So although you might be scared, you might feel a
lot of fear right now, Challenge those negative beliefs that
no one will ever love you. Challenge that belief that
everyone will leave you by changing the narrative and questioning
(42:24):
the evidence. Where is that feeling coming from Why do
I think this? Why do I think they don't love me?
Have they told me something that has told me this?
Has someone else told me? Have you seen it? If not,
try and realize that it's not a problem until it is.
And I know it's hard to lean into that discomfort
and the reality of not knowing, But what I always
(42:45):
say is that it's better to see what happens than
to be left with the what if of pulling away
before the relationship has had a chance to prove you
wrong or really live out its storyline. I think the
reality is is that you can't avoid being heard every
now and again, no matter how much you might try
and test people or practice avoidance or cling onto them
(43:07):
for dear life. It's kind of just part of the journey.
But I think you really need to let life surprise
you sometimes and know that whatever happens, you gave it
your best. You took a chance, you let yourself be vulnerable,
and you felt the fear and did it anyways, And
I think that is so worth it every single time. Finally,
(43:28):
I'm going to give you one more tip because this
is something that has really helped me. That is to
over communicate. Often your perception of a situation or an
event or something your partner or a friend has done
is going to be really disturbed by your own cognitive
biases and anxiety and so over communicating what you need.
(43:52):
Telling people how you feel, how you interpreted a situation
is really really important. And obviously you don't need to
jump right into your past trauma on the first date,
because we know that that is really your fear of
abandonment being activated by oversharing. But what you should do
is really reveal, with time, perhaps why you might react
(44:13):
in a certain way, why you maybe need a little
bit more reassurance than the average person, ways that your
partner can make you feel safer, And if they're a
good person, they will respond to that. I've seen it happen.
It's beautiful. They'll understand, and they'll really want to give
you that sense of security and safety. I really hope
(44:34):
that this has helped you if you've been questioning this.
There is also, I'm just going to say it, so
much that therapy can do for integrating past trauma that
might be manifesting in a fear of abandonment. I think
that therapy is amazing because there is a third party
there who can really be so valuable and interrupt that
pattern of negative and harmful beliefs or assumptions. As someone
(44:57):
who is not involved, as someone who is unbiased, so
definitely something else to think about, but as someone who
has dealt with this previously and has had really open
discussions about this in my current relationship, I'm telling you now,
it does get a lot easier, and there is someone
out there who will stay, who will meet you in
the middle, who will kind of prove that consistent love
(45:19):
and companionship does exist. So I hope that that is
a really solid, helpful, comforting reminder to finish off this episode.
I think that that is all we have time for.
But I really do hope that you enjoyed. It was
a bit of a scientific one, a little bit of
a roller coaster, but also so valuable. I think that
this is something that I hope people can come back
to if you're anxious or worried about these things, perhaps
(45:42):
again in the future. As always, if you enjoyed this episode,
please feel free to leave a five star review on
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you are listening, Go and follow
us at that Psychology podcast on Instagram if you want
to see behind the scenes or have an episode suggestion,
and you can follow me at Jemma speG if you
just want to see more personal content. We also have
(46:04):
a Patreon. It's linked in the episode description. It's a
lot of work doing this podcast, and I really do
appreciate all the support. If you do get value from
these episodes, and you're not already paying for it or
contributing or showing your support in other ways, it's just
a small way to help me out if you feel
cool to do so. So thank you so much for
tuning into this episode, and we will be back next
(46:26):
week with another one.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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