- What is abandonment?
- What is abandonment syndrome?
- How do abandonment and the feelings of abandonment occur?
- How does abandonment relate to attachment?
- Abandonment and abandonment syndrome
- The feeling of abandonment and general feelings of abandonment
- Attachment problems, stress, anxiety, depression and grief
- Adult-child and inner-child problems
Abandonment problems, couples therapy, psychotherapy and grief therapy
Do you know that?
- The fear of being let down or abandoned
- The fear of being rejected and discarded
- The worry of not being good enough and accepted or vulnerable and powerless
- Difficulty feeling yourself and expressing thoughts and feelings
- Problems with speaking up or taking care of one’s own needs and boundaries
- Challenges with identity, self-esteem, involvement, relationships and relationships
- The shame of oneself and being alone or feeling empty and lonely
- The urge to free oneself from the past and the old patterns
- The longing for closeness, security, peace, joy, love and self-love
What is abandonment?
Abandonment comes from French, where ‘abandon’ can be translated as something like abandoned or neglected. In psychology, we understand it as greater or lesser early failures or violations in connection with the primary caregivers. Failure that can leave a mark on the mind like abandonment and affect our behavior and reaction patterns as well as attachment style, contact ability and relationship skills as adults. For some it is relatively unproblematic and for many others it can lead to feelings of abandonment, themes of abandonment, problems of abandonment or abandonment syndromes to a greater or lesser extent, which can manifest as psychological challenges, pain, emptiness and relationship addiction or relationship addiction as well as social problems in close relationships and at study or the job. This is a very common problem that you cannot avoid running into on a daily basis – either because you yourself contain the dynamics of abandonment or because you meet others who have a theme of abandonment. It is so common, as Steele and his wife Miriam write in their post in the book What Is Parenthood?, that even sensitive caregivers only get it right 50% of the time. Along these lines, the now deceased and recommended family therapist Virginia Satir is quoted as saying that 96% of all homes are dysfunctional.
Abandonment, family, relationships and couples therapy
Abandonment can, for example, be about the psychosocial problems and failure we all experience to a greater or lesser extent in childhood. Most often within the first three years of life or later, when we as children are insatiable, dependent on and developed through contact, mirroring and interaction with our caregivers. The feeling of abandonment can, for example, arise when we as children are unexpectedly, repeatedly or irregularly let down or left in a vulnerable situation by the caregivers for a short or longer period of time. Either because the caregiver must temporarily shift focus and presence or because the caregiver leaves the child in other ways due to gaps in parenting ability. Abandonment trauma can also occur earlier – prenatally or during birth.
Feeling of abandonment or neglect
The caregivers may have been busy, stressed, tired or angry for many other reasons than just the child. They may also have been in crisis or for other reasons had enough of themselves and found it difficult to accept themselves as others. Since the child’s thinking, abstraction and mentalizing skills are not sufficiently developed, the child does not see and understand the adults’ world, behavior and reactions. They simply feel it as a serious rejection of them as a person and then think it must have something to do with them. It creates more or less conscious concerns that they must have done something wrong or that they themselves are wrong. This can lead to early beliefs such as ‘I’m not important’, ‘I’m not valuable’, ‘I can’t do anything right’, ‘I’m wrong’ or ‘I’m not worth loving’. These beliefs can lead to rules of living such as ‘I must get attention’, ‘I need to earn love’, ‘I must not make mistakes’, ‘I must be nice and perfect’ or ‘I must manage myself’.
Abandonment and love
With very few exceptions, all parents love their children. Even if they were not planned or if the parents wanted a child of a different gender. Not all parents are always and equally able to meet the child. Themes of abandonment can thus arise in the event of illness, psychological problems, substance abuse issues, divorce and death. Abandonment problems can also arise from physical separation in the form of travel, secondment, placement outside the home, adoption or due to study and work. Relational psychological treatment in the form of couple therapy supports a healing of the inner child and a strengthening of the inner caring parent and creates healing and growth through the internal relationship with oneself and the external relationship with the partner and/or therapist.
An attachment problem
The feeling of abandonment also arises from an emotional distancing or distant attachment, where the child does not experience sufficient support, closeness or unconditional love. The feeling of abandonment can also be rooted in religious conditions, ideological conditions, norms, living rules and rules of the game in the childhood home, whereby the child learns to disregard his own perceptions, thoughts, feelings, needs and boundaries in order to make himself lovable and not to be rejected or ostracized – to stay alive. Some children thereby become prematurely adults and responsible or perhaps even overresponsible – the adult-child problem. The child thereby learns an early form of distancing, dissociation and self-annihilation. Regardless, it is an attachment problem, where the feeling of abandonment and a possible abandonment syndrome is rooted in the child not being seen, cared for and loved sufficiently and in the way it wants. When we as children are not met and mirrored sufficiently, we become insecure about ourselves and our right to exist, since it is through the mirror that we meet ourselves and develop. It can result in a chronic feeling of abandonment and insecurity as well as a negative self-image with a constant search for oneself and to become normal or like the others. It can cause existential doubts about the right to be loved, to be and to exist. Even if, as young people and adults, you are perfectly functional and high-performing on the surface. Psychotherapy and couples therapy are thus largely about mirroring and affect regulation as well as learning to feel one’s own feelings, needs and boundaries. As self-esteem grows, assertiveness and assertive communication are simultaneously worked on, so that submissive and aggressive behavior is turned into an equal adult-to-adult transaction in an ok-ok relationship. Psychotherapy and couple therapy thus support you to come home to yourself and find your authentic and true self at the same time as you learn to regulate your own needs in the relationship and other close relationships – self-regulation. If you have challenges in your relationship and wonder whether you are to some extent overresponsible, indulgent or codependent, you can take a free adult-child test.
Everyone knows it and can develop through psychotherapy and couples therapy
Feelings of abandonment and abandonment syndromes are thus something that most of us harbor to one degree or another. Everyone has experienced being dependent, vulnerable and abandoned. No one likes to be rejected and it always hurts or brings back memories. Also for those who come from well-functioning families. It does not have to be a bad childhood, bad parents or neglect. It also exists in good and well-functioning homes. It is more about an unattainable or emotionally absent contact with, for example, the father or the mother. They may love the child, have been present and function, but be emotionally dead or absent – this is also called a dead mother complex. On the other hand, there could also have been a form of over-involvement on the part of the caregivers, where the child thus could not have room for his own feelings, needs or boundaries in the contact and relationship, with which the child ended up setting himself aside for the caregivers and on the caregivers’ premises. It may have arisen because of good faith or because of the caregiver’s own challenge with abandonment, boundaries, self-regulation and attachment. It may also have arisen because the caregivers in contact with the child have taken care of their own needs to a greater extent than the child’s needs or because they have satisfied their own needs through contact with the child. Abandonment and attachment are therefore an important topic in psychology, relationship formation and couple therapy. Psychotherapy and couples therapy are therefore not only about crisis management, but at least as much about healing, development and prevention.
Experiences, reactions and couples therapy
At various times in our lives, we may feel left behind, failed, insignificant, wrong, unloved, unwanted, discarded or rejected. Regardless of whether we are or not, it will be experienced that way. It can take the form of a major or minor trauma in the body and mind. Rejection and failure have a biological effect on our brain in that, neurologically speaking, a hormonal effect is created on the brain’s pain centers – abandonment and abandonment can therefore be experienced as real pain. The pain can take the form of an emotional imprint in, e.g. amygdala, which is the brain’s emotional memory and warning system, and affect our attachment, stress, survival and reaction patterns such as fight, flight and freeze. To a lesser or greater degree, as you see it in people who have stress, short temper, PTSD or battle-brain. When we are not aware of this in the relationship or when we impulsively act on our emotions in marriage, we become trapped in our reaction patterns and need couple therapy. Some wait too long to seek couples therapy and risk becoming addicted to arguments, strife and rejection. Others withdraw, push the partner away, develop techniques to not feel the pain or resort to various forms of abuse to soothe the pain.
Abandonment and human-beings or human-doings
Lonely joy is only half joy.
Lonely sorrow is double sorrow.
Grethe Heltberg
We are not always aware of what it is about and where it comes from, due to the creative adaptation and the psychological defenses. Many feel it simply as restlessness, sadness and emptiness or a tightness and pain in the stomach, chest or throat. It can also feel like a deep, heavy and diffuse pain, guilt, shame or sadness. It is difficult to be in, accommodate and process without outside help via interpersonal psychotherapy, relational psychological treatment in the form of couple therapy or grief treatment in the form of relational grief therapy. Most people try to hide their face, pain and true identity – this can result in them building an unconscious wall around themselves, making themselves strong or independent and thus creating distance themselves. Many find it difficult to simply be and to be, rather than to do and be something in the form of a facade and self-staging. It can create a neurotic and soothing or fear- and escape-based behavior that at best displaces the problem and at worst exacerbates it. In this way, you talk about human-doings versus human-beings, as well as an underlying fear of being seen through and exposed. Many therefore keep up the facade and smile on the outside, even if they are crying inside. Partly to keep it going and partly because they find it very difficult to cry alone – many thus find great help in crying together with the therapist. The way out is thus through. Not above or beyond. To begin to recognize, remember, feel and acknowledge yourself, your feelings, your past and your current behaviour. To feel and contain the loss, the pain, the shame and the grief. To grieve and to cry out loud – it is a great sorrow to be abandoned and an even greater sorrow to leave oneself. To travel from grief to care as well as love and self-love. Reconciling and forgiving yourself, first and foremost. Next, your caregivers if you can. Living through the grief and listening to what it wants to tell and teach you, so that you can come out wiser, stronger and healthier on the other side – where you turn stumbling blocks into stepping stones and at the same time become your own caring parents towards yourself and your inner child.
Antenna children, couple relationships and couples therapy
Losing a relationship hurts.
But losing yourself in a relationship hurts longer.
Charles Orlando
Most have long and well-developed emotional antennae. They can feel the feelings and needs of others, which they are good at satisfying, at the cost of putting themselves aside or ultimately losing themselves in the relationship and the relationship. In this way, many end up with an abandonment syndrome, also by abandoning themselves. For example, via dissociation, isolation, compulsion to repeat, pleasure sickness and co-dependency – where, without realizing it, they again and again run into relationships and situations of rejection and abandonment. Some also call it relationship addiction and relationship addiction or loving too much. It causes challenges with self-acceptance, self-esteem and self-love. In the relationship, this often means challenges with attachment, closeness, intimacy and love. It can be difficult to love and feel loved if you don’t love yourself. It can also be difficult to come to love someone who suffers from abandonment and does not love himself or loves his partner more than himself. Positively, the abandonment syndrome can drive most people far. Both privately and career-wise. They are always busy, busy, diligent, goal-oriented and ambitious or perfectionistic, over-responsible, indulgent and co-dependent, while often feeling stressed, empty, hollow, lonely and abandoned. Some discover it in time and seek treatment in the form of, for example, interpersonal psychotherapy, relational psychological treatment in the form of couple therapy or grief treatment in the form of relational grief therapy. Others seek treatment in connection with running out of mental energy and experiencing anxiety, depression or burnout. Others find it in connection with developing an abuse or addiction in the form of e.g. alcohol, tobacco, food, sugar, sports or sex. Prevention is good and it is never too late to work on yourself, your relationships and your relationship. It’s not a shame to have a problem. It’s a shame not to do something about it.
Broken trust and couples therapy
Abandonment in the form of broken contact, broken relationships, broken trust, broken security and broken care can result in problems later in life when you have to bond with a partner or let go of a relationship. Some have challenges entering into new relationships, partnerships or marriage and in connection with having children. Others experience problems with infidelity, alcohol problems in the relationship and divorce, where they find it difficult to let go, to accept the loss and to grieve as well as to learn, develop, grow and change through the grieving process – in order to take on life again. In the same way, any experience that reminds of the first failures can open up the old wounds and retraumatize. External events can trigger the primal separation anxiety and spread terror and panic at the same time as infantile feelings, needs and reactions re-emerge in the relationship as well as at work. Many couples spontaneously express in couples therapy that they each feel like four or seven-year-old children and that they feel trapped, helpless and lost. It is also called regression and is known in connection with learned helplessness. Many have it from childhood, having grown up in dysfunctional families or a family with, for example, psychological problems, illness or alcohol problems. Many adult children of alcoholics thus experience challenges in their relationships, family and close relationships – regardless of whether they drink or not.
What is abandonment and what does it do to us?
Abandonment is therefore what we know in connection with i.a. rejection, rejection, failure, abandonment, abandonment, insecurity, self-doubt, unworthiness, self-blame, loneliness, isolation, loss, abuse, abuse, violence, bullying, trauma and grief. Deep topics and strings that are often touched upon and also brought to life in the close relationships of everyday life – study, work, friendship, relationship, marriage and family. Current as well as old experiences and wounds in our baggage, which via the subconscious in an unconscious way come to control our lives – experiences, feelings, reactions and attachment. If you are interested in getting to know yourself and your partner better, healing old wounds and developing together, imago therapy / imago couple therapy is an obvious option. If you are not in a permanent relationship, but are interested in understanding your past, patterns, attraction to certain types of partners and finding your authentic self, Parterapi-parterapeut.dk also offers image therapy for singles.
Why external help in the form of couples therapy
The relationships, feelings and reactions linked to the abandonment are often completely outside our awareness and cause us to not understand ourselves and misunderstand each other in the relationship as well as overreact or cover up. In this way, we are talking about psychological and behavioral patterns that can best be observed by an external, neutral and outsider such as a psychotherapist, couples therapist, imagotherapist or family therapist – who can thus record the reactions directly in relation to the client’s relationship with the psychotherapist during the psychotherapy or in relation to the client’s relationship with the partner and family during, for example, couples therapy, imagotherapy or family therapy.
Couples therapy versus psychotherapy
The insight and self-insight that, for example, psychotherapy, imago therapy and couples therapy provide is very important for our function, development, well-being and quality of life. Because we are talking about conditions that otherwise make us blindly slaves to our past, habits and unconscious urge to repeat. As most people already know from their close relationships, relationships and family, we create repetitive arguments, arguments, dramas, problems and conflicts by going into our abandonment themes and attachment issues and withdrawing or pushing each other away. When we contemporaries are blind to see that it actually comes from ourselves and our own past, we often think that it is the partner who is the problem. But it is a useless project to try to create a better relationship by getting right and changing the partner. Couple therapy helps in that situation to create an overview, insight, understanding and responsibility for the individual and the joint process in the relationship. Couple therapy is thus psychotherapy with two adults in a relationship and couple therapy caters for both individual and relational development. And the purpose of couples therapy is insight, responsibility, action and change.
The relationship is the stage and the couples therapy is the medicine
Couples therapy and the relationship are thus both a stage for the drama and a field for insight, recognition, responsibility and healing. Instead of new rejections, breaks, retraumatization and consequences such as stress (incl. separation stress), anxiety (incl. separation anxiety), withdrawal, low self-esteem, self-devaluation, depression (incl. depression of abandonment), disturbance of the ego-self axis, avoidance behavior and encapsulation of the self/identity or survival mechanisms such as borderline, narcissism, schizoid and overadaptation, couple therapy can turn the relationship into a healing relationship with a flexible and rhythmic movement in the contact. The way forward is via couple therapy to let the light in via initiative, dialogue, warmth, love, humour, curiosity, initiative, creativity, play and learning – containing and acceptance.
Course in abandonment and couples therapy
As a psychotherapist, grief therapist and couples therapist at Parterapi-parterapeut.dk in Copenhagen, I have, among other things, attended a course and further education in codependency, inner child, attachment, grief, abandonment and abandonment to immerse myself in the subject. Underlying and pervasive themes I experience daily as a psychotherapist and couple therapist via family and couple therapy as well as in connection with alcohol treatment, psychotherapy with adult children of alcoholics (inner-child / inner-child problems) and grief treatment / grief therapy. I am thus taught by, among others, two major international capacities in the field:
Dr. Kathrin Asper who i.a. is known for The Raven in the Glass Mountain (The Abandoned Child Within – Losing and Regaining Self-Worth / Emotional abandonment and new therapy) and The Inner Child in Dreams / About our own inner child, the child we once were and childhood – as a motif in our dreams).
Professor Joy Schaverein who, among other things, is known from The Revealing Image, The Dying Patient in Psychotherapy and The Boarding School Syndrome.
In addition, the following books can be recommended: The journey home (free your inner child and understand yourself as an adult) by John Bradshaw, Red and white (about shame and shamelessness) by Else-Britt Kjellqvist, Adult children of alcoholics by Janet G. Woititz, At fight for closeness by Janet G. Woititz, Then I cried a little for myself by Beth Grothe Nielsen as well as The Journey from Abandonment to Healing (Surviving through and recovering from the five stages that accompany the Loss of Love), The Abandonment Recovery Workbook (Guidance through the five stages of healing from abandonment, heartbreak, and loss), The Journey from Abandonment to Healing (turn the end of a relationship into the beginning of a new life) and Taming Your Outer Child (Overcoming self-sabotage – the aftermath of abandonment) by Susan Anderson.
Abandonment and abandonment in business, jobs, management and coaching
I should not be late to say that these are also themes we take with us to the workplace. These are thus themes I often come across when I work as a Business Coach® in connection with stress coaching, career coaching and leadership coaching as well as when I coach partnerships, management boards and boards or when I work as a business consultant.
Abandonment problems as a basis for coaching in business and on the job
As an employee, we can, for example, experience feelings of abandonment in connection with rejections in the form of colleagues not speaking to you, turning your back on you or when you are not invited to a Friday beer. There may also be cases where you are not informed or kept out of the information loop. The themes of abandonment can also be awakened or arise in connection with termination and firing or when you lose a customer, order, assignment or a project. Or if you don’t get promoted and get a raise. The problems of abandonment can also arise or arise in connection with management failure and management negligence, when the employee is not seen, heard and taken seriously or in the case of under-management, lack of instruction and training. Abandonment syndromes can also arise or be awakened when a transfer occurs or when the manager, along with an inadequate parent, fails to give the employee enough presence, support and recognition. Special forms of abandonment problems can arise when private life and work are mixed together, such as in the case of bullying, harassment outside the workplace, sexual harassment and cases of infidelity where the workplace is involved. Most people who suffer from the feeling of abandonment often suffer doubly. This is because their themes of abandonment can be evoked at the workplace and in their private life at the same time – friendship, relationship and family. For example, if you are bullied at work and at the same time have relationship problems and are going through a divorce. In those cases, ErhvervsCoach® offers not only business coaching, but psychological business coaching or psychotherapy.
Grief and psychotherapeutic process in attachment and abandonment themes
In conclusion and in summary, I will briefly outline a generic process, which can however be very individual depending on the person, the situation and the therapeutic collaboration. Realizing, grieving, changing, developing and growing out of an attachment or abandonment theme is partly a grieving process and partly like bringing a frozen foot back to life. It has to happen slowly. You have to understand what happened, slowly thaw your foot and then find a footing again. It is about, together with the psychotherapist, thawing the old frozen feelings that you did not have the skills to handle as a child. But first you have to recognize and understand the problem. Overall, the process can look like this:
- Recognizing one’s avoidance behavior, neurotic behavior and acting out as a clue
- To map the creative adaptation and survival patterns from growing up
- To revisit the past and understand what happened and created the abandonment syndrome
- To re-establish, feel, contain and experience the feelings of abandonment with vulnerability
- To grieve, forgive, reconcile and grow with the insights that arise along the way
- To find new footing and take on life with the new insights and skills
In connection with processing the inner psychological pain and everyday frustrations, reference can also be made to the Letting-go method.
By Parterapi-parterapeut.dk
In every crisis there is an opportunity and a learning.
Parterapi-parterapeut.dk in Copenhagen helps turn stumbling blocks into stepping stones.
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