Reinventing your Life: 6. Abandonment Trap

Diagnostic Questionnaire:

1. I worry a lot that the people I love will die or leave me.
2. I cling to people because I am afraid the will leave me.
3. I do not have a stable base of support.
4. I keep falling in love with people who cannot be there for me in a committed way.
5. People have always come and gone in my life.
6. I get desperate when someone I love pulls away.
7. I get so obsessed with the idea that my lovers will leave me that I drive them away.
8. The people closest to me are unpredictable. One minute they are there for me and the next minute they are gone.
9. I need other people too much.
10. In the end, I will be alone.

Score each question from a scale of 1-6.

The feeling of Abandonment

You have a fundamental belief that you will lose the people you love and be left emotionally isolated forever. Whether people will die, send you away, or leave you, somehow you feel that you will be left alone. You expect to be abandoned, and you expect it to last forever. You believe you will never regain the person you have lost. In your heart, you feel it is your destiny to live your life completely alone. You are overly sensitive and often read the intent to abandon you into innocent remarks. Anything that feels disconnected can trigger the life trap, even if it has nothing to do with real loss or abandonment. Once the life trap is triggered, you will go through a cycle of negative emotions: fear, grief, and anger.

Types of Abandonment
1. Abandonment based upon dependence
2. Abandonment based upon instability or loss ***

Many people who have the dependence lifetrap also have the abandonment lifetrap.

Few lonely people have dependence underneath. Dependent people do not tolderate the loneliness. Most dependent people are quite talented at finding someone to take care of them. They go from one person to another with rarely more than a month between.

People who fear emotional abandonment can be alone for long periods of time. They might withdraw from close relationships out of hurt and out of fear of being hurt again. They have already faced the loneliness as children, and they know they can survive. This is not the issue. It is the process of loss that is devastating. It is having that connection, and then losing it, and being thrown back into the loneliness one more time.

Some people are born with the capacity to experience the cycle of anxiety, grief and anger to a strong degree. They connect deeply to other people - this is one of their gifts, but they cannot tolerate being alone.

The Origins of the abandonment life trap

1. You may have a biological predisposition to separation anxiety - difficulty being alone.
2. A parent died or left home when you were young.
3. Your mother was hospitalized or separated from you for a prolonged period of time when you were a child.
4. You were raised by nannies or in an institution by a succession of mother figures, or you were sent away to boarding school at a very young age.
5. Your mother was unstable. She became depressed, angry, drunk, or in some other way withdrew from you on a regular basis.
6. Your parents divorced when you were young or fought so much that you worried the family would fall apart.
7. You lost the attention of a parent in a significant way. For example, a brother or sister was born or your parent remarried.
8. Your family was excessively close and you were overprotected. You never learned to deal iwth life's difficulties as a child.

Danger signals in potential partners

1. Your partner is unlikely to make a long-term commitment because he/she is married or involved in another relationship.
2. Your partner is not consistently available for you to spend time together (eg. travels a lot, lives far away, is a workaholic)
3. Your partner is emotionally unstable (eg. drinks, uses drugs, is depressed, cant hold a job) and cannot be there for you emotionally on a consistent basis.
4. Your partner is Peter Pan, who insists on his/her freedom to come and go, does not want to settle down, or wants the freedom to have many lovers.
5. Your partner is ambivalent about you - wants you but holds back emotionally; or one moment acts deeply in love with you and the next moment acts as though you do not exist.

Choosing partners who are not really there for you ensures that you will continue to reenact your childhood abandonment.

Abandonment lifetraps in a relationship

1. You avoid intimate relationships even with appropriate partners because you are afraid of losing the person or getting too close and being hurt.
2. You worry excessively about the possibility that your partner will die or otherwise be lost, and what you would do.
3. You overreact to minor things your partner says or does, and interpret them as signs that he/she wants to leave you.
4. You are excessively jealous and possessive.
5. You cling to your partner. Your whole life becomes obsessed with keeping him/her.
6. You cannot stand to be away from your partner, even for a few days.
7. You are never fully convinced that your partner will stay with you.
8. You are angry and accuse your partner of not being loyal or faithful.
9. You sometimes detach, leave or withdraw to punish your partner for leaving you alone.

Push people away with one hand, while clinging desperately to them with the other.

Changing Abandonment

1. Understand your childhood abandonment.
2. Monitor your feelings of abandonment. Identify your hypersensitivity to losing close people; your desperate fears of being alone; your need to cling to people.
3. Review past relationships, and clarify the patterns that recur. List the pitfalls of abandonment.
4. Avoid uncommitted, unstable or ambivalent partners even though they generate high chemistry.
5. When you find a partner who is stable and committed, trust him/her. Believe that he/she is there for ou forever and will not leave.
6. Do not cling, become jealous or overreact to the normal separations of a healthy relationship.

An Abandonment Flashcard

   Right now I feel devastated because Richard is withdrawing from me, and I am about to become angry and needy.

   However, I know that this is my Abandonment lifetrap, and that my lifetrap is triggered by just the slightest evidence of withdrawal. I need to remember that people in good relations withdraw, and that withdrawal is part of the natural rhythm of good relationships.

   If I start behaving in an angry and clingy way, I will push Richard even further away. Richard has a right to pull away at times.

   What I should do instead is work with my thoughts to try to take a longer view of the relationship as a whole. My feelings are way out of proportion to reality. I can tolerate my feelings and remember that in the big picture Richard and I are still connected, and the relationship is good.

   To best help myself, I should turn my attention to my own life, and ways of developing myself. The better able I am to be on my own, the better I will be in relationships.