Abandonment Wound
Abandonment trauma can, of course, vary from person to person, but it may include emotional and psychological pain associated with memories of being left behind, emotionally neglected, hurt, or abandoned. It can also bring about intensely distressing and emotional pain somatically.
This may sound odd that as an adult that we cannot simply understand that this is a fact of life, and it is out of our control if we are hurt by being abandoned. Yet, if we experienced traumatic events as a child where we felt neglected, unloved, or abandoned it can create a lasting impression on our psyche. Even if we experienced this as an adult through abusive relationships, divorce, or the death of a partner these can all be triggers for abandonment trauma in adulthood.
My own abandonment wound runs deep within me, operating things behind the scenes. My brain is always trying to protect me from this deep wound again and if something seems a threat to me my brain will go in to protection mode and try to distract me or get me ready to defend myself.
I was abandoned as a child, perhaps multiple times, but a few that I can remember. Our brains cannot process things that do not make sense for a young mind that is just learning about the world, instead it becomes an emotional imprint and multiple layering beliefs that we did something wrong to be feeling so awful.
Can you recall a time of when you felt abandoned as a child?
It doesn’t require actually being left, it can even just mean that you felt like you had a lack of support. It can mean you felt a lack of emotional safety to be able to express yourself, and that you had no choice to be who you were because it wasn’t accepted at the time.
Now the real link to all of this is making the connection from your childhood experiences to how you may be feeling that same abandonment in your adult life.
One way, is in abusive relationships. Threats of abandonment are a form of emotional manipulation that uses a persons fear as a weapon. I know personally, that my abusive partner would threaten to leave me and carrying an abandonment wound from childhood just heightened my internal fear. He used this as manipulation to get me to conform, and I obliged.
Divorce can feel like abandonment, because that person who you thought loved you, doesn’t now and this can feel isolating and scary. Of course, death feels like the ultimate abandonment and cause feelings of being alone, anger, and depression to arise. A deep loss can make the deepest of wounds to surface and have you swimming in a sea of sadness.
Ultimately, if you carry this wound it can make an individual desire to maintain control in their lives. Lack of control caused the original abandonment, and we fear this happening again so much we seek to try to control everything we can. What this can lead to is a struggle to be able to mentally be healthy, because you are so busy trying to hold everything together that you are overwhelmed and exhausted. It helps to remember that the the only thing we have control over is ourselves.
The first way to heal this wound is to identify that you carry it in the first place. In the next blog I will discuss this more in depth on the way to deeper healing.
As always, thanks for being here with me,
