- Hey everybody, today I'm gonna talk
about fear of abandonment.
Why does it happen and how can we better manage it?
(downtempo electronic music)
Like I've been saying, I'm wanting to get into the habit
of defining things before we talk about them.
Let's define abandonment.
Webster's Dictionary defines 'abandonment' as
"when someone is completely left or utterly deserted".
That sounds really bad and depressing.
That's why a lot of us have a hard time with it.
What I'm here to talk with you about today
is fear of abandonment.
This fear tends to be most common in those of us
who struggle with borderline personality disorder
or any of us who've had a trauma in our past.
Just to give you a brief synopsis of what BPD,
or borderline personality disorder, is,
it's when people feel overcome with emotion.
Everything that we feel and everything that happens to us
can be just so much and so overwhelming.
It's often described as being an emotional burn victim.
You can see why people who struggle with that
would have such a fear of abandonment because the thought
of even losing someone and being deserted
is simply overwhelming.
The most important thing to talk about
is why do people leave us?
Why does this abandonment occur especially
for those of us who have such an intense fear of it?
The first reason is manipulation.
I don't say that to be hurtful.
I say that because we have this irrational fear.
We always worry that someone's going to leave us.
That is terrifying and overwhelming.
Therefore, we will create scenarios where people are needed
and we're trying to make them stay with us.
We may act like we can't really take care of ourselves
even though we can because then they're needed.
We need them and they won't leave us.
It'll be all wonderful and happy.
But people can get burnt out,
especially if we're always acting like we're in crisis.
That's something a lot of my patients have struggled with
and lost friends or family members as a result.
It's because people just can't manage
all of that drama and crisis all the time.
They get overwhelmed especially if what we've reported them
isn't the same when they show up.
Let's say we reported and said, oh my God,
I think there's a fire in the house next to me
and I'm afraid it's gonna come to my apartment.
Then they get there and just like nothing,
like they're having a fire in their backyard
and it's completely contained.
People can get really angry and upset.
Because we're trying so hard to keep them,
it almost is like sabotaging our efforts
because it's just too much.
The second reason I believe abandonment occurs
is due to volatility.
If we worry so much that people are gonna leave us
or we feel our emotions so intensely,
we can be really volatile.
We can lash out.
We can say things in the heat of the moment
because it feels so painful
and why'd you have to do that and that hurt me so bad.
All of that that's swirling in us can come out
in just nasty things to people that we love
and truly things we don't mean.
As we know, once we've said things and done things,
we can't take them back.
We can ask for forgiveness
but at that point, people may have already decided to leave.
Don't worry, there are so many things that we can do
to better manage this and to manage this fear
so that we don't try to manipulate those around us
or become really volatile and upset them.
Obviously, I'm gonna use some of my DBT skills.
The first one we're gonna talk about
is a distress tolerance skill called 'improve the moment'.
You know how we love our acronyms
so the first, the 'I' in 'improve', is imagery.
So if you're feeling really overwhelmed with that volatility
or even that fear of abandonment has come into your head
and you're considering how to get them to come over,
take a breath, imagine you're in your favorite place.
Maybe it's your most soothing place.
Maybe you're floating in an ocean, whatever it is,
imagine that you're there and that you're calm.
It can really help soothe your system and calm you down.
The 'M' in 'imagine' is meaning.
What this is is just encouraging you
to find purpose in your life.
This could be volunteering.
This could be going back to school, getting a new job,
meeting new friends, doing different things,
whatever it is, maybe rescuing an animal.
Giving meaning to your life or a purpose
can help us feel so much calmer and better.
The 'P' in 'improve' is for prayer.
This doesn't have to be a religious thing
if you're not religious, you can just repeat a mantra.
I know that I do that a lot and that helps calm me down.
If you are religious, you can pray
to whomever you like to pray to.
That can be really self-soothing
and help us better manage the distress we may be feeling.
The 'R' is relaxation,
so this could be deep breathing,
progressive muscle relaxation, a hot bath,
something that helps calm you down and relax you.
The 'O' in 'improve', I really love
because it's one thing in the moment.
This takes us out of the future worries,
past upsets, and all the things
and helps us focus just on one thing now.
Focus your attention.
If you wanna color, just really color.
If you watch that favorite TV show,
fully participate in that one thing right now.
The 'V' in 'improve' is vacation.
No, I don't mean plan a trip to Paris
and hop on a plane today.
I mean just a little mini vacation.
This could closing your eyes and going kinda into the
imagery realm where you imagine you're somewhere else.
Or let's say you just get up from your desk
and you go take a walk around the block and you come back.
Just taking a break and a beat to breathe
and kinda give some distance to yourself from the situation
can help us feel better so take a little mini vacation.
The 'E' in 'improve' is encouragement, cheer lead yourself.
This is something that I help my clients do all the time.
Just tell yourself, you got this, you can do it!
You've done this before, it's gonna be better!
Whether you believe it or not isn't important.
What's important is that you talk to yourself positively.
You encourage yourself when you're having a hard time.
The second tip for how to better manage
the fear of abandonment is an emotion regulation tip.
It's called the story of an emotion.
I'm reading from my notes because this is really helpful,
helps us slow down how we feel
because when we feel so much so intensely,
it can run us over, feel like our emotions are running us.
We might not even know why we feel how we feel.
The story of emotion helps us slow it down
and better understand.
We're supposed to answer these questions.
If you're taking notes, pull out your pad of paper
and write some stuff down.
The first question is what was the prompting event?
What caused this?
When did this start to happen?
When did you start to feel that way?
The second is what was my interpretation of the event?
The number one, the prompting event, needs to be factual.
I don't want you to say how you felt about it.
I want you just to stick to what exactly happened.
And then what was your interpretation?
That's the point where you get to say,
'then I felt like she wasn't taking me seriously'
'cause she wasn't making eye contact and all of that.'
Then we can interpret what happened.
The third question, what body sensations do I have?
Do I feel really tense?
Am I sweating?
What do I feel, is my heart racing?
What going on, how do I feel in my body?
The fourth is, what body language do I have?
Are my arms crossed across my chest?
Are they in my pockets?
Am I sitting down, am I hunched?
Is my head down?
What kind of body posture?
How are you presenting yourself
and what kind of body language are you putting out?
The fifth is, what was my action urge
or what is my action urge?
What is it I wanted to do?
Did I wanna scream, did I wanna throw something?
Did I wanna leave them first so they couldn't abandon me?
The sixth is, what action did I take?
Did we do anything?
Maybe we didn't lash out at all.
Maybe we did angry in, maybe we self-harmed.
How did we manage all that we were feeling?
The final, the seventh final portion of story of an emotion,
is what's the emotion name based on my answers?
What would we call that?
If I felt this certain way in my body,
let's say my heart was racing and I was sweating.
Maybe I said that my interpretation of the event
was that they were gonna fire me
or they weren't gonna invite me to that party.
Maybe the emotion name is I was overwhelmed,
I was embarrassed or I was stressed
or I was anxious.
Depending on how you answer these questions
and what's really going on
will help you identify the emotion,
which is so helpful.
If I've been talking about those feelings charts forever
and you don't really know where to start
or how to even consider what you feel each day,
this technique can really help.
It breaks it down, it slows it down
and helps us better understand
where all of those feelings are coming from.
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Fear of abandonment is much more common than you may think.
Let me know in the comments.
What are things that you do to help you feel better
and to better manage in the moment?
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I will see you next time, bye.