You may not know it but your fear of abandonment
could be the result of emotional abuse or it could be causing you to stay with someone who you shouldn't really be with.
Maybe someone who's toxic, so that's what we're talking about today on
QueenBeeing.com; the fear of abandonment and how it affects our ability to self love
self-care and to really discern
what our life looks like and who and what we deserve. The fear of abandonment is common in
abuse victims and there's a reason. We're going to talk about it.
So let's get started. Closed captioning provided by Athena Moberg and CPTSDfoundation.org
My name is Angie Atkinson and on this channel I offer free daily video coaching to help you discover, understand and overcome
narcissistic abuse and toxic relationships. I like to call it toxic relationship rehab.
So if that sounds good to you hit that subscribe button, and let's get going. Just a few minutes ago,
I finished up my live chat with the SPANily and
one of the issues that came to the forefront today was the fear of abandonment.
So many of us have this
deep-seated fear of abandonment and what is interesting is that narcissists have it too.
I've done a video on that take a look at it right there,
but when it comes to the survivors of narcissistic abuse, people who are getting out of toxic relationships,
the fear of abandonment is not only real but it's real debilitating and we're going to talk about that right now.
So I think something that a lot of people don't realize is that the fear of abandonment
may or may not come from actually having been physically abandoned. The thing
is that while some people were actually abandoned in childhood, like my husband who was left in a telephone booth
— I've done a video on that take a look at it right there — as a
newborn, other people weren't ever physically abandoned by anyone or they were
abandoned by one parent but not the other, but they were dealing with a series of abandonment that was masquerading as a
relationship basically.
So what happens when you're dealing with the
narcissist whether it's a parent or a spouse or any sort of person in your inner circle that it is a,
like I said a series of small abandonment, when they go through the cycle where they love bomb you and then they devalue you.
You start to get that emotional abandonment and then they emotionally discard you now
sometimes they never physically discard you or they never leave you but they always mentally discard you. The fear of abandonment is
more than just being
physically abandoned but yet we have this ultimate fear deep inside of ourselves of always fearing, I don't want to be alone.
I can't stand to be alone.
The idea of being alone scares me more than the idea of staying with someone who's abusing me, in some cases.
But what you don't recognize is that being abandoned or the idea of being abandoned it creates this deep anxiety within us and
and it many times starts an early in childhood.
But even when it doesn't start until more much older, it affects our relationships,
it affects our ability to see ourselves as whole people. It affects our self-worth, our ability to make decisions, all of these things.
See abandonment or the idea of it is almost a visceral thing for nearly every human
because in
different times if we were abandoned by our mate or abandoned by our parents we might die out there in them in the wild.
But today it's different, but yet we still have those sorts of fears like
intrinsically inside of ourselves. So we have to recognize a few things here,
our brains are programmed to be afraid of abandonment in general as humans because of the visceral stuff
but also if we experience abandonment in any sense of the word,
we become focused on the fact that we are potentially in danger from any number of real or perceived fears.
So recognizing these things as logical points great,
but I understand that just knowing it doesn't always fix the problem or the fear of abandonment itself.
A lot of people who watch this channel, a lot of people who have gone through narcissistic abuse in general
were also dealing with something similar in childhood. And so their fear of abandonment,
your fear of abandonment can be very very deep-seated and can be even beyond your ability to comprehend where it came from.
But what's important to know is that if you do end up alone that you're going to be
okay, and that alone is a state of mind.
Maybe you live in a house by yourself, but you still have support in some way, if nothing else
you've always got your SPANily. Being emotionally abandoned by a parent in childhood can really have a lifelong effect on you.
And many narcissistic parents or toxic parents in general have this sort of effect on their children.
But sometimes even parents who are well-meaning may affect their children this way.
What does emotional abandonment look like for kids?
Well, when parents stop their kids from expressing themselves or stifle them with you know,
don't be who you are because of this religion or the societal norm or whatever or when parents
ridicule their children for who they are or when parents hold their children to a standard that's ridiculously
unmeetable and treat them horribly for never meeting it or when parents rely a little too heavily on their children to kind of determine their
own self-worth, they leave too vicariously through their children, believe it or not
that's a form of emotional abandonment. As is parents who treat their children like friends or peers instead of children.
When your children are adults, it's a different story.
But when your children are being raised and growing up and going through all those developmental phases, you might want to be their best friends
and I'll tell you, I have some really cool kids.
I would love to be their best friends,
but sometimes you have to suck it up and be a mom or a dad and do what you need to do and when you
don't do that as a parent,
then you sort of emotionally abandon your child.
If you were a child of a parent who was emotionally abandoned, you may have a really deep-seated sense of abandonment.
Now like I said, it could be a physical abandonment or an emotional one or
both, you know, growing up and becoming adults and in our young adulthood even throughout, you know
long marriages, you can be repeatedly abandoned over and over again.
So the fear of abandonment is completely normal, one more type of emotional abandonment that you might have experienced is
from a spouse or a partner as an adult or even a really close friend. What does that look like?
Well, like we've talked about, it's the cycles of abuse that are common in toxic relationships.
But what are the signs of abandonment in an adult relationship?
Well,
one of you might be a people pleaser, always
trying to cater to everyone around you, always giving more than you should give, giving too much.
You might also feel kind of envious of other people's relationships. There could be trust issues in your relationship
You might feel insecure, always worry that your partner's gonna cheat on you.
You might feel like there's a significant lack of emotional connection in the relationship. You know them,
but they don't know your heart. They don't know what you're about.
They don't care to find out. Anytime you say to them, "you know, why do you love me?"
They say things like because you do X Y & Z for me as opposed to because you are X Y & Z.
It's always about what you do for them instead of you.
In emotional abandonment and adult relationships one partner almost always controls the other partner and you might feel like you're settling for a relationship that is
let's say less than satisfactory
So if any of that's sound familiar to you, here are a few things you need to know;
first of all, just like physical abuse, emotional abuse has a cycle.
This is emotional abuse being in that relationship where you're being emotionally abandoned is
emotional abuse, the feeling, the fear of
always being afraid to be alone, of always being afraid of abandonment as a result of having been
abused emotionally as a child and/or as an adult in a close
personal relationship. Emotional abusers are not any better than anyone else. They are just as bad as physical abusers if not worse.
They just don't leave scars for the world to see but the scars they run deep for us,
don't they? So they figure after all I'm not physically hurting that person,
so I'm not really doing anything at all, because so many people don't even realize
emotional abuse is a real thing.
And I think that's why so many people are so shocked by this
when it happens. As you may know, emotional abusers tend to use their targets fears as
basically a way to abuse them, they use their target's fears against them.
So in most cases,
when a partner directly threatens to abandon you or a parent directly threatens to abandon you even if they have never
physically abandoned you before,
you are being abandoned in that moment and
they use this fear of abandonment as a way to control you and keep you in check.
And so if you don't work through that and get past it,
then you are gonna find yourself accepting and settling for things that you don't deserve, things that aren't good enough for you in order to
feel truly like you are with someone that you want to be with you need to not need to be with them.
You need to be with them because you care about them and they care about you and there's mutual love and respect in that
situation, if you're not ready for something like that, then that's okay. You've got time
You don't have to rush into anything getting through emotional abuse is very difficult and painful.
Since a lot of us already have abandonment issues,
it's really easy for abusers to keep us in check and keep us in place by continually doing these little mini abandonments.
Over and over again to us. And then threatening to abandon us is almost in some ways the ultimate control
that a narcissist can have and they will use it to overstep every boundary you have
and to keep you in check. In addition to having been emotionally abused, you have that basic human
factor, like I mentioned in that you are wired to want to be connected to people.
So what you have to know is that your brain, it kind of works against you in these
situations because when you really feel threatened by
abandonment by being alone when you're not supposed to be or you don't expect to be or you don't want to be.
Something happens to your body and your brain, certain neurotransmitters
and hormones are released like cortisol and adrenaline and
because you're not connecting with them emotionally or in any other major way. Yeah, that feel good, we've connected and bonded hormone — oxytocin,
doesn't show up or at least it's depleted and guess what?
That is a cocktail for pain, you know dealing with the cortisol and the adrenaline without the feel-good hormone. My gosh,
you're gonna feel terrible, you're gonna feel miserable and you're gonna think, all you can think about is getting back to that person.
You'll do anything to bring back the good feelings, even stay with an abuser and sadly
this is the truth, regardless of the level of abuse to which you have been subjected.
Which is why things like trauma bonding and of course the Stockholm Syndrome, which are basically the same thing exist.
It's almost like they're training you like a dog. As you learn to kind of feel
abandonment or the fear of it every time you don't do what you're supposed to do,
you start doing what you're supposed to do according to the narcissist.
You just want to prevent the abandonment and those yucky feelings that happen when that abandonment cocktail cooks up in your brain.
So you do whatever the abuser wants you to do and sadly you and the narcissist to become used to this.
So then what happens is you're kind of both brainwashed, they're brainwashed by themselves into controlling you and you're brainwashed by their abuse and
their use of the fear of abandonment against you to do whatever they want or fear of being abandoned. The abuser feels even more
in control, even more able to decide how things are gonna be between the two of you and you feel even less
capable of doing that as per time goes on. Pretty soon,
there is no time in-between the abuse sessions because it's just all one long abuse session.
You're just constantly living in fear of being abandoned and doing whatever you can to prevent that. You're like almost chasing
the high of
the good times that you once felt and you never really quite feel that we got in that relationship, you get kind of
shell-shocked. You know what I mean?
When it comes down to though, is that this type of abuse,
even when you finally do wake up and you get out of that relationship,
you find yourself kind of repeating these patterns with new relationships, unless you give yourself enough time to heal.
So for example,
the person we were talking to in our chat this morning, was saying that he just felt terrible because someone he really cared about had
kind of left him by the wayside. He was a new person. He was dating and he really liked this person.
But then the person kind of at the last minute pulled out and said, you know what never mind.
Well,
it turned out that she hadn't responded very quickly to some of his concerns or some of his
attempts to contact and that worried him and so he kind of freaked out a little bit and then she decided that she didn't want
to be with him and you know
we can all
understand that, but at the same time we can also understand how this person felt when he's felt so rejected and so abandoned by so
many people. And so as I'm doing this video, you know who you are.
I want you to know that you have a lot going for you.
But until you're fully healed, don't waste your energy or your time trying to be in relationships.
I know this sounds harsh. But give yourself a little more time. Maybe you need another few days or months.
Give yourself that time.
You're a young guy, you'll be fine but seriously if you continue in a relationship like this
you will for sure lose your sense of self. You will lose who you are.
You will become a shell of the person you should be and you deserve better than that.
There are a lot of different things you can do to work through this. The first thing is truly changing your perception,
recognizing that you are a person who deserves to be loved and that you were a person who deserves
someone who's on the same page as you.
Trying to squeeze together two people who don't fit just because both of you feel lonely and sad only works for a short time.
Maybe that person can just be your friend if that's the case. Bottom line, don't rush into
relationships because you are lonely.
In fact until you're in that place in your life where you're ready to truly feel like you know what I'm so okay with who
I am that I would rather be single than
miserable with some wrong person, someone toxic or someone who's just wrong for me, that's around the time
you're gonna run into the person you're supposed to be with. Find yourself a place of peace where you can really get to know yourself
and really recognize your value.
Recognize that you are in fact a catch, that you are someone who deserve to be loved and don't put up with any less.
Don't tolerate any
less because that you deserve the very best and you are the only person who can decide what that is.
If you're a person who wants to be like I always say joined-at-the-hip with your spouse
don't be with somebody who likes independence from their partner, you know.
If you're someone who needs a little space like me don't be with somebody who needs to be joined to your hip.
It doesn't work. Think about your own needs as well as how you can connect with the other person and
when you're looking for your one, look for someone
compatible with your needs and someone whose needs you can also meet because every relationship is a two-way street, at least every healthy relationship.
If you're not ready to date yet, it's okay
not to date. Stay strong.
If you're struggling to get through those feelings, those fears of abandonment, work on letting go of the perceptions that you have of yourself,
potentially from you're emotionally abandoning parents or
emotionally abandoning exes or friends and see what you can do to choose your new perception of yourself.
I'm gonna share with you a playlist that will help you start doing that in the comments section below in the pinned comic.
And just in case you missed it,
I recently launched a new program that will allow you to work with me directly for
really really cheap. If you're interested in getting coaching through an app with a customized program designed for you,
check out DailyCoach.app
I do every single person's profile individually and I check in with them personally on a monthly basis after that.
So make sure that you take a look at that if you're interested and you maybe can't afford regular coaching or you
prefer to work on your phone or work through an app. All right, that's all I've got for you right now,
but as always, thank you so much for being a part of my day and a part of my life and hey
thanks for letting me be a part of yours.
It really does mean a lot to me and I want you to remember that you're never never alone.
You always have your SPANily. So go to QueenBeeing.com/span, sign up if you haven't yet. Get involved,
lots of different ways you can recover for nothing over at QueenBeeing.com
Alright, and of course this channel is completely free. So I'm wrapping up.
Oh, but before I go make sure you take a look at the videos
I'm leaving for you right here and right here and while you're here hit that Subscribe button
right there so we can stay connected and continue on this healing journey together. I'll see you soon.