Abandonment Syndrome: How to Overcome Abandonment Fear and Anxiety
The abandonment syndrome is more than the simple fear of losing a loved one or experiencing a separation. Basically, the fear of abandonment - albeit in a different way - affects us all: those who are not afraid of being alone or of feel abandoned by your partner? However, for reasons that often come from the past and from their personal experience, some people are unable to manage this anxiety at all and become victims of a perennial feeling of anguish that takes on pathological traits, leading to difficulties in relationships, panic attacks and even depression.
The abandonment syndrome can affect both children (especially towards the mother) and adults, who can manifest different symptoms, from emotional dependence to the inability to bear even a brief separation. So let's analyze this widespread disorder together and try to understand how to recover from this "anxiety that really risks undermining our daily life.
Abandonment Syndrome: How does this fear or anxiety of losing a person originate?
The syndrome of abandonment manifests itself in people who suffer from it with a mixture of fear and anxiety, if not anguish, which is triggered every time the partner (or in any case someone towards whom a strong affection is nurtured) is absent, which be it a momentary, definitive, real or just feared separation. Why and when does this happen?
Those who suffer from this disorder have generally experienced an "experience of abandonment in their childhood. If as a child they were abandoned by their emotional references (parents in the first place), it is easy for a real separation anxiety to develop in adulthood. it will recur in each subsequent relationship.
Even if you are not aware of it, you cannot really trust your partner and you live in constant fear of being abandoned at any moment, again. The consequence is to establish real addictions, to misunderstand every gesture that is made by the partner, to accumulate anger towards him or to indulge in states of anguish or depression.
At the origin of the syndrome there may be different life experiences linked to a separation or an absence: the sufferer may have suffered a major bereavement during childhood or may have simply been a very neglected or ignored child, left to himself. In adulthood, he will continue to carry within himself that sad and frightened child, an abandoned child who is afraid of being left alone again. Most likely, he will also end up developing a real emotional dependence on the other, as explained by the our video:
When does the anxiety of abandonment occur in children?
Abandonment anxiety does not only develop in adulthood, but as a child, and it is not necessary for a parent to literally abandon their child for this to happen. It is enough for parents to make them feel alone and emotionally abandoned, for example not. paying them due attention, stifling their emotions, making them feel inadequate and incapable in front of others.
From what symptoms to understand if a child suffers from this syndrome? If you show separation anxiety, worry, or panic attacks when separating from someone you are close to, fear of being alone, difficulty concentrating, frequent agitation and stress.
What are the symptoms in adulthood?
In adulthood, the fear of abandonment can manifest itself with different symptoms. First of all, however, we must specify that it is not a diagnosable mental illness, but a personality disorder that a good psychologist or psychotherapist will not struggle to recognize.
Among the symptoms of the syndrome in question we find a strong insecurity that often leads to feeling unworthy of love from one's neighbor in general; manifestations of great anxiety in moments of separation, whether it is true or feared; hypersensitivity to the judgment of others; difficulty in trusting the partner and in forging emotional bonds of any kind; repressed anger that often results in uncontrollable attacks.
Those who suffer from abandonment anxiety will surely have difficulty in establishing important relationships in their life, which risk being always dysfunctional. He will do the impossible to avoid separations and rejections and will tend to move away in the first person for fear of being abandoned in turn, or he will be terrified of ending his relationship even though it does not work. He will have a tendency to please the other in every way and to blame himself if things don't go.
How can abandonment anxiety impact your life, your relationships and your relationship with your partner?
Those who have suffered repeated abandonment as a child, as we have said, will tend to carry their insecurities into adulthood, with negative expectations regarding the behavior of others. The result will be to feel very insecure in their adult relationships, easily interpreting the gestures of the partner as signals of rejection, even when they are not.
One can therefore end up becoming paranoid, possessive, in need of being constantly reassured by the other. This request for reassurance can also occur with forms of violent anxiety or with fits of anger: the fear of not being listened to and understood by the other is very strong ! Those who suffer from this disorder cannot leave their past life behind and every occurrence of the present life reactivates their trauma, like a wound that has never stopped burning.
If the adults with him have not proved trustworthy when he was little, he will continue not to trust him even when he grows up: why shouldn't his partner leave him, as did all those who loved him?
Generally, those who suffer from this anxiety do not reveal their disorder from the first moment: at the beginning of a relationship, when they are not yet 100% involved, they show themselves more confident and calm, and then start slowly - as they progress. intimacy and attachment grow - showing the first signs of insecurity.
After the honeymoon, it is normal that there are no longer the same attentions as in the beginning, and it is then that the subject suffering from abandonment anxiety begins to panic, reading the normal relaxation of a now solid relationship as a sign of imminent separation and detachment.There will then be those who react by showing themselves more needy, those who instead move away so as not to be abandoned in their turn.
The partner finds himself having to fight with a blind, irrational fear, and risks not understanding what is happening. His reassurances will be of little use. In order to live a healthy relationship, those who suffer from this fear necessarily need to undertake a treatment path with a psychologist or psychotherapist.
To deepen this topic:
"Saying enough to emotional dependence. Learning to believe in yourself" by Marie-Chantal Deetjens available on Amazon in both print and digital format
How to overcome separation anxiety?
A good psychologist or psychotherapist can help those suffering from abandonment syndrome to overcome this difficulty in relationships. The psychotherapist will be able to guide him in retracing his past, finally becoming aware of his own experience, in order to let all those emotions emerge - anger, anguish, loneliness - that have remained nameless for so long. At that point, with work and patience, he will be able to learn how to manage them.
The psychologist will help those who are afraid of being abandoned to acquire first of all greater self-esteem: feeling confident is the first step in not living in fear of being abandoned. At that point it will also be easier to trust others. Little by little, it will be possible to re-elaborate the trauma, become aware of one's identity, strengthen it and then establish healthy relationships, without fear of losing the other and therefore without creating any emotional dependence.
