Abandonment trauma is rooted in traumatic experiences — often from our early childhood. It can impact our self-esteem and mental health as an adult, manifesting as self-sabotaging behaviors that affect our ability to maintain and even form healthy relationships.
Identifying your abandonment issues can be challenging. You may not realize you’ve been traumatized or that your current behaviors are a response to being abandoned. This guide helps you understand what abandonment trauma is, how to identify the signs of abandonment trauma, and how you can heal from it.
What Is Abandonment Trauma?
Abandonment trauma is the fear and anxiety that someone close to you will leave. It’s a behavioral and emotional response to feeling neglected or rejected that’s rooted in fear from a time when you lost a significant person in your life, whether from divorce or death. Abandonment trauma can also stem from the neglectful behaviors of your primary attachment figures, like your parents or guardians.
Causes of Abandonment Trauma
Abandonment trauma develops in response to physical or emotional abandonment. It can develop at any time, but childhood trauma is the most common cause. While many circumstances can encourage the development of abandonment trauma, these are the most common ones.
Childhood Neglect
Childhood neglect can be obvious, such as a parent or caregiver not providing food or shelter. However, a child experiences abandonment trauma through less obvious situations, like not being allowed to express their emotions or being pressured to behave a certain way.
Abandonment anxiety and trauma may also develop when a parent doesn’t provide consistent or warm interactions or support a child’s emotional state. Repeatedly being placed in a dangerous situation can also create abandonment fears or trauma.
Unstable Family
Unstable, toxic, or dysfunctional family dynamics can cause childhood abandonment trauma. Families that can’t communicate openly and honestly or resort to passive-aggressive tactics and manipulation are an example.
It’s important to note that sometimes an unstable family situation happens due to circumstances outside parental control. For example, a parent who experiences frequent job loss and has to move in search of employment or a parent who’s chronically ill can create an unstable family life despite their best efforts.
Losing a Parent or Guardian
Though death is a part of life, losing a parent as a young or even teenage child can contribute to childhood abandonment trauma, especially when the remaining parent or guardian is unable to provide the emotional support a child needs during this difficult time.
A parent who is physically separated from the family — whether it’s forced or by choice — can create a similar reaction.
Emotionally Unavailable Partner
As adults, abandonment trauma can be caused by an emotionally unavailable partner. When you’re with someone who doesn’t want to or can’t connect with you emotionally, you may feel that you can’t be your authentic self around them, fearing they may leave you.
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Effects of Childhood Trauma
To be sure, abandonment trauma is a psychological wound, but it can also physically impact you. Repeated exposure to traumatic events changes how you respond to stress. This, in turn, can cause heightened anxiety or depression and make it more likely you’ll experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It also increases the likelihood of developing heart disease and obesity later in life.
Signs of Abandonment Trauma
The symptoms and signs of abandonment trauma vary among individuals and can look different in a child versus an adult. However, some behaviors are common signs of abandonment trauma in most people.
People Pleasing
People pleasers may suffer from abandonment trauma. They do whatever they have to ensure everyone around them is happy — often to the point that they disregard their own emotional or even physical needs.
Conflict Avoidant
Conflict is often a key theme in unstable families, so someone with abandonment trauma may avoid conflict. Even if a situation bothers them or someone’s behavior violates personal boundaries, they won’t speak up for fear of offending the other person, out of fear of abandonment.
Need Constant Reassurance
Even in a stable, healthy relationship, a person with abandonment trauma may need constant reassurance that the relationship is OK and the other person isn’t leaving them. This separation anxiety may manifest as constantly asking the other person if everything is OK and if they’re happy or if they want to leave the relationship.
Clinging
Similar to needing reassurance and validation that the relationship is fine, you may cling to your partner because you don’t want the relationship to end — even when the relationship is toxic or unhealthy.
Jealousy
Though your partner reassures you that the relationship is working and they are happy, you may still have a hard time believing that’s possible. When your partner engages in activities or hobbies without you or spends time with friends without you, you may feel jealous and worry your partner is lying to you about their true feelings.
Trust Issues
Similar to feeling jealous, you may have trust issues. If the adults in your life consistently let you down, as an adult, you may have trouble trusting others. You may wonder about hidden motivations when someone is nice to you or fear that if you are open and vulnerable, it will be used against you.
Fearing Intimacy or Commitment
On the other end of the spectrum, you find it difficult to maintain healthy relationships. Abandonment issues can cause you to close off emotionally because you’re unable to be open and vulnerable. While this is a protective behavior that stops you from being hurt, it also makes it difficult to form genuine connections.
Unstable Relationships
Even if you realize you have abandonment issues, you may find yourself in and out of unstable or toxic relationships. Unresolved childhood trauma can lead to us seeking out familiar patterns because they are familiar. They feel comfortable despite how unhealthy they are.
Intense Emotions
It’s normal to feel intense emotions sometimes, like losing a job or buying a house. People with abandonment issues experience intense emotions some or all of the time because they never learned how to regulate their emotions or how to take care of their emotional needs and didn’t develop healthy coping skills to deal with intense situations.
Feeling Ashamed or Self-Conscious
It’s common for people with abandonment issues to feel ashamed or self-conscious. This happens because they feel guilty and powerless, which can cause low self-esteem and feelings of worthlessness.
Hypervigilance
Another common sign of abandonment issues is hypervigilance. You may be completely unaware that you’re always on high alert, scanning your environment and the people around you, looking for signals they’re getting ready to abandon you. This constant “on guard” posture may lead to chronic stress and exhaustion that you can’t explain.
Feeling Lonely
Even when you’re in a safe and loving relationship, surrounded by people who care for you, you may still feel lonely. Your abandonment issues can make it difficult to connect with family and friends, making it feel like you never truly belong.
Perfectionism
Some people blame themselves for being abandoned. In an attempt to prevent it from happening again, you may work toward being perfect — whatever that means — to ensure no one leaves you again.
How To Heal from Abandonment Trauma
Moving past abandonment issues and trauma is possible. While there are some steps you can take on your own, working with a licensed mental health professional can teach you the skills you need for long-term recovery.
Setting Boundaries
Setting boundaries helps ease your abandonment issues in two ways.
First, learning how to set healthy boundaries can help you regain a sense of power and autonomy. It will help you learn how to put your needs and wants first without hurting others while you learn how to approach conflict in a healthy way.
Second, sometimes contact with unhealthy people is unavoidable. But boundaries can help you limit your time with them and teach you when it’s time for you to walk away without feeling guilty or that you’re abandoning them.
Self-Care
Self-care is the act of putting yourself first without being selfish. But someone with abandonment issues may feel that their needs don’t matter and neglect to care for themselves. This creates a negative loop where you’re putting someone else first, which makes you feel bad, but you continue to put others first so you’re not abandoned.
Daily affirmations can help remind you that your needs matter and that it’s OK to put yourself first. Over time, these affirmations can help you break your negative behavior patterns.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) will help you identify and reframe your negative thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors that are caused by your abandonment trauma. For example, a therapist can help you reframe the feeling that everyone you love leaves you into a new, more positive understanding of your relationship dynamics.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy (EMDR) uses side-to-side eye movements to help you process uncomfortable emotions and memories. Working through these feelings with a trained therapist can help you recall these moments without causing as much distress.
Internal Family Systems
Internal family systems (IFS) is a treatment modality that addresses the different “parts” of your mental system. For example, there may be parts of you that feel anger and shame. They may try to control the parts of you that were abandoned, making it difficult for you to process your emotions. Using IFS, a therapist helps you interact with the angry or shameful parts to heal them and, in turn, heal the parts of you that feel abandoned.
Healing Is Possible
Moving past your abandonment issues and trauma is possible. While you can try to tackle it alone, this kind of mental health issue often needs the experienced hand of a therapist to help you process what happened and recover from your trauma.
The compassionate team at Anchor Light Couples and Family Therapy is here to guide you on your transformative journey. Schedule a free consultation with one of our experienced, licensed therapists today.
