Thoughts on Abandonment

I had been trying to process “Abandonment” as if it were “Grief”, along the lines of the Kubler-Ross model.

Kubler-Ross Model of Grief

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

It wasn’t working for me. The Kubler-Ross model is death-centric. An abandonment is not the same as a death. When a death occurs, the person you are “missing” is gone. Just gone, forever and always.

When you are abandoned, the person you are “missing” isn’t gone from the world forever and always. He/she is just gone from your life. There is a huge difference.

The main difference as I see it, is that “abandonment” carries a whole layer of “rejection” along with it. You not only have to deal with the loss of the emotional support and the “connectedness” you shared with that person – you also have to battle the brutal feelings of being rejected, of being not good enough, of being unworthy, of having trust betrayed.

Sometimes it can be a complete abandonment – where the abandoner leaves, both physically and emotionally. Sometimes it can be an emotional abandonment, where you may continue to be “with” the person, but that person has effectively “checked out” and isn’t providing you with the emotional support and connectedness that we, as human beings, crave. It can happen with parents, it can happen with a spouse, it can happen with love relationships, it can happen with intense friendships.

I never thought of myself as having “issues,” I thought I had my head on pretty straight, but life smacked me upside the head and I have realized I have intense issues with both past abandonments and fear of future abandonment. It wasn’t obvious to me, because I grew up in a “regular” two parent household, there was no obvious “abandonment” in my past. And most of my love relationships ended because I ended them, not because I was “left” by the other person.

Then I realized that although both of my parents were “present” in the home, neither one was really “present” to parent me. My father battled intense psychological issues his entire life and as a result was very volatile and unpredictable. I love him, and I know he loved me, but my childhood was 20 years of walking on eggshells hell. My mother was always preoccupied trying to appease my father and keep him from going off the deep end, so she was never really “there” for me either. Combine that with years and years of, “You’re not good enough, you have to try harder” negative messaging, and I basically didn’t have parents. They clothed me and fed me and otherwise provided for me, but they were just emotionally not there as parents, in any way shape or form. I was… completely emotionally abandoned.

After I grew up, I ended up attaching myself to men who acted just like my parents. There… but never really there. Always making me feel “not good enough,” hypercritical, and incapable of providing real love or emotional support. The catch is, I didn’t know what real love or emotional support was, so it seemed normal. It was all I knew. (Apparently we seek comfort in “familiar patterns” even when they hurt us.)

Anyway, enough of my wall of words. I really wanted to share what I have discovered about Abandonment.

Susan Anderson has come up with 5 Stages of Abandonment that she describes as follows. When a person suffers an abandonment, he/she can cycle through these phases many times, at different paces. (These are quoted verbatim from the linked page.)

5 Stages of Abandonment

1. SHATTERING – Your relationship is breaking apart. Your hopes and dreams are Shattered. You are devastated, bewildered. You Succumb to despair and panic. You feel hopeless and have Suicidal feelings. You feel Symbiotically attached to your lost love, mortally wounded, as if you’ll die without them. You are in Severe pain, Shock, Sorrow. You’ve been Severed from your primary attachment. You’re cut off from your emotional life-line.
2. WITHDRAWL – painful Withdrawal from your lost love. The more time goes on, the more all of the needs your partner was meeting begin to impinge into your every Waking moment. You are in Writhing pain from being torn apart. You yearn, ache, and Wait for them to return. Love-withdrawal is just like Heroin withdrawal – - each involves the body’s opiate system and the same physical symptoms of intense craving. During Withdrawal, you are feeling the Wrenching pain of love-loss and separation – - the Wasting, Weight loss, Wakefulness, Wishful thinking, and Waiting for them to return. You crave a love-fix to put you out of the WITHDRAWAL symptoms.
3. INTERNALIZING – you Internalize the rejection and cause Injury to your self esteem. This is the most critical stage of the cycle when your wound becomes susceptible to Infection and can create permanent scarring. You are Isolated, riddled with Insecurity, self- Indictment and self-doubt. You are preoccupied with ‘If only regrets’ – - If only you had been more attentive, more sensitive, less demanding, etc. You beat yourself up with regrets over the relationship and Idealize your abandoner at the expense of your own self Image.
4. RAGE – the turning point in the grief process when you begin to fight back. You attempt to Reverse the Rejection by Refusing to accept all of the blame for the failed relationship, and feel surges of Rage against your abandoner. You Rail against the pain and isolation you’ve been in. Agitated depression and spurts of anger displaced on your friends and family are common during this turbulent time, as are Revenge and Retaliation fantasies toward your abandoner.
5. LIFTING – your anger helped to externalize your pain. Gradually, as your energy spurts outward, it Lifts you back into Life. You begin to Let go. Life distracts you and gradually Lifts you out the grief cycle. You feel the emergence of strength, wiser for the painful Lessons you’ve Learned. And if you’re engaged in the process of recovery, you get ready to Love again.

She wrote a book called “The Journey From Abandonment to Healing” that talks about this all in detail. I’m not big on self-help books, but I’m working my way through it. It is giving me useful insights and a bit of comfort during a difficult time. She talks quite a bit about how our brains work and why we react so violently to abandonment. It made me feel better to know that my reactions to abandonment, and fear of abandonment, are not unique to me. It is not a character defect, it is a normal human response to having been abandoned.

I think fear of abandonment, and the intense human desire for “connectedness,” can cause people to stay “stuck” in relationships where they have already effectively been abandoned (or which they, themselves, have already “checked out” of). They cling to the relationship, yearning, longing, aching for either a return to connectedness, or waiting for scraps of connectedness like a heroin addict seeking a fix. Because they are so deathly afraid of truly being on their own. Being alone is hard. But if you cling desperately to the remnants of what is now a non-relationship… you can never really open yourself up to that which your soul requires – true connectedness with another human being. (Unless, perhaps, you are a fully functioning polyamorous person.)

Abandonment is a huge psychological trauma that shakes us to our core, whether it is a complete physical abandonment, or “just” an emotional abandonment. I think sometimes it is just helpful to know that your experience and emotions are not unique, and you are not defective because you can’t just “suck it up and move on.”