Abandonment Anxiety

This episode was pre recorded as part of a live continuing education webinar on demand. CEUs are still available for this presentation through all CEUs. Register@Allce.com Counselortoolbox I'd like to welcome everybody today to the presentation Love Me, Don't Leave. Addressing Fears of Abandonment. The purpose of this presentation is really to help us help clients increase their awareness of their story, including beliefs about behavioral reactions to situations that trigger their fear of abandonment. So how do we do that? Well, the first thing we need to figure out is what is fear of abandonment and how can we identify it in a clinical setting? Then we're going to explore the concept of fear schemas or core beliefs. And these are things that are formed in early childhood. And you know, if you remember prior classes we've talked about, early childhood cognition is generally very dichotomous. Children, young children don't have the ability to look at that gray area. So these schemas, if they've gone unchecked, can lead to some very extreme belief patterns, which leads us into common traps in thinking, reacting, and relationships. If your schemas are based on all or nothing, you either love me or you're going to leave me, hence the name of the book, then your reactions are going to tend to be more extreme and more all or nothing, which increases anxiety because then anytime a person perceives any amount of disapproval, obviously it's going to go to that extreme. So we want to talk about bringing it more towards the middle line and helping people learn to appreciate and love themselves for themselves. While they may not approve of behaviors in other people, they can still love other people. So just because somebody doesn't approve of your behaviors doesn't mean necessarily that they're going to abandon you. So we're going to talk about that and then we'll learn skills necessary to help people accept their past as part of their story. Maybe they do have a lot of abandonment issues and you know, some people do and it really is painful. It cuts to the core, especially when those abandonment issues occur in early childhood when the kid's going, what'd I do? So we're going to talk about that and help people learn how to integrate it into their present and will learn skills necessary to acknowledge that their past does not have to continue to negatively impact them in the present. So if they were abandoned when they were a child, you know, we need to deal with that. However, if they continue to expect that every significant person in their life will abandon them. Notice I use the word every because we're still in those extremes, then they're going that past is negatively impacting them in the present. So we'll talk about how to sort of moderate those belief systems. How does this impact recovery? Whether you're talking about addiction or mental health issues, Connection is a basic human need. We are not meant, for the most part, to be hermits in the middle of the woods. There are introverts, and my husband's an introvert. He has a couple of really good friends. He needs quiet time each day. He doesn't need to be surrounded by people, and he's fine. But I mean, we've got human connection. He's not going to be one that's just going to, you know, move out to the middle of nowhere. I'm an extrovert, on the other hand, and I tend to have a lot of acquaintances and a lot of friends, and I draw energy from being around other people. So just because someone doesn't have 150 acquaintances doesn't necessarily mean they don't need connections. So we want to recognize that connection is a basic human need. When infants are born, they are put on their mother's chest. When we embrace each other, whether it's mother and child or friends or whatever, a chemical called oxytocin is released, and it's our bonding chemical. We are programmed, we are hardwired for connection. And oxytocin is a very rewarding chemical. So we want to recognize this, that if people are so afraid of abandonment that they push everybody away, what are they losing as far as quality of life? As infants and children, survival was dependent upon the relationship with the primary caregiver. So if mom or dad wasn't happy, if mom or dad was rejecting the young, child was pretty much helpless. Think about a child who's growing up in a family that's just riddled with addiction and mental health issues, and that primary caregiver or caregivers are completely emotionally unavailable. They may be physically there, but they may be so high or so depressed or so psychotic that they cannot attend to the child's needs. What does that communicate to the child? The child feels abandoned. The child feels a sense of neglect. People's beliefs about other people and relationships was formed largely based on their interactions with their caregivers. So if this child was going, mom, I'm hungry and nothing happened, or worse yet, child was going, mom, I'm terrified and nothing happened, or they were just given a pacifier and told go shut up, then that is, they were told, they were communicated to that their beliefs, their feelings, Their wants and their needs were not important, so they were being rejected. Healthy relationships serve up as a buffer against stress. So even if they had all these negative experiences in early childhood, childhood, teenage years, you know, maybe up until they walked into your office, it doesn't mean it has to continue. And how much can they gain from having healthy relationships? A lot of clients that I work with who have pretty significant abandonment issues can't even fathom trusting someone enough to be in a healthy relationship. So we're going to talk about how to sort of ease into that. Because you're not going to say, don't let your past influence your future and wave a magic wand. And they're ready to trust people. Even once you point out that what happened in the past was largely not their fault, or maybe not even their fault at all, they're still going to have difficulty not accepting responsibility and going, everybody leaves me. So we'll talk about that. Addressing beliefs that formed as a result of these relationships, the past dysfunctional relationships. We can help people create a new understanding of events. Was mom or dad or caregiver really being rejecting? Were you being abandoned emotionally and physically because of you, or because mom or dad just wasn't able to do what they needed to do to be a caregiver at that point in time? They were doing the best they could with the tools they had, but it wasn't enough to meet your needs. So we want to talk about alternate explanations for why parents caregivers may have behaved in that way. If you have a young child, well, an adult now, but who was put up for adoption or abandoned by their caregivers at a young age, the young child was probably very confused because one moment their caregiver was there, and the next moment they were in the system. So they were trying to figure out what did they do wrong? Why doesn't that person love me anymore? It must be me. Because children really can't see, well, you know, mom is not able to function as a parent right now, or dad is having difficulty coping. We want to help people better understand themselves and their reactions. So when they start getting this urge to just cut all ties and be like, you know what? Fine, you know, I'll take my ball and go home. No problem. What does that mean? There's a certain point in all relationships, in all healthy relationships, that, you know, sometimes people have to distance themselves from one another because it's becoming dysfunctional. But for the most part, people will, in relationships will encounter hiccups, will encounter disagreements, but in healthy relationships, they can Work through them. In relationships with people who fear abandonment, there's going to be two extremes. There's going to be complete compliance and please don't leave me or complete disengagement and whatever, I don't care. The final thing we want to do is help make people more conscious of what they're doing so they can make healthy decisions in their current relationships. So, so when they get that urge to either comply or disengage, is that a healthy normative reaction right now or are you reacting out of your past experiences? The abandonment experience in childhood survival depends on caregivers. A four year old left alone for five days is not going to do so well. You know, they may be able to scavenge food, but once the food runs out, where do they get it? There's only so much that a child can do. An infant can't even get their own food. So survival depends on their caregivers and if their caregivers fail to meet those needs, there's high levels of anxiety. And I will refer regularly to caregivers who are emotionally unavailable and emotionally absent in addition to physically unavailable or absent, because some parents and I worked in the field of co occurring disorders for over two decades and some parents just, they are so overwhelmed and so paralyzed by life itself, they can't even attend to anything else that's going on. They're doing good just to be breathing. But if they have a child, then that child's needs are getting neglected. Fear of abandonment is a natural survival response. When your food source goes away, what happens? You start to freak the freak out. So this is normal. We look at this and say that's natural. If a child. Think about the first time you take a child to kindergarten or pre K or daycare or whatever it is and you drop the child off. Even if they're securely attached, what do they do? They cry because they're afraid that mom or dad won't come back and they're afraid of this new situation, this change. Securely attached children will, you know, adjust and then be happy to see mom or dad when they come back. But the point is there's that initial oh crap reaction. Meeting biological needs and safety are key triggers for anxiety at any age. So we're talking about housing, we're talking about safety, we're thinking about Maslow's hierarchy. If somebody is not meeting the child's needs or if the person is not getting their needs met, then they may have high levels of anxiety. And I add to the safety concept not only physical safety, but also Emotional safety. People need to feel safe in their own heads and they need to be free from emotional abuse. When focused on survival, people can't focus elsewhere. So if they're not getting their physical needs met, guess what? You know, if you take somebody who is in pain, who is sick, who is hungry, and who is homeless, are they going to work on self esteem? Are they going to work on relationship skills? No, they're focused on survival. They need to have those basic needs met. They need to have a certain sense of security. If they are in a situation that is dangerous physically, obviously they're not going to be focusing on how can I better myself? When they're worried about somebody coming in and hurting them physically. Likewise, it's hard to focus on how can I better myself when everywhere they turn they perceive someone telling us, you're not okay, you're stupid, you're lazy, you're bad. You were the worst decision I ever made in my life. They can't focus on personal growth when all they're getting is these verbal beatdowns all the time. So people need to have acceptance. If they don't have acceptance, kind of the opposite of acceptance. Is abandonment two kind of extremes. Again, we'll bring it back to the middle. Every stressful situation becomes a crisis in the insecurely attached child. Now you can go back and read Bowlby's work on secure attachment and all that kind of stuff. Great reading. But for the short version of this presentation, remember that securely attached children feel anxiety when their parents leave, but then they can adjust and they're happy to see the parents return. Insecurely attached children feel a great amount of anxiety when their parents leave and are terrified of that mom or dad won't come back. And then when mom or dad does come back, it's either very, very clingy or very, very rejecting. So with this child that's insecurely attached, it's just like one to a hundred. As soon as something happens that they think they may be abandoned. You see this pattern again in adults who are still struggling with these abandonment issues. Those schema that they formed, and I'm getting a little ahead of myself, the schema that they formed says, if you let this person out of your sight or if this person disagrees with you, or if this person criticizes you, they're rejecting you and they're going to abandon you. So we want to, you know, check in with those cognitions and look for trying to make those thoughts a little bit more help in infancy or early childhood, if caregivers were away for long periods of time because of work, because of military, if they were in jail, if they just chose to be away, or if they passed away, children may experience some abandonment issues. Now if the parents are away because of a parent is away because of work or military or even jail, and the other parent can help the child work through it, there's much less dramatic, you will, there's much less issue with abandonment issues in totality. Now if it's whatever parent it is, if the father happened to be the one that went away, that person may have some residual issues with adult figures in their life that you need to deal with, but they may not. You know, I'm not saying that every child of a soldier or a service person is going to have abandonment issues. That's so not true. However, if the experiences, if the time apart was not handled in a way where the child felt secure, then it could have consequences that are going into present day. In early childhood, caregivers were inconsistently or unpredictably physically or emotionally present. So think about a parent who has major recurrent major depressive disorder, addiction, or is just ill equipped to deal with a child. When I was working at the treatment center in Florida, I had 14, 15, 16 year old young women coming in and having babies. And you know, what does a 14 year old know about giving birth and raising a child? So it's not that they weren't necessarily trying to, you know, they didn't have great role models raising them in most cases. And so they don't have anything to work with. They don't know how to be a parent. They've never been taught. So it's not always, I don't want to pathologize or make the parents look like bad people because I believe that people do the best they can with the tools they have at any given time. Parents don't choose to be sucky parents. Sometimes it happens, but I really don't believe they choose to anyhow. Off my soapbox in later childhood as the child becomes elementary school, middle school age. If they're a poor family fit or they feel like they're the black sheep, they just don't have the same beliefs that the other people do. They don't seem to have the same interest that their family does. They may not feel accepted, especially if the family's going, no, that's wrong to believe and invalidating them. So going back to that psychological safety, if they're constantly being told their ideas are stupid, they're wrong, they have the wrong point of view, they can feel very isolated. Something can happen that ruptures the relationship with the primary caregiver, whether it's abuse or. Or some kind of other trauma. And introduction of a new, less emotionally or physically safe caregiver can also lead to abandonment. If the child feels like the biological caregiver chose a new spouse over him or her. See where I'm going with that? Because if this new person comes in and is less safe, is abusive in some way, emotionally, physically, sexually, it doesn't matter. The child is going to feel like they didn't have a voice. The child is going to feel like the biological caregiver didn't care and brought this other person in anyway, which leads to feelings of rejection and abandonment. So what are the reactions? Fight or flight. Whenever there's a threat, we fall back to fight or flight or freeze. But we'll talk about that. When there's a threat, our anxiety goes up. And we say, in the past, in these kinds of situations, if I fought, did I succeed? If so, then we've got fight. In the past, did I succeed? And if the answer is no, then the response is flee. Pretty simple. So anger towards someone who's unavailable, if they got angry and they felt like it got them some sort of acceptance from somewhere, that might be the prevailing reaction. Sadness when someone goes away, A sense of helplessness. This person just left me. Shame or self. Anger about feeling needy or about pushing someone away. Fears related to rejection and isolation. Nobody will ever love me. Loss of control or the unknown. Everybody always leaves. See how I'm using these extreme words again? And fear of failure. I can't maintain a relationship. Nobody wants to be with me because I'm not good enough. So the questions for clients in these situations, what caused these fears as a child? So when someone starts to have these fears about a relationship, if the relationship starts to get rocky, first question is, what is it that you're afraid of in this situation? If you stay together, what is it that you're afraid of if this person leaves? What is it you're afraid of? And how likely is it that this person is going to leave based on whatever's going on right now? So let's get some objective evidence here. Another tool you can use is the Challenging Questions worksheet in Cognitive Processing Therapy. If you Google it, Challenging Questions worksheet, CPT or Cognitive Processing Therapy really helps people walk through the logic in some of their cognitions and identify some, you know, unhelpful distortions. So then after you figure out kind of what the Fear is. Then we say, what caused that as a child? In the past when you felt like this, what caused that and how was this reasonable or helpful? You know, in the past when you felt like this and you reacted in anger, what was the outcome and how was it helpful in some sort of way? You know, did it get somebody to pay attention to you? Did it get somebody to come comfort you? Okay, so we're identifying the function of the current behaviors and then we want to say what causes these fears? Now a lot of times it's the same or similar stuff, but we can say, how are these reactions now? Unhelpful. Because as independent, you know, adult type people, we can fend for ourselves. We, we can put food on the table, we can go to work, we can do, we can function independently. Whereas as a child we couldn't. You know, there were just some barriers to that. Does that mean again that we should be live in isolation and say, well, I don't need anybody? No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is these fears that are overwhelming about abandonment that causes people to push others away, cling on like, you know, whatever clings on. Are these reactions helpful in the present day? You know, do you still need to hold on to people like there's no tomorrow? Temperament? Based on their temperament, children need different types and amounts of caregiver interaction. Some children are wide open and easily overstimulated. You know, my son was that way when he was born. Well, to this very day when he's awake, he is like the energizer bunny on methamphetamine. And he's just going, going, going and talking and talking to himself. And he needed a lot of structure and he would get overstimulated easily. But we were able to help him figure out how to handle that. Instead of getting mad him for what seemed to be acting out, we were able to help him channel and figure out when he needed to take a break. The introvert may not need as much one on one attention with the caregiver. They may need a comforting word here and there, but they may not need the amount of attention that an extrovert may need. An extrovert tends to need more interaction with parents, with family, with other people because they draw energy and they think while they talk and they think while they talk with other people. So they feel a lot more isolated if they are isolated. So we want to understand the person's temperament and how they may or may not have gotten their needs met, how they may have been told they were wrong and invalidated when they were younger. And you can hear some of this is kind of going towards Linehan's DBT environment. But what we want to look at is what do you need now? How can we create an environment that's accepting and welcoming to you now? Based on their needs and caregivers reactions, children form schemas or core beliefs about the world and others. So if they state their opinion and it's squashed or it's ridiculed, then they're going to form this core belief that it, it is not safe ever to share my opinions because I am always wrong. Now we're talking about children here, but a lot of times think back for yourself there. I think most of us have at least some all or nothing dichotomous thoughts that come in every once in a while and you know, we can catch them. But if these dichotomies go unaddressed, the person starts feeling very lost and very abandoned because it's all or nothing important points about children under 7 from 8 to 12 children are developing alternative cognitive skills. They're starting to be able to think abstractly. They're starting to be able to see the gray area and alternate explanations. But even you know, during that period, so 0 to 12 children are having difficulty envisioning all the possibilities. So anything that happens before that, we want to encourage them to look at the schemas that were formed and challenge them to examine whether they are currently accurate and helpful. Children think dichotomously when they're that young. It's all or nothing. It's good or bad. It's not kind of sort of something. It is what it is. I mean even thinking back to grades that we would get, it was satisfactory or unsatisfactory. There was no ABCD F when we were in elementary school and I don't remember middle school. It was a dichotomous grading scale. You either did it or you didn't. Children are egocentric. So whatever happens they say, what was it about me that made this happen? If mom's in a bad mood, what did I do? If you know, mom is rejecting, well that was stupid. I'm stupid. Children are very egocentric. So you take all or nothing combined with all about me and you can see where we're creating the perfect storm. Children can only focus on one aspect at a time. When I work with adult clients, they come in and they tell me that they had an interaction with their boss. He was walking down the hall and he was in a bad mood. And I just. I knew I did something. And so we talk about that. And I'm like, how do you know that? Because he had a. He had an angry look on his face. Okay, what are some other possibilities? What else might have been going on with him at that point in time? And a lot of times we can brainstorm ideas about a call he just got or whether he just left a meeting that didn't go so well, or who knows what else. In this day and time when we've got our cell phones and PDAs and everything, there are a lot of things that can trigger a mood besides just whoever you pass in the hallway. Children can't think about those other things that might have triggered the mood. They see somebody unhappy and they're like, I'm sorry. So we want to encourage adults. We want to encourage them to say, all right, what are the other possibilities? And even as children, I try to work with my kids to encourage them to look at alternate reasons why somebody may be acting a certain way. Children can't think abstractly and consider those possible options, even with kids is, you know, knee high to a grasshopper. If you're in a situation and maybe a store and somebody behaves not kindly to you, you can talk about that later with the kids and say, you know, that was kind of unpleasant to go through. What do you think might have caused that? And brainstorm three ideas. My favorite number is three. I don't know why, but brainstorm three ideas for alternate explanations for why that person may have been in unpleasant mood. If children learn to do this when they're younger, it's a lot easier to transition to as adults. Schemas are a broad way of perceiving things based on memories, feelings and thoughts. Basically, it's our go to perception of what something's going to be like. We have schemas about everything. If you go to church, you have a schema about what's going to happen. When you go to your mother's house, you have a schema about how mom's going to behave and what's going to happen. We form these. It's our brain's shortcut. Instead of having to analyze every situation, it says, oh, I remember this. Been here before. It's probably going to be like xyz. Unfortunately, sometimes there's things change. And one of the things we see in addictions treatment is as caregivers enter recovery and really get a hold on it and start working that new way of life and sobriety and all that stuff. Old family members or family members still expect that old behavior. They have that schema that when Jane comes in, this is what's going to happen because they're remembering how she behaved and and acted in her addictive self. So we want to help people identify their schemas and check them. Sometimes they're still accurate, sometimes not so much. Schemas that trigger abandonment fears center around the self acceptability. Is this person going to like me? Which is one of the reasons we do a lot of self esteem work in reducing abandonment fears. Because we want to reduce the need for people to solicit external validation. We want them to say, I'm all that and a bag of chips and I would love to play with you, but if you don't want to play, I'm okay with that too. Lovability. If they were told they were unlovable, if they perceived they were unlovable, then in the present they may fear isolation. They may fear that they're not lovable, so they will try to do whatever they can. Or likewise, they will build a lead wall that is five feet thick all the way around them so nobody can hurt them. They may have fears about their own competence. You know, thinking back to Erickson, you never thought some of these theorists from the past would keep coming up even in current practice, but they do. If a child going through that period of industry versus inferiority, Erickson's stages of psychosocial development, and they felt like a failure all the time, or they were never good enough, the parents never recognized their positive achievements, then they may question their own confidence and feel like a failure. And if they feel like a failure, they may feel, they may believe that nobody wants to be around them, so they will leave. So if I fail, they will leave. And fears may center around adaptability. Some people are not able to tolerate any loss of control. They're just like they're holding on with a death grip to the relationship to anything that's going on. And if it starts to go wonky, they are going to freak out. So we want to look at what does it mean if you're not in control of everything? What does it mean if you trust that this person is going to do the next right thing, if you are doing the next right thing as well? Schemas that trigger abandonment fears can also center around others. If someone is rejecting distant, cold or unable to handle the person's needs, then the person may not feel acceptable. So if they are in relationships with people like this, then we need to look at is it you who's not acceptable or something else going on with that person that may be making them unable to deal with anybody else's stuff right now. The person may feel isolated if other people are absent. If people fail to keep promises, they may feel like nobody's ever there for them. Competence. If other people are always critical, then the person will question their own competence. And if others are unpredictable. A lot of the time when people who have anxiety about abandonment, they come from situations where other people have not been predictable or if they were, they were unpredictably absent and relationship of self to others. If they are afraid about their ability to relate with others, if they're afraid of rejection, if they're afraid that if they start to love they will be rejected and then they will be isolated forever. If they are afraid of the unknown and they just, they want consistency more than anything. And as soon as consistency starts to waver a little bit because as we grow, things change. And people with abandonment issues don't like things to change because that's not predictable and that's not consistent. So they may have difficulty. If one person starts to change, what do they do? I see this a lot, not saying that it's an abandonment issue necessarily, but when law enforcement officers retire, because they can retire after 20 years, so they may start on a new career and that causes a lot of change, schedule changes, they're not law enforcement anymore and the spouse sometimes has difficulty adjusting to it, as does the retired officer. But controllability. If the person holds on to relationships and everything in their life with white knuckles because they're so afraid, if they let go of control that they are going to disappear or disintegrate, then if something seems like it's not in their control, it's going to be a catastrophe. So attachment styles secure. If there's an emotionally available caregiver, the child will seek the caregiver for comfort. And guess what? The caregiver will be there and will more often than not meet the need for comfort with the correct type of comfort. So hungry, cold, scared, kind of following the child's upset when the caregiver leaves, especially in new situations. But the child gets over it. It's not a child that's going to sit there and cry for eight hours and then the child's happy when the caregiver returns. In this kind of attachment, the child learns to trust others, will be responsive to their needs and validate their needs. The child learns to be self reliant and try new things. But if they fail, they know they can return to home Base, they can go out and go, well, that didn't go as planned. And caregiver will be there to say, all right, let's figure out what to do next. Not, you are such a failure. The child learns to adapt to a variety of situations because when they've been faced with something that's a little scary, caregiver's been there to kind of coach them on and go, you got this. It's scary. I got it. But you can do it. The child learns to deal with stress because the caregiver is there to coach them or to process it with them afterwards, because the caregiver is not always physically there. But if you've got children, you know, sometimes they'll come home from school and they've had a really bad day and you pull them aside and go, you know, what's going on? Let's talk about it. So in this way, the child learns to deal with stress and the child learns to have accurate expectations of others in the secure attachment, emotionally available situation. Remember, children are egocentric, so if mom's upset, the child goes, what did I do? Or oh my gosh, I hope mom's not gonna leave. In a secure situation, sometimes the parent has to say something like, mommy had a really bad day at work today, nothing to do with you. I need to go take a time out. That helps the child understand that, you know what, it's not all about me. And I can understand that sometimes mom's upset for something besides me. And I can understand that if mom's upset, it doesn't mean she's going to leave. So obviously this is the ideal situation. Avoidant attachment styles, the rejecting or harsh caregiver. The person depends less on the caregiver for security because every time they go, say, mom, Mom, I had a nightmare. Can I come into bed with you? They're met with, go back to your own bed. And the caregiver rolls over. It's not, oh, I'm sorry you had a nightmare. Let me walk you back to your room. When the child is separated from the caregiver, there's little response when the caregiver leaves or returns because the kid's like, what use is that person to me? The child learns not to depend on the caregiver for comfort, connection, or security. Now imagine yourself, a four year old child or a six year old child, thinking, I can't count on my caregivers for comfort, connection or security. That must be a terrifying place to be. And I can see why you would develop some pretty strong defense mechanisms. The ambivalent relationship. The caregiver is inconsistent or wow, can't talk. Caregiver is inconsistent or chaotic. This is really true in a lot of homes where there's at least one parent who is battling some sort of addiction or mental health issue. So the parent may or may not be available. You don't know what the good days are going to be. You don't know what the bad days are going to be. So the child may be anxious and afraid to try new things or explore because they're like, things are going good right now. I don't want to topple the apple cart, just going to sit here and ride it out. The child may be clingy and demanding, trying to elicit a response, remembering that negative attention is better than no attention at all. And the child is upset when the caregiver leaves, but also inconsolable when the caregiver returns. Because, you know, I was upset, I was scared, you went away, but you came back and that's good, but I don't know when you're going to go away again and if you're going to come back. So it's this constant anxiety of abandonment, core abandonment beliefs. All people leave. So we want to challenge that by identifying exceptions, mistrust people will hurt, reject, take advantage of me, or just not be there when I need them. You know what, that's true sometimes because people have their own stuff. So when this happens, let's look at whether it's happening all the time and. Or let's also look at what else might be going on with that person that caused them to hurt, reject, take advantage, or not be there when you needed them. Emotional deprivation. I never get the love I need. Nobody understands me, cares about me, or even ever tries to meet my needs. Hear how dramatic and extreme that is. So one of the things as clinicians we can do is say, if you were getting the love you needed, what would it look like? What would be different? What is it that you need that you're not getting? Because once we identify it, then we can create a plan to get it. But a lot of times other people don't understand or may not be able to interpret what you need. So let's help, let's try to figure out how to make this happen. Nobody understands me. Alright, let's talk about why that might be. And you know, let's look at some people who've kind of gotten a grasp sometimes with clients with abandonment beliefs. Nobody understands me translates to I don't give anybody a chance and I Cut them off as soon as they become confused and because they associate confusion with rejection. So we might talk about communication skills. We might work on what it is that people don't understand and how to better communicate that and where to find people who have similar interests. Nobody ever even tries to meet my needs here. I would really look for exceptions, but I would also challenge the person and I would say, when do you meet your needs? What do you do to take care of yourself? Because a lot of times clients with abandonment beliefs are so freaked out and afraid of being abandoned that they're not taking care of themselves either. They're just living in this paralyzed going back to fight, flee, or freeze. They're living in this paralyzed state of I want to be loved, but if I love, I'm going to get hurt, and I don't know what to do. They don't even love themselves. So we want to start talking about, if you had your best friend now create this best friend Persona, what would he or she say to you? What would he or she do right now? Let's try to help you understand yourself. Mindfulness exercises are really good here because a lot of times these clients don't understand themselves. They've got so much anxiety. They're so afraid, and they don't know where it's coming from because a lot of it has been going on for so long. Defectiveness. If people knew me, they would reject me. You know, not everybody's gonna like you. Why do you need everybody to like you? Why is it important that everybody likes you? And failure. I don't measure up and I'm not able to succeed. I usually put pull out the obnoxious quote that if you haven't failed, you haven't tried. And we talk about what it means to get outside your comfort zone. And you're not going to be perfect at everything. You're not going to be Michael Phelps. You're not going to be the President of the United States. That doesn't mean that you're a failure. That does. Definitely doesn't mean you're a failure at everything. So what things are you good at? What can you and have you succeeded at? And go back and look over things like you graduated high school. Not everybody does that. You raised a family. Not everybody does that. So we want to challenge all or nothing languages. We want to look for exceptions and we want to look for, in what ways can you provide yourself the validation so you don't fear abandonment. You don't need other people to tell you you're okay because Guess what? You're telling yourself I'm okay. And before I go on to unhelpful reactions, I do want to point out that if we tell people to tell themselves, you know, I'm okay, that sounds great, but if they don't believe it, if it's not supported with evidence, it's actually probably going to slow their growth because they're sitting there going, telling themselves, I'm okay, and in the back of their head going, no, you're not. So we need to get that internal critical voice to kind of hush up by providing the person with objective evidence of why they're okay, why they're good enough. And that's slow process. It's not going to happen overnight. But encourage people to figure out why they believe what they believe, and then you can work from there. Okay, Unhelpful reactions. Fighting with someone, you don't want to leave me because. So the person may engage in dominant sort of posturing behavior, aggression, hostility, blaming and criticizing. Trying to tear down the other person to say, you know what, I don't care and you should be grateful that I'm in your life. Recognition, seeking to get attention, validation or approval. So if they feel something's going wrong in a relationship, they may start trying to do something to gain recognition, to prove that they're worthy of a relationship for what they do versus who they are. Manipulation and exploitation, seduction, lying, justifying. I did this because you made me. So sometimes. I mean, we all occasionally do things that aren't the nicest. People who fear abandonment have difficulty saying, you know what, I screwed up. And they're more likely to go, you made me do it. I wouldn't have done it if you would have. X, Y and Z. People, again, who are worried a relationship is going to fall apart may also make excuses for other people's inappropriate behavior. It's like, you know, I really hate what this person does, but if I don't make excuses for it, if I condemn it, then this person is going to leave. In counseling, we can talk about the difference between loving a person, loving a person's behavior. You know, I love my kids to death, there is no question about that. But some of their behavior makes me want to climb a wall. I'm very clear to separate with them the difference between the behavior that I dislike and them. Because, you know, like I said, I love them to pieces. And we want to help people start making this differentiation if they don't do it already. And clinging and chasing is the other fight reaction. Stalking, messaging somebody 47 times. On Facebook in an hour. All these kinds of behaviors and even online bullying, those sorts of things can be fight reactions in response to feeling like there's a threat of abandonment. Flight is more of the I don't care if you leave. So the person will withdraw physically and emotionally and maybe even numb themselves with some sort of addictive behavior or distract themselves with something completely different or find a new person just to prove that, you know what? I didn't need you because I've got this new person now. Questions for clients about core beliefs. All people leave. Okay, so what does it look like if somebody's available to you if they don't abandon you? Who in your past left you or was unavailable emotionally? Now, a lot of these. I find it helpful for mental health and addiction clients to have them write an autobiography, because then we can go back and kind of review it and identify the core people and certain stages in a person's life. What did the person who left you do to make you feel rejected or abandoned? In retrospect, you know, it was hard to see what was going on back then because you were a kid. In retrospect, what are the alternate explanations for why this may have happened? Was it really you, or was it more about them? Who in your past has been available to you emotionally? Most of the time, people can point to one, maybe two people who have generally been there. It's unreasonable to expect someone to always be there. Who in your present is available to you emotionally? You know, maybe they've only been in your life for six months or a year, but they are available. And I say emotionally because, you know, not everybody can be available physically all the time. We've got jobs, kids, all. All that kind of stuff. But can you pick up the phone and call them or text them and say, hey, you know what? I'm really struggling right now? What do you do in your current relationships that causes people to leave? Do you push them away? If so, how? What are alternatives to pushing them away? To cutting all ties and just saying, fine, be that way. I wipe my hands of you. If you cling, how do you do this? In what ways do you perceive yourself as being clingy? And what are some alternatives to holding on with all desperation, mistrust? People will hurt, reject, or take advantage of me or just not be there when I need them? So, again, what does it look like when somebody's. Or what does it feel like when someone is trustworthy and safe? Who in your past was untrustworthy or unsafe? What did they do that taught you this and what are alternate explanations? Who in your past has been trustworthy and safe? Who in your present is available and trustworthy? What do you do to yourself that is unsafe or dishonest? That's one of those tricky questions. They're talking about other people, other people, other people. Then it's like, what do you do to yourself? How do you lie to yourself? Or how are you mean and hateful to yourself? How does your distrust of other people or even yourself impact your current relationships? Some people distrust their own internal intuition so much that they don't want to make friends with other people. They're like, I can't tell who's going to hurt me and who won't. So just, you know, I'm going to wipe my hands of it all. What could you do differently? What do you think you could do in order to start building trust? And what does it look like to build trust? Because trust doesn't just appear. It builds gradually. Emotional, desperate, deprivation. I don't get the love I need. Nobody understands me. So again, what does it look like when somebody understands you and meets your needs? Who in the past failed to meet your needs emotionally? And how can you deal with that now? You know, it may have been mom, it may have been ex husband, it may have been, you know, who knows? How can you deal with it now? Yourself, so you can put it to rest. Who in your past has understood you? Who in your present understands you? How can you start again better understanding yourself? Because it's hard for other people to understand us when we don't even understand ourselves. And what can you do to start getting your needs met? One of the things with starting to get your own needs met is to figure out what your needs are. And this is one of the exercises I have people do as a homework assignment. They keep track of what is it they want on a daily basis. Keep a log, and then let's talk about what common themes we're seeing. If people knew me, they would reject me. Okay, so how do you know when you're accepted or acceptable to someone who in your past made you feel defective? Are there alternate explanations? And how can you silence those old tapes? Because that person, that statement stays as a heckler in the gallery. We need to hush the heckler. What can you do? Part of it could be talking back and saying, you know what? I'm not going to listen, or, I don't have time for this right now. Who's been accepting and supportive? Who is in your life that's accepting and supportive? And how can you start accepting yourself and being compassionate. So some compassion focused training, mindfulness work to help people understand themselves, start being compassionate with their selves, understanding their vulnerabilities and cutting themselves some slack. I don't measure up, I'm not able to succeed. Okay, that's pretty big success, you know, what is, what does success mean? Success means different things to different people. So what does it look like to you to be successful? Let's kind of hammer that out. What is it? If you are successful, what would be different? What in your past has made you feel like a failure? What are some alternate ways of viewing it, such as a learning experience or something I had to go through to grow? Or brainstorming alternate explanations for why people fail. If they don't have a response to this, sometimes I ask them to kind of take on a flip roll and say, pretend you're a parent and your child comes home and they tried out for the football team and they didn't make the team, they failed. What are you going to tell them? What have you succeeded at doing in the past? What are you good at in the present? And we really want to pay attention to minimization here because a lot of our clients are not good at identifying their strengths. What does being successful mean in terms of your relationship for others? Do you have to be successful in order to be loved and be in a good relationship? You know, obviously you're going to be successful in a relationship if you're. But do you have to be financially successful, powerful, all whatever you define success as in order to be in healthy relationships? Who are three successful people, you know, and what makes them successful in your eyes? Does success equal happiness? You can do a whole group on that. And what do your kids need to do to be successful in life? You know, we want our kids to succeed. We want our kids to be happy. So what is it that I envision my child's Life to be 10, 15 years from now? Triggering relationships. The abandoner is unpredictable, unstable and unavailable. The abusive relationship is untrustworthy and unsafe. The depriver, depriving relationship. The person is detached or withholding. The devastator is always judgmental, rejecting and critical. And the critic is critical and narcissistic. Usually a lot of times people replay their past to try to kind of get it right the second time. So we want to look at, do you have a habit of getting into relationships with people who are not safe? We can also ask them, how do you exhibit these behaviors? In what ways are these behaviors present in your current relationships? And in what ways were these present in your primary caregiver relationships? Behavioral triggers Abandonment and mistrust. If somebody starts acting different, they change their behavior in some way. A person who fears abandonment goes, well, that's not good. If they're not getting constant reassurance, that's that external validation. It can trigger abandonment fears. So again, we want to work on internal validation. And why is it that you feel you need constant reassurance? The other person's relationships feel threatening, so work relationships, those sorts of things. The person who has abandonment issues won't want their significant other around other people, and they become hyper vigilant to rejection and disconnection. Even if it's just somebody going, I had a really bad day. I need 20 minutes, and going into the room and shutting the door. The person with abandonment issues will likely have a high level of anxiety. So I want to ask how these behaviors have threatened them in the past? What are alternate explanations for why this is happening with this person right now? And what would be a helpful reaction to these behaviors now? So this is happening. What would be a helpful reaction instead of assuming that the sky is going to fall? Defectiveness and failure. So if somebody is critical, if they have unexplained time apart, there's absent or inconsistent reassurance, or if the person tells them they're a failure or they fail at something, These could all be behavioral triggers. They could be like, I failed at something. I'm not getting reassurance, this relationship's fixing to end. Questions how has this threatened you in the past? Alternate explanations. And what would be a helpful reaction to this particular situation right now? Envisioning activity. What does a healthy relationship look like? Presence versus abandonment. Acceptance versus rejection. Emotional support versus emotional unavailability. Trustworthy versus untrustworthy and safe versus harmful. These are extremes. What does it look like to be middle ground? There are going to be exceptions. You know, things are going to happen. So what does a healthy relationship look like? Look like? And how do you deal with exceptions? If somebody's not always present, how can you create this relationship with yourself? That's a big one. And then how can you create this relationship with others? Mindfulness questions. What am I feeling? What's triggering it? Am I safe right now? And if not, what do I need to do? Is this bringing up something from the past? If so, how's this different? How am I different than I was when I was 6 or 4? And how can I silence my inner critic? And finally, what would be a helpful reaction that would move me more toward my goals and toward a positive emotional experience. Summary Core beliefs about the self and others are formed in early life due to children's lack of knowledge, other experiences, and primitive cognitive abilities. These core beliefs are often very dichotomous. Core beliefs can be formed around events or experiences outside of the conscious memory. Identifying and being mindful of abandonment triggers in the present can help people choose alternate, more helpful ways of responding in the present. Insecure in Love and Love Me, Don't Leave Me are two really excellent books. There are Google previews if you want to look at them to see if it's something that you like, but they do. Take what we talked about in this presentation and expand upon it a whole bunch more. If you enjoy this podcast, please like and subscribe either in your podcast player or on YouTube. You can attend and participate in our live webinars with Dr. Snipes by subscribing at allceus.com counselortoolbox this episode has been brought to you in part by allce.com, providing 24. 7 multimedia continuing education and pre certification training to counselors, therapists and nurses since 2006. Use coupon code counselortoolbox to get a 20% discount off your order this month.