Free Yourself from Abandonment Anxiety & Insecure Attachment

Hey there, everybody. And welcome to this episode on a cognitive behavioral approach to addressing abandonment anxiety. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. In this presentation, we're going to examine the cognitive behavioral approach. We're going to define abandonment anxiety, explore the roots of it, and identify some cognitive behavioral techniques in order to help people address it. So just a quick recap if you're not familiar with the cognitive behavioral approach. The cognitive behavioral approach asserts that our thoughts, feelings, behaviors and perceptions all interact with one another. So our thoughts, for example, if we're in a negative mindset, then that can have an impact on what we perceive. When we are in a unpleasant mood, our brain tends to focus more on the threats in the environment. When we are in a happy mood, our brain actually pays more attention to some of the positive things. So our thoughts affect our perceptions. Our thoughts can affect our feelings. If we're having pessimistic or negative thoughts, it can increase feelings of anxiety or anger or depression. Our thoughts can affect our behaviors. You know, if you think that something is getting ready to go wrong, then you may actually take behavioral steps to change it. And you can see from this presentation, from this slide that all of those things interact. And anywhere you start, whether you start with behaviors or thoughts or perceptions, each one of those is going to interact with the other one. So I'm not going to go into super detail with that because there are plenty of other videos on cognitive behavioral. But it's important to have a general understanding of the cognitive behavioral theory when we start talking about abandonment anxiety, because abandonment anxiety incorporates both thoughts about abandonment, perceptions of people and the world, and our feelings about others and about ourself, we, which results in behaviors. Whether you're a counselor, social worker, psychologist, pastor, or even a caseworker for the Department of Children and Families, you're likely going to encounter people with abandonment anxiety. Unfortunately, it's true. Abandonment anxiety results in an ongoing undercurrent of stress. And in other episodes, we've talked a lot about the HPA axis or our threat response system. When people fear abandonment, when people fear anything, it keeps that threat response system kind of amped up a little bit. So there is a constant or semi constant undercurrent of anxiety, kind of waiting for that other shoe to drop, if you will. When that HPA axis, that threat response system stays activated for too long, it starts causing actual changes in the brain. It contributes to stress related health problems, including autoimmune disorders, difficulty managing blood sugar, cardiovascular disease, circadian rhythm disruption, emotional dysregulation, which is when somebody goes from feeling flat or maybe even okay to having an extreme reaction to a situation, I call it flat to furious. They can have negative affect, which means they feel depressed, anxious, angry, guilty, any of those dysphoric feelings. And when we feel that way, that is an indication that our neurotransmitters are also starting to become imbalanced. Because our neurotransmitters help us feel our feelings. People who have this underlying current of anxiety are going to be more likely to notice, perceive the threats in the environment. And people's non verbals, even you know, just minute micro expressions which they may interpret pessimistically or negatively, which contributes to and enhances their feeling of unsafeness. All of this kind of adds up to difficulty developing healthy relationships because there's a difficulty trusting others. When people with abandonment anxiety start to get into relationships, they start noticing those micro expressions. They start noticing things and assuming that it means that they are getting ready to be abandoned. Most people have a certain amount of anxiety in relationships because when you're in a relationship, you tend to become at some point vulnerable and that person becomes important in your life. And this could be intimate relationships, this could be your best friend, whatever. But when you start telling them things that you don't tell everybody, when you start becoming vulnerable, when you let them into your heart, so to speak, you have made your made a choice to make yourself vulnerable because you trust that person to not hurt you. However, it is natural when you're a little vulnerable to have a wee bit of anxiety here and there. And the differences with abandonment anxiety, the person experiences this fear of abandonment, this person experiences this anxiety nearly constantly and it can be overpowering and it negatively impacts one or more areas of their life. So they may be constantly watching their significant other or their friend for any indication that that person is going to abandon them. Maybe their best friend went out with somebody else to do something on the weekend. And that can be perceived by somebody with abandonment anxiety as an indication that they are getting ready to get kicked to the curb. Many times abandonment anxiety started with a traumatic experience. Now this can be a traumatic experience from childhood when the person didn't have have a secure attachment with their primary caregivers. And they got a lot of messages about the safety and predictability and trustworthiness of others and their own lovability or and you know, it can. People can unfortunately have both traumatic childhoods and traumatic adulthoods, but you don't have to have the traumatic childhood. Sometimes the abandonment anxiety begins after a traumatic event. In adult life. And not all abandonment anxiety results from somebody willfully leaving. Sometimes the person will suddenly pass away, and that is perceived as abandonment. You know, it's not that the person chose to pass away, but all of a sudden that person's no longer in your life and you're left kind of floundering. And sometimes, especially if this happens a lot or enough, it can be extremely terrifying to get close to anybody because people become afraid that either you're going to willfully leave or you're going to pass away. So either way, you're gone. When people experience these traumatic experiences, memories of the traumatic event are triggered whenever the person is faced with similar situations in the future. So whenever they start to get close to somebody or want to get close to somebody, or they're in a relationship and someone does something that reminds them of a prior relationship that ended badly, they default to those memories that they have because those memories are kind of what guide our ability to predict the future. So when they get into these relationships and are vulnerable, they may rely on outdated scripts or memories to predict the current person's future behavior. And this is a big challenge when dealing with abandonment anxiety and just relationships in general. Not holding your current partner or friend hostage for the mistakes that people in your past have made. Could they make them? Sure. Are they definitely going to make them? Well, you can't predict the future. So it's important to use those past experiences to inform your awareness, but to also use the current context. And we're going to talk about context when we get into coping skills, but use the current context to say, okay, in the past, when something like this has happened, when I've started to feel vulnerable, then I've been abandoned, okay, but in the present context, what facts do I have to support the belief that this person is going to do the same thing? So anyway, when people with abandonment anxiety get into relationships and are vulnerable, or even think about getting into relationships and think about becoming vulnerable, they can have high levels of anxiety triggered because it hurt so much before. This may result in self preservation behaviors is what I call them. They may become rejecting. They may just say, okay, I'm going to cut bait right now. Don't want to go down that road. Not safe. Or they may start criticizing the other person in order to try to, you know, they don't think it out this way. It's very. They don't mean to try to cut somebody down. But if they start criticizing the other person, they may feel like they can make the other person less likely to leave. Because they've lowered that person's self esteem, they may result in resort to clinging very clingy behaviors where they're texting all the time, they're calling all the time, their partner, their friend, friend can't go anywhere without them, or exhibiting high levels of jealousy. You know, there's a lot of different ways that people may try to protect themselves from abandonment. And from a survival standpoint, it can kind of make sense. You can see, you know, how in some way this behavior might make sense in order to try to prevent the person from getting caught unawares or being abandoned. Unfortunately, these behaviors are often unhealthy and create a self fulfilling prophecy. So when they start becoming clingy or jealous or excessively critical or rejecting, oftentimes it does end up pushing the other person away. So the other person leaves. This reinforces their belief that nobody's trustworthy or safe, end quote. Everybody leaves. So we create this self perpetuating cycle or we see it being created. What do we do? Well, the first thing, when people have experienced abandonment, whether it was when they were an infant, a child or an adult, they experienced a trauma, they were led to feel unsafe and disempowered. So the first thing is to start creating safety. We are not going to get outside of our comfort zone if we don't, can't even feel safe in that. You know, if we don't have a comfort zone, it's hard to want to move forward. So we need to help people start to feel safe. And the first step I usually work on with people is to help them create a secure attachment with themselves. And I know that sounds kind of weird, but a lot of times people with high levels of abandonment anxiety have been chameleons. They have not been living authentically because they have been trying to be whatever that other person wants in order to prevent them from leaving. So I've created the mnemonic Visceral and I like it because safety as well as relationships are very visceral. We feel them in our gut. So validation is the V in visceral. We need to help people start providing themselves validation of their feelings. And this is where we start talking about mindfulness and, and becoming aware of how they're feeling and accepting non judgmentally. I am feeling anxious, I am feeling angry, I'm feeling confused. Whatever the person's feeling, encourage them to start becoming mindful of what their thoughts, feelings and needs are and validating them saying, okay, this is how you feel. We're not judging, we're not saying it's good or it's bad, we or just saying I acknowledge that you're feeling angry or anxious or whatever right now, that's the first thing. And for a lot of people, they've been raised with shoulds and accepting how they're feeling non judgmentally is really a whole lot more difficult than you might think it is. So I encourage people not to rush through this. Really start practicing becoming mindful and validating how they're feeling non judgmentally. Now the interesting thing with emotions is emotions are our body's way of communicating with us. When we feel happy, our body's saying do that again. When we're feeling anxious or angry, our body's saying there might be a threat. So I'm going to give you a bunch of energy so you can go check it out. It's kind of like the smoke alarm of the body, if you will. And it's important to recognize that just because you feel angry or anxious doesn't necessarily mean there's something to be angry or anxious about. In the present context, it could be memories from the past that are coming up and projecting and telling you what you should expect. So it's really important to recognize that feelings are there for a reason. And if I acknowledge that I'm feeling anxious, I validate it and I say, okay, I'm feeling anxious, not good, not bad, it just is. Then I can make take steps to check it out, ensure my safety and address those feelings. So validation to enhance emotional awareness is first, I stands for intimacy and connection. And this means becoming connected with yourself, learning how to be authentic, knowing what your thoughts, wants and needs are. And that is self intimacy. A lot of people operate on autopilot and that is not connected. That is not a self indication of self intimacy. So people need to start exploring when they validate their feelings, they validate their thoughts, wants and needs. And then they start asking themselves. They develop this intimacy, this curiosity to understand their point of view and their default schema. They start saying, okay, I'm curious, why am I feeling anxious right now? What about this situation? If is triggering my anxiety, what's my point of view? And you know, what are the default schema, which are our memories, if you will, what are the memories that are telling me or triggering these feelings right now? And again, are they accurate in the present context? S stands for safety and boundaries. And it's important to do this with other people, but it's also important to do this with ourselves. Recognizing being able to talk to ourself and use distress tolerant thoughts and what I mean by that is instead of saying, I can't handle this, it's going to overwhelm me. I can't go on using distress tolerant thoughts that say this is really unpleasant and I know I can get through it. So creating safety in, in your own head can be really helpful. And then learning how to start setting boundaries. And you're not going to set a lot of boundaries with yourself, but you're starting to help the person set boundaries with other people. So recognizing where they are, you know, if they are in a meeting, if they're at work, if they're out to eat with somebody, encouraging the person to become aware, mindfully aware of their thoughts, wants and needs and recognize that those are mine. They may not be Sally's or Jim's or Bob's. These are my thoughts, wants and needs right now. And you know, they can have their own. I am here, they are there. So part of setting boundaries is recognizing where you end and the other person begins. C stands for consistency and predictability. And we need to be consistent and predictable with ourselves when we feel anxious, when we feel angry, when we feel depressed, when we feel hungry, whatever it is, consistently being mindful, reacting in a predictable way. What we're doing is learning how to nurture ourself. When we start creating this secure attachment with ourself, number one, we're modeling to other people what we deserve. Number two, we're learning what we deserve. And number three, we're creating our first potentially healthy relationship. So consistency and predictability is really important. Now. Not everybody is as structured as I am and you know, living by schedules and that sort of thing. But being predictable in your responses to yourself when you're hurting, when you're sick, when you're tired, predictably responding and trying to get yourself what you need. E stands for encouragement and nurturing, for self efficacy. So you want to be able to help the person start encouraging themselves and being their own best cheerleader. Because we don't always have people that are going to cheerlead for us. And it's important that people can feel competent and confident in their ability not only to live life, but to accomplish the things that are important to them. Helping people start learning how to set those smart goals, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time limited can be really helpful because then they can start seeing progress. And I encourage people, when you're working with clients to have them set micro goals. What is your goal for today? Or maybe even what is your goal for this meeting, you know, or this dinner that you're going to. It's not about changing henceforth and forevermore. It's about seeing progress, being able to get through situations that were triggering before without being as triggered. R stands response for responsiveness to help with coping and problem solving. And it's important that people start developing coping and problem solving skills. But in order to do that, they first have to identify what's causing their distress. You can't fix something if you don't know what's wrong. You know, think about if you have a leak at the house. You know, the water pressure's down, but you got to figure out where it's coming from before you can even start trying to solve the problem. So that responsiveness is really important. And part of it involves helping people learn skills that are effective for them to cope with distress. A stands for authenticity, to feel feelings and grieve losses. And it's really important when you acknowledge your feelings, you know that validation, acknowledge that you feel sad, you feel a loss. For example, being able to allow yourself to move through the grieving process instead of trying to box it up and shove it back somewhere in the back of your head, allowing yourself to experience that grief authentically and move through it. And finally, L stands for love. And that's the unconditional kind of recognizing that you are different than your behaviors, you know, so it's really important to help people see themselves as lovable, see themselves as worthy. Yes, they're going to make mistakes. They're going to do things that they may not like. They may regret, but they are not regrettable. When you're working with people to help them develop this secure attachment with themselves, you know, going through the visceral mnemonic and then asking them, how could they, how do they currently fill or fail to fulfill these needs in their relationship with themselves? A lot of times they do some of them a little bit, you know, what we want to do is enhance that, improve that. So they create that secure relationship with themselves and then have them explore how do they fill or fail to fulfill these needs in their relationship with others? When they're working, not talking with their child, their best friend, their significant other, in what ways do they validate that person? In what ways do they try to understand that person's point of view and engage in intimacy and connection? In what ways do they help create safety? In what ways are they consistent and encouraging and responsive? In what ways do they allow that person to be authentic the relationship, even if they don't agree? You know, that person could be really upset about something. And your client may not agree, but their ability to set those boundaries and allow others to be authentic is so important. And how do they love others unconditionally? Not based on what do you do for me, but I love you for you. So that's the first part, and that takes time. This is not something you do in a group or an individual session, and bada bing, it's done. A lot of people, it takes them several weeks to work through this and really start creating that authentic, secure relationship and attachment with themselves, start to get to know themselves. Because a lot of times people with abandonment anxiety have been on autopilot for so long, they're just completely disconnected. The next step is to create what I call outer safety for change. And this is involving relationships with others. And we're still using that visceral mnemonic. But it's important for people at this point. You know, the first step was to look at how they engaged or how they fulfilled these needs for themselves, with themselves. The next step was to examine how they fulfilled these needs for others that they want to be in relationships with. The third step is to start looking at the important people in their life and saying, okay, now how does this person fulfill these needs for me? In what ways is this person validating, supporting intimacy and connection, Safe, consistent, encouraging, responsive? In what ways do they allow me to be authentic, and in what ways do I know that they love me unconditionally? And that can be really challenging for a lot of people, because especially for people with abandonment anxiety, a lot of their relationships are often unhealthy. So it's going to be important to examine, you know, what aspects of this relationship are healthy and what aspects aren't. And then looking at, in what way can people be counted on and who can be counted on and for what? So not everybody in your life, for example, is going to be encouraging. And we would love to have that in the perfect secure attachment. The person is always going to be encouraging, but that's not always the way it happens. Humans are imperfect. Relationships are somewhat imperfect. So looking at the relationships the person has, for example, who do they know who they could count on to be encouraging, and what can the client do to help others fulfill these needs? And that is sort of a paradigm shift. But a lot of times, other people either don't understand how to have a secure relationship, so this is new to them, too, or they don't know the needs of your client. So it's important for the client to be able to start articulating what they need. Explaining, for example, that when they're upset, you know, maybe they can say something like, you know, when I'm upset, I don't need you to solve the problem and I'm not trying to push you away. Whatever, it's hopeful. If you can validate that I'm upset, you can acknowledge that I'm upset. You don't have to agree with me, but acknowledging that you see that I'm upset is helpful. Intimacy and connection. You know, talking with your significant others and having the client be very clear with their significant others about what they need in terms of intimacy and connection and what that looks like. Helping clients educate their significant others about all of these concepts like boundaries and consistency. What does it look like? You know, we've all heard about the different love languages. What does it look like for your client to receive encouragement, nurturance and unconditional love? That's going to look different for different people. So if the client assumes that other people know what they need, they assume other people are going to read their mind. They're often going to be disappointed and may feel rejected. It is important to create safety. We've talked about relationship with self, relationship with others. It's important to also remember that this work may feel overwhelming and people sometimes can get all consumed by it and that's really not what we want. It's important to be mindful of what's going on, but becoming all consumed by it can be exhausting and can lead to other difficulties. Additionally, you know, when you try to think about when you tried to cram for an exam, for school, a lot of times you miss some of the finer details. If you throw yourself in and try to get it done in, you know, overnight or in a week when you were supposed to be using the entire semester. It's important to encourage people to set boundaries, set limits on how much time each day they're going to engage in processing or self enhancement behaviors. Now they need to do some each day, but they also need to be able to breathe, so to speak, because this can be really anxiety provoking work. That being said, it's important to make sure that people identify two or more supports that they can call if they start start getting overwhelmed. This could include a therapist, a pastor, the crisis line, whomever. But we want to make sure that people are safe. If they are exploring prior traumas or if they are starting to do something that feels scary to them, we want to make sure that they've got a safety net. Some people do better if they do the Work with others around so they don't feel totally isolated. So they may do it in their room, but when their roommates are there. And this is all about again, creating safety, whatever helps that person feel safe. And finally, encourage them to join an abandonment, recovery or similar support group. Helpful to be able to connect with others who have an idea about what it feels like, about what you might be going through. And there are some that are online, there are some through different churches, there are some, you know, just go online, do it, do a online search to see what sort of relationship and abandonment recovery groups are out there. So we've created safety. Let's talk about a couple of skills. The first one, and in cognitive behavioral therapy we often talk about is the ABCs. But here we're going to talk about the ABCDEFS of distress regulation. Distress regulation will be important when people are exploring past issues as well as abandonment fears when they get triggered in the present. So what can people do? A stands for awareness, encouraging them to be mindful of how they're feeling. It doesn't mean trying to change it or get rid of it. It means non judgmentally accepting. You know, we already talked about that and validating. B stands for breathing. And this is for focused breathing. So breathing in for a count of four to six, holding for a count of four, and then exhaling for a count of four to six. That slower breathing will help slow the heart rate and lower people's blood pressure. Now you can do biofeedback with it. If you've got a fitness tracker or some other device that monitors your heart rate, you can watch and see your heart rate actually starting to decline, which can be reinforcing. The nice thing about biofeedback is when you're focused on that number on your fitness tracker or whatever you're using to monitor your heart rate, you're actually diverting your attention to that and away from whatever triggered the anxiety. Okay, so we have being aware so you can engage in early intervention. You notice that you're starting to feel not okay and you want to do something about it. Focused breathing in order to down regulate that HPA axis in order to reduce the stress response. Cued progressive muscular relaxation is something that you can learn to do. And it involves starting from the head and working all the way down, tensing and releasing each muscle, noticing the difference between tense and relaxed. And basically it's a whole body scan. Now the cue comes in because every time you relax your muscles, you say a word like breathe or it's all good or whatever. Phrase or word you want to say. So in the future, your brain is actually connected to that cue. So when you say that cue, your body will start to relax. It's really kind of cool. And you're thinking, how could this work? Well, I'll give you an example. Think back to school when you used to, you know, go in, sit down in class and if the teacher said clear your desk, your heart rate would go up, or at least mine would, and the fear response would trigger. So the phrase clear your desk was cue was a cue for your anxiety response because you knew that probably meant a pop quiz was coming. So cues actually can be very powerful. D stands for develop distress tolerance thoughts. It's really important that people are able to talk to themselves when they're feeling anxious or angry. Be able to sit with the emotion. Feelings don't go away just like that, like flipping a switch. It takes a little while when you get angry or anxious for that feeling to move on. So distress tolerant thoughts help people develop the skills to be able to sit with those feelings and not feel overwhelmed by them, or not feel like the emotions are too powerful. E stands for express. Now this doesn't mean, you know, start screaming or anything. Generally, journaling can be very helpful. When people are feeling distress, writing down what they're anxious about, just getting it out of their head can be helpful. Or if they've got someone that they can call or text with to articulate their feelings again, sometimes just getting it out and hopefully getting someone or yourself to validate how you're feeling, you know, okay, I notice that I'm feeling really anxious right now, or you know, somebody else saying, I hear that you're feeling terrified right now. That can be extremely powerful at helping people feel less out of control. So expressing yourself actually can be very helpful with distress regulation. F stands for focus. And what I mean by this is move your focus. When we are distressed, if we focus on the anxiety, if we focus on the thoughts and we replay those thoughts over and over again, that anxiety will build kind of like a tidal wave or a very loud stereo. So one technique you can use is the knob. Imagine using the knob or the side of your, the volume control on your mobile device and seeing that volume go down. So what you're doing is seeing the intensity, the volume of that noise of that distress go down. Another technique I use with people is I call it shelving. And they can either write down their distress on a card and put it in a box and literally put it on a shelf, or they can envision themselves taking that issue, whatever it is, putting it in a imaginary box and putting it on a shelf, knowing that they will come back to deal with it later. And what's important with this is we generally don't think super clearly when we are in that fight or flight mode, when we've got a bunch of adrenaline just coursing through our veins. So shelving things is a way to say, okay, this is important and I want to give it my full attention when I can give it my full attention. Right now I need to focus on down regulating and getting back into a clearer headspace. Which takes us to s scheduling worry time. You know, we're talking about abandonment anxiety here. So worry time is when you go and get all those boxes off the shelf from the day and you process them and you acknowledge your anxiety and you examine the thoughts that were contributing to that anxiety. Another technique that is very, very useful is changing unhelpful thinking styles. In cognitive behavioral therapy, they're often referred to as cognitive distortions. That just sounds so ugly. We want to help people identify unhelpful thinking styles that they use and the function and alternatives. So the four big ones that I often see when working with people with abandonment anxiety are personalization, mind reading, catastrophizing, and overgeneralizing. So let's think about personalization. What is the function of taking everything personally? Somebody scowls at you, they must hate me. Somebody says, gives you some constructive feedback and you personalize it and say, that must mean I am a horrible person or I am useless or a failure. The function of that often is self protective. When people personalize that, it is a way of keeping them from being caught unawares, Keeping them from being harmed, if you will. So alternatives, alternate explanations. The person who scowled at you, what are three other reasons that that person may have scowled at you? Or the person who was rude to you in the grocery store. Maybe they were directly rude to you, but is that because of you? Or what are three other explanations? Maybe their car broke down today, they got into a fight with somebody, and you know, I don't know. A third thing. You know, there are a lot of things that could put put people in a bad mood and you just unfortunately happen to be in the way. Separate the person and the behavior. Instead of telling yourself, I am a failure. When you get feedback about something you did wrong, Separating that and say, I failed at I am a good person, I am successful, I am. But the behavior, you know, I didn't do that so well. Mind reading and jumping to Conclusions. This is another strategy that helps people predict or think they're predicting the future in order to prepare ahead of time. Unfortunately, we can't predict the future. So when we mind read or jump to conclusions, a lot of times we're using outdated schema. We're using information from old memories that may not be accurate in the present context. So it's important to get the facts. If somebody is acting squirrely and the person doesn't know, you know, maybe the person's abandonment anxiety is triggered, does that mean that they're getting ready to be abandoned? Well, not necessarily. That's an assumption. They're jumping to conclusions. They're reading the other person's mind. They're assuming they know what the other person's thinking. So it's always important to get the facts. What are the facts in this situation? Which often comes down to asking somebody, are you angry with me or did I do something to offend you? Or, you know, fill in the blank. So getting the facts is really important. Or maybe their best friend went out with somebody else on the weekend instead of jumping to conclusions and saying, well, they like this other person more than they like me. Asking the person, you know, I noticed that you went out with, with Sally this weekend and you know, and didn't include me. I'm wondering if I did something to offend you or if you like her better than me or whatever the case may be. But actually asking the person, why did you do that? It is a fair question. Catastrophizing. Again, protective. You know, get the trend here. All of these are in some way trying to protect the person from being caught off guard and being abandoned. So if they're in a relationship with somebody and they have a fight or a disagreement, catastrophizing would say, okay, this person's gonna leave me and I am going to be alone forever and always. Well, that spiraled quickly, encouraging them again to examine the facts. You know, yes, you had a disagreement. Yes, the person asked for some space. What other facts do you have that let you know that they're going to leave you and that you're going to be alone forever? C stands for control. What aspects of this situation do you have control over? You know, if the person asked for some spirit space, well, okay, you don't have control over that except for to give them their space. You can't get them back sooner. What do you have control over? You have control over how you react in the present moment. You have control over what you do with your time and your energy. You have control over the way you respond to them, whether you respect their boundaries or not. And P stands for probability. Given the facts in the situation and if you do the things that are within your control that are helpful, what is the probability that the worst case scenario is going to play out? And overgeneralizations. When something bad happens, it sticks out in our memory. And we try to keep ourselves safe by remembering that. Unfortunately, sometimes it becomes overgeneralized to statements like all people always leave. The function again is to help us predict the future so we can try to protect ourselves. How do we respond to overgeneralizations? Specifics. If somebody says all people always leave, let's find some exceptions to that. And yes, some people have left, some people have willfully left, some people have died, some people have, you know, whatever. What are the specifics in each situation? And are there exceptions in your life? And are there exceptions in other people's life? If, if you're saying that all people always leave, then that would indicate that there is no stability in anybody's relationships anywhere. And the ABCs activating event. What happened? So the person is just bebopping through the day and something triggers their abandonment anxiety. So encouraging them to jot down the ABCs. What happened that triggered their abandonment anxiety? Maybe they texted their best friend and their best friend didn't respond. That can be terrifying. Okay, so that happened. The consequence happened really fast. Their anxiety was triggered, which resulted in what behaviors did they engage in? What were their feelings? What were their thoughts? Okay, so activating event resulted in abandonment anxiety being triggered. Going back and examining what were the automatic beliefs? What were the thoughts that started racing through your head that led to you feeling anxious? So it's really important to encourage people to at the very least when they experience abandonment anxiety when it gets triggered, to write down the activating event so they can go back later and process. Okay, I know what happened and I know what the consequences were. Now let's figure out, you know, non judgmentally going back to that intimacy and connection. Let me figure out what was going on in my head. What were my thoughts? Thoughts that were telling me that this was a bad thing. Then you go back and dispute the beliefs. Some of them are going to be right sometimes. You know, I'm not saying that they're wrong, but you want to examine them. What were the facts in context? If you had the belief that that meant that that person hated you? Okay, what are the facts in context? What are the controllable aspects of the situation? And what is the probability that the Person or the abandoned activating event was going to lead to abandonment. So activating event, you got into a disagreement with your best friend, consequences, you had your abandonment anxiety triggered and started spiraling. Now, what is the probability that having a disagreement with your friend was going to lead to abandonment? Especially if you address the controllable aspects, for example, apologizing if that was appropriate. And this is where a lot of the relationship skills come in very handy. Learning how to validate people's emotions, even if you don't agree. Learning how to listen and empathize. We're going to talk about those in a little while. But some of those are the controllable aspects of the situation. And then E stands for evaluating your reaction. Recognizing once the person has gone through and disputed their beliefs and decided which ones were accurate, restated some of their beliefs to be more accurate and less extreme. Okay, now they have factual information. So was their reaction that abandonment anxiety, was that an effective response to the situation? If not, what could have been a more helpful response? Now that people have created safety and have a couple of tools in order to deal with distress and start evaluating and altering their automatic beliefs and schema, it's time to start gathering information. Have them name the problem and describe the symptoms. So the problem is abandonment anxiety. But what are their symptoms? Physically, how do they feel when their abandonment anxiety is triggered? Physically, how does this abandonment anxiety impact their their health and well being? Affectively, how does their abandonment anxiety impact their emotions? A lot of times people have complex emotions, so they have abandonment anxiety and they may have some anger, they may have some depression and a sense of hopelessness. So we want to look at how does the abandonment anxiety contribute to the person's overall mood? Cognitively, how does the abandonment anxiety alter or infect the way the person perceives the world and interprets the world and solves problems? Environmentally, how does the abandonment anxiety contribute to or detract from their sense of safety and the big one? Relationally, how does the abandonment anxiety impact their relationships? In what ways is it affecting their relationships with their co workers, with their friends, with their children, with their family? You know, the list goes on. Then have them describe the course of the problem. When did it start? For some people, they can't even remember when it started because they were so young. That's fine. For others, it started later. That's cool too. We just want to have an idea. When did it start? What may have triggered it? And for people whose abandonment anxiety started when they were very, very young, they may not really understand what happened. Some people will say I was adopted or I was put into foster care or one of my parents walked out on us or something. Okay, you know, that's a clear precipitating event. But for other people it may be more ambiguous and we'll explore that a bit later. But we want to know if they have any ideas about what triggered it. What beliefs do they currently hold that contribute to the problem? So when they start thinking about relationships, when they start thinking about abandonment, what are the thoughts that come into their head? And sometimes I'll have them spend, spend two to three minutes just thinking about being in a relationship or thinking about abandonment and jotting down everything that they think, sort of free association, if you will, to get an idea about all of those automatic thoughts. For people who don't like to write, they can also just record it and then you can run it through a transcription program. So we have talk to text and then you can see what's going on. And then examining each of those beliefs for their accuracy and helpfulness in the current context. Now, all of our experiences impact the way we perceive the world, the way we perceive others, the way we perceive even nonverbal communications, and the way a person perceives the world is theirs. But is it helpful in the current context? So re examining does, for example, people who grew up in an environment where there was a lot of domestic violence, large nonverbal movements may be very threatening, may trigger anxiety for them. However, in the present context with this person, what do those large movements mean for me when I get excited, the more excited I get, the bigger my hand gestures get. And a lot of times that's happy excitement. So it's important to help people explore their beliefs in the current context. So instead of saying every time somebody uses big hand gestures, it means danger. Saying in the past when people have used big hand gestures, it meant danger. So I need to be aware. However, it's important to evaluate every situation in the present context, encouraging people to explore their core beliefs. What messages did they receive from their caregivers, both through words and behaviors about their lovability. So thinking back to when they were an adolescent, a child, an infant, far back as they can remember, behavior is communication. So if a caregiver was not responsive, ignored, the child only responded when there was something to be critical about. You know, that sends a totally different message than the caregiver who is responsive and loving and gives them positive attention. So what messages did they receive about themselves and about others through their caregivers behaviors as well as their words? So we want to look at their core beliefs about their own lovability. Are they lovable? Are they good enough? What information, what messages, what beliefs did they form about relationships? They observed their caregivers interacting. So what messages, what did they learn about relationships from watching and listening to their caregivers? And what did they learn from their caregivers about the safety and trustworthiness of other people? What beliefs have they developed as a result of abandonment or loss as an adult? So first you're going to look at childhood. And some people, as I mentioned earlier with abandonment anxiety had an okay childhood. So the first part of this, they may have gotten positive messages about their lovability and relationships and trustworthiness of others. And then in their adult life they've just had a series of devastating losses. Or like I mentioned earlier, they could have had an insecure attachment all the way through through childhood and it just perpetuated into adulthood. Either way, what beliefs has the person developed as a result of abandonment or loss as an adult? And I put loss in there because remember when people die, it can be, it feels sometimes like abandonment. It is a significant loss. And when we think about do I want to become vulnerable to somebody again just to risk having them disappear, you know, death as a loss also comes up in addition to willful abandonment. What thoughts do they have when people abandon or reject them or seem like they are getting ready to reject or abandon them? And a lot of people with abandonment anxiety engage in that jumping to conclusions and mind reading so they notice micro expressions, they notice slight changes and they assume that they, that they know what the person is thinking and that it's nefarious which can lead them to start having these abandonment thoughts really early on. As I mentioned, behaviors, communication and children who had adverse childhood experiences received messages. Early abandonment experiences can communicate to the child, you don't matter, you're not loved or you're not safe. You know, a 2 year old who gets abandoned can't take care of themselves. That's terrifying. Insecure primary attachments. So maybe the caregivers were there but were not responsive. We're not validating, we're not encouraging, we're not loving. And that often results in either neglect or abuse. When the caregivers are emotionally unavailable to the child or physically unavailable to the child or abusive to the child, it communicates work beliefs like you're not worthy of care or you're a bad person. Yes, children make mistakes, yes, children get punished, they get put in timeout, whatever, but that doesn't mean they're a bad child, it means they made a bad choice. And then Adult Experiences and related schema we want to encourage people to examine their beliefs related to abandonment or loss and their beliefs related to their ability or inability to form or maintain healthy relationships. If they've had prior traumas, they may have developed insecure attachment, which results in behaviors that are characterized as either codependent or personality disordered. I don't like to put labels on things. I like to look at what behaviors does the person exhibit and how do those either help or hurt them in terms of maintaining healthy relationships? Encouraging people to go through each one of these things and identify how these experiences shape their belief about their own acceptability and other people's trustworthiness and examine each one of the beliefs one by one using that facts, control and probability method. So what are the facts about your early abandonment experience? What parts of that were within your control? And especially for children, a lot of it wasn't in their control. It. It had more to do with the adult being unable to cope or deal. And probability, you know, what is the probability that that situation, given what you know about what you had to what you could control in it, what is the probability that it means that you are not lovable or whatever the belief is? Other core beliefs and I know we're going through a lot of core beliefs, but sometimes it helps to approach it from slightly different angles because different things come out. So again, you're going to examine these core beliefs in each of these four areas using that facts, control and probability method. When people fear losing someone that's important to them, they may fear rejection. You know, the reason I'm afraid of losing something important to me is because I fear rejection. I fear that if they go away, it means I'm unlovable or nobody wants to be with me. So encouraging people to explore their abandonment beliefs and identify rejection themes. I may fear losing somebody that's important to me because I'm afraid of losing control. I'm afraid of vulnerability. So I may have thoughts like I should never get into relationships because people can't be trusted, or I have no control over whether they stay or leave and it's too scary to be vulnerable. Isolation, I will never find someone else and people always leave or the unknown. I do not know where I can find someone else. I can't function without this person in my life or I don't know who I am if I'm not such and such as best friend or such and such as spouse or such and such as parent. So there are a lot of beliefs that go along with abandonment anxiety, and many of them, maybe not all, but many of them can be categorized in terms of one of these four themes, or maybe the belief taps on multiple of these core themes. So examining the individual's beliefs, identifying the facts, and separating the past from the present. So in the past, when they interacted with people when they were five, what did they have control over? In the present, when they interact with people now that they're 25, what do they have control over? There's a big difference between safety and all those things. Once a person becomes an independent adult, explore with the person what behaviors that they have that contribute to abandonment. And this is a really touchy area to go into with a lot of people because it's scary to think that they may be contributing to it. Unfortunately, we recognize when working with people who have abandonment issues, a lot of times their frantic efforts to avoid abandonment actually end up contributing to the abandonment. So looking at people's behaviors, when they can step back and objectively look at their past relationships and say, yeah, yeah, some of these things I did probably weren't helpful. Okay, you know, in the moment, it was a survival mechanism. In retrospect, we see that may not have been the best choice. So how did those behaviors develop to help the person stay safe? This is where we want to validate and look at the context. In that context, at that point in time, I believe that people do the best they can with the tools they have. So that behavior developed. How did it develop to help them stay safe? How are those behaviors currently negatively impacting their relationships? So if one of their behaviors is to start becoming extremely clingy or the opposite, to walk out, to just break up, it's like, okay, fine, started to hit a little rough patch, we're done. In what ways are those behaviors currently negatively impacting their relationships? And what could they do instead that would help them feel safe and secure? It keeps coming back to safety. Remember, the core of abandonment, the core of trauma is a feeling of unsafeness and disempowerment. So we want to help people continue to explore what can I do to stay safe. And by creating that secure attachment with themselves and eventually working on their self esteem, they start developing a sense of wholeness where they don't feel like they are inadequate or they don't feel like they're incapable of dealing with life on their own. You know, so we want to help people feel empowered and safe in their own skin, even if other people aren't necessarily around them and then starting to feel safe and empowered in relationships, to engage, to be vulnerable, and sometimes to step away if it's not a healthy relationship. If they woke up tomorrow and didn't fear abandonment and rejection, how would life be different? And how would it be the same? Most people have some things that are going right in their life. Maybe it's their work, maybe it's their dog, maybe it's their house. But identifying the things that are going right is just as important. Identifying what they would like to be different and creating that holistic view of what life will be like. When they've addressed this issue, what strengths and resources do they have that can help address their fears of abandonment and rejection? Maybe they have people they can call on, like a pastor or a counselor. Maybe they have a strong faith. Maybe they have books that they are reading that are helping them understand whatever it is. Let's explore these. Have them write a narrative of two or more relationships that have resulted in abandonment. Start out, you know, writing the narrative, then going back and evaluating. Were things ever good? If so, in what way? You know, a lot of relationships start out good. So how were they good? At what point did things change and why? You know, really looking back and saying, you know, what was going on here that all of a sudden led to this pivot? What did the other person do? What did that behavior communicate about the other person's feelings and needs? Maybe the other person started withdrawing. What did that communicate about that person's feelings and needs at that point in time? Maybe they weren't being effective at communicating. But if we look at their behavior and think back to the conversations, what were they trying to communicate? What did the client. What did the person do in the relationship, and what did that behavior communicate about that person's feelings and needs? What, if anything. And that's important, if anything, could the client. Could the person have done differently in the relationship? That may have led to a different outcome. Maybe they decided as soon as the relationship started to hit a bumpy patch to terminate it, just fine, no, too much stress, I'm out. Okay, well, obviously that led to the end of the relationship. Is there a different way that you could have handled it that may have resulted in getting through that patch? What are the three most important reasons the person wants to address their fears of abandonment and rejection? This helps with motivation. What obstacles might interfere with their ability to progress in their journey? For example, if they're in currently unhealthy relationships, that's probably going to be unhelpful, because those relationships May underscore or fulfill their beliefs about abandonment. And lack of trustworthiness and low self esteem can also be an obstacle that interferes with their ability to progress because they may not feel like they deserve any better, they may not feel like they're lovable, or they may rely on other people to provide them external validation in order to give them permission to be okay. Who is supportive of their efforts to address their abandonment issues? And if they say no one, then where could they find support? So this is again important. We need to start encouraging some sort of support for the individual, whether it's support groups or professionals or whomever. Once we've gathered some information, we've started disputing thoughts, we've started trying to modify unhelpful beliefs, then moving into baseline monitoring over the next few weeks. Each time they notice they're experiencing anxiety about abandonment, have them write down what's happening, that activating event, what their thoughts are, the beliefs that they're having, what images are going through their mind. And sometimes people think in images or flashbacks instead of words. So images can be very helpful. What are their feelings? All of them. Not just anxiety, but anxiety, anger, guilt, depression, what have you. And in what ways is the current situation similar to past situations? So basically, it's encouraging people to identify what past memories are being triggered, what past feelings and experiences are being triggered in the present moment, and then exploring that and saying, okay, in what ways is this present moment similar to and different from that past situation? At the end of each day and then again at the end of each week, review the logs to find common triggers and core beliefs that are still problematic. Continue to use the facts, control and probability approach to address and start to modify those, or at least challenge those unhelpful core beliefs, and then help the person start to become empowered. On a scale of 1 to 10, one being totally terrified of abandonment most of the time, and 10 being totally secure in their ability to maintain healthy relationships. That's not totally secure, that nobody's ever going to leave. That's not realistic. It's totally secure in their ability to maintain healthy relationships and let go of unhealthy relationships. So on a scale of 1 to 10, where are they now? What 1 to 3 things will they do each day? Not can they do, but will they do each day to help them move toward the next point on the scale. They can identify things like practicing mindfulness to identify needs, wants, triggers, and core beliefs, developing a secure relationship with themselves. That visceral mnemonic that we talked about, cognitive Restructuring to address unhelpful thoughts, self esteem building activities, improving boundaries and assertiveness skills. What I call empathy and attribution. That means listening to other people, learning how to listen without defensiveness, to understand the feelings and needs of the other person and themselves and in the current moment, and then attributing those feelings and needs appropriately. So if they're communicating with somebody who is angry, recognizing for example, where that anger is coming from, maybe they did something, you know, they're in a relationship with somebody, they're roommates, and they left the cap off the toothpaste and the roommate just like flies off the handle. Okay, empathy, I see, see that you're angry about this and you're frustrated that I left the cap off the toothpaste again. But attribution encourages the person to look back and say, all right, I did something that irritated this person. But it really was probably only a 1 or a 2 on a scale of 1 to 10. So I wonder what else is going on in their life that is making them so angry right now. The anger is not all about me. And proactively begin to connect with others in a safe and meaningful way. And this is called graded exposure. So initially they may engage with others on like a discord server or online chat room or a support group or an online support group, and then gradually put themselves out there a little bit more where they're meeting people face to face and you know, maybe it's meeting with a hiking club to go face that to go hiking. You know, there's not a lot of self disclosure during that, but that's being in, in a group. And for people who fear rejection, for people who fear abandonment, then just starting to develop a group of people that they can do things with is a huge step towards starting to create meaningful, connected relationships. Most people have a certain amount of anxiety in relationships because when you're in relationships, you're vulnerable and that person is important to you. Abandonment anxiety is an issue when it negatively impacts more multiple areas of a person's life, when it starts impacting their health, their sleep, their mood, their work, their concentration, etc. Addressing abandonment anxiety means first creating safety, then identifying and addressing the thoughts, feelings and situations that trigger the anxiety, and becoming empowered by implementing new skills and modifying outdated and inaccurate beliefs.