Abandonment: You are Not Alone

The beginning of my life started out pretty normal. I was loved, cared for, and spoiled as the only child. I had a very strong attachment to my mom like most children. When I turned five years old my mom became very discontent with where she was in life causing her to question her career choices. 

She decided to apply for the highway patrol academy, little did she know that after completing her course she would have to make the biggest decision of her life that would affect her relationship with me forever. In order to get hired she had to move from her small town to South Florida. It was a very hard choice but she choose to move and leave me to live with my great grandmother. 

This one choice to better our lives cause me to experience a feeling of neglect, trauma and abandonment issues. My strong emotional dependence on my mother and me as a five year old asking why my mother left me thinking that I did something wrong, cause so much confusion in my life I felt unsafe, unimportant, and unsure wether or not I was truly loved.

Ever since childhood all I’ve ever wanted was a family of my own. I learned later in life that one can have the desire to be in a relationship that is meaningful and fulfilling and yet they might find this hard to achieve. And it could be that they can't seem to attract the right person or that when they are in a relationship with someone who they connect with, it becomes challenging due to unexpected life experiences and life adversity. Many people look back on their childhoods and cannot remember anything bad, but the issues you are having in your adult relationships may have more to do with what you didn't get from your parents, according to Psychology Today. Your physical needs may have been met consistently while love, safety, security, comfort and attention were likely inconsistent or lacking. These children develop insecurities and abandonment issues that may intensify as they get older, making adult relationships difficult to navigate.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog you are familiar with my story and struggle coping as a trucker wife.  I learned from my work as a individual and family behavior therapist in the mental health field that what triggered my unexpected life experience and the reason why I was struggling when I became a trucker wife had a lot to do with a life trap called   “emotional dependence”. 

We all know that as a newborns we rely on our parents or  primary caretaker, which is usually our mothers, to meet all of their physical and emotional needs. This attachment is formed based on the non-verbal communication between the mother and the infant, and it helps to determine how you will form relationships throughout your life. Bonding with your parents  in infancy lays the foundation for emotional regulation, empathy, the ability to gain satisfaction from relationships, self-love and resiliency, according to HelpGuide.org. An infant with an insecure bond to their primary caretaker can grow into an adult who is distant, both emotionally and physically, in relationships. The ability to handle stress, feel safe, and have appropriate expectations in relationships may be hampered.

When my mom left the lack of attention and love you would usually get from a parent was neglected and therefore my self image, self worth and self esteem took a huge blow. I thought I had done something wrong for my mom to have left me. No one ever explained to me that she left to go to work in order to give us a better life. From this experience and lack of knowledge it  cause me to seek approval and become emotional dependent in my relationships. This childhood  experience cause me to clingy or detached depending on the type of person and relationship I was in. 

Working as a individual and family behavior therapist I saw the exact behavior a lot in women I counsel for depression, low self worth, and codependence. Many of these women were abandon during their lives just like me. However,  it wasn’t just childhood abandonment.  I learned there could be all kinds of reasons as to why emotional dependence life traps were happening. 

For instance a individual who lost a loved one to death of illness or tragedy. Some of theses women went through a unexpected divorced and now faced coping with being a displaced housewife who gotta learn how to support herself.  A bad breakup  with a lover or best friend was a common issue. Many women experience miscarriages and felt abandon from their spouse after the experience. 

The bottomline is we all may have experience loss and abandonment in a different way, but spiritually we all are learning the same exact lesson and challenge in life.  Learning how to cope with the stress and emotional trauma in our lives. In the mental health world its explained as a stress response that fails to return to a state of equilibrium becomes unresolved psychological/emotional trauma. 

When you became a wife and mom, you go from being an independent, self-motivated, and well rested young lady, into an ever maturing, interdependent, selfless and often sleep-deprived woman. Just like when I experience my quarter life crisis after being a victim of mom shaming I notice a lot of changes in my thinking and life goals. This was the start of my self awareness journey and learning about shadow work.  

The shadow is a term coined by psychologist Carl Jung, and it refers to our deepest wounds. The wounds that have us believing we're flawed, unlovable, undeserving people.  These wounds are often created in childhood, but can sometimes develop later in life.  I actually learned about shadow work from a book I read  by  the late Debbie Ford, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers, she developed the shadow process which is a tool I used to cope with my own abandonment issues and  I now use in my current private practice to help women heal from their abandonment issues and other emotional life trauma.  

You too may have noticed changes in your desires, priorities, hopes, and fears among other things. 

However, you might not have noticed any unresolved issues.  At first, this might not be visible and everything could appear to be going on randomly. However, if one was to take a closer look at what is going on and what is not going on in their relationships, they will start to notice certain themes. This may not be seen straight away and could take a short time to realize. But if one wants to see them and is committed to having exactly what they say they want, then the answers will soon arrive. I know when I first became a trucker wife I didn’t see the patterns. I just thought my husband was choosing his career and truck over me and our marriage. Not in a million years did I expect his lack of presence in my life would trigger a old childhood abandonment experience.  

So how can emotional or psychological trauma be distinguished from stress?

Seeing these patterns in ones reality is not the easiest thing to do though and this is partly due to how the mind works. All kinds of illusions can arise and these can end up distracting someone from seeing what is actually occurring. In the absence of pattern recognition, life is typically seen as random and one is then simply a bystander. And while this can create a momentary sense of relief from having to deal with anything, in the long run, one will only end up feeling victimized and that they have no control over their whole life or this area of their life.

First you must understand the difference between emotional and psychological trauma from stress. say for example you can calm yourself by yourself or by communicating your distress to a friend or loved one, and you are able to return to a state of equilibrium following a stressful event, you are in the realm of stress. If instead, you become frozen in a state of active emotional intensity or a state of fear, or if you withdraw or become depressed, you are experiencing emotional trauma –although you may not always be consciously aware of the level of distress you are experiencing.

The exercise I give to all my clients that is very easy and helpful to tell the difference between stress and emotional trauma is by looking at the outcome – how much residual effect an upsetting event is having on our lives, relationships, and overall functioning. Traumatic distress can be distinguished from routine stress by assessing the following

• How quickly upset is triggered
• How frequently upset is triggered
• How intensely threatening the source of upset is
• How long upset lasts
• How long it takes to calm down

The challenge is in seeing the patterns

These patterns then play out without ones awareness and while the people they are attracted to or attract will be different, the same scenarios will be played out. What then happens and as to how long this takes, may alter, but how one feels will be the same. Externally there will be certain things that either take place or don't take place, but underneath all of this will be certain feelings. And this could be: abandonment, betrayal, rejection and loss for instance.

So even though each relationship will have different experiences, how one ends up feeling is likely to be the same. It's like me being in  Atlanta and having rain and my mom being in Florida and there is still rain; each place looks different and yet it is still the same story.

Some daily life behavior to watch out for may include:

Physical 

• Eating disturbances (more or less than usual) 

• Sleep disturbances (more or less than usual) 

• Sexual dysfunction 

• Low energy 

• Chronic, unexplained pain

Emotional 

• Depression, spontaneous crying, despair and hopelessness 
• Anxiety 
• Panic attacks 
• Fearfulness 
• Compulsive and obsessive behaviors 
• Feeling out of control 
• Irritability, angry and resentment 
• Emotional numbness 
• Withdrawal from normal routine and relationships

Cognitive 

•  Memory lapses, especially about the trauma 
•  Difficulty making decisions 
• Decreased ability to concentrate 
• Feeling distracted 

Common personal and behavioral effects of emotional trauma: 

• Substance abuse 

• Compulsive behavior patterns 

• Self-destructive and impulsive behavior 

• Uncontrollable reactive thoughts 

• Inability to make healthy professional or lifestyle choices 

• Dissociative symptoms ("splitting off" parts of the self) 

• Feelings of ineffectiveness, shame, despair, hopelessness 

• Feeling permanently damaged 

• A loss of previously sustained beliefs

The thing I want you to understand is that we all go through the feelings of emotions when our trucker is gone. We all are lonely, sad and worry like hell until they are safely home again. I’m here to let all of you lonely spouse and significant others know you aren’t alone. There are more lonely hearts out here in the world experiencing the same thing you are. 

You may or may not be a victim of childhood abandonment issues. But when this pattern relates to being abandoned, one might find that they get into relationships and before long they end. This could be one that is going well and everything seems to be going to plan, and then out of nowhere, it just finishes. And ones whole idea of who they are can be based on being abandoned, so if this was to change, one might wonder who they are. So all the time these feelings are still trapped in one's body, they will continue to create situations that mirror these early experiences. These feelings can cause one to push other people away and to behave in ways that will make them leave, so that one can feel abandoned once more. This usually happens unconsciously though and while it won't get one what they truly want, it is likely to feel comfortable at a deeper level. But after reading my experience and seeing how lost affect everyone in different ways we still have a lot in common that we can learn from and try our best to heal from. 

It’s all in the way that you handle the situation. We all have a destiny the only thing of true importance in this material life is the way we live and how we treat other people. The circumstances of our life mean nothing compared to our compassion and acceptance of others and leading a helping hand, or a sense of empathy towards other people struggles in life. This is the entire purpose of this blog to let you know you are not alone in this transition or this journey. 

I hope that I have given many of you some  awareness to move away from this pattern and to no longer feel abandoned as a way of life or through experiences with others. You may be like I once was and need to release the trapped feelings and emotions that were created in these early experiences. Over the years, additional feelings, thoughts and beliefs will  have accumulated on top of these original feelings and these will go away once the original trauma has been dealt with.

This can be done with the assistance of a therapist or counselor who will allow one to face their feelings and emotions and release them. There is no set time for this, as some people can have more to release than others. And a certain level of trust will also have to exist in order for one to feel safe enough to let go. 

Until then, 

Be Inspired!!!


To Live Your Best Life

Warrior Chic
XOXO