Overcoming Abandonment Wounds
Abandonment trauma is one of the more common issues that my clients are facing, and it has been the focus of a lot of my personal shadow work in this lifetime. When we experience abandonment, especially during our formative years, that experience leaves a mark that can remain for lifetimes if it goes unresolved. This abandonment wounding often initiates a cycle of self-abandonment, which creates more pain and suffering in our lives. Abandonment often triggers feelings of unworthiness that can greatly impact our self-image and self-esteem. Part of healing from abandonment trauma is reclaiming your identity and transforming the way you look at yourself in order to improve your quality of life. When you love yourself despite anything that has ever happened to you, you can make choices that result in a better way of life moving forward. You must see and understand that you have always been worthy of loving connection, even if some people decided to exit your life.
Our negative experiences occur to teach us something, but oftentimes we can misinterpret the lesson if we’re just looking at the surface of a situation. On the surface, the abandonment wound appears to be telling you that you’re not worth the time and effort for this person to stay in your life. There’s no truth in this statement though, because people don’t abandon other people because they’re not worthy. Individuals who have a tendency to run from people, places, and situations in their lives are doing that because of their own wounding and trauma. There are many reasons why someone might choose to leave your life, and it is likely that those reasons have very little to do with you. Trauma occurs to facilitate our growth on a soul level, and when you look back at your history through that lens you might realize that you were abandoned by someone else to teach you to ultimately show up for yourself no matter what.
This action of showing up for yourself so profoundly regardless of your flaws and limitations is the antidote to abandonment trauma. When you refuse to abandon yourself despite your shortcomings, you can finally see that you were worthy all along. We are often encouraged to abandon ourselves in the service of others, and when we’ve been conditioned to put everyone else’s priorities first, it can be difficult to prioritize ourselves even to care for our basic needs. Once we decide to reclaim our power and energy in this sense, we can move forward in a new way that allows us to care for ourselves before offering to help someone else. Growing your self-worth often looks like living for yourself for the first time because you finally have the strength to put your needs above the desires of others. This can often be viewed as selfishness by people who have been benefiting from your self-abandonment.
It’s important to stay strong in this mindset despite any opposition because your needs are your responsibility and should be your first priority unless you have tiny humans who depend on you for survival. You don’t owe anyone else that level of care and prioritization over yourself. If you’ve been in this cycle of self-abandoning for a while, you likely have many grown adults looking to you for solutions to their endless problems. Establishing boundaries with these people might be difficult, but this is a necessary step in reclaiming your life and showing up for yourself. You have to build self-trust and self-efficacy in order to fully heal this wound, and the best way to do that is by making promises to yourself and keeping them. These promises might start small, but over time these small consistent efforts will allow you to trust yourself more than ever before.
Realizing that you were abandoned for reasons outside of your control is pivotal, but it is the first step on the pathway of healing the pain that resulted from the abandonment. You must find ways to validate your existence and worth as a person from within, which will ensure that you have the strength to stop abandoning yourself. When you no longer rely on external validation for your survival, you can give yourself the security you’ve been seeking from other people. Once you can fulfill this need for yourself, it is much more bearable when someone chooses to leave you. At some point on this journey, you realize that you can’t be perfect enough to keep the wrong people in your life. By the same token, you can’t be imperfect enough to keep the right people away. If someone is meant to be in your life, they will be there, and that isn’t always under your control. You are meant to be there for yourself unconditionally, always. Show up for yourself every day, and you’ll end up where you’re meant to be surrounded by people who love you. You just have to let go of the people who can’t be there for you and trust that the right ones will come along.