Today, we are going to talk about the fear of abandonment.

I know it's a tough one because the fear of abandonment can turn into an addiction.

It's an addiction to a problem you think exists, but it doesn't. 

This one, unraveling this one, like it's taken me, oh, like 56 years to figure out, and it's just now that I am figuring out what my triggers are and when I am being triggered. 

I can catch it now in the act of happening. 

It is one of my favorite things because there is nothing more exhausting than a trigger cycle, like a trauma cycle, an abandonment cycle. 

When we think we will be abandoned, the trigger is immediate. It's like we go into fear mode. 

There's no love; love is nowhere to be found. 

Faith, gone out the window, trust, belief, who needs them? 

We're just going to go after the drug. 

The drug is trying to manipulate and control people around us so that they won't abandon us because that's our worst fear. 

Where does this come from? 

Let's spin the wheel and return because it started at birth. It started way back, like somewhere in your past. 

There was a moment, probably early on, before you ever had words and certainly before you had the emotional maturity to understand what was happening. 

You witnessed or felt the effects of someone abandoning you emotionally. 

That is tough because we're like, I don't even know what happened. 

We're just little kids trying to play tag on the playground or find our binky on the floor. We're crawling around and trying to have a good life. 

We realized that the people around us and their voices have changed. 

They're upset, they're angry. 

We don't process that because we didn't come out of the womb upset or angry. 

We cry if our diaper needs to change or we're hungry. We're like, this is life. 

This is where we're happy in between. 

We communicate when there's a problem and show satisfaction when there's none. 

Playing with an unreasonable emotion in the middle of having a happy day can teach us, can condition us, and is based on who we are.

If we're a supersensitive or severe child, a serious child doesn't grab onto the idea that somebody's mad at us as much as a sensitive child will, that somebody is angry at us because we weren't good enough. 

We didn't smile enough, crawl fast enough, or do something right that made them unhappy when it couldn't possibly be. 

Unfortunately, some of us had parents that were not equipped to be parents. 

There is no handbook for parenting—at least, not back then. There is a lot more information now. 

If you were raised with somebody riding the struggle bus, there's a good chance they let you know they were unhappy. 

If you smile a little bit more, are funny enough, or do something different to earn a smile, you will also be satisfied and overcome the problem. 

You were able to fix it. 

Unfortunately, there's something called emotional incest, and that is where there's a role reversal where the child is not allowed to be the child. 

Still, the child has to solve complicated adult problems because the parents refuse to take emotional responsibility. 

If you were given that kind of responsibility as a child, you're likely continuing to battle it because you were an underdeveloped child who should have been nurtured, valued, and loved completely. 

That should have been you back then. 

But instead, they were all in turmoil, meaning the grownups, and it was your job. 

You didn't put your shoes away, or you weren't helpful before that, and you knew that they needed your help, or you felt like something else was going on, and you were the reason they were having a bad life. 

When that kind of emotional transfer happens from an adult who's not taking emotional responsibility for their unhappiness or their pain or their addictions, and it's put on you.

You're the one doing the dishes and getting your siblings ready for work or school, or you're the one who needs to be quiet and remove your footprints from the earth so that your parents will be happy because they didn't want you in the first place. 

When those kinds of things are going on, it's even harder to kick this habit, this addiction called fear of abandonment.

Now, if your circumstances weren't that extreme, But there was a relationship you thought was going hunky dory, and then you got blindsided. 

Suddenly, they were cheating on you, or they broke up with you. Something was going on that brought that kind of relationship into your life.

There's a reason why you were blindsided by it.

If you're aware that you have a fear of abandonment, then you find yourself. 

Controlling and manipulating outcomes means abandoning the people you think will do the abandoning, whether it's getting fired from work or not even being able to get a job; maybe you get rejected on every interview. 

Maybe it's a relationship you were attracted to when you thought you were in love, but it was the premise: I'll be whatever you need me to be so you can be happy.

They just loved it because they didn't have to do a look of work and bring something to the table and into the relationship; instead, they were just like, hey, if you want to be what I need you to be, we're good to go, right? 

That's probably a narcissistic relationship that you jumped into, and that's perhaps biting you in the butt. 

We attract these things because we live by the premise we internalized as children: that we must try hard to be loved. 

We have to earn someone's validation of us. We are dying for words of approval, and we'll do whatever it takes. 

We'll bow low enough, submerge ourselves, prostrate ourselves on the ground, and sacrifice what we want for what they want, and there will be no return on it. 

There's no equal giving and taking. 

It's just you're trying to get something that needs to be offered. 

They're not offering you words of affirmation, time, or touch. They're just refusing to give you what you need. 

Well, that is a big red flag that you're in a relationship perpetuating the fear of abandonment. 

At any moment, this person, you put all your eggs in their basket or this job, the situation that what you do is your complete identity, that you'll do anything. 

You'll sacrifice a good life, a healthy balance, self-care, and time off for the job. 

You'll do whatever it takes without boundaries so that you don't get rejected. 

That is a huge recipe for ill health. 

Your thoughts are just always shooting at the problem. 

It's like I have to prepare myself; I have to be ready so that I don't get blindsided by what others think of me, say about me, or judge me. 

That's a lot of work, lots of work—so much energy.

You just need a nap from the mental energy it takes to work through the problem before it manifests itself. And you know what they say, that what you focus on grows. 

If you're just focused on the problem, how it will manifest, how bad you think it will be, and all the ways you'll have to fight for yourself, defend yourself, and justify yourself to somebody else disapproving of you. Oh my goodness, exhaustion. There was so much exhaustion.

I have heard people say they just don't wanna live anymore.

The exhaustion of managing yucky gut soup. Your guts are just churning all the time. It's either in panic, it's in depression, or it's in anxiety. 

When you're managing, the emotions and your head are spinning because you're trying to thwart the problem before the problem ever manifests, or you're trying to overcome someone else's bad mood before they even show up in the room, or you're trying to manage the bad mood in the middle of them gaslighting you or blindsighting you. No. It's an addiction. 

It's something that you literally can't overcome. 

That's why this fear of abandonment, this addiction to controlling outcomes, is killing you. It's exhausting you. 

Sometimes, it just feels like you're going crazy. 

You'll always need to figure out how to get out of the cycle of managing everybody else and whether or not they decide to accept, love, and validate you. 

When those emotions are present, and that's how you operate every morning, you wake up and just wish you didn't have to.

You wish you could find a way out so that you could disappear, fall off the face of the earth, and pretend like you never even existed. 

Those are red flags; many of us have never wanted to live. 

Many of us would love to know what it's like to not be in despair, to give up anxiety, to forever, you know, just drop the drama. 

I want to give you some tips on how to do that. 

The first one I have is to sit with yourself. 

I went on this journey when I was like, I think I need a divorce. 

My life is falling apart. 

I feel like I'm coming unraveled and that I'm going to die. 

It was December 25th, 2010, and I was pretty sure that on the new year, January 1, 2011, I was going to die. 

I just couldn't see my life beyond it. That was a big red flag for me. 

I couldn't care more about other people's problems anymore. 

I can't worry about whether they accept me or don't accept me or judge me or if they're even going to see my value or see me and who I am and that my gifts and talents matter. 

I wanted others to do that for me, but it wasn't getting me anywhere. 

I sat down in a quiet spot, tears running down my face. 

There was so much grief and loss around it because I was going to have to give up everything I had ever known to find the new me. 

That was the level that I was at, and many of us have done that, and many of us need to do that because sitting with ourselves is something we've never done. 

We've never gotten quiet enough just to check-in. 

It's like, is it all that? Am I all that bad? Am I all that wrong? Am I so off from everybody else that I couldn't be loved like everyone else? Or that everyone else is a huge comparison.

But it seems everyone else has the love, and you do not. Right? 

That's the fear of abandonment. That's how you know. 

When you're triggered, you try and run away. 

When you can't find the exit because everything is crashing down on your head, you just want to run. 

You want to disappear, and you want to remove yourself from the earth. 

Those are the despair trigger responses to the fear of abandonment. 

There's a fear of abandonment that sometimes we can take personal responsibility for, and we're like, okay, I have not to care if that person decides not to associate with me anymore. 

I do not have to care because I have to trust that something else will shift me in a better direction and put me around better people so that I can choose better for myself. 

That idea is sitting around there, but you can clear the clutter once you sit down with yourself. 

You can't get clear on that idea that the best place for you to be is in the pit of despair because there's no place to go but up. 

It's trying to teach you a lesson about what you don't want so you can go towards what you want.

When you sit with yourself, you have this: it may be very uncomfortable, but I'm suddenly lonely.

I feel abandoned already because I removed myself from the people I was fearing would leave me, not necessarily physically, as you might still be in the same house. 

But you might be in a quiet room, which means removing yourself. 

Most of us who were very dependent on other people's opinions of us didn't like solitude. 

Solitude and I were not friends. 

I would find any and every way to be in a room with people, hoping that there would be peace among us and that they would see that I was funny enough, happy enough, productive enough, compelling enough, and helpful enough to be loved. 

Sitting with yourself is how you clear the clutter, and you cut the crap. 

The crap is the story that was told to you about your job to be the lone emotional mediator in the room. 

It's your job to ensure nobody else is unhappy in the room. 

First of all, that's not true. But it might be the role you've been playing because you thought it was your job. After all, the implications were all present when you were growing up. 

So, to clear the clutter, you must check your family dynamics. 

Go back and get real with the truth about what happened. 

I don't mean pick at the scabs, revisit all the wounds, or recall all the traumatic moments when people were unkind to you. 

I suggest going back and just checking the family dynamic. 

In my family, it was my mom who had been severely abused by an alcoholic father, and she decided without question that she was unlovable so that she would reject our love. 

We would say I love you and she's like you don't mean it. 

We're like, I don't. Okay, I thought I did. I meant it, you know, little kids. They love unconditionally. 

She would push our love away, and we're like, we need to be better. She'll believe us next time; we were trying hard. 

When I sat down to clear the clutter, I was like, oh, you know what? She was just struggling. It wasn't even about me. 

Here I was, trying to be the emotional mediator in the room, and it was like moms on the warpath. 

Let's be good kids. Let's help out. Let's do our chores. Let's do what we can or just get out of our way. It just was never enough. 

There was no way to satisfy the void she felt about herself.

When she decided never to allow love in.

When you clear the craft, you can see and distance yourself from the story you were told and reality.

The reality is that you've always been loved. It can't be removed from you. 

Nobody can take that from you because a healthy relationship with yourself means not giving your love away. 

I'm only acceptable, validated, or worthy when you say so, but instead, you're like, well, I am worthy, I am loved, and my higher powers always loved me, so it can't be removed, and my trying to remove it is exhausting. 

The trying to get love from others is just you trying to prove that you aren't worthy and lovable without trying. 

You don't have to try to get love. 

You actually can't get love from other people. 

If you do that, you are an energy vampire, and you're draining other people who no longer want to give love to you; they're going to withhold it because they're running short. 

When you sit with yourself, you've got to list all the good you are. 

When I would talk to my mom, I was like, Mom, but you, you're a good person. Why do you think this about yourself? 

She's like, no, I'm not. No, I'm not. I was a no-good Nick to my parents. 

They couldn't have told me that enough. No good, Nick. That's me. 

I was like, okay, there's no overcoming that story. 

You cannot overcome something that you're determined to keep accurate.

It was false, but she was living as if it was confirmed as she was a no-good Nick. 

You can't get past that. You've got to get cut the crap. You cannot go about saying that is what is true, come heck or high water. 

You just can't do it and be happy at the same time. 

If you want to get through this cycle of trauma, you want to end the self-abandonment and the fear of abandonment by others. 

You must stop believing that whatever was told to you was true. 

It wasn't true; it came from people riding the struggle bus. It was about them; they were telling a story. My mom told me a story about herself. 

Every time she rejected my love, that was her story coming true. She's like that because if I said I love you and she accepted it, her story would be false. 

This would be the story she wanted to make accurate to ensure that her parents would always be right about who she was. 

She needed that story to be right more in this life than the true story of how loved she was apart from her parents' struggle. 

But she was; I'm surprised she wasn't a Taurus. She was stubborn and adamant that nobody loved her. 

And so, wow, I know that in this life, she had no idea how that was negatively impacting her kids. 

She wouldn't have done it. She was too good of a person to do that. She was a gentle, kind person at heart. But when it came to herself, man, she was a tough, strict mother. 

When I had to sit down and cut the crap, yeah, I could not tell the story that my mother didn't love me, and nobody's ever going to love me because that is the premise on which I agreed to get married the first time.

I met somebody who was a good person, and I was a good person, and I was like, how bad could it be? 

It turns out he was a good person with an avoidant attachment style. This meant he could never attach to me, making me continue believing that I would never be lovable enough. 

Wow. Energetically, I attracted the perfect person to perpetuate a false story my mother told me. 

That's why you have to clear the clutter. 

You have to cut the crap because otherwise, energetically, you are going to draw more of that garbage to you, and you're going to be trapped in a trauma cycle. 

You'll go back for it over and over and over and over again. 

If it ends and you find peace and suddenly you're like, oh, okay, I made it through that exhausting effort to figure out why that person doesn't love me. 

You'll head right back into it because you can't stand peace for longer than, I don't know, an hour. 

You will go back in to find the drama because it's an addiction. It's an addiction to interact with people that perpetuate a false story. 

You have to be a truth seeker. 

When you sit with yourself, be a truth-teller. Tell yourself the truth about who you are. 

When I sat down and made my list, I was like, I am happy, I am pliable, I was optimistic, I was enthusiastic, I was kind, gentle, helpful, I was adaptable, I was able, like I just went through all of them.

I just was like that, yep, I can see that in me, and oh, yep, that I can see in me.

When you apply them to just you, like if you were to be put on a planet and there were no other human beings, you'd have to learn how to function with those things in your toolkit as yourself. 

If you were to return to a social setting, you would still have to practice, like mega practice, staying present so that you weren't charming in the public eye but pleasing enough for people to like you. 

You're likable already. You're lovable already. You are already pleasing enough. 

When you breathed at birth, you magically had value because you were alive. Everyone in the room was like, yay, she took a run. 

Your value doesn't increase or decrease from that point on. You do not increase in value. 

You are fantastic and starry and shiny and bright, and that doesn't go anywhere. 

Your brain thinks that you are because others have said you are not because they were not. But the truth is that shiny brightness is still in you. It's still there. It's your job to find it. 

Acknowledge it and own it as your own. Okay?

Number two. Decide you can be okay without needing others to approve of you. I am okay. Oh, see that person there in a bad mood. Oh, that's okay, but I'm OK. Their bad mood is not about me. 

Do you know the four agreements? Never take anything personally.

It's a game-changer. Change my life. Read it.

Remind yourself that you can print out just the four agreements on an image from the Internet. But that was a game changer. Never take anything personally. 

Their story is theirs, and if they're telling you their story, that doesn't mean it's about you. It's about themselves. 

If you listen, if you get good at this, and you just stand still in a moment of crisis, when somebody is blaming you for their emotional problems, or they need you to care more about their issues than they do. 

They're playing the victim stand present for just a second and be like, oh, I heard their story. 

They're like, I can't get to the doctor, I'm sick. You need to go to the doctor. They're afraid of being powerless to get the meds they need. 

They're fearful right now. They feel helpless to help themselves. 

I got it. It's not my job to know they needed meds ahead of time. 

They're unhappy they don't have the meds they need. That's not my job. I'm all right. 

That's when you just stay okay. That's huge. 

Learn to stay okay without needing others' approval. 

In the middle of staying okay, your brain will be like, panic, panic! You're in danger; you're in trouble. 

You need to figure it out. 

Your brain's going to be on fire.

I'm warning you to be aware of that and just notice it now. 

It's like your brain's like, run, run! Do something quick! 

You need to remember that you're still okay. 

None of this can take away your value. None of this can take away your wholeness. None of this can take away your true nature, lovability, and likability. 

Here's what the trigger looks like. 

The trigger starts as you mirror their emotions. 

Well, how was I supposed to know you needed your drugs? That is, you mirroring their panic. Their panic.

Then they're like, I need you to panic so I can feel better about my panic. Cause my panic's coming from an emotionally immature place, and I need you to be emotionally immature. 

Now we can banter and fight and come up with why you're the reason I need to blame my immature emotions on. Yeah, that's old. That's a sickening cycle, right? 

Beware of your brain's need to participate in the drug of chaos. 

It's an addiction to mirror other people's panic or tantrums. Don't do it. 

Just be like, oh, I see you need medication. How past due are you? Do you have someone that can run and get it for you? When will you be able to get up and get your meds? Can you have it delivered? 

Ask the questions; don't mirror the emotions. 

Some people are like, I literally can't be in that arena. I have to walk away. 

I recommend you do that. It is the number one way to prevent the trauma cycle of matching their energy again. 

Don't worry; if someone is in that state of mind, they will find a way. 

They have enablers in their life that they can call. 

They're all on speed dial, and they can call them, whine, complain, blame, and point fingers, and they have minions to do their work for them. 

You don't have to participate. 

It's not being unkind. It's not lacking compassion. 

It's literally saving yourself another go-around with a trauma cycle because the way you interact with those kinds of people is not healthy, and it never will be. 

Even if you decide to be okay. 

You haven't broken those trauma patterns, and it's just the honeymoon before the divorce. 

It always starts like, okay, I'll just help them one more time; it will be all right. 

They will abandon you in the end. They will stonewall you and block you. 

That's just the pattern. That's the divorce. 

The emotional energy it takes to pull yourself out of the mire after that is enormous. It's just massive, massive exhaustion all the time. 

You need a nap from your life. 

Just be aware that your brain is going to want the drug, and it's going to be like, oh, I can do this thing one more time. No, no, you can't. It's the drug. 

But the drug looks good before you take it. 

The drug feels good while you're taking it, but the drug drops you off and leaves you dirty in the gutter every single time, and it doesn't feel good. 

Make sure that your brain's need for the chaotic drug of the fear of abandonment is not, is something that you refuse to take, okay? 

Number three set yourself apart from your family story. 

You are not your past. You cannot change the past.

If you're still looking at the past and trying to explain or justify why you do what you do based on something that happened yesterday, a mistake you made that somebody is holding you accountable for, you just don't want to be held responsible. 

It's not their job to rub it in your face. 

It's your job to acknowledge that I made a mistake, but I can also learn from it and start something new today. 

By the way, every day is a fresh start, every single day. 

If you're focused on what happened yesterday, a fight you got in, a drama you were involved in, financial drama, a relationship drama, it's all drama, right? 

It's just like something that feels heavy; it's negative, and you end up with yucky gut soup; let it go. It was what it was. 

When you come into alignment with accepting it was what it was, I fell for that line again.

I became the doormat again, but it can be the last time. 

When you set yourself apart from your family's stories and realize you're not the past, you can start to set healthy boundaries. 

Boundaries don't keep people out; they give you clarity. 

If that clarity is more than an hour away from them, get that clarity. 

If you need to move your body physically, do so because your happiness is waiting on the other side. 

Your clarity, your peace of mind. 

A healthy life, a new start, it's all on the other side of setting a healthy boundary and saying no to the drama, saying no to the drug, and the addiction of practicing self-abandonment. 

The worst thing about the fear of abandonment is that we do it to ourselves. 

It's the self-abandonment that hurts the most. 

We gave up our time, gifts, talents, and health for other people's well-being. 

It went unappreciated, unnoticed, used up, spit on and spit out. 

That is self-abandonment. 

When you think you owe somebody something. Self-abandonment. 

When you're waiting for them to approve of you, self-abandonment. 

When you are giving and giving and giving, it's unbalanced, self-abandonment. 

When you self-abandon, you're just repeating a historical story you were told as a child. 

Somewhere in there, whether they said it out loud or it was just implied through behavior, often, nobody has to say a word. 

You pick up on it. 

How did you learn a language? How did you learn to speak? You just picked up on it. 

Nobody sat down when you were 18 months old and started spelling him and her in front of you. 

Nobody gave you an English lesson. You just picked up through context. 

That is how you internalize the story of your childhood. 

You picked it up through context that you weren't worthy of having a happy life. 

You weren't worthy of having your own space and your boundaries. 

You didn't deserve the respect you deserve for your needs and wants. That's what you picked up. 

That's why fear of abandonment has been an issue. That's why you've also developed an addiction to participate in the trauma cycle of abandonment. 

But the most important thing that you can do is self-accept. 

That is the antithesis of self-abandonment. 

Be self-supporting. 

Honestly, nobody can love you but you. 

When you love yourself, you become indestructible. 

When you love yourself, you know that nothing is coming at you, and neither the fear of the world nor the fear of people in your family can rattle you. 

It's like, oh, I see, you guys are all in fear. 

Well, I don't choose to participate in that. 

I am unavailable for anything but self-support. Right now. 

Self-support means that you acknowledge, own, and claim the love that you are. 

Self-support says that you are okay being who you are, the way you are, as far as you've come to get to this place where you are picking up many of those pieces of the past and putting them in their proper perspective. 

That is what helps develop the underdeveloped child in you over the years. 

It's like, oh, that one wasn't mine either. And I don't feel good now; that negative emotion tells me my brain is telling a false story, and my inner self disagrees. 

If that's language that you're like, I don't even know what she just said, go back. 

My former blogs all deal with this. 

I'm doing an ongoing blog after blog about the same topic. 

I'm saying it in 10 different ways. 

But self-abandonment is the lack of self-support, period. 

If you need more self-support, you will have to do the work to avoid the drug. 

It's no different than putting yourself in rehab. 

In rehab, you're isolated from the drug itself, you're isolated from the world and the environment that created that habit, and you are put in a place where you are mostly isolated with just the thoughts that bring truth, enlightenment, and good feelings to you eventually. 

So it's your choice. It's your life. 

You get to choose to participate in a trauma cycle of abandonment, or you can choose to get out. 

When it becomes uninteresting to be that tired, you will get out. You will find a way. 

And like I said, I had to extract myself from the only life I had known for 35 years. 

It was hard. It was, there was a lot of grief, let me say that. 

But I'll tell you what, the grief didn't last half, not an eighth longer than the actual pain I had been in all those years.

For me to go on and live a life now more than a decade of self-support. 

I'll tell you what. It's so worth it. So worth it. 

There is happiness and peace and harmony on the other side. 

That doesn't mean you're perfect. That doesn't mean you don't revisit triggers. 

I said I'm just now able to preempt my struggle. But that's the good news because I can now preempt my battle. 

Lots of reminders. Lots of reminders not to step in the poo. 

Luckily, I'm not relying on just wearing waders anymore to not step in the poo. 

I can walk in regular shoes and go around the poo. That is the good news. 

This can be very vague if you need help with this or clarity. It's different from saying big problems in 40 minutes here. 

But if you need help, clarity, answers to questions, or guidance, please let me know; I can only help if I see the problem. 

You can email me at teresafordcoaching@gmail.com. 

Let's get out there and make a living. 

Note: You can access the full blog content in audio versions on Spotify and YouTube. Happy listening! 🎧

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