May 3, 2009
Abandonment
Posted in DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Online Therapy, therapy, Therapy and Counseling, Therapy Homework Ideas, Trauma, trauma therapist tagged Abandoned, Abandonment, AbuseConsultants, AbuseConsultants.com, Abusive Parents, Alone, Aloneness, Anger, Anxiety, Attachment Issues, Borderline Personality Disorder, BPD, Building Relationships, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Crisis, CSA, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Crisis, emotional pain, Facebook, Healing, Isolation, Kathy Broady, Low Self-Esteem, Maintaining Relationships, Online Support, Online Therapist, pain, Physical Abuse, Safety, Self Esteem, Self Harm, Self Injury, sexual abuse, Support Group, therapy, Treatment Goals for DID, Trust, Twitter, Worthlessness at 3:30 pm by Kathy Broady
Abandonment is such a tender issue for trauma survivors. Most survivors with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID/MPD) and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) have had more than their fair share of genuine abandonment instances.
For severe trauma survivors, abandonment would have been experienced over and over in various situations:
- Each time your parents or caregivers turned a blind eye to the sexual abuse or physical abuse that was occurring to you right there in your own household
- Each time your parents or caregivers abandoned their role of safety and became the perpetrator of your abuse
- Each time your parents or caregivers ignored your physical needs, leaving you to be hungry, cold, unkempt, improperly dressed, neglected in any way
- Each time your parents or caregivers handed you over to someone else that was physically or sexually abusing you
- Each time your parents or caregivers left you alone for extended periods of time, leaving you to tend to your own care when you were too young to be taking care of yourself by yourself
- Each time your parents or caregivers refused to give you proper medical attention or medical treatment
- Each time your parents or caregivers ignored your pleas or cries for help, turning a deaf ear, and leaving you to deal with your crisis without their assistance
For survivors with DID, these kinds of instances of abandonment happened on a frequent basis. All too many survivors were abandoned on a weekly basis, and for some people, on a daily basis.
How does this kind of abandonment affect people?
Excessive, repeated, severe abandonment teaches survivors to not trust. It teaches that other people cannot be counted on. It teaches them that they are alone in the world. It makes them believe that no one will help, or no one will be there for them.
What’s worse, it gives deeper emotional messages to the survivors, drilling in feelings about worthlessness, unworthiness, unimportance, having no value, being bad, being stupid, being invisible. It eliminates and destroys any self-esteem the survivor could develop.
It creates a deep-seated anger, an ongoing emptiness, a constant sense of isolation.
It scars the heart and pierces the soul.
.
How can survivors of extreme abandonment recover from such emotional wounding?
Parents are wrong, sometimes criminally wrong, legally wrong, in some of their abandoning behaviors. Do not assume that your parents were “right” in their abandoning behaviors. They were very likely doing something wrong.
Once a survivor truly hears and understands the fact that their parents and caregivers are responsible for the improper treatment of a child, then that survivor can begin their own path for healing.
But healing from abandonment is not easy. The wounds went deep into your core existence, and overcoming that level of emotional wounding takes a lot of time and repeated effort.
Some of the steps involved in healing from abandonment are:
- Remembering again and again that the abandonment was not your fault
- Remembering again and again that you are not a bad person because your parents or caregivers committed crimes against you
- Learning that while some people are criminals, not all people are criminals, meaning, while your parents were willing to abandon you to such a huge degree, not all people will act in the same manner
- Learning to trust again, ever so slowly, little bit by bit. Dare to try. Dare to reach out. Dare to build relationships.
- Finding people, even if only one or two, that you can build meaningful relationships with
- Being a trustworthy, reliable person so that other people will develop trust in you
- Addressing your anger issues at the true offenders of your pain. If you go “on the attack” to people that make small errors in your relationship (while refusing to address your feeling at your parents or caregivers who committed grave errors), then you will find yourself alone time and time again. Work hard at showing the appropriate amount of anger equal to the level of the mistake. Going overboard at people in the current day will not be helpful.
- Working really really hard at separating the issues that belong to people in your past versus attributing your pain to people in your current day world
- Develop relationships with pets or animals if you are too scared to trust people. Building connections with another living being, where you each rely on each other, is a great starting place
- Remembering and realizing that safe people will come back to you time and time again, unless you do something to push them away over and over again. You can keep good people in your life if you want to.
- Finding little treasures / trinkets / small reminders of people to help you maintain that sense of object permanence. Out of sight does not mean that they are gone from your life.
- Working on extended your comfort zone in terms of how often you need to hear from someone in order to feel secure in that relationship. Repeated contact, vs. excessive contact, is an acceptable way to maintain relationships.
- Finding safe but creative ways of building relationships. For example, if you are afraid to meet with people face-to-face, build online relationships. Use an online therapist or an online support group as a starting place. Connect through blogs, twitter, facebook, etc.
.
Abandonment is painful, but it is still possible to build positive and healthy relationships with other people. It will take consistent work on your part to overcome the negative, damaging teachings given to you by neglectful parents and poor caregivers, but you can do it.
Unless you really want to be alone, you don’t have to be left alone anymore.
__________
By:
Kathy Broady LCSW
thelittlestsurvivor said,
May 3, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Dear Kathy,
Thanks for posting this, it was very difficult to read. I think because when you are a child and you are constantly being abandoned you fear that everyone in your life will abandon you, so you decide not to get close or not to trust. Something my therapist and i spoke about a few weeks ago, is how myself and parts included look at death as abandonment also. In the end we both decided that that idea was rather selfish, or well self centered, like how i could think that a person would go as far as dying to get away from me. Its kind of funny now. We also battling with my therapist about abandonment. I saw a therapist before for 3 years, she was the first person i trusted and the first person i told about my trauma and then she got a new job and in two weeks she was gone. This has scarred me, i worry constantly about being abandoned. I also grew up in foster care so there are a lot of issues going on there with feeling like i’m not wanted or loved or that i don’t belong. i think that my fear of abandonment keeps me from doing a lot of things, like making new friends or even trying, it cripples my relationship with my adoptive mother and it causes me to shy away from my therapist. Thanks again for posting this, once again you’ve really stimulated my brain..
pieces,
Liv
Kathy Broady said,
May 3, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Liv,
Yes, that’s a very good point — deaths can certainly be a type of abandonment, and same with an ill parent — a parent that was away in the hospital for an extended time, or bed-ridden, or too medically ill to actually parent consistently, or too mentally unstable to be a good parent, etc. If we put more thought to it, I’m sure we’d come up with a whole big bunch of other scenarios where parents / caregivers can abandon children.
It sounds like abandonment issues have been a very difficult part of your trauma. I’m sorry to hear about all the difficult times you’ve been through. It’s not been easy for you, has it?!!!
It also sounds like you have done a whole lot of work on your abandonment issues — good for you, that’s excellent. And thanks for sharing the ideas of overcoming the self-centeredness and selfishness as they pertain to these issues. That must be difficult to look at, but I can certainly see how they would apply.
Overcoming the fear and the inability (? or unwillingness) to trust is important but difficult. And it takes a long, long time, and even then, sometimes people do make changes in their life which are not intended to be “abandoning” (like your therapist taking a new job), but can still feel very abandoning to you.
Reframing change as “necessary change” or “a good change for someone else, even if its not so great for me” and not pure abandonment can be helpful too. The perspective / meaning you put on change — how you define the situation can affect a lot. For example, if you can truly understand that your therapist was making a positive move in her life, and not purposefully abandoning you or desiring to leave you, that can give you a different perspective on the whole ordeal.
Keep up the good work —
Kathy
ivory54 said,
May 3, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Kathy,
You finally touch my most tender nerve. Abandonment. It has taken me nearly all of the 5 years I’ve been in therapy to STOP testing my T and let him be there for me. Well, I’ve pretty much stopped testing him. That is also why, because I cannot pay him right now, he has not abandoned me. He’s put a lot of effort into helping me, too, so that is probably another reason. I don’t care whatever the reason. He often tells me he’s in it for the long haul – in that sense I am fortunate.
Abandonment is a huge, huge issue for me. I realize, now, the magnitude of abuse I experienced as a child. It happened because my parents left to myself too often and put me into the hands of an abuser. After only 3 months of therapy (and still occasionally), I call my daughter and the only words I can speak are, “Did I keep you safe?” Her reply is always the same, “Yes, Mama, you kept me safe. I love you for it.” And we hang up. I have to keep hearing it.
juliewtf said,
May 4, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Ouch….this is a hard post….
“It scars the heart and pierces the soul.” these 7 words say more then anything else I have ever read.
gobbies said,
May 4, 2009 at 5:02 pm
hits a nerve for me too. It hink for me it is both the real memory of abandonment and also that my abusers used abandonment as a constant threat, that they would leave me, or kill themselves because of me, that sort of thing.
juliewtf said,
May 7, 2009 at 4:12 pm
I just had a thought….I wonder if it is possible to abandon ourselves
muffledones said,
May 7, 2009 at 9:52 pm
yes it is possible, I abandoned my inside kids.
Kathy Broady said,
May 8, 2009 at 12:28 am
yep, I agree with muffledones – it is possible to abandon yourself, and certainly to abandon your insiders.
A big part of the healing process is to make sure that none of your insiders are feeling abandoned by you and the other adults. That’s a bit of a tall order, but it can be done.
Kathy
creativehealingsoul said,
May 8, 2009 at 3:49 pm
I was wondering if you might address the issue of past abandonment as it relates to the tremendously difficult task of a client finally trusting and “attaching” to his/her therapist, investing years of intensive DID work with him/her (in effect inviting this safe relationship into the system) and then having to move towards separation as the final phases of therapy approach…and the sense of an impending “death of the relationship” looms. How does one invest in this type of relationship in an authentic and real way, with appropriate therapeutic boundaries, and after years of investment, not usher in a deep depression, decompensating or suicidal meltdown when its time to move towards closure? What warning signs/traits would you look for in either a DID client or therapist and the dynamics of the relationship that could lead to extreme difficulty in the end? Do you have any suggestions for clients who are so overwhelmed at the thought of “the end” that it prevents him/her from further progressing, trusting and attaching because with each issue that is worked through the system perceives it as bringing them all one step closer to the unbearable pain and grief of losing the relationship? This seems a particularly difficult issue for child parts who perceive the therapist in a special “parental” role and see the inventual separation as the death of a parental figure and being left to survive “alone again”. It seems to be a a critical issue that a client can unknowingly sabotage therapy over to avoid the pain of “the abandonment”. How is this framed and worked through so that the experience is not retraumatizing nor triggers a life-threatening breakdown? I’d welcome your thoughts regarding client attachment levels and dependancy on the therapist and issues that might bring up…maybe a good topic for an article!
muffledones said,
May 8, 2009 at 5:33 pm
My comment here kinda fits w/this some I think.
http://discussingdissociation.wordpress.com/2009/02/08/dissociative-trauma-survivors-%e2%80%93-must-you-be-alone/#comment-840
About T vacations.
Kathy Broady said,
May 9, 2009 at 11:41 am
Creativehealingsoul,
Oh, you’ve asked some hard questions! But some important questions and yes, I think that could be a good topic for an article. I’ll think about that for awhile, and it’s added to the “post about this” list.
Thanks for the comment —
Kathy
outsidersinside said,
May 10, 2009 at 7:54 am
hi kathy
it does scar your heart.
it makes you see abandonment in every act of those you love. and because you want to think of yourself as strong and resilient rather than clingy and needy
you gradually distance yourself even from those who never leave.
and then you are alone alone alone.
pilgrimchild said,
October 21, 2009 at 4:08 pm
This post stings a lot. Abandonment is probably the biggest thing for me. It always has been like everyone I love and everyone I need leaves me. Even if they promise that they won’t, even if they say that they’re not like everyone else, even if they say they’re the one who WONT leave. This was a big issue that we worked on with my therapist, who said she wasn’t going to abandon me, that she wasn’t like everyone else. Then she abandoned me too. Which hurt worse than everyone else doing it because she KNEW what she was doing and she knew what it would do to us inside.
And she is a really good person… so somehow it must be my fault. All my fault, because whenever anyone gets to know the real me, they leave. So I don’t let anyone get to know me anymore, I always act happy and good and make sure to be perfect, so no one will leave me anymore.
Mona said,
October 22, 2009 at 10:24 pm
Pilgrim child,
I know it is hard to believe it right now but none of the abuse was your fault. When people hurt you it was not because you deserved it, it was not because you brought it on yourself. You deserved to be protected, you deserved to be safe. You deserve that now, too. So if your therapist can’t be there for you, you need to find a new therapist who can. You deserve to get the support you need, you deserve to be your true self and not hide your feelings behind a mask. Maybe you did that as a child because you needed to protect yourself from overwhelming pain and sadness. But you are a grown up now and no longer (I certainly hope) in a dangerous situation. You are stronger now and you deserve to have your feelings get heard.
I am so glad Kathy didn’t say about abusive parents what so many people say, “They did their best.” I am a parent myself and I know that my parents had choices and they made bad ones about letting their own abusers have access to their children. There is no excuse for what they knowingly allowed to happen. None. And one day I hope to be able to feel angry about that.
Be well.
multipixie9 said,
October 23, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Pilgrimchild,
I feel sad as I read your post. I have fought against dealing with abandonment because it was so painful and I felt so shameful over it. Some of these experiences in the last few years were devestating as they re-wounded the inner children in our system. We also felt very angry and wanted to rain destruction (verbally) on those who were so cold, cruel and disrespectful of our being. It may have taken these many long years to get to the point of dealing with our horrid past because we so feared to re-encounter the “orphan” feelings and abandonment that happened so often growing up.
I hope you can come to a point where you can value yourself, that’s what I’m trying to achieve. I want to look into the mirror and smile at the me’s who smile back and to flippin hell with ANYONE who can’t see that we are valuable and worthy of respect, affection, love!!!
As I’ve said before my spouse has abandoned me for the last 27 years of our marriage and it has been countless abandonments with him. Finally I saw that I am right and he is very wrong in denying that we struggle with abuse and DID, etc. I am learning to love myself and my inside family and we are going to get healing and live no matter what anyone thinks of us.
We matter, we are amazing survivors and we will NOT let him or others define us or jam us into a round hole when we have never been meant to be in any kind of structure. We are unique and worthy and to hell with anyone who can’t see it in us.
Passionately, Rebelliously,
Pixies
Wounded Genius said,
October 23, 2009 at 10:54 pm
@creativehealingsoul – this is something I dread even being at the beginning of the relationship and is definitely something that is preventing me from attaching but at the same time… if step back… I’m trying to believe in the therapeutic process, that I will be prepared through work carried out in therapy for the termination at the appropriate time, that I won’t be sent back out into the world “alone” until we are both/all agreed that I am ready etc etc. Incidentally, I have also read that being near or perceiving signs of impending termination of therapy can create a backlash and regression to previous ways of thinking/behaving for the client – I think the shrinks are prepared for dealing with this.
Kathy I’d be interested in your thoughts on termination in a new post
WG.
Kathy Broady said,
October 28, 2009 at 5:51 am
Oh Wounded Genius….
Oh boy, oh boy. I have a BUNCH of things to say about termination! In fact, I’ve got articles on that topic already partially written — just haven’t gotten them ready to actually post yet, but yep, I have a lot to say about that. That’s definitely a topic on my list!
I will say this much — I completely believe that an improper or sudden “cold turkey” termination is absolutely one of the most damaging things that can ever happen to a client, especially after a long-term therapeutic relationship. That kind of negative, sudden end can cause tremendous harm that ripples out in all kinds of destructive ways for a very long time. It practically erases the positive gains that had been made during the relationship.
yep… I’m gonna have to finish those articles… Thanks for the nudge.
Kathy
kindygirl said,
October 30, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Hi, just found your blog too and wanted to comment on this because it is soooo true. The first therapist I ever saw who diagnosed me with DID turned out to be an abandonment trigger for me. She realized very quickly that my biggest fear was talking to her and then having her leave me and she used it against me constantly. She would always say things like, “If you self injure I won’t see you anymore” or “if you don’t see me twice a week I’ll know you’re not committed to therapy and won’t see you anymore” and anything else she could think of that I did that she didn’t like that I was doing became a huge battle between she and I and it left me constantly saying, “are you going to leave me?” She finally said I was DID and borderline (which my current therapist says I am NOT borderline), but she brought out that abandonment fear in me so strongly that a lot of my behaviors inadvertantly became borderline. In the end, she made me so sick that I attempted suicide and THEN she followed through with her threat to never speak to me again. She never once contacted me or my husband when I attempted suicide and sent me a letter via mail to tell me she was no longer my therapist. She was horrible. I was a mental mess after just 10 months of seeing her. Now I have a very ethical therapist who has helped me a lot. In fact, I wish I had found her first and never gone through that because I put her through the test of whether she was going to stop seeing me in the beginning too. I am comfortable now that she will never do that to me and I rarely think about it, but having someone retraumatize you like my first so-called therapis did is truly devastating to your healing. It set me back even further than I was before I was diagnosed and took me 2 years to get past.
Kathy Broady said,
November 1, 2009 at 8:12 pm
Hi Kindygirl,
Welcome to Discussing Dissociation!
Thanks for your post – yikes, what a story.
Providing therapy by threats… hmmmm…. that’s probably not the best way to build trust and rapport …. ouch! Lots of trouble there…
It sounds like you are in a much better place now, and while your first experience sounds terrible, at least you were able to move on and begin working with someone else. I’d encourage you to stay there!
I hope you continue to find positive helpers along your journey –
Warmly,
Kathy
pilgrimchild said,
December 28, 2009 at 10:20 pm
in 13 days it does be 2 yers sins sharin lev me
i just be so sory
it do be all my fallt
i miss her so mutch i want my sharin bak i miss her i miss her
her did say her wudnt lev her promst
her did ust to coler with me on the floor i miss that her did red me storees
her did sit by me i miss her
i dont no wy her nevr say by to me
Mona said,
January 1, 2010 at 4:02 pm
I am sorry you are so sad. I hope you let yourself color on the floor even if no-one else colors with you. And maybe reading a story out loud would feel good. Or just look at the pictures and tell your own story. I love to color. I also like sidewalk chalk. Have you ever tried that. You can make a big picture and get messy and the rain washes it all clean again. My neighbors kids used to draw with me, sometimes.
inviziblepain said,
November 4, 2010 at 10:10 am
My last t terminated “cold turkey” almost a year ago. I didn’t feel it for 6 months. Then I was completely devastated. She said she couldn’t help me anymore, that I needed more help. After the six months I tried to contact her for answers and understanding since the whole situation did not make sense to me at all. She ignored all my attempts to contact her for five months. Phone calls and emails. I saw her for eight years. She was the first person I had been able to trust. It took me four of those eight years to be able to tell her I had been abused. She is the only one I have ever been able to tell. She left. Like everyone else. When she finally called me back she said she is no longer seeing adults only kids and to stop calling her. I gave her a piece of my mind and that was it. Now I am worse off than I have ever been in my life. The little I have is ALL falling apart. I literally have noone who truly knows me. When I told her I had been abused it opened pandoras box for me. I don’t even have the words to describe all that is going on with me. Worst of all I am completely alone in this. I’m pissed off that she is the one I allowed to chip away at my wall of protection. Now she left me and the wall has become twice as thick. Abandonment sucks the life out of me.
Pilgrim said,
May 5, 2011 at 2:42 pm
evrebuddy lefs us
we dont no who to trust enemore
we are left alon
we do be so scard
\ we mite be left agan it feels like it we dont no waht to th ink
evn wen pepol say they dont gona go noware they still do
we cry an cry an cry
we dont got enebudy left enemor
god lef us to
nowon heres us enemoe:(
the bully say we are werthles and stupid and nobudy love us that why we get left like this
we dont like to be awak enemor cos it to hard
we dont like to slep cos of the bad drems
nowon no wahts hapening to us
evrebudy left agan
we dont
Mona said,
May 18, 2011 at 10:17 pm
It seems this site is not active any more…so please don’t depend on it for support. You can look inside and find your wise self and tell her what you need and then allow her to give it to you.
I find that if I ask my insiders they will tell me what they need. Sometimes they don’t trust me to take care of them, but it is important that you build those relationships with your parts. In the end we have to learn to parent ourselves…sad as that is. I wrote a story about that called the Fairly Good Mother. You might enjoy it. It is on my From Hurt to Healing Blog.
Take care…hugs
Mona
Pilgrim said,
October 16, 2011 at 2:31 pm
we keep geting left agan and agan and agan
we dont gone to trust enebydy eneymore
evreyone leves us
evrebudy
i wish missy didnt be rigt about evrething
TUCK
methinkstoo said,
March 12, 2012 at 12:31 am
We feel abandoned a lot. Tho in our life now – we are not abandoned. I guess it is still the old stuff. It happened to us on everything you mentioned. I try to justify the one’s that abandoned me so that I don’t feel it so much. That’s not working so good. Our mom recently died. We always hated Christmas – so now she died at Christmas & did it again. She abandoned us a lot. Now it feels even worse than before. Me thinks we have more work to do. *sigh* It never ends does it. We wanna grow up.
leighsamuelcannon said,
June 9, 2012 at 3:20 am
Reblogged this on leighcannon and commented:
Those of you interested in a scholarly article about the effects of trauma read this.