Feeling abandoned hurts. When it hits you, out of nowhere, it ripples through every fiber of your being. You may feel, all the sudden, like a heart ache, heavy, maybe like you can’t breath. In those moments maybe you become clingy or you withdraw and isolate in your pain.

We are born to connect

As human beings, we are innately wired to connect; when we come in the world it’s our primal need. Through attuned experiences with our caregivers we develop an emotional intimate connection with others. That emotional matrix of being able to connect intimately with others becomes part of who we are – our mind, body, our nervous system. At the same time, as we internalize that strong bond with our caregivers, we start developing our own intimate connection with ourselves.

Why is so important to establish such strong and intimate connections

An intimate connection to ourselves and others is at the root of feeling safe and grounded in ourselves in relationships. We can trust we’ can have fulfilling relationships and that we can navigate relational ups and downs. It protects us from gettin stuck in abandonment and from abandoning ourselves in moments of  relationships ruptures. 

A strong and intimate connections creates our foundation for emotional well-being, resilience, personal growth, and overall life satisfaction. It help us feel supported, understood, and valued, which are essential for mental and emotional health. The emotional abandonment is the reverse of all this. It’s living in fear of not trusting others. This fear can operate in our awareness, but many times lurks in our unconscious mind. 

Why an attuned and intimate connection to ourselves matters

Being attuned and connected to ourselves in allows us to trust that we can take care of ourself emotionally:

• we know what we feel and why, we honor our feelings
• we have awareness what belongs in the present and what is old
• we can self-regulate our emotions, we can make wise decision
• we have self-compassion, we are connected to our sense of agency
• we are emotionally resilient
• we feel emotionally alive

When we abandon ourselves we are not attuned to ourselves, we don’t take care of ourselves emotionally: we dismiss, minimize, shame, or deny our feelings. We don’t access healthy copping strategies of soothing our feelings. We don’t engage in a thoughtful process of deciding what would be a wise and healthy way to respond to relationships moments of ruptures. We either become reactive or defensive. We re-enact old moments of emotional abandonment. Unfortunately, acting from unhealed emotional abandonment – clinging, attacking, being reactive, isolating, putting walls – tends to push others away. It doesn’t helps us get way we need and to reconnect. We get trapped, unconsciously, in a cycle of perpetuating emotional abandonment.

By engaging in the reactive or defensive strategies, we developed in reactions to early abandonment injuries, we stay locked in a self-fulfilling prophecy of abandonment. 

Emotional abandonment is complex and multilayered

While, you may think of abandonment as such times when there is break up with someone, or when someone doesn’t come at a meeting, abandonment is more layered than these instances. Abandonment gets weaved in the relational matrix of the early missattuned experiences with others – it’s embedded in your nervous system. This means that abandonment can be triggered by more subtle day-to-day moments of missatunemet with others. Maybe when you feel misunderstood, not heard, someone is not listening to you, someone is not showing up for you, not acknowledged or witnessed in some ways.

When our early needs aren’t met or are neglected, we experience it as an emotional abandonment and we internalize a fear of being abandoned.

Unfortunately, as an adult, your fear of abandonment can affect your current relationships, your drive to accomplish your goals, creative expressions and ambitions. A fear of abandonment can lead to trust issues, feelings of insecurity, and it impacts your emotional intimacy. It disconnects you from your sense of agency. 

Thankfully, you don’t have to live with that crippling fear forever. EMDR therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy) can help you ease your abandonment fears so you can so can have healthier and more productive relationships, in your personal life and in your career. 

Let’s find out how. 

How EMDR Therapy Can Help? 

Some type of therapy is almost always necessary to resolve a fear of abandonment. Therapy helps people struggling with that fear to dive into the root cause of it. It can encourage you to take a look at past events or circumstances to understand where the abandonment issues simmer. However EMDR therapy weaved in with a relational treatment approach – based on the neurobiology of relationships – is quite powerful in treating abandonment trauma. 

That’s not always easy, of course. But, with EMDR, it’s not necessary to work and re-work your way through all your past. With EMDR, you can work with what’s here-and-now experiences to get at the root issues and memories not being attuned to or neglected. You can release, or at least minimize, your fear of abandonment. 

While there are several types of therapy options to consider if you have a fear of abandonment, EMDR has become one of the most popular due to its proven effectiveness. 

EMDR is often used to help people deal with different types of trauma. While you may not initially think of a fear of abandonment as trauma, it has many similar characteristics, especially if the fear stems from childhood. 

If you were abandoned in your past, you might be holding onto that loss and anxiety. By carrying it with you into adulthood, it could be affecting you and impacting your life in negative ways you don’t even realize.  

How Does it Work for Abandonment? 

EMDR is a therapy, using the rapid, rhythmic movements of your eyes, that will help you to reduce or eliminate the power of the traumatic event(s). You can let go of the anger, frustration, resentment, and the sadness and all the tears of feeling unimportant enough to deserve love, emotional interest, or care.  

When you’re going through an EMDR session, you will reconnect to the situations that caused the fear of abandonment in the current emotional safety of attuned therapeutic relationships. 

That emotional reconnection will allow you to shift from images, self-thoughts, and even body sensations of abandonment to feeling more connected and grounded in your own self as an adult – the place where you can develop authentic connection with yourself and others.

EMDR works by reprocessing your memories that link to past abandonment and disappointments in your relationships. Thereby, you are able to break unhealthy emotional cycles to more genuine personal and professional relationships. 

You can shift emotionally to loving yourself, being more attuned to yourself, and valuing yourself. This will result in a more fulfilling, creative, and productive life.

The important thing about EMDR therapy is that your brain’s natural healing powers are doing the work. It will access your innate propensity for healing and growth.  

You’ll feel emotionally free from old abandonment feelings. You can be more connected to your inner emotional life, your sense of agency, and creativity. Therefore your can experience more authentic and fulfilling connection to others. You will be more in control of creating your life. 

EMDR is a powerful and effective psychotherapy approach to heal a fear of abandonment, especially if that stemmed from childhood or a traumatic relationship or break up.

If you want to learn more about EMDR trauma treatment, you can read more in my EMDR Therapy Page. 

I am Mihaela Ivan Holtz, Doctor in Clinical Psychology. My specialties are emotional trauma expressed through depression, anxiety, performance anxiety, creativity, relationships and love, PTSD, and addictions – to become their own best version.  I am also specialized in working with creatives and performers – you can read more about Therapy for Creatives here.