Extreme fear of abandonment to do with complex childhood abuse trauma- does it ever go away??

[purpleswirled]

hi, my life has been one long story of abuser abandonment and rejection. the pattern keeps repeating itself in my adult life ahgain and again. relationships end because my trauma keep scoming up. I keep fearing rejection and anticipating so i push people away and end up more alone than ever. Am writing this with tears running down my face and i am somewone who NEVER cries unless angry.....why am i so worthless that i keep being abandoned and unwanted and made to feel disgusting???? my dad always to0ld me to go away as a child that nobody wanted to listen to me. he got aggressive when i wouldn't leave....why wasn't i worth more than that??? did i not deserve better? other people do, why don't i???

 

[purpleswirled]

I know i need to go away and self sooth.......but i am scared to stop the tears becaus ei never get to cry or feel sorry for myself- it is a lkuxury for me and if i suppress the tears now i will never get this release again......anfd once my CPTSD gets better I wil be left alone again.. to face the world as a whole person but never having been taught to. i was abused since age 2 i never knew what normal was.............i'm being left alone in the world expected to act normally and i just don'r know how

 

[Suzetig]

Can I check the support you have around you just now? The folk here on the forums are great as a general support but cant take the place of real people who know you and your daily life. I ask because I see you reaching out here but people here aren't around enough and don't know you well enough to give concrete help that you seem to be trying to find.

It's not about you being able to self soothe and stop crying - crying can be a good thing, but you seem to be in a place just now where you need actual help. How would you normally get that help for yourself?

 

[Freedomfighter]

hi, my life has been one long story of abuser abandonment and rejection. the pattern keeps repeat...

We are here for you, and we understand your pain. It is very evident that you are facing a lot of pain right now. The thought of any child to be unwanted and to be told that by a parent is excruciating pain. Only a very abusive person would ever ever say such a thing to their own child. For a parent to say that to the child would certainly cause horrific pain. It is that parent that lays the groundwork for repetitive abusive relationships. A predator will brainwash the child, (a little person whose well being relies on an adult and in in normal situations requires the child to trust the parent), will show love to the child and then turn around and hurt the child immensely. My father is in his seventies and he tried that shit with me right after my mom died. My response was to totally cut him out of my life, only sane thing to do.
Stalkers in my life have adopted the same kind of actions to make me "fügig", german word for someone to turn a human being into a machine that only follows orders and that does everything the predator wants them to do.
I have noticed such traits in many people, when they use love, hate tactics I often wonder if there are many normal people left out there.

It is inherent for human beings to be able to trust, however in modern society this is not a possibility, because in my opinion our society is full of predators and one has to be very careful.

Your mind is still in a very vulnerable state, possibly child like state, in which you still believe the lies of your parent and what they told you. You are mirroring the words that the abusers told you and you have adopted their way of thinking which is what they wanted you to do.
In my opinion it is literally like an exorcism: to get the predator out of your mind is like ridding yourself from the devil....

 

[purpleswirled]

Can I check the support you have around you just now? The folk here on the forums are great as a genera...

How would i normally get that for myself? To be honest, i don't normally get it for myself. I end up keeping it all inside (letting it out via self harm, aggression towards others and ED issues) and then I find i don't know how to manage the turmiol in a safe way, outside of repressing it completely? I had a friend i could talk to about it but she stoped believing me when she met my father and spoke to him. what makes me sad is she believed me 100 per cent before then

find relationship with my current therapist difficult. i am waiting for a different type of therapy- MBT which can help challenge core beliefs but the waiting lists are long. therapist i have now tend to make me feel invalifdated and that i'm wasting her time

 

[Thinkbig]

The realization that we are worth having support around us and learning healthy boundaries is a huge step towards healing.

How would i normally get that for myself? To be honest, i don't normally get it for myself. I end up keeping it all inside (letting it out via self harm, aggression towards others and ED issues) and then I find i don't know how to manage the turmiol in a safe way, outside of repressing it completely

Another part in healing is finding healthy ways to express our emotions, and yes there is so much! As a child it was impossible to sort through all the feelings that overwhelmed me so I shut down. But now I am able to feel pieces at a time.

But it's dangerous to start feeling if you don't have any healthy ways to cope. That's where having a therapist that you click with becomes so important. We can't do this alone. We deserve support! That's why we are on here, to give and receive what we never got.

I totally agree with @Suzetig that online support cannot take the place of personal interaction.

 

[Tinyflame]

@purpleswirled I think it's common we blame ourselves. As @Thinkbig said:

The realization that we are worth having support around us and learning healthy boundaries is a huge step towards healing.

I think this is so because not only do I relate but I have gone past (long long ago) 'why don't I deserve it' to 'I surely don't deserve it'.

I do think it's very difficult, for myself anyway, to expect my flaws will not, or do not, over-ride any other acceptable or otherwise qualities I may have. But it is different than poor self-esteem, or rejection or insecurfities, or validation, though it can include that too. But it's my experience that neglect and/ or abandonment are different animals than these, sort of rejection but of one's core self, first by others, then one's self. It's a period- full stop- total dismissal as a person, or human. No, you didn't deserve that.

Hugs to you.

ETA, just as no 2 people with ptsd are the same, no 2 people without are, either. Not everyone abandons, not everyone cherishes.

 

[Tinyflame]

In retrospect, in answer to the thread title I would say no.

 

[Recovery4Me]

How would i normally get that for myself?

Finding support for burning questions can be a life time journey. Often self-help is a good place to start for introspection. There are many books on abandonment as well as web sites. For instance this link in particular has an free section on abandonment fears and he is a solid therapist as I went to him.
Pete Walker, M.A. Psychotherapy

Insofar as rebuilding your self-esteem there are many self affirmation sites that offer little thoughts to replace the negative ones of worthlessness. It takes time, introspection, perhaps solid therapy with a true desire to be more than the sum total of what others have done to you.

Regardless of who stays and who goes- you deserve to be loved, respected and valued. Sometimes however, we must build from within or start by loving, respecting and valuing ourselves. :hug:'s if you accept and good luck with your journey

 

[amosmorris]

I grew up with a mother who used to threaten to run away from home whenever we, as little kids, made any kind of innocent mistakes (spilling something etc)--this was her routine response, "That's it! I'm running away from home!! You ever hear of mothers who run away? Well I'm running away!!" Well: so not only did I--for years--not believe this had ever impacted me, I even--so I thought--had forgotten it...until I started therapy. And then one day her voice--loud as ever--came searing through my head. My heart started racing and I don't think it's really stopped since, and many more memories have come to the surface too, some deeply painful.
Anyway, my point is that in the context of therapy I have since had to contend with my own attachment and abandonment issues, and I have to say the shame is unbelievable--and so please know you are not alone. I have been shocked--shocked, floored, really--to find myself crying like a confused kid in front of my therapist because she's going on a vacation, to say nothing of the time she messed up one of our scheduled appointments and missed--took me about two months to get beyond it enough to talk about anything else. It hurts like hell. It's an affliction, a thing, a kind of wound that's there that I had for years lived without feeling. I don't know that it can be undone so much as accepted, taken care of, as a part of who you are--it is one of the things (and there are many other things, of course) that many of us our made of thanks to the choices made by our caretakers. I hope--this is my hope, anyway--that in knowing and feeling and facing the fact of this particular, unique wound, we might not just pass it on and repeat it and just recycle it over and over. So-- @purpleswirled --I say be proud of yourself for walking this path. Can't undo what's been done but you can come to know and define your terms. Sending you healing.