What does abandonment feel like?

[grit]

Hi all,

I am at home today. I called in sick because I have been feeling very down lately.I mentioned before but I have been in therapy since April 2017 so you can imagine, I am in the trenches for CPTSD.

My therapist is away. Last time I saw was in Sept and not again until mid November. So full two months of no therapy. I wrote another post about this little bit.

I have dissociation as my absolute defense of all things. I am dissociating often in the past few weeks. I am also zoning out but rarely. Dissociation, I can work and be around people but may not pay attention deeply and my concentration is gone. zoning out is like What? what happened? I am out like coma.

I know what anxiety feels like and I have learned how to soothe self. I am not familiar with clinical depression but what I am feeling, I could classify as depression. Lack of concentration, tiredness, sleeping a lot, appetite is good and digestion is OK. But also this is how my body recovers from too many zoning out or persistent dissociation. so I am confused.

I do not know if I am defending abandonment feelings by the therapist. My biggest core issues are intrusion, violence, boundary break, treatment of non-personhood until I was 18 and sexual abuse...these caused me very hyper vigilant and no flashbacks (except body shakes), critical mind, extreme belief that I am dangerous or difficult or scary.

I do not know what abandonment feels like? My therapist mentioned one time I had one foot in and one foot out and I was really surprised. He also tried to give me hints of finding another therapist and I made a decision to stick with him. All these are confusing. I told him all my life my biggest fantasy was to be left alone. I love being alone. I love being one with nature. I never been told in my life I have abandonment issues. I am more avoidant than anxious attached.
I have friends for over 30yrs and happily married and abandonment issues never came back.

But here I am lost. I grew up very collective society so babies are abused or neglected but abandonment is almost unheard of. I feel my understanding of abandonment is limited. I googled it and there is no stories or real people. Very in theory but what does it look like in every day to day feeling?

I have a lot of school assignment that I must finish and in this state, I am just a worm.

PS. I danced in the park with my dog for one hour and felt so good but still I wonder if I am experiencing abandonment feeling relating to my therapist or I am just depressed?

All inputs are welcome.

 

[EveHarrington]

I think that feelings of abandonment are obvious to me because I have matching thoughts. And yet I can't exactly say what those feelings are other than feelings of agitation and distress.

Is it possible you're experiencing separation anxiety of sorts?

 

[grit]

I think that feelings of abandonment are obvious to me because I have matching thoughts. And yet I can't exactly say what those feelings are other than feelings of agitation and distress.

Is it possible you're experiencing separation anxiety of sorts?

Hi Eve,
Thank you for your comment. That is really good point that feelings and thoughts are matched for you. For me, I feel what I am feeling is not abandonment but then what is it? I am really challenging myself here because it is possible I am not aware or fully or none.
The feelings I have are similar not as intense as the feelings I had when I started therapy. Honestly I would not know the difference between abandonment and separation anxiety?

My husband goes away now and then, I am most productive but now I cannot even do my homework. I am distracted and no concentration enough to grasp complex theories.

 

[Friday]

For me it feels like I’m leaving someone to die.

I have to draw a really hard line with abandonment - (in the civilian world? IE not at war) - You can only abandon kids & pets. Everyone else can take care of themselves. They may not want to, but they can.

 

[Anana]

i was trying to understad the reason of my vague disssociations as well, i worked out with many core beliefs but still there left the episodes when i became nothing. and it appered it is connected with abandonment issues. Sometimes they are very evident and then i experience high points of arrousal. when it is activated i feel and actualluy believe that i will die, and i dont feel as i am a person, just a piece of some substance and there is nobody to help me because everybody have left me and it is not separation anxiety. yea...I just like stop existing when there is nobody around. But there are also episodes when i even cant spot when it is activated and only realise it too late when i m 2-3 days in "light"dissociations when i feel numb, distracted, with low cognitive functioning

 

[grit]

you guys are truly wonderful!

I have been mopping around all day. I ate but no shower. I took a nap (my old self soothe mechanism cause every thing else took my energy). I just woke up to do my homework...I finish two assignments so far and I really feel better but still feel I have no bones in my body. I am just a "substance" as anana said. So apt!

Before I went to bed, I had wrote few things in my journal to process this feeling. I do not minimise any feeling and I put all my energy into this because yes it was heavy and felt like death. Weird, I do visualise my husband dying and how I would react! weird weird...fantasies I have sometimes and I hate them and they would come the least expected times....i hate them!

I think abandonment issues emotionally speaking are not psychical states but more like similar to grief. I have had a lot of grief. it feels like I am grieving. Thank you all for touching different angles.

I am already feeling a tad better. I wrote in my journal these passages:

I never separate from my mother that is why I am in pain.
I only grew older and bigger in bodywise but my mind is still there
Every time I try to separate from her, I got scared and ran back
I never felt safe because I never been alone
I stayed with my mother because I was afraid
I was afraid about who else was there
not knowing it was my mother who was also there
I split on her in order to survive
And now I am paying the price

I came to therapy and saw him as my mother
and I did exactly the same thing
I stayed with him and got scared to go out
Now that he is away, I am reminded of my mother
I do not feel safe because I am alone with her

How did I survive for so long?

I need to see my therapist outside of my body
I need to see he is not inside of me
I need to feel where the void is
So I can tell my inner child, I am here for you
So she can fill that void and we can feel safe

By writing it down and reading it couple times, I started to believe I can self soothe myself. No one else can. and that I was projecting huge amount of my safety onto my therapist and I needed to take it back.

I hope I stay this way. At least my concentration is back a bit.

 

[Abstract]

Maybe another way of seeing it is very simple. A normal desire for a human being to have connection with someone who has been a support when going through something very painful and difficult. Even more so if others in the past have not been a reliable support. Its normal to feel pain and find it hard if you are swimming in PTSD and other stuff and your main support is gone that long.

If you want to get theoretical then maybe attachment patterns as you mentioned may be more useful. Avoidant isn't what it feels like as far as I understand it. It is a way of avoiding the feelings associated with the desire to attach. The avoidance of the potential pain of abandoment if you want to put it that way. If avoidant in the past it may be that feelings of abandonment could be a step forward in certain cucumstances. An indication of daring to start to be attached.

Oh, and enmeshment with a mother is a recipe for all that is horrible. You aren't choosing this. You are merely still trying to find yourself outside of it.

 

[grit]

@Abstract

My problem is not about feelings. I have my body that tells me a story every day in feelings. My problem due dissociation, selective amnesia, pure survival, I sometimes do not have the words to describe what I am feeling. I need intellectual insights in order to understand the feeling and integrate my body experience to my brain. I did not talk about how I missed my therapist or who I must have felt when I was a baby and was left alone to have this kind of feelings as a child, maybe as a baby because I need the words to articulate the feeling in a loop in my body and mind connection.

I survived for so long with feelings in my body and never connected them in my brain. I am in therapy not because I do not feel but precisely because i need to use language to process what is it I feel.

when I get the words and the intellectual understanding of my feelings then i process by thinking and connecting with the newly named feelings and the meaning which is in this case, a lost child who was abandoned by the only person she trusted and I am looking at this from a child's point of view not my point of view as an adult. I took the day off yesterday to focus on my body, meditation, dance and get in touch with my mind.

It is paying off because I am no longer tired, lethargic but I am feeling sad and I am not dissociating anymore since early last night.

It is my experience that a baby or a child learns by body and adult learns by brain. I have all the feelings and information I need to heal in my body, how do I understand that in order to integrate myself as a whole? this is my journey.

What I do not do, and maybe this is what you speaking about, is keep going with disconnection of the body and the brain. I feel I am using my brain to understand but my body to make the meaning with my brain so I am whole not split. I am progressing because I am using the same obsessive things I did the height of my trauma in the reverse now in healing. I find when thoughts and feelings show up in my dream at night, I am fully integrated because that is happening without my thinking or feeling. It is all juju at this point but I know what I gained.

Thank you so much for your comments.

I am back from the dead so far. I am feeling really great...not a grain of tiredness in my body so I must have slept like a baby.

 

[Abstract]

Glad you are feeling so much better. Totally understand the help of having understanding and making connections rather than just being in feeling. And totally that what happens in these situations is about our learnings and experiences as a child. Affecting us now as adults. Body and brain helping emotion and coping. Think one can take various ones of these and help the rest.

Mostly what I was saying was that the various styles of attachment that we develop in childhood and still live with in adulthood: some can feel like lack of want of attachment but as I understand it those feelings are a defence. A desire for the child to avoid attachment and keep distance to avoid being hurt, harmed, rejected. Even we aren't aware of that. Needing to keep independent. Sometimes healing can be about being able to tolerate and experience desire for connection. Maybe moments of feeling abandoned are a step forward. Depends on your past patterns.

 

[Tinyflame]

To me, and surely it's not a working definition but simply my own thoughts- abandonment feels like knowledge of my needs has no priority or importance or significance to another, they do not care. And involves general or specific knowledge of that need; usually a small sacrifice needed to be given in relation to a large negative, or even a desperate need, for the person if left without; and often either not the courage to say there is no care or importance: avoidance or denial, though sometimes rage, or disgust, always self-justification, since the choice is the person who abandons, and they feel justified. It does feel like rejection, but with a personal component, personally you are the one at fault, or the burden, or of 'not worth', and a lack of honesty, or an awareness of a different agenda. So it involves deceit, even if it's just the deceit of wanting to not appear in a way a person is, or to appear and be thought of in a way a person is not. Because abandonment infers one has been trusted; is thought of as honest; is expected not to lie, or betray, or that they care, because they pretended to, but are lying.

I now understand this much, but from a different perspective:

some can feel like lack of want of attachment but as I understand it those feelings are a defence. A desire for the child to avoid attachment and keep distance to avoid being hurt, harmed, rejected. Even we aren't aware of that. Needing to keep independent.

I don't know much about attachment patterns but I disagree with this ^^, in this way: it's needing to be independent because there is no alternative- there is no care about the person abandoned. And then avoidance of the person who wants nothing to do with their welfare occurs, and severing of the relationship occurs.

But the severing is not actually caused by the person 'abandoned', though the final or what seems 'obvious' step may be. What is misunderstood, is that the person who didn't care about the other, severed most of the way through the tie, by their abandonment.

Thank you for the question.

Too bad I missed the edit window, as it isn't worth more space.

But it helps, too, because I really don't feel and haven't felt that much guilt walking away, and now I know why. I would want to say to any of them- but never would- without rancour or anger, for a minute don't ask me why I left; ask yourself this question: where were you?

 

[ILoveLife]

I have my body that tells me a story every day in feelings. My problem due dissociation, selective amnesia, pure survival, I sometimes do not have the words to describe what I am feeling.

Dissociation happens when emotions and feelings become too much for our minds to handle. So we get numb, away and disconnected.

I need intellectual insights in order to understand the feeling and integrate my body experience to my brain.

If you need to intellectualize feelings, you're not feeling - you're thinking.

My problem is not about feelings.

Want to rethink this statement? I think it really is.

Your T possibly makes you feel connected to yourself, when your T is gone you feel the disconnection, you're alone to handle it because no one else can help you but yourself.

To answer your question, abandonment is "no one cares for me" to the extreme. I agree with @Abstract you should probably be focusing more on attachment than abandonment.

 

[grit]

Hi Sietz,
Thank you for the through comments. I really appreciated your input.

I think sometimes chatting online, a lot of things get lost in the medium or in translation.

For me, I am under the impression that we are all affected differently and our constellations over the years due to our adult life choices, general health, and a lot of other factors are different but yet we are not also so different. So it is really hard to judge a person's journey of recovery from trauma. There is not one size fits all but the same sizes are used different times.
Dissociation affects us all different just like depression or anxiety. No two people are the same. For me I did not get numb. I got dissociated meaning, I suppressed my memories of my childhood quite deep. but my feelings stayed. I just confused them. So sad became anger. Disappointment became frustration. Surprise became startled. No one corrected me because also I do not experience dysregulation much in my life. I sort of lived in more straitjacket where I could write or dissect feeling but did not really know what it was exactly. I feel but I did not have mirror to learn what that feeling is until intimate level with others. I am learning how to articulate the right feeling with the right name now in therapy. You see this is so elemental. I do not want to say I am depressed. I can tell you exactly how I think during depression (certain dark thoughts that only show up when depressed). I can tell you exactly my body parts that are out of order or impacted and I can tell you emotionally what that means, sleeping, tiredness, weepy, and regretful and forgot any self sooothing...but this is because I know today. Few years ago, I was depressed but did not know that was it. I just thought must be just tired. You see the difference.

The issue of intellectualising feeling is a good one. The question is how do you learn something? we are all different. For me, articulating a feeling is healing for me. I need to use language to get it out of my body into the therapist and disssect...and we agree I can feel obviously but not able to say which one. So if I say I am yearning for the therapist. is this really who I am yearning? Why does yearning for the therapist feel so fundamental and so global and so devastating? Because the yearning is not about the therapist as a person. I am not feeling abandonment about the therapist. The therapist is triggering this developmental area for me. I have a brain that thinks so I know even though I am feeling a lot of feelings to my therapist right now. I am also happy these feelings are real BUT I will not heal if I truly believe they are all about the therapist. They are too deep and too much in every cell of my body. I would conclude this is a developmental yearning of a mother that neglected, abused and abandoned me way back and I am transferring same feelings to my therapist cause he is that good and I am feeling that safe! My healing will only start if I acknowledge the feelings toward my therapist but also work through them with the therapist and grieve the loss. These feelings are depressive for me as an adult and as a baby, they 100% put me to dissociation. They were that powerful. I cannot intellectualise depression not matter how much. But I am not feeling depression, abandoned and crying because of my therapist. The therapist is a channel and a bridge to those feelings. Otherwise, we will never get over last therapist or we will need another therapist forever - the cycle can go forever. Any persisting feeling for me is not about my therapist. It is about my mother. It may initiate with the therapist but if I bring up to the therapist, he does not go on forever that I am feeling this for him...eventually we get to the source of this issue. I am not afraid to go this deep and face the same demons I faced as a child and this time not dissociate but stay awake. The beauty is I am an adult and what hurt me as a baby is not likely to hurt me today. This is a belief and what made survive for so long. Now I am brave to face that and it is brutal but I am still standing up right. No sleeping here!

It is my opinion, one thing trauma is so hard to heal is because most of us, including me in the past, we stopped to go deeper and admit how our family truly screw us up BECAUSE we want to maintain relationship with them still. I did that for all my adult. I had to swallow my trauma so I can have a relationship with my mother. When I started to heal, my mother did not want me even more so. and I have to have a place where those feelings can be shared. and that is with therapy but therapist do not want my yearning for him. He will be happy to help me name my feelings and take them to their rightful place - my mother.

I know what my problem is. It is not my feelings alone. It is I am not integrated. I have my feelings fully. I have my brain fully. I am not integrated and I am in therapy to name my affects, to understand myself, to expand my awareness and to work through my childhood experience in a safe space.

We are all different. I truly feel I am lucky to be in therapy but I lasted 46 years of not having therapy and I am a reader. I need to understand how therapy works to know it is working for me.

sorry long winded response. But I thought I should share what works for me and may or may not work for others. Our healing journeys are all so different just as our lives.