Fear of Abandonment

What is fear of abandonment? It is the insatiable terror within our souls that no one could ever possibly love us—and stick with us-- for simply being who we are. It’s the constant fear that at any moment someone we care about may decide we aren’t good enough for them and thus choose to walk right out of our lives-- forever.

How did we come to be possessed by a fear of abandonment? Most likely someone used a life-altering form of shame to try and control us when we were small children. We may have been told that we were lovable only when we were good and that we weren’t lovable when we were bad. The inference here being that we could be sent packing if we weren’t “good enough” to be lovable all of the time.

Worse yet, we may have been threatened with physical abandonment by parents who valued us so little that might just sell us to the gypsies. And of course there were also those of us who were literally physically abandoned by parents who placed them up for adoption. The pain of being abandoned in this severe manor—even though it wasn’t our fault and it wasn’t about our being unlovable or undesirable—is still devastating for many people who were left behind by their birth parents.

Most of us, however, were probably faced with constant emotional abandonment by parents who were completely incapable of showing us affection through words, feelings or physical touch. Our parents were physically present to us, but in uncomfortable, emotionless ways. This kept us walking on egg shells-- never knowing if at any moment we might say or do something to rock the boat and find ourselves threatened with being thrown overboard by mom or dad.

What is the root cause of fear of abandonment and why am I still suffering from it? The root cause is a continual lack of self-acceptance and self-love. As long as we refuse to accept and love ourselves unconditionally, we will suffer from fear of abandonment. Once we choose to accept and love ourselves just the way we are, we will stop abandoning ourselves. Self-abandonment is the worst form of abandonment. And as long as we refuse to believe we are lovable, we will refuse to believe that anyone could love us. Our own self-abandonment continually fuels our fear of abandonment by others.

Deciding to believe we are lovable for who we are, and not for what we do, will free us from self-abandonment and from the fear of being abandoned by others. It will enable us to understand that people who REALLY love us do so because they value who we are and not what we do for them. We will also come to understand that people who abandoned us in the past were incapable of loving us for who we are. In fact, they were incapable of loving ANYONE, including themselves.

Self-acceptance and self-love will enable us to be relaxed and natural. It will also remove the compulsion to jump through hoops to please others. Oh sure, the people who pretend to love us will object to our newfound self-worth and our refusal to please them. They will threaten to abandon us, but we will be spiritually equipped to rejoice when they actually do walk out of our lives instead of dreading it. We will no longer fear abandonment because we will have found value inside ourselves—a value that no one else can take away from us.

If fear of abandonment is a major issue for you, seek professional help. You are worth it!