Want to know a huge factor in healing your abandonment? It is a very important building block in our overall development and if you suffer from abandonment, you also suffer from this. What is this underlying condition that screams for attention at the root of our abandonment issues? It is the dreaded Low Self-Esteem.
I have found that there is a huge correlation between abandonment and self-esteem. Very simply, when abandonment anxiety is high, self-esteem is low. When those anxious abandonment feelings are almost nowhere to be found, our self-esteem is measuring pretty high. This is how shame and abandonment work together to really suck you under. It kind of makes sense, if you think about it. If we’re not feeling good about ourselves, the thinking is, “Why would anyone else feel good about me and want to be with me?” Our awareness is then heightened for any potential signs of abandonment and we cannot shake the feeling in our gut. We feel anxious and on edge as we grapple with the uncertainty of potential loss.
By the same token, when our abandonment anxiety is low, there’s a good likelihood that we’re feeling pretty good about ourselves. If we feel confident and self-assured, our thinking is more like, “Of course people would want to be around me. What’s not to like?” Gone is the worry that we will be abandoned because, at least for the moment, we are aware of our positive qualities and know that if someone abandons us, it is their loss. We feel strong and equipped to handle the loss.
So it stands to reason that if we fix our self-esteem, we will fix our abandonment. Fixing your self-esteem is a big job, but it is well worth the effort as it fixes a lot of other problems, too. The first step? Get in touch with your self-esteem on a regular basis. Check and see how you feel about yourself periodically throughout the day. Maybe even rank it on a scale from 1 – 5 and keep track of it for a couple of weeks. It is only when you become aware of your waning self-esteem that you can begin to figure out what triggered the decline and make some adjustments to correct it.
It will take a good while to learn how to keep your self-esteem high despite what is going on in your life, but after a while, it will become second nature. As you gain more confidence and self-assurance, the anxiety brought on by your abandonment will begin to fade and you will feel much more content with your life!
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