Is your abandonment bigger than you are? Does it haunt you in the middle of the night? Does it cause you to dig through your spouse’s phone records & text messages? Do you freak out if your significant other is late coming home? Does it cause you bite the head off of your loved one over something completely ridiculous?
I read a poem today by Veronica A Shoffstall called After a While. To me, it spoke right to the heart of abandonment recovery. One line said,
“you begin to accept your defeats
with your head up and your eyes ahead
with the grace of a woman or a man,
not the grief of a child. . .”
Ah, this made so much sense! It takes SO MUCH learning, growing and maturing to be able to overcome abandonment such that one can accomplish such grace! When a person is wounded with abandonment as a child and there is no one there to help them process that pain, they are able to overcome it for the time being, but the lingering effects of the wounds are ever present. “How do you overcome it?” is a question I am faced with every day.
First, you simply must take the focus off of the current trigger. Whether your wife is dressing up and going out with the girls too much or your husband is texting a female co-worker or looking at porn, you are not dealing with your abandonment if all of your energy is devoted to what is triggering your abandonment (your partner’s behavior).
Secondly, learn to recognize when that old familiar ache of abandonment has come up in you. Like the waves in the ocean, abandonment ebbs and flows. “I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut.” “I feel like the room is spinning.” or “I feel like I’m going to throw up.” are some of the physical symptoms I’ve heard that make it easier to recognize when abandonment has reared its ugly head. When you can recognize it, you can begin to do something about it.
Thirdly, learn how to nurture yourself through it. If your son or daughter, beloved niece or nephew, were facing the things that caused you abandonment from your childhood right now, how would you feel? Most times when I ask a client this question, they sit up straighter, get rather defiant and I am quite aware that they would be kicking butt and taking names to keep their loved ones from going through that same pain. Yet they went through it and they have no sympathy for themselves. Learn how to be gentle with the little child inside of you that experienced that pain and is still dealing with the aftershocks. You will not die from the pain, even though it sometimes feels like it!
Recovery from abandonment is learning about the little child that was wounded, allowing them to fully grasp the scope of the damage that was done, and then loving that little child enough to tenderly navigate them through the shark-infested waters of life going forward. Once we learn to take care of the wounded little child inside, we discover that we can walk through life with our head up and our eyes out . . . and in that, we find a sense of peace.
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