If you have abandonment issues, you know the searing, gut wrenching pain that comes up at the most nonsensical times. You know the ridiculous, desperate things you will do or say to relieve that anxiety that has taken over your whole body. The most common question when someone finally identifies their abandonment issue is how to get rid of it! First, however, you have to understand where it came from.
Abandonment can be caused by . . .
- Having no contact with one or both of your parents for periods of time
- Family being split up by divorce
- Losing a close family member to death
- Having a very sick family member
- Being the oldest of several siblings and taking on a care-taker role
- When one sibling takes all the attention because they are “the star” or very sick or the favored gender
- Moving a lot as a kid (having to start all new friendships)
- Being bullied at school
- Being labeled as the bad kid at school
- Having trouble making friends
- Being behind other kids in school in either intellect, maturity, or physical size
Those are kind of the no-brainers of abandonment, but here are a few you may not have realized. . .
- Being shamed or guilted (made to feel inadequate for reasons kids don’t understand)
- Being teased, mocked, ridiculed
- Parents not teaching their kids things about life, but hammering them when they make a mistake
- Parents not having an emotional connection to the kids (not really interested in the kids lives)
- Unforgiveness (you make a mistake and you lose love from the parents and can never get it back again)
- Cut off and the SILENT TREATMENT!!!
- Physical abuse
- Emotional abuse
- Sexual abuse
- Abrupt, intense responses to a child’s behavior
- Lack of positive physical touch by the parents
- Not having an understanding and nurturing environment to process things they are experiencing as they grow up
In short, abandonment is caused by anything that makes a kid feel separate and apart physically, emotionally, or spiritually from his or her parents, the two life giving sources that God gave them. This forces them to have to deal with adult emotions that they don’t understand way too early and without any real assistance. Now please understand that there is absolutely no way to avoid some abandonment. We cannot be perfect parents – it isn’t even possible. We absolutely must break eye contact with our kids at times! We can minimize the effects on them, however, if we understand what causes abandonment and avoid as many of these as possible.
If you are an adult with abandonment, look at all the ways you may have been abandoned as a child. Those things that you identify with probably still trigger a reaction in you today! We heal abandonment when we understand where it came from and grieve it. In addition, we have to learn where we are abandoning ourselves and stop – learning to love ourselves instead.
Abandonment is incredibly intense, confusing, and painful, but we can go a long way towards healing it, if we understand what is causing it. What is causing yours??
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