Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast, new listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world, it is so great to have you here back for another episode.
Today we're tackling a topic that I think many of us are struggling with and maybe wouldn't even know it, and yet it really does impact a lot of our relationships in such insidious, often invisible ways.
It is a very deep belief system and anxiety that can really disturb our ability to form meaningful connections, to love deeply, and to trust others, and that is a fear of abandonment.
I think all of us feel that instinctual drive to avoid emotionally painful experiences like being rejected or heartbroken or feeling forgotten about.
Naturally, these events, the way people treat us or leave us is quite devastating and it can leave some very long lasting emotional scars, but it's also somewhat part of life.
We have to come to peace with the reality that not every relationship is going to last, that people are going to leave, people are going to pass away, so there is no way of controlling how your relationships kind of pan out, but we can decide, a, how we want to treat ourselves and b, how we respond
to these unfortunate kind of events.
For some of us though, we are so petrified of losing the ones we love or feeling abandoned that we really cannot allow ourselves to get close to other people.
For many of us who are experiencing this, it normally comes from these experiences that we had in childhood or even early in our romantic relationships, right, when we were 18, 19, dating for the first time, where we developed almost an insecurity based on our experiences that everyone that we loved
will leave us. And this feeling can really influence how we approach not only our romantic connections, particularly the people we're dating or even married to, but also our interactions with people like friends, like family, like co -workers.
There's a few ways that this manifests that we're gonna speak about in this episode.
I think if we have developed this really intense fear of being abandoned by those we love and what the emotional consequences of that would be, we can respond by becoming incredibly avoidant or self -sabotaging our relationships, becoming really emotionally numb to the world and to opportunities for love
and intimacy and connection.
But then on the flip side, a fear of abandonment is also really closely linked to things like intense people pleasing tendencies and clinginess and self abandonment whereby we end up sacrificing our own needs for others because we think that that will keep them closer, that this will prevent our worst
fears from being realized or confirming this really deep insecurity that we are correct.
People we love cannot be trusted, we cannot trust them, they will inevitably leave us.
And we know that that is not true.
We know that there are so many people out there who stay in people's lives for decades.
I feel like everyone has at least someone like that, whether it is a parent or a friend or a family member or even a partner.
So I really want to break down where this unfortunate negative but also false belief system comes from and how it's especially relevant for our 20s because I think it's often during this decade that we become a lot more aware of how our past and certain events or in some cases trauma continue to influence
us or manifest in unhealthy relationship patterns.
And that doesn't have to be our reality.
Often we engage in a lot of self -blame for what are very deeply ingrained emotional reactions that have emerged from a lot of things that were beyond our control.
We wonder why we can never let people get close or we always feel the need to start a fight or sabotage our relationships when they begin to feel too comfortable.
So I really also want to provide an explanation for why that is.
Sometimes it's really subtle things or sometimes it's big things like witnessing a divorce or having BPD early romantic experiences.
But also I think it's important that we acknowledge this anxiety where it comes from and how to integrate it, how to manage it.
It is something that we can all definitely heal from.
So there is so much to discuss.
If you are someone who has been struggling with this and you're trying to find a reason why you find it so hard to trust others and connect with them, hopefully this episode provides you with an explanation, with some answers, with somewhere to go.
So without further ado, let's get into it.
You know I love having a cheeky drink with friends post work or a beer with dinner but this year I have committed to completing Dry January to start the new year off fresh and to really kind of kickstart the lifestyle I want to have for the next 12 months.
Heineken 00 is the perfect companion for this journey because it has 0 .0 % alcohol so I can still socialize, enjoy myself, get out there without feeling like I'm missing out.
Plus it genuinely actually tastes very very delicious.
My fridge is now stocked with Heineken 00 and friends of mine will even join me for an evening or for an afternoon going alcohol free.
If you are also taking part in Dry January this year or just looking for your new favorite drink, Heineken 00 is it.
Heineken 00 is available at your local Heineken retailer or for delivery at Heineken .com.
You must be 21 plus to purchase, enjoy Heineken responsibly and good luck with Dry January.
Okay so first of all as we do we need to get our basics down pat before we jump into the theories and ideas that make up a fear of abandonment.
I think typical of psychology terms that gain very general societal notoriety and popularity sometimes the truth about ideas like a fear of abandonment can become misconstrued and leading to people becoming also somewhat misinformed or at times confused or excluded from a definition or from a narrative
around a certain issue and that's really not ideal because I think there are so many of us especially in our 20s as we enter into our first really serious long -term relationships or where we start to encounter things like death for a lot of us or friendship groups falling apart.
Often what we do is we question some of our past experiences.
We are undergoing this very real emotional battle at times between our primary instinct for love and security and a much deeper fear of being hurt or discarded by someone we feel really connected to.
So firstly it's important to note that a fear of abandonment it's not a recognized mental health condition.
You know your doctor unfortunately is not going to be able to give you a diagnosis and a cure and send you on your way because it's a lot more nuanced than that.
Instead psychology has kind of come to see this as a type of anxiety in which we feel this overwhelming yet often unwanted and unwarranted fear that the people we love will leave us and so we react in somewhat irrational ways perhaps sabotaging our relationships pulling away so that people don't have the chance
to hurt us or feeling a really intense need to be close to people at all times perhaps sometimes also transforming into codependency.
Actually the thing is that a fear of abandonment although it's not a recognized mental health condition it's really really closely linked to a bunch of other concepts that we have discussed on the show.
Things like emotional unavailability and hyper independence even a social phobia but it differs in that its primary function on an emotional level the primary function of this fear of abandonment is to help us avoid the pain of being rejected dismissed or let down and it's not so much a fear of general
social interaction or even intimacy but a fear of what will happen when these things we deeply value are taken away what is going to occur in the absence another distinction is that this fear of abandonment it shows up in all of our relationships not just our romantic ones I think we typically think
about abandonment issues when it comes to dating but people will experience this type of anxiety and worry for their friendships as well they'll worry that their friends will leave them they worry about what will happen if their family members something happens to their family members or even co -workers
or acquaintances or being rejected or abandoned by entire social circles which we know is quite irrational but I would say the reason that we think about it a lot in terms of romantic connections is because for many of us these fears of being abandoned aren't really fully realized until we enter into
our first or second romantic relationship that's because I think unlike friendships or family romantic relationships really take on this whole new level of emotional closeness and expected intimacy and vulnerability the stakes are a lot higher the risk of being hurt really increases with each kind of moment
and memory where you get closer typically also because we often have more than one friend or more than one family member but we only have one partner and we are often naturally incredibly bonded to the people who fill this role in our life and so I think everyone is going to experience this fear on some
level that one day they may find this person they love drifting away or outright you know leaving them having to mend a broken heart and as humans like I mentioned before one of our primary instinctual drives is to avoid pain and often we think of that selectively to just mean physical pain or injury
but we know from countless countless studies that certain emotional experiences can also manifest in the body and it's a concept known as psychogenic pain whereby when we are exposed to psychological distress or emotional distress that can actually manifest in very real physical discomfort and suffering
so I think that reason is why a lot of us do relate to having a heightened anxiety over the possibility of being abandoned or left by someone and I think if you don't have that anxiety at times if you're someone who you know kind of approaches your relationships like everyone is replaceable no one can ever
hurt me that is equally as unhealthy I also want to say that this reaction especially when it gets to a really intense fear of abandonment it is neither intentional nor is it voluntary it is not an opt -in situation no one is looking to experience more anxiety than they already are but also it almost
consistently emerges from situations that are outside of our control that have influenced us on a somewhat unconscious level and then begin to manifest in certain behaviors and tendencies that really interrupt our ability to connect people with abandonment issues fears whatever we want to call them
they're not going to experience that in the same way it's not always going to be identical so there are actually four different types of profiles or archetypes of people who are experiencing abandonment wounds or who are fearful of abandonment so there's the saboteur the needy the avoidant and the serial
data and sometimes all of these can operate within one person but let's break them down one by one so the saboteur is someone who undermines their own relationships to try and identify faults and push people away before they get hurt often when that happens they'll blame the other person they'll blame
their friends or their string of partners they'll say that they're toxic or problematic rather than really closely examining what this pattern of behavior says about their own emotional wounds right that they're actually sabotaging these relationships perhaps subconsciously because that way these people
can never leave them if they leave first so the next is the needy or the clingy and this is someone who often displays behavior that is very similar to someone in the early stages of codependency right so getting close to someone incredibly quickly perhaps sharing too many intimate details about themselves
too soon or really wanting to reach certain milestones like exclusivity or applying labels really early on and they do this in hopes of kind of fast tracking a relationship to provide them with a sense of security before they truly do actually start to trust this person it's kind of like the false pretense
of okay well if we have this label if they have reassured me that we're exclusive if they're not sleeping with other people they're not going to leave me um and this will provide me kind of with the structure in which i can actually start to build a relationship with this person after they've already
provided me the reassurance that we are in that point the next is the avoidant and the avoidant will almost abstain particularly from intimate vulnerable relationships or close friendships entirely they may pull away from family members or certain social circles because they are so fearful of being
hurt or disappointed if they pull away first much like the saboteur then they will have the power and agency that's kind of what they're telling themselves basically they're saying what you know very similar to the saboteur i cannot be abandoned if i make the decision first therefore although it's going
to leave me in the same position of not having these people around or feeling lonely at least i'm in control here at least i'm not going to be surprised and finally we have the serial data also similar to the saboteur this person will cycle through relationships friendships quite quickly but they'll
find themselves not really getting attached in the same way that the saboteur does instead what they're really choosing to do is soothe their abandonment wound with new people right so they might fall in love pretty quickly the relationship ends perhaps because of sabotage perhaps because of something
else and instead of really acknowledging that that really hurts instead of acknowledging that perhaps this is really unfortunate and really deeply painful they will find someone else to heal them rather than really acknowledging why they find this so particularly distressing so i would say that something
that's really important is that none of these types of individuals associated with abandonment issues are bad people it's really important to remember that there should be really no shame in admitting that perhaps you know you have historically approached relationships like this or that this is how
you continue to approach relationships because i would say a so much of why you are this person is out of our control which we'll discuss in a second but b i think if you're afraid to correctly identify ways in which your actions are perhaps maladaptive you'll actually just prolong these experiences
and it's not going to lead to any changes outside of these very high level archetypes there are some other core behaviors that i just want to quickly dive into a little bit deeper so we spoke about cycling through relationships some of us who are facing a fear of abandonment may want to engage in numerous
consistent shallow relationships we're afraid to ever let someone truly see the ugly vulnerable scared side of us so we protect this part of us we never let anyone see that because if they do leave us we can always comfort ourselves with the knowledge that this person really never really knew us that deeply
so that is very similar to a fear of intimacy and often the reason we cycle through relationships particularly shallow ones is because we find a reason to leave them before the other person can leave us we talked about sabotaging relationships but there's this other interesting term called emotional
baiting so this is where we attempt to create situations that elicit a particular emotional reaction from a partner either positive or negative so in psychology emotional baiting is actually used to describe certain narcissistic tendencies that are inherently very manipulative and attention seeking
but in this case that is not accurate right that is not why people are baiting their partners or baiting someone in their life this behavior actually represents something a lot more vulnerable it reveals a part of us that really needs love so what we're doing when we emotionally bait people in our lives
you know by starting fights by withdrawing by saying things we don't mean is we're really testing them to see if they will leave us so for people with a fear of abandonment this is a slightly counterintuitive way of building trust it's interesting because in these moments we're not trying to endanger
our relationship right it's not all about self -sabotage in fact i think these behaviors are almost a sign of how much we want these relationships to last hence why we're really subconsciously testing them to see if the other person is genuine and if they will stay and if what they're saying is true
we really want to entrench ourselves further and feel that deeper level of vulnerability and intimacy but before we can do that we need to be like a hundred percent sure that this is not going to end badly that this person is not going to withdraw from us so we kind of become our worst selves to test
them to really push them and then closely watch their response the next thing is clinging to unhealthy relationships some people with abandonment issues there's been research to show that they might stay in relationships that aren't good for them even when they have a desire to leave i think that's
because the fear of being alone is a lot more powerful and they often perceive it to be safer to pursue someone who cannot provide them the emotional connection that they need because instinctually they know that they'll never get too close i would say that this is actually really it's kind of a way
that our brain or our fear of abandonment tricks us because we know based on principles of attachment and familiarity and proximity that the more time we spend with someone even if we are trying our hardest the more bonded we will become so it's actually quite dangerous i think to pursue relationships
with people you think won't hurt you in order to protect yourself because that might actually really backfire and further entrench your fear around abandonment finally we have needing constant reassurance this is what i've experienced a lot especially in my current relationship and you know my partner
is incredible he is beautiful but no matter how much i think love and attention you give someone especially someone who's maybe had past experiences where they've been let down you kind of always have this fear that they're lying to you or that they're going to change their mind so you really consistently
regularly require them to confirm and reassure you that they're not going anywhere that yes they still love you no they're not annoyed they're not mad at you they're not going to leave you it kind of also can sometimes result in what we call fawning behavior right so that's also really closely related
to people pleasing tendencies where when we fawn when we try and please someone what we're doing is constantly trying to make this person happy sometimes at our own expense by being really excessively generous affectionate or passive or agreeable as to not give them a reason to leave us and that can often
result in us actually neglecting our own needs or becoming really hypersensitive to things like conflict or criticism small disagreements that are really natural in any relationship but we see them as a threat because they undermine our sense of security small things like that if you are someone who has previously
been in relationships where people have given and taken love very inconsistently or you've been raised with very inconsistent parents small things like arguments like little disagreements they trigger an alarm in our brain the one that has a very low threshold because we have become hypervigilant towards
anything that may indicate that the other person has a reason to disappear that is why we need that reassurance that is why we may become quite passive because we want to keep the peace we really want to make sure that they have no reason to need to walk away and if they do that would be our fault one
thing that's really interesting to me is how some of these behaviors that are very deeply associated with a fear of abandonment have become kind of romanticized in society especially around pop culture and places like TikTok or Instagram particularly what we're seeing is this like idolization of a very
avoidant detached approach to romantic connection so trends around being heartless or how to stay detached and cold in the early stages of a relationship how to get people obsessed with you to appear emotionless and untouchable you know the heartless one in particular really really worries me because when we
examine that deeper i don't actually think that having no emotion towards people at all is a particularly healthy thing it also in some ways is very thinly veiled abandonment issues i think that if you've been through an experience where you've been left really like absolutely demolished and heartbroken
or just so hurt and betrayed by someone we kind of go the complete opposite way and we like to appear emotionless or in some ways convince ourselves that this is a person we can be when really what it is manifesting is our fear of abandonment subconsciously our minds want to avoid another situation like
that so they take the experience and they reverse all of the behaviors that perhaps put you in that previous situation so that you act differently and sometimes you act in a way that's really counter to your desires or even your overall well -being this really links to where a fear of abandonment comes
from which is what i want to discuss next so generally psychologists attribute a fear of abandonment to the experiences and beliefs that we have as children so as a child if you are denied really basic fundamental comforts like physical affection emotional connection and safety we learn not to trust
the permanence of these things in adulthood and what that results in is a very dysfunctional and insecure attachment style in this case often it's an avoidant or anxious attachment style we're worried people will withdraw their love so we become extremely stressed and panicked either drawing them in and really
wanting to hold on to them or completely removing ourselves first traumatic events in childhood as well can really disrupt this sense that our relationships with people will be sustained even if there's distance that is something that a child has to learn it's called object constancy basically what that means
is that even if your parent leaves you at daycare or leaves you at school for the afternoon they are a gonna come back and be the relationship is going to be the same but you know events like a divorce or injury or the death of a parent or a caregiver they're really significant and they really disrupt
the development of this really fundamental cognition so although we know that this person didn't intentionally leave us or mean to hurt us we still really feel the intensity of their absence and we rationalize that if we just been a lot less closer to them if we had loved them less we would be in less
pain and so the logic follows that to avoid future pain avoid future connection so that's one of the origins because as we know healthy human development really requires those physical and emotional needs being met and during childhood that often comes from our parents but during adulthood it can come
from a broader range of personal and romantic relationships i say this all the time but something that i think psychology as a field really needs to investigate more is the impact of early romantic experiences on later romantic and emotional well -being and also dating specifically how do we go on to
form healthy relationships and seek out the right people based on what we were kind of taught that love was i think often the research and attachment style really only goes one way but i also think that it's really important to acknowledge that you know although maybe your first relationship was when you
were young maybe 17 18 even younger that's still going to have a really foundational impact that is because as these cognitive scientists at mit have explained we experience peak mental processing and memory power at around 18 to 19 and that kind of tapers off the older we get but it is around that time
i'm going to say like a bracket of 17 to 21 that we experience a lot of first you know our first love our first breakup our first kiss and that's all occurring during a period where we are still developing but also absorbing information and memories at a crazy pace so for some people a particularly
painful relationship perhaps you dated someone who cheated on you or treated you poorly or lied or left suddenly that is going to be a core experience that makes you really fearful of situations that could recreate that pain in the future and from that we see abandonment issues being born and they're
really maintained by that cycle we spoke about before of hyper -vigilance of self -sabotage of avoidance abandonment issues can also stem from a really intense fear of loneliness but also it's quite closely linked to borderline personality disorder now this podcast is not a place for self -diagnosing mental
health conditions so i just want to make that really really clear but i think that we cannot talk about abandonment issues without talking about bpd because they are so closely aligned in a lot of people's minds so bpd if you haven't heard about it before it's a mental health disorder characterized
by a lot of symptoms mainly really chronic challenges with maintaining healthy relationships feelings of low self -worth impulsivity really volatile moods this disorder is often really hallmarked by a pattern of very unstable personal relationships and what that means is that a fear of abandonment is also often
a really big part of the lives of those who are impacted by bpd it's also really one of the most common symptoms that we will see there's really no kind of solid explanation that can be given as to why this is but according to a number of psychologists and psychiatrists the fear of being abandoned often
causes people with bpd to form unhealthy attachments sometimes they can abruptly cut off these relationships effectively abandoning their partners and other times they make really frantic attempts to hold on to the relationship and it's this overly i think it's quite intense or erratic behavior that is what causes
them to push loved ones away makes it harder to have those stable relationships like we talked about but also heightens that fear around abandonment because there is a cycle of perhaps very difficult interpersonal connections interactions and experiences not everyone with abandonment issues though has bpd
let's really make sure that's quite clear bpd is a separate condition that just has some overlap with this unique type of anxiety and like we said before fearing abandonment it's going to show up very differently it's going to come from very different experiences but what i want to talk about is what is kind
of the long term prognosis here and how can we push past our fear of being rejected or disappointed or abandoned how can we kind of break out of our self -sabotaging patterns or our avoidant behaviors to really trust and to really love people so we're going to talk about all of that and more after this short
break you know i love having a cheeky drink with friends post -work or a beer with dinner but this year i have committed to completing dry january to start the new year off fresh and to really kind of companion for this journey because it has 0 .0 alcohol so i can still socialize enjoy myself get out
there without feeling like i'm missing out plus it genuinely actually tastes very very delicious my fridge is now stocked with heinikin 00 and friends of mine will even join me for an evening or for an afternoon going alcohol free if you are also taking part in dry january this year or just looking
for your new favorite drink heinikin 00 is it heinikin 00 is available at your local heinikin retailer or for delivery at heinikin .com you must be 21 plus to purchase enjoy heinikin responsibly and good luck with dry january i think a lot of us are struggling with this in very invisible ways often because i
really don't think we want to admit this very vulnerable insecurity this really vulnerable belief that we don't think anyone will ever stay or anyone will ever love us enough to not abandon us i think the reason we don't want to admit that is because we think that that says something about us and we
also are worried that what if we continue to be proven right what if we admit this to someone maybe a friend or a partner whoever it may be and they still leave the thing is and something i really want to make quite clear a fear of abandonment has nothing to do with your quality and beauty as a human or the kind
of depth of your soul of what you bring to other people it really has no correlation with how people choose to treat you or have treated you in the past often i think if we've experienced a number of really painful events or instances of withdrawal or where someone we thought would love us forever has abandoned
us we convince ourselves that we must be the common denominator that there is something that we are doing wrong and that can become like we've explored a bit of a self -fulfilling prophecy whereby the behaviors we adopt to seemingly protect us or the ones that we use as defense mechanisms have an opposite
effect of actually further removing us from situations in which someone could maybe prove you wrong a fear of abandonment in that way is so subconscious and so it's going to continue to operate unless we a acknowledge it and b really get to the root cause or address this pattern so that we don't see
that typical repeated timeline in relationships this cycle this timeline it's characterized by a few major things right that inability to fully commit the heightened emotions and anxiety as the relationship becomes more serious sometimes we have that emotional baiting or testing and finally self -sabotage
or withdrawal there was this really good example that i found which i think sums this up really well and i think a typical relationship of involving someone with abandonment issues might go through some of the following stages so you start off in the early days at this point it's all really fun you
feel really safe you're not really emotionally invested yet so you kind of continue to live your life whilst also really enjoying time with them i think at this point we're not worried about abandonment we're not really in that mind frame yet and then we have the honeymoon phase and this is where you
choose to commit you kind of maybe overlook some of your anxiety you overlook some of the red flags you suppress some of those emotional wounds because you feel embarrassed by them you don't want to admit them to your new partner your new boyfriend or girlfriend and you do in some ways feel really secure
because this person has offered you exclusivity or commitment and you're not yet so emotionally invested that those fears are starting to really bubble up and then as you become partners as things get more serious things get in the way you know relationships are sometimes quite hard people have bad
days work gets really annoying you have to cancel plans you worry about money and something really small might occur and an example of this is for example an unanswered text message or an unreturned phone call to most people i think that this is really normal right they might find a different reason they
might give themselves a rational explanation for why this is happening they're at work their phone's dead they just haven't gotten around to replying to me they're busy but if you're someone who already has that initial anxiety or bias that this person is going to leave you you're probably really going
to battle really hard internally about how to respond because to you in your state of hypervigilance that is a really big sign that they might be going to leave you that is a sign that they're pulling away and although quite rationally and objectively someone else might look at that and say well that's
ridiculous you have this fear response that's become deeply ingrained so some people handle that by becoming really clingy really insistent and demanding and other people also just withdraw at that first sign of of difficulty or what they interpret to be a sign that they're about to be left or broken
up with they make the first move but they're making the first move with false information with information that is coming from a subjective bias or a place of fear so how do we prevent our fear of abandonment from doing this from really interrupting these healthy beautiful connections i'm going to give
you a few tips both from personal experience and then some more clinical advice that you know a therapist or a psychologist might give you number one and i think this is something everyone listening is already doing but you kind of need to shake hands with who you are at this point and where you're
at and acknowledge that this is something that you're dealing with i think you need to approach it really objectively so no self -pity try not to fear what this means or look for blame or back in the past for something you could change sadly that's one of the realities of time we can't change what brought
us here however i do believe in our ability to control how we interpret and deal with our fear so if you have acknowledged that you may be dealing with this fear of abandonment you've acknowledged that or looked back at past relationships and said oh my god i can clearly see now where i have self -sabotaged
or where i have been avoided or where i have been fawning or people pleasing that is really valuable information and that is information that can only help you be better so that first thing acknowledge that this is where you're at and then examine why you believe this where did you learn this belief
where did you learn this idea that everyone who loves you will leave so examining like the origin story that's often a technique used in psychotherapy where it is really useful to talk through our current experiences and trace them back to where they may have began and how they're still influencing
what is currently happening in your life maybe it was you witnessed a really terrible divorce between your parents and that's taught you that love does not last or you found out that your partner was cheating and now you can't trust people anymore you're so fearful of this abandonment whatever it is what i
want you to realize is that it is not your fault you did not choose that experience and it doesn't say anything about you either and more importantly you get to decide where you go to next and we do this by identifying why when and what triggers this reaction in psychology triggers are essentially events
situations things in the environment that elicit a really intense or unexpected emotional response so when we're talking about a fear of abandonment one that is common is as we spoke about before a partner maybe not replying to your messages or perhaps asking for a lone time so the reason that this triggers
this anxiety around them leaving you is because your brain is searching for patterns that serve as warning signs based on past experiences and is telling you to react in a certain way that is why this thing has so -called triggered you to have this really unexpected response this perhaps desire to run
away or to pull this person in really closely and be really needy in that moment you really need to stop pause feel and then rationalize is this really what's happening has this person really given me any other indicator that this is how they're feeling that they are going to leave me and then ask for reassurance
instead of testing your partner with emotional baiting test them i would say through vulnerability and honesty and maybe test isn't the right word but i think asking for clarity and pursuing open communication seeing how your partner responds to that is going to tell you a whole lot more about the future
of your relationship or whether they're going to leave you than withdrawing or starting a fight or pushing them away just have a sit down and say hey it makes me really anxious when you don't reply during the day can you just check in with me every now and again and maybe they can't do that for some
reason and they tell you why and the thing is it's that their reason it's going to be much more valid and much more real than the one that you're making up in your head so i think it's really important to just tell them tell them how you're feeling secondly often a fear of abandonment can result in self
-abandonment when you are afraid of being left or dismissed you'll kind of do anything to make the relationship work no matter the cost even if this person is bad for you as a result we can sometimes really neglect our own physical mental emotional social spiritual needs when you meet someone if you
find you have abandonment issues maybe you will stop taking care of yourself and doing the things that bring you joy and help you live to balance life because you are prioritizing them and making sure that you're not giving them any reason to back away so some examples are you stop spending time with your
friends even if they're not asking you to do that you give up on your hobbies or your free time for them you neglect things like working out or your sleep or your self -care practices here's the thing though when you stop taking care of yourself or you engage in what we call self -abandonment that really
just increases the stakes of your relationship and it makes you feel more insecure about what might happen if the relationship were to end because you have nothing you care about to fall back on if you've sacrificed it all for maintaining this connection so i would say try not to let a person or a new
spark overwhelm what's important to you on an individual level make a really deliberate effort to maintain the life that you love i think additionally this also means that you just have less time to worry about what they might be thinking or to ruminate unnecessarily on your relationship and all the things
that might be scary or worrying you think feeling secure in the relationship you have with yourself really allows you to feel more secure in the bonds and the connections that you have with others thirdly remember that your feelings are not reality they are just feelings your fear is just your mind
trying to help you out by avoiding a pain you've experienced in the past but your brain your mind it can't predict the future it's just serving as a guide so although you might be scared you might feel a lot of fear right now challenge those negative beliefs that no one will ever love you challenge
that belief that everyone will leave you by changing the narrative and questioning the evidence where does where is that feeling coming from why do i think this why do i think they don't love me have they told me something that has told me this has someone else told me have you seen it if not try and realize
that it's not a problem until it is and i know it's hard to lean into that discomfort and the reality of not knowing but what i always say is that it's better to see what happens than to be left with the what if of pulling away before the relationship has had a chance to prove you wrong or really live
out its storyline i think the reality is is that you can't avoid being hurt every now and again no matter how much you might try and test people or practice avoidance or cling on to them for dear life it's kind of just part of the journey but i think you really need to let life surprise you sometimes
and know that whatever happens you gave it your best you took a chance you let yourself be vulnerable and you felt the fear and did it anyways and i think that is so worth it every single time finally i'm going to give you one more tip because this is something that has really helped me that is to over
communicate often your perception of a situation or an event or something your partner or a friend has done is going to be really disturbed by your own cognitive biases and anxiety and so over communicating what you need telling people how you feel how you interpreted a situation is really really important
and obviously you don't need to jump right into your past trauma on the first date because we know that that is really your fear of abandonment being activated by oversharing but what you should do is really reveal with time perhaps why you might react in a certain way why you maybe need a little bit
more reassurance than the average person ways that your partner can make you feel safer and if they're a good person they'll respond to that i've seen it happen it's beautiful they'll understand and they'll really want to give you that sense of security and safety i really hope that this has helped
you if you've been questioning this there is also i'm just going to say it's so much that therapy can do for integrating past trauma that might be manifesting in a fear of abandonment i think that therapy is amazing because there is a third party there who can really be so valuable and interrupt that pattern
of negative and harmful beliefs or assumptions as someone who is not involved as someone who is unbiased so definitely something else to think about but as someone who has dealt with this previously and has had really open discussions about this in my current relationship i'm telling you now it does
get a lot easier and there is someone out there who will stay who will meet you in the middle who will kind of prove that consistent love and companionship does exist so i hope that that is a really solid helpful comforting reminder to finish off this episode i think that that is all we have time for but i
really do hope that you enjoyed it was a bit of a scientific one a little bit of a roller coaster but also so valuable i think that this is something that i hope people can come back to if you're anxious or worried about these things perhaps again in the future as always if you enjoyed this episode
please feel free to leave a five star review on apple podcast spotify wherever you are listening go and follow us at that psychology podcast on instagram if you want to see behind the scenes or have an episode suggestion and you can follow me at jemma speg if you just want to see more personal content
we also have a patreon it's linked in the episode description it's a lot of work doing this podcast and i really do appreciate all the support if you do get value from these episodes and you're not already paying for or contributing or showing your support in other ways it's just a small way to help
me out if you feel called to do so so thank you so much for tuning into this episode and we will be back next week with another one this year i've been really rethinking my relationship with alcohol and so i decided to commit to dry january to really kickstart 2025 and just test myself heineken 00 is the perfect
companion for dry january because you feel like you're still participating when you're out for dinner with friends out for drinks whilst you're still meeting your lifestyle goals i'm a big beer fan so i also love the taste of heineken 00 plus being alcohol free you can enjoy whenever refreshment calls
heineken 00 is available at your local heineken retailer or for delivery at heineken .com you must be 21 plus to purchase enjoy heineken responsibly and good luck with dry january
