Abandonment Issues:Impact on Relationships

Have you ever seemed to puzzle yourself with questions like: "Why do I settle for less,I don't really deserve this" or "I cannot lose this person, he/she is everything to me, my world will fall apart without him/her?" or "Why am I not enough for this person/situation/job,even thought I have put myself on the line for this?"

These questions stem from a place of fear and lack which has malformed within a person over years. Human beings believe in the concept of "social herding". Simply put, it means that the phenomenon of individuals deciding to follow others and imitating group behaviours rather than deciding independently. We all need to feel needed and accepted in a social setting.

Linking the concept of social settings to childhood,our skill development starts right from birth to age 5, a child's brain develops more than at any other time in life. And early brain development has a lasting impact on a child's ability to learn and succeed in school and life.

Early childhood trauma can de-growth the process of social skills in a child. Trauma is said to be a fear based response that an individual shows to protect himself to cover vulnerability.Trauma stems from abandonment in relationships. So what is abandonment and how are its responses in relationships?

Abandonment issues is linked to a person's childhood experiences such as fear of being hurt, rejected in relationships;a response to painful childhood experiences such as parental neglect,betrayal of friends at a young age, feeling of non-acceptance in social circles to state a few.This forms an insecure attachment style in relationships.

According to the Attachment Theory by John Bowlby (1907-1990), a British psychoanalyst who attempted to understand the intense distress experienced by infants who had been separated from their parents, 'believed that the earliest bonds formed by children with their caregivers have a tremendous impact that continues throughout life. He suggested that attachment also serves to keep the infant close to the mother, thus improving the child's chances of survival'.

On further,evaluating the Attachment theory,children with warm,consistently responsive caregivers develop secure attachment relationships further in life. A secure attachment style represents a person who learns to trust and open up to others and form healthy and close bonds in relationships.

However,children who have stemmed from relational trauma,where the caregivers in early childhood were responsive, unpredictable or abusive, develop fear of vulnerability in relationships and appear to be distant, private and withdrawn. Such people follow an "Avoidant Attachment Style" in relationships.

Some behavioral traits of Avoidant Attachment Style persons are:

#1 Shutting down on emotions.

#2 Leaving and abandoning the relationship.

#3 Avoiding conflicts and arguments.

#4 Fear of confrontational conversations.

#5 Withdrawing and coping difficult situations alone.

#6 Feeling as though their partners are being clingy when actually they want emotional support.

Avoidants avoid intimacy because of an intense fear of being used,engulfed,controlled, or manipulated if they share themselves with someone else.

Contrary to Avoidant Attachment Style in a relationship, there is the Anxious Attachment Style.

People experiencing the latter, have abandonment fears by latching onto others and develop intense close and dependent relationships. They often are needy for reciprocity of emotions and have co-dependent needs and find it difficult from separating themselves from their partners in healthy ways. Simply put, they cannot contain boundaries in romantic relationships.

Some behavioral traits of Anxious Attachment Style people are:

#1 Emotionally reactive in sticky situations.

#2 Interpreting conflicts and arguments as a self depleting mechanism by overthinking a post par-tum argument.

#3 Engage in fear-based behaviour and high anxiety levels after a conflict or argument with the fear of being abandoned.

As stated above, early childhood traumatic experiences can form a deficit in self to form healthy social bonds and bouts of insecurities in self. Some exemplars of childhood experiences that lead to abandonment issues and insecure attachment styles are:

#1 A parent who is neglectful or unresponsive to the feelings and needs of a child.

#2 A parent who is physically or emotionally abusive and highly intimidating towards the child's responses.

#3 A parent who shows dual behavior once approached by the child i.e at times is warm and attentive and during other situations in interactions is cold/unresponsive.

#4 A parent who is separated/absent in the early emotional development years of a child.

Sharing my early childhood experience here. I had a friend who was with me since the age of 3 in primary school and we were always together in our schooling years. One find day,she randomly walked upto me and said, "Hey,you know what, I can't be friends with you anymore as I got cooler friends now, so let's just stay put and not be friends anymore."

That statement created a heart wrenching impact to a point,I was frozen and was left without a reaction.I came home and cried my eyes out. The agony and throb that statement created lasted for weeks altogether. I used to see my best friend chill with the cool kids and used to wonder " Why can't I be like them", "Why did my best friend choose them over me". It took a real long time for me to emotionally accept this and started impacting my academic grades. Later in 2002, I left that school and didn't inform anybody I was leaving town for good.

To this day,after 19 years,I developed myself into a self sufficient person and find it difficult in building good inter-personal relationships as I prefer being self managed in most gamuts of my life such as:

#1 Managing my daily work schedule.

#2 Conducting my own subject research work.

#3 Going on lunch dates by myself.

Not that I do not have friends,but I am very particular now who I let into my space. I avoid any form of co-dependency.Even at work,I have moulded myself into a being of a self-managed person and avoid taking other's opinions to a large extent.

After all these years of experience in interpersonal relationships ,I learnt how to maintain a healthy boundary in all my relationships. It has been a life lesson, but must say, every experience that we undergo transforms us to a stronger version of ourselves.