Living with abandonment trauma causes a person to feel constant fear that someone important will leave them. It can include rejection or abandonment by someone currently in the individual’s life or someone they hope to bring into their circle.
Montare Tucson provides comprehensive care cultivated specifically to meet the needs of each person we treat. We provide a gentle hand via attending different types of therapy that help people stop fearing they will be abandoned. Our therapists also help them resolve past incidents in which they felt abandoned so they can move forward. Our residential program provides the perfect homelike environment for someone to relax and learn to feel safe and included.
What is Abandonment Trauma?
Abandonment trauma is a form of trauma that causes the individual to have a fear-based response to all sorts of situations. Their main focus is that they will be abandoned, often coming from a history of feeling abandoned. The person feels unworthy and constantly stays vigilant because they expect people to make a habit of leaving them.
Abandonment trauma can also cause a person to feel they have been abandoned when that isn’t the case. For example, the end of an often brief romantic relationship becomes catastrophized so the person believes every person they date or love will walk away at some point. As a result, the person with the disorder may feel too afraid to put themselves out there again, or they will act in clingy ways with the next person they meet. This often serves to cause their partner to walk away, thus shoring up the belief that everyone abandons them.
How Common is Abandonment Trauma?
Approximately one out of seven children in the U.S. experience abandonment or other forms of abuse, which often turns into abandonment trauma that spills over into their adulthoods. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) happens to about 5% of U.S. adults each year. For many of them, the symptoms have a genesis in abandonment trauma.
Symptoms and Causes of Abandonment Trauma
People who struggle with trauma that focuses on abandonment exhibit certain symptoms that include the following:
- Putting their needs second out of fear of another person not liking them
- Using clingy behavior to the point others feel smothered
- Difficulty regulating emotions, including overreacting to the words and actions of others
- Anxiety
- Difficulty communicating effectively
- Self-sabotaging relationships that result in discord and the end of a friendship or romantic relationship
- Poor self-esteem
- Regularly asking others to reassure them that everything is fine
Abandonment trauma can develop for a variety of reasons. It may begin with a life-changing event during childhood like the death of a loved one or parents divorcing or splitting up. It can also happen to children who enter the foster care system or experience abuse or neglect from their caregivers.
Effects of Abandonment Trauma
For some, the effects of abandonment trauma zero in on romantic relationships. They fear a breakup at any point while dating, living with, or being married to the other person. Others have a more globalized fear in that they worry that all of their relationships are at risk, and any moment friends, family members, co-workers, and others will leave them.
Living with abandonment trauma often causes or increases symptoms of anxiety, depression, and moodiness in the individual. Their insecurity can spill over into confidence about how they do their jobs or perform at school. The person’s self-esteem flatlines, and they assume nothing will ever improve.
Types of Abandonment Issues
How a person attaches to others is key to their emotional health and having good relationships. People who have abandonment trauma typically have either an anxious attachment style or an avoidant attachment style. They both result in a person fearing abandonment daily. This can crop up in relationships with family, friends, co-workers, and romantic partners. The individual has poor or no boundaries. This results in breakups, divorces, the end of friendships and relationships with family. Each time this happens, it increases the person’s fear of further abandonment.
Why Healing From Abandonment Trauma is Important
People who do not seek professional treatment for abandonment trauma doom themselves to live a life full of fear that they will make the wrong move or someone will leave them with no cause. Entering a residential or outpatient program that treats those whose lives are ruled by a fear of abandonment offers hope and a new wave of positive emotions. Attending therapies designed to target the person’s disorder helps them reframe how they see the world. When they don’t live a fear-based life, many doors of opportunity open up to them.
Treating Abandonment Trauma
Two common forms of talk therapy offer tremendous ways to learn to disarm the power that abandonment trauma has over people. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) helps people draw a correlation among their feelings, thoughts, and behaviors and understand how they influence each other. The individual learns to examine their negative thought system and adopt healthy ways to cope.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) teaches people to develop mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, and distress tolerance. It teaches people to stay in the moment and not project to a future, usually negative, that they feel will happen.
Prescription medications also offer a way to ease a person’s symptoms of anxiety and depression while they use therapy to help heal overall.
Contact Montare Tucson to Start Treatment for Abandonment Trauma
Do you struggle with fear that everyone you love will reject you or walk away from you? Doing so impacts every aspect of a person’s life, including their personal and professional relationships and their ability to trust. Montare Tucson constructed a detailed residential program to treat abandonment trauma and help people stop feeling lost. We help you make the connection between what happens that you can control and what’s out of your control. With our help, you become more confident and secure in your place in the world.
Contact us today to find out the details of our revitalizing residential treatment program. The help you deserve is just a phone call away.
Published: 3/7/2025
