Abandonment issues

I have finally come to the realization that I am so completely co-dependent. I have forgotten what I like, what to do with myself when "he" is not around. I have completely lost myself in my significant other, as I had done before with my ex-boyfriend.

Many will say this is a form of "abandonment issues".

Abandonment represents core human fear. We have all experienced it. When a relationship ends, the feelings harken all the way back to our lost childhoods when we were helpless, and dependent. Our adult functioning temporarily collapses.We feel shattered, bewildered, condemned to loneliness. As we apply the tools of recovery, at the bottom of abandonment's pain, we discover a wellspring of positive change.

Abandonment is a cumulative wound containing all of the losses and disconnections stemming all the way back to childhood. Abandonment is:

• • A feeling
  
• A feeling of isolation within a relationship
• • An intense feeling of devastation when a relationship ends
  • An aloneness-not-by-choice
  • An experience from childhood
  • A baby left on the doorstep
  • A woman left by her husband of twenty years for another woman
  • A man being left by his finance for someone 'more successful'
  • A child left by his mother
  • A friend feeling deserted by a friend
  • A father leaving his marriage, moving out of the house, away from his children
  • A child whose pet dies
  • A little girl grieving over the death of her mother
  • A little boy wanting his mommy to come pick him up from nursery school
  • A child about to be 'replaced' by the birth of another sibling
  • A child needing his parents but they are emotionally unavailable
  • A boy realizing he is gay and anticipating the reaction of his parents and friends
  • A teenage boy with his heart twanging, but afraid to approach his love
  • A teenage girl feeling her heart is actually broken
  • A woman who has raised a family now grown, feeling empty, as if she has been deserted, as if the purpose of her life has abandoned her
  • A child stricken with a serious illness or injury watching his friends play while he must remain confined to braces, wheel chair, or bed
  • A woman who has lost her job and with it her professional identity, financial security, and status. Now she is left feeling worthless, not knowing how to occupy her time - - feeling abandoned by her life's mission
  • A man who has been 'put out to pasture' by his company, as if obsolete
  • People grieving the death of a loved one report feelings of abandonment
  • The dying fear being abandoned by their loved ones as much or more as they fear pain and death
  • Suicide is an excruciating form of abandonment
  • Abandonment is all of this and more. Its wound is at the heart of the variety of human experiences, and is found in the uniqueness of each person's life.

I know I relate to so many of these issues and I am suffering from them today in my relationship with my boyfriend. I do not know what to do when I am alone, I sometimes cry, I sleep A LOT, I feel intense fear.

This would be called-- Unresolved abandonment - - the source of our insecurities, addictions, compulsions, and distress.

What happens in your body when you feel fear?

• I'm tense
• I'm too serious
• I stop breathing deeply
• I'm tied in knots
• I freeze or feel numb
• I worry a lot
• I don't play and have fun
• I want to be somewhere else
• I attack

In order to heal your
abandonment issues
you must:

---

1. Identify and heal the earlier experiences that underlie your issues (often child abandonment).
   
2. Identify your beliefs, feelings, and unmet needs that formed in connection with those earlier experiences.
   
3. Build the new, life-enhancing, coherent beliefs, feelings, and needs that will bring you inner power and deep, lasting growth.
4. Create a "shift" in your energy field from the old to the new. This requires more than the usual "talking/thinking?understanding/problem solving" of the left brain.
5. Become empowered by WHO YOU ARE. Connect with your genuine power and potential. Know that change is possible. Shift what you resonate with. I do this all day, every day. It is so very do-able~! "Simple but not easy" as the saying goes, unless you know how, of course.

What is it that keeps creating painful relationships? Or blocks them from the start? The answer is unique to each person. Yet at the same time, there are many common issues that we share.

The truth is...most of us have a
hurt and abandoned inner child.

Your issues are rooted in the experience and reality of life...

Life Is Abandoning. Think about it.

Sources:
http://www.beat-depression-naturally.com/abandonment-issues.html
http://www.abandonment.net/faq.html