The Abandonment Wound

Welcome to the Hearts Entwined podcast.

In this podcast we'll be having discussions around the secrets which attract lasting,

Healthy,

Fulfilling relationships,

Creating a healthy mindset and what women should know and understand about men.

Introducing your host,

Lynne Smith,

The Queen of Hearts,

Relationship expert,

Trainer,

Speaker and bestselling author of the Cupid's bow technique.

Lynne's mission is to have a positive impact in reducing divorce,

Domestic violence and suicide.

Welcome to the Hearts Entwined podcast.

This is your host,

Lynne Smith,

The Queen of Hearts and today I've got a very special,

Lovely returning guest.

Her name is Fabienne Sandoval.

We've had some amazing conversations both on and off air previously and I always love to connect with Fabienne.

So welcome again,

Fabienne.

Hi Lynne,

Thank you so much for having me.

So Fabienne,

Just for the benefit of the audience,

Just remind the audience what you do and what your area of expertise is.

Yeah sure,

So I am a self-worth coach focused on helping women specifically develop their sense of worth and value in the world and help them work on relationships as well.

Excellent and I think this topic that we've decided to speak about today is going to be a very,

Very interesting one for our audience to listen to because I certainly haven't discussed it on a podcast episode before so this is very exciting for me to get my teeth into as well and it's all about the abandonment wound that we're going to be talking about today.

So Fabienne,

What would be a bit of a background introduction to this subject do you think that would be helpful for our audience to listen to initially?

Yeah sure,

So I'm really excited about this.

For me personally,

The abandonment wound is something that I carry and I think a lot of the work that I usually do is based on the things that I've also gone through.

It's easier to teach if you've experienced it for yourself.

So I would say in terms of an abandonment wound,

If someone's just hearing that for the first time,

The things that you want to bear in mind is that probably for the most part people are all carrying around some kind of abandonment wound but that can vary in scales.

So abandonment is like a primal fear shall we say and it's something that each of us might experience at any point during our lives but not everyone will experience it in such a traumatic way and I think the way that abandonment shows up could be through emotional unavailability,

It could be due to having like an absent parent when you're a child.

So it could be things like either a parent leaving,

Your parents going through a divorce,

One parent having to travel a lot so they might have been actually there,

They might have been available to you in some respects but maybe during the week they had to travel and they were away.

It could even come down to something like a really traumatic breakup or even something like a loss of a job somewhere where you were feeling really safe and secure and then you lost that.

Yeah so some great examples there.

Another one I can think of is as babies I think in certain generations parents were sometimes taught to leave their babies to cry cry themselves out you know rather than keep demanding it and responding to any attention and I think there's a fine balance there sometimes as to how long you leave a baby crying before you go and tend to them isn't there and probably in the past some parents haven't responded that quickly even when the baby's got really traumatised.

Yeah absolutely and I think it's really interesting because in the Western culture we're much more taught to yes yes let the baby cry and leave it on its own but in other cultures they would not dream of doing that.

In some cultures they will literally have their baby tied to them until that baby is like ready to start walking.

I mean literally for about the first year the baby would literally be attached to you on the chest you would wear the baby all day long so there wouldn't be any moment where that child feels that sense of insecurity that the parents not coming back or that they don't have someone to you know take care of them.

Yeah and these times are probably not times that we'd actually remember so if it was actually babies when that happened to us we might even not realise we've got some sort of abandonment wound because we won't have remembered that that might have been the case for us as babies.

Yeah absolutely and I think obviously you know Lyn we've always spoken about attachment styles that's one of my favourite subjects also but you know this this can also come from depending on like how you know what the situation was when you're in the womb as well so depending on like if your mother was like extremely anxious while she was like you know um while you while she was pregnant maybe she was worrying maybe she had something traumatic happen to her prior to conceiving uh conceiving the baby then she would she would be carrying that with her that would then fall onto the baby and then when the baby is born if they've got that anxiety that is then going to also create that abandonment wound also.

Yeah very interesting so how do we actually know then if we're actually carrying some sort of abandonment wound if it does stem as far back as even being you know in the womb or or in early childhood as a baby?

So I think that it really depends on how it's showing up in your life so a lot of people that are suffering from an abandonment wound will more than likely have a low sense of self-worth.

They possibly may feel as though they can be quite needy in their romantic relationships if their partner has to go away and leave them that might spur them into some kind of like anxiety panic attack or spiral and they might have like this just underlying feeling that kind of nobody understands me no nobody gets me like everybody everybody feels like I'm overreacting to certain situations but like I can't my body physically like does this reaction I can't I can't stop it and that can be around you know a sense of like a post-traumatic stress disorder depending on how big the abandonment wound is if you're physically having like bodily sensations that can also be down to like unresolved post-traumatic stress disorder from the abandonment wound that you've gone through.

Right so how does that then have a knock on effect to our romantic relationships?

Oh my goodness so many ways so so many ways and I think that this shows up not just in romantic relationships but in kind of any relationships that you have also but it can be things like feeling really um just in general a lot of sensitivity or over sensitivity so you know if your partner says something to you you know oh I don't like that dress on you or actually I'm not really a fan of that hair maybe you should do something different you might take that really personally I think a lot of the stuff with the abandonment wound is you you really personalize things like it could just be like a a brief comment from your partner but you would really personalize it um you would do things like overreact during conflict so you're either going to be like you're going to be like very black and white so you're going to either be one scalar of the spectrum where you're just going to completely over dramatize the situation get very upset um really kind of like go into that dramatic place or you're just going to completely shut down are you just going to be like I don't actually care like I don't have any feelings about this kind of get away from me so that kind of shows up when you're thinking about conflict in you know I guess more romantic relationships that can also happen in other ones like friendships families stuff like that also um and these kind of extremist tendencies you know so like either an extreme outburst when your partner when you know maybe you and your partner are starting to get into some kind of a conflict or disagreement and instead of just being able to listen to them and handle it you just go to you know either one end of the spectrum either completely shutting down or not or completely like you know just blowing out basically yeah I think I can actually relate to being in um you know relationships where that's been the case and you know thinking that this is a very black and white person you know they're either all or nothing there's no gray area you know there's a like you say that very polarized um reaction which is all or nothing yeah and that can be really difficult because the person that's that's experienced the abandonment wound they are being triggered in that moment so something is coming up for them and I think a lot of what happens with people that have that fear of abandonment that is really just like engulfing them when they get into conflict they actually think that this means that like the relationship is over um so a lot of clients or people that I have like worked on with this kind of wound they will really feel as though a disagreement with their partner is literally the end of the world like that's it we're done it's over they don't love me anymore not realizing that it's just a disagreement and I think um Gottman Institute actually says that I think it's uh the the number is like 69% of conflict will actually be unresolvable no matter what relationship you're in so when you think about that then you think with a person that has an abandonment wound 69% of the time that you're having disagreements and you're thinking it's the end of the world and this relationship is going to end actually for really the majority of the part of it is it's not going to end this is just an unresolvable conflict that you're just going to have to figure out how to manage and work with.

Interesting I can relate to it because I think that you know in a past relationship there was that situation and I always had the feeling that you know it's only a minor disagreement you know I feel as though I've committed a parking offense in terms of you know engaging in this disagreement some now on the end of you know being sent down for 25 years.

Yeah yeah and for the person on the receiving end if they don't understand that their partner has an abandonment wound they are just going to be like what the heck is going on I know like for me personally in my partnership you know it was it's it's definitely tricky having that person not really recognizing what's happening because they're like you're not really acting like the way that you normally would and for a lot of the time someone with a abandonment wound they might not always act like that during the conflict it might be only once they've been triggered and so the triggering event whatever that might be is what will set them off and and have them show up with those kinds of extra sensitivities these extremist kinds of behaviors um getting like you know severe anxiety and just having this belief that the other person is going to leave um even just stuff like you know I think what you're saying that you know you feel like you've been you committed a crime that you're going to be in prison for for 25 years you know just like just like feeling like oh my god I don't feel like I did something that bad but okay yeah exactly yeah it's it's very interesting because I you know uh there would be things like you know I'd accidentally um spill water on the carpet for example and that trigger you know a conflict that was um you know talk about make a mountain out of the mold and it's like what yeah yeah and so it's really important for people with these um with this kind of a wound or if you're in a relationship with someone and this is all making sense to you then really what you need to be doing and it's it's funny because it sounds kind of like wait what they're the one overreacting but I'm the one that's going to have to kind of soothe them but ultimately is for the part so if you're in a partnership where you feel someone does have an abandonment wound it's about you showing up and allowing them to feel safe so when that starts to happen actually just stopping being like hey hold on one moment I know we're having a disagreement right now but can we just have a hug or I know we're having a disagreement right now but I love you and this is just a disagreement and I think just reminding that person that like this is not going to be the end of the world it's just a disagreement it's going to happen right now it's going to feel uncomfortable it's going to feel yucky and then once we pass through that you know in the next 24 or 48 hours all of that conflict will calm down we'll come back around and we'll be able to think about a more logical solution um but just kind of soothing helping that person with that wound to kind of soothe them so that they can their kind of internal system that's been activated can start to calm down because that's really one of the things that needs to happen when someone starts to be triggered absolutely some great tips in that because I know for me initially in that relationship I would um I didn't have the knowledge in the awareness that I've got now so you know I would react more in a masculine way and there'd be an even bigger argument on the back of it um and you know once I did start to gain some tools and skills even then you know my way of handling it would be to walk away rather than probably more helpful is what you suggested in terms of you know give them a hug or you know try and rationalize what's going on and helping them to feel safe and happy yeah because that's really the main thing that is coming up it's a fear of you know not being safe it's like a fear of being left out in the cold no one's coming home for you you know that's kind of the feeling that the person is experiencing like oh my gosh I'm alone I don't have anyone I'm I'm going to be back by myself again and having that fear that yeah no one's understand you nobody gets you and that you're not going to be you're not going to be taken care of but it is the responsibility of the person with that wound so if you're listening and you have that wound it's your responsibility to figure out how to also self-suit so you might need to have a conversation with your partner and take them if we do disagree could you could you just do x to just remind me that this isn't the end of the world and it will be okay um but actually for yourself you need to take responsibility can't obviously put it just on your partner they can help you with that and you can work on it as a team but it's definitely your responsibility to just figure out what things trigger you and how you can navigate those in the best possible way so that you don't get as triggered yeah I think it's it can be quite difficult I suppose to figure out what might be the things actually trigger a particular person or whether it's just a build up you know over a period of time that gets them to a point where you know even things that aren't you know what I consider majors such as a you know if your partner accidentally spills something on the on the you know some water on the floor it's not like going off and having an affair with another person but you know why would that trigger an argument in my mind you know it's just it's no big deal I just clean it up but um you know uh so I'm just just not sure and when I think back to those times uh whether it was just a for him a build up of different things and it was then that that was a straw that was a trigger that broke the camel's back that triggered or whether it was just that minor thing that just triggered for some reason you know something in his past I don't know and I think actually you're raising a really good point there because some people that have so say like your abandonment wound is from your mother or from your father for example and maybe they actually left you at a certain point you know in your in your life or maybe they weren't ever present you may have a lot of anger towards them now if you are let's just say for example you are in a relationship with a man but you have a father wound any of the leftover resentment anger frustration that you feel towards your father when your partner does something that's going to you know maybe frustrate you or anger you your partner's probably going to receive all the anger for that moment which might be like 20 percent of your anger plus like 80 percent of your anger that is all of the past stuff that maybe you haven't actually dealt with yet so I think it's really important to just recognize like when you are getting frustrated with your partner is that actually does that anger actually is it relevant to take it all out on that person or is it that you actually are using that as an outlet to relieve some of your other frustrations or angers or disappointments or resentments onto that person because they're the person that's in front of you and because they're more than likely the most closest person to you yeah I did feel that you know it was a case of I was in that I actually was able to rationalize it and think it's not think it's not think it's not me that that's the problem here and rationalize it and think you know I'm just the most convenient person to take it out on at the moment and you know unfortunately I felt like I was the emotional witch at that time but I did sort of realize it was based on you know his own past insecurities and uh and in particular I didn't have the um awareness to at that moment to think it was associated with something called the abandonment wound but obviously I did realize it was something from his past that was triggering yeah and I think that's why we really need to you know we need to see whoever it is that we're partnered up with we need to see it as you know that's your that's your new curriculum that person in front of you if you're going to be partnered up with them you want to learn as much about that person as possible so that you can understand like who they are and how they are and what things have shaped them and made them so the more that you understand your partner the more that you have that knowledge they might not be able to identify that they have an abandonment wound but you may be able to because you've learned enough about them to recognize ah okay so that happened to them when they were a child or this specific happened this specific thing happened to them in a relationship or whatever it happens to be and then you will be able to work with them because you have the knowledge and you will potentially be able to open their eyes to the fact that that might be something that they're dealing with so if you've got somebody coming to you Fabienne and it's obvious you know from the conversation you have with them that there is an abandonment wound there how do you go about helping them heal that so i think one of the first things for abandonment wound is you need to have some sense of emotional regulation so you need to be regulating your emotions frequently because what's going to happen is you are potentially going to get into like a fight with your partner and that's going to send you down this place down to this place that you don't really want to go to and you're not going to be able to think rationally or logically and you're going to start acting out of those wounds so creating a sense of emotional regulation is really important so the way that i would suggest that you do that is by practicing journaling and also meditation now i know these things that everybody talks about but the reason they're spoken about so much is because they really can help you regulate your emotions so one thing with people that have been abandoned is they may feel that their needs that their feelings aren't valid so using the tool of journaling to actually connect with themselves and just understand like on a daily basis so starting the day with you know how am i feeling like what emotions am i having you know what what actual emotions am i experiencing is this rage is this fear is this anxiety actually tapping into it because a lot of the time we're only thinking about our emotions from a perspective of sad happy grateful you know but we're not really getting into actual like deep emotions of what you're really really feeling and being able to name them is really powerful so creating some kind of practice that you can do every day that helps you to create that sense of like serenity and peace within yourself and regulate those emotions is definitely one of the first steps excellent so how can somebody find out a little bit more about the abandonment wound is there any recommended reading that you um suggest or any research that you think has been particularly helpful for people to look at to identify whether they have got this as an issue in their life yeah definitely well i have a i have a free workbook i will be willing to share with anyone that's listening so they can get in touch with me for that so i have a healing or abandonment wounds workbook that has a lot of like information and things in there and tips on how you can kind of move through that wound and heal i think though the primary person that i will speak to that has just been such a pioneer in this of this work is a lady called susan anderson so she has a ton of books and resources on abandonment and abandonment recovery and how to heal and she's literally dedicated her whole life to understanding abandonment traumas grief and loss wow that's great so um susan is that spelled with a z or an s with an s yeah so susan anderson and the books that i would recommend of hers is black swan so that's a story of abandonment and when you read it you really resonate with what is being said i think if you've someone that's experienced that abandonment in your life and it's very severe for you reading that story will create a sense of healing within for sure um and then she has another one that's that's called oh gosh actually it's called hold on the journey from abandonment to healing so that book is also really really helpful and i think the other thing that i would recommend is looking into some of the work by peter levine so he has a book called waking the tiger and that's about healing trauma and so that book is really helpful because sometimes what happens if something traumatic has taken place in our lives then the person may have so the bodily functions that would usually happen to guide a person through that process sometimes what happens is it gets stopped or it gets stuck and so then you keep reliving those experiences so you might keep finding yourself in relationships where the person is emotionally unavailable to you or physically unavailable to you um and then that it's that abandonment wound keeps reoccurring and you're wondering like why do i keep finding myself in these situations well it may be that you've not completed the body's trauma response and so reading his book is really also powerful for just understanding how to heal the rest of those um wounds where you may have gotten stuck right okay so interesting isn't it to um do a bit of research and reading about these sorts of topics and uh see what is uncovered and how it actually relates to yourself or others that you've had relationships with yeah definitely so any other steps or shares that you want to impart just before we end the episode fabian around this particular topic yeah i think some of the key ones so definitely emotional regulation is really important um because that's going to give you that daily practice to keep yourself like in a positive place but i think that one of the things that is commonly found with people that are working on healing their abandonment wound is boundaries so not having a good understanding of how to set boundaries maybe they weren't allowed to set boundaries in you know in childhood or there wasn't a sense of boundaries in the family structure that they were in um for a variety of different reasons so recognizing that boundaries are going to be important to you and it's probably something that you may struggle with doing also um so also codependency so just having an awareness of are you actually entering into your relationships and showing up in a you know if you get triggered does that kind of also trigger a sense of codependency so being aware of that also um my favorite attachment styles so recognizing which attachment style you are someone with an abandonment wound will more than likely be either an avoidant or an anxious attachment style so figuring out which one you are and learning about that so that can help you and then i would and then i would also say working with your inner child so thinking back i know for me personally when i would experience like that triggering feeling of being like of being abandoned in like a current situation what would happen to me is what would happen to me is i would literally go back to my 10 year old self of when my dad left and i would become that small little girl of 10 years old just being like oh my gosh what is happening to me right now and it's like i'm in my 30s like i'm not 10 years old like i can take care of myself i don't need to worry about that so kind of taking time to sit with the inner child and like let them know that hey i'm not 10 anymore i'm a grown up now and i can take care of myself and like i've got this and so doing that work is really really powerful and then i think the final thing that i will know which um is also very important is most people that have an abandonment wound will abandon themselves when they feel like they're being abandoned so it's kind of it's kind of crazy but if they feel like someone is abandoning them they will self-abandon and so that's why thinking about all these other sex that i've mentioned is really important in your journey so when that gets triggered making sure that you don't abandon yourself reminding yourself that you can take care of yourself you can love yourself you can look after yourself you are safe with yourself and creating creating that and just being aware of the fact that when you get triggered there may be that instant reaction of wanting to self-abandon and what do you actually mean by self-abandon in that context Fabian so that could show up in a variety of different ways but ultimately not taking care of yourself so say for example you are going through a rough patch in your relationship instead of in that time where you're going through that rough patch maybe you and your partner aren't seeing eye to eye or there's something happening you would put all of your focus and attention onto your partner and quite literally forget about yourself so forget about your own needs forget about taking care of you and during that time you might find that you have you know you are feeling really down or you're feeling really a lot of anxiety or you you might have a lot of feelings yourself but what you may end up doing in that situation is just putting all the focus and emphasis onto them so for example why aren't they pulling me back why don't they want to solve this why is it taking them three hours to reply to me just literally becoming kind of completely obsessed with the other person and then therefore failing to worry about yourself you know maybe you forget to eat maybe you forget maybe you can't sleep maybe you um are having trouble taking care of yourself and your your own needs so remembering that just because just because it feels like somebody else is abounding you or they're not available to you doesn't mean that you need to stop being available to yourself that's actually a signal if someone is doing something where they're pulling away or they are becoming unavailable to you that's a moment for you to take stock of yourself and say hey what do I need right now and a lot of the time people that have suffered that aboundment wound do have a trouble saying what do I need right now they will more than likely say what does that person need anybody outside of themselves they would look to to be like I can I should give something to somebody else but actually it's not about that they need to give to themselves and also within the context of the relationship I was in I would say that you quite often self-sabotaged you know our relationship in other words I think that you know perhaps me leaving the relationship so rather than risk that he'd sabotage it himself absolutely that is yeah another really really great bundling self-sabotage comes up massively because it's usually that fear of usually a couple of things happen they'll they will be like hold on a second you know what so that I don't have to feel that pain I will already prepare myself for the pain and I'll leave you first or I'll do something that will make you leave me yeah because I'm so used to being left you know why would anyone stay with me yeah totally resonates and I just want to say that we have mentioned the attachment styles within this episode and we did do a separate episode totally around the attachment style so anybody who's interested in knowing more about attachment styles Fabian and I did do a previous episode so research that if you're interested in knowing more about that anything else you want to add around the abandonment wound before we wrap up Fabian no I think that that's the that's the majority of the things I would say Linda is one really really amazing resource which is like a a psychology video it's on youtube it's free it lasts about an hour but it's absolutely wonderful it's called abandonment anxiety overcoming fear of love and that is really really important if you're in a relationship with someone that has this or it sounds like they have this or it's you yourself definitely watch that because that goes really into great depths about how it shows up and how it can be healed and there's a lot of really wonderful questions towards the end of the webinar that will really get you thinking deeply about what it is that you've experienced and help with that healing thanks