The Root of Abandonment

⚜️ The Root of Abandonment ⚜️

Abandonment doesn’t begin when someone leaves.

It begins the first time you leave yourself.

As children, we are wired for connection; we depend on caregivers for safety, love, and belonging. When those needs are unmet, our nervous system makes a painful trade: authenticity for attachment.

If love only came when you were quiet, good, strong, or useful, you learned to exile parts of your Self.

If anger, sadness, or joy were punished, you learned to silence them.

And if your needs went unmet long enough, you learned to stop needing at all.

This is how abandonment begins: not as a single event, but as a pattern of inner exile. You abandoned yourself so others wouldn’t abandon you.

⚜️ How It Shows Up in Adulthood

Unhealed abandonment weaves itself into every corner of adult life. It’s not always obvious; it hides behind habits that seem normal.

1. Hypervigilance

You scan for danger in every relationship: a tone change, a delayed text, a sigh. Your nervous system doesn’t distinguish between now and then. It believes rejection is coming, so it prepares for war.

2. People-Pleasing and Over-Giving

You keep earning what should have been freely given. You call it love, but it’s survival, a desperate attempt to prevent loss.

3. Avoidance and Emotional Withdrawal

You fear the same closeness you crave. You disappear before someone can see your need. You confuse distance with safety.

4. Obsession and Control

You fixate on others: their moods, attention, silence, because focusing on them distracts you from your own pain. It’s not love; it’s self-abandonment disguised as care.

5. Chronic Shame

You feel defective for wanting too much or being too sensitive. Every unmet need from childhood becomes proof that you were the problem. Shame keeps you loyal to your wound.

These patterns are not character flaws; they are adaptations. They were once brilliant strategies to keep you safe. But now they stand between you and wholeness.

⚜️ The Path to Integration

Healing abandonment is not about making sure no one ever leaves.

It’s about refusing to abandon yourself again.

Integration is the slow, sacred work of reuniting with the parts you left behind, the child who felt invisible, the teenager who shut down, the adult who performs to survive.

Here’s where to begin:

1. Awareness: Name the Pattern

Start noticing when you leave yourself. Do you change your tone to keep the peace? Stay silent to avoid conflict? Obsess over others instead of tending to your own sensations? Each moment of awareness is a homecoming.

2. Sensation Over Story

When the wound activates, don’t spiral into why. Drop the story and feel the body. Tight chest, hollow stomach, trembling hands; this is where your Self is speaking. Presence with sensation heals what thinking cannot.

3. Re-parenting: The Inner Bond

Your abandoned child doesn’t need logic; they need presence. When fear rises, close your eyes and whisper inwardly:

“I’m here now. I won’t leave you again.”

This small act of self-love rewires the nervous system over time.

4. Boundaries as Self-Love

Setting boundaries isn’t rejection; it’s reunion. Each time you say no when you mean no, you strengthen the bond between your adult Self and your inner child.

5. Practice Staying

The next time you want to run, hide, or numb, pause. Take one conscious breath. The courage to stay in your body, even for a moment, begins the cycle of return.

⚜️ Coming Home

Healing abandonment is not the end of your story; it’s the return to your beginning.

The parts you left behind are not broken; they are waiting.

Each time you stay, each time you breathe through fear, you take another step Home.

Your abandoned parts whisper: “Please stay.”

And when you do, the Self answers, “Worthy.”

( ✍️ J.Mike Fields )