How a Fear of Abandonment Impacts Our Relationships
In today's episode, we're diving deep on the abandonment wound - a fear that lies at the heart of many insecure attachment patterns and relational dynamics. A fear of abandonment can show up in so many ways, and can keep us from experiencing relationships in a way that feels trusting, safe and secure.
We'll cover:
how it feels to fear abandonment in your relationship
different forms of abandonment (physical, emotional)
relational behaviours that a fear of abandonment can lead to
the link between self-abandonment and a fear of abandonment
FURTHER LINKS & RESOURCES:
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Episode Transcript
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You're listening to On Attachment, a place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience relationships and where you'll gain the guidance, knowledge and practical tools to overcome insecurity and build healthy, thriving relationships. I'm your host, relationship coach Stephanie Rigg, and I'm really glad you're here. Hey, everybody, welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, I'm going to be talking about how a fear of abandonment impacts our relationships. So as I was preparing for this episode, and I put the call out on Instagram for people to submit topic ideas, and a few people submitted the topic of a fear of abandonment and varying questions around that.
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And as I was reflecting, it's kind of wild that we're at episode 97. I think this is of the podcast and I've never done an episode specifically on the fear of abandonment. And the reason that that seems a little wild is because, as many of you would know, a fear of abandonment is really at the heart of a lot of anxious attachment patterns. And I know that anxious attachment is the experience of many of my listeners. So it's taken a while for us to get here to an episode exclusively on the fear of abandonment, even though we've touched on it in many different settings and many different conversations up until now.
0:01:34.11 → 0:02:29.51
But I'm hoping that in today's episode we can delve into it a little more specifically, looking at how that fear manifests itself, what behaviours it might drive us to, and I suppose talking about less obvious aspects of the fear of abandonment. And for a lot of people, it can be kind of confusing that they might identify with this fear. Given that it would make more sense if we'd been literally abandoned as a child, then that'd be a pretty direct joining of the dots, right? But for most people, hopefully, that hasn't been your experience, and yet this fear can really be very, very intense and profound and can be a very, very strong driving force in your relational patterns. So we're going to be diving into all of that today before I do.
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Today is the last episode before doors close for this round of healing anxious attachment. So I think registration closes Sunday night, my time, so that's 48 hours from now thereabouts. If you are someone who struggles with anxious attachment, as I said, I know many of you do and you're looking to make a change and get some support around that, I would really love to see you in the programme. As I've mentioned, I have a VIP offering this time round and that allows you to work directly with me in a small group setting over an eight week period. It's an online community, so you can connect with each other, which is really such a valuable aspect that I think a lot of people overlook having that connection and seeing that other people have the same embarrassing, neurotic thoughts that you do and do the same weird things.
0:03:20.38 → 0:03:58.59
There's a lot of shame that dissolves from having that community connection component. So whether you're interested in the course, in its classic version or the VIP programme with me, either way, I'd really encourage you to cheque it out if you're feeling the pull. As I said, this is the final call before registration closes, at least until later in the year. I'll likely run another round, I think, before the end of the year, but no solid plans yet, so best to jump in while you can. And you will have lifetime access to all the materials, so it's no big issue if you have a busy period coming up and you can't keep to an eight week programme or anything like that.
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Okay, let's dive into this conversation around the fear of abandonment. So, as I said in the introduction, a fear of abandonment is really at the heart of anxious attachment. We know that, right? And that fear is what, for many of us, drives us to really desire closeness and to really feel a lot of anxiety around distance separation or anything that might feel threatening to the primacy of the relationship. And the other person, when we're in relationship, becomes our safety blanket, they become our power source, they become our anchor, and that really exists outside of us.
0:04:38.50 → 0:05:27.08
I've mentioned before on the podcast, when talking about the origin story of anxious attachment, that a really common theme that emerges across a million different variations and contexts and nuance and family systems is inconsistency. So the anxiously attached child has an overall positive impression of connection and love, but they can't rely on it. So there's this sense of, it feels so good when we're connected, but I can't trust that you are going to be there when I need you. So when I call for you, there is some inconsistency or unreliability in your responsiveness to my cues. And because of that, the anxiously attached child becomes hyperactivated in their attempts at getting and keeping connection.
0:05:27.19 → 0:05:51.97
Because it's like, if I don't know whether you're going to come when I call, I don't want you to ever go. Because that exposes me to the risk that you will not be available to me when I need you. And that feels terrifying to me. Right? And we see that that pattern, which for most people is an origin story from childhood in one form or another, carries through to our adult relationships.
0:05:52.07 → 0:06:19.97
Right? So with a partner, it's not like I'm terrified of being alone, full stop. And I think that this is a really important distinction because in my experience, personally and working with a lot of people on this, it's not so much I'm scared of ever being by myself, I'm scared of spending time alone, of being in my own company. That's not it. I think that's an oversimplification and kind of misses the mark.
0:06:20.09 → 0:06:59.45
I think the fear of abandonment is more I'm scared that in a moment when I might need you, you won't be there for me. And so as a result, I would rather not take the risk of separation or distance when I feel like you are unreachable to me. Okay? So I think that related to that is this fear of emotional abandonment. And I think, again, as I spoke to in the start, it's not so much physical abandonment, literal abandonment in the sense of someone just upping and leaving although that can be a factor, right?
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And a lot of people can fear someone breaking up with them in the relationship ending. But if you are in a more stable long term relationship and that doesn't seem like a risk, you don't have any sort of conscious fears that your partner is actually going to leave you. What you might experience is this sense of emotional abandonment. So when you feel like you are again reaching for someone and they are not there or they are shutting you out or there's some sort of unavailability in a moment of emotional need and feeling alone with your big emotions can feel very daunting. So it's this fear of what if I am either today or in the future, sad or lonely or afraid and I can't rely on you to soothe me in that and I can't rely on you to help me through that experience.
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And again, this links back to what I've spoken about many times before, which is that the anxious person tends to be overly reliant on their attachment figure. So that's usually a caregiver in childhood and a romantic partner later in life they tend to be overly reliant on that figure to do all of the soothing work, right, because they have typically an underdeveloped capacity for self soothing. And so there's this sense of if I have these big emotions and I don't believe in your reliability to be there for me and kind of rescue me almost from those experiences that feel so overwhelming to me, that's terrifying. And so whether that's a real or imagined scenario, whether that's present day or hypothetical future scenario, that can trigger a lot of stuff as well this sense of you're not going to be there when I need you and that is not okay, right? The last thing I'll say in sort of framing this issue is and it's in the same vein as what I was just saying around it's not so much the fear of being alone as it is the fear of letting go or disconnecting.
0:09:09.62 → 0:09:58.55
So I think that again, many people who I work with would identify with anxious attachment but they might have been on their own for a while, maybe they've been single for years. And what I'll often hear is people saying I'm quite happy with my life, right? I'm quite content in my life but as soon as I'm in relationship, all of my anxious stuff comes up and I get really afraid of losing the person and that drives me into all of these behaviours. And I think that the way I make sense of that is there is this fear of having to disconnect from a person, having to let go of a person, having to lose a person. That fear of loss and grief and decoupling ourselves from someone who we love and care about, that feels more like the fear than just the being alone.
0:09:58.71 → 0:10:38.45
So I think that it is that transition from connection to disconnection that really triggers the anxiously attached person. And again, that makes sense when we look at inconsistency as being part of that origin story blueprint that created these patterns within us in the first place. So I just wanted to set that up as framing our discussion, just drawing out some more nuanced takes on what we're really talking about with this fear of abandonment. And that might not be your experience. Maybe you do really directly and literally fear abandonment and maybe that has been your experience and that makes sense.
0:10:38.65 → 0:11:24.07
But I think for a lot of people it tends to be a bit more indirect than that or a bit less literal. And it is these senses of like, I fear emotional abandonment. I fear that you won't be there when I need you. I fear I cannot rely on you to take care of me, to respond to me, to be available to me, to even rescue me when I'm in distress. And when we have that kind of story and that feeling, that's a pretty good sign that we're carrying some burdens from childhood, because even as I say that, I'm scared that I'm going to be distressed and alone and you're not going to be there to save me, that's a very young kind of story.
0:11:24.14 → 0:11:53.40
That's a very childlike fear. And I don't mean that disparagingly. It's not saying you're being juvenile, but just recognising how that part of us might be a young part that's holding that fear and maybe doesn't realise that we are an adult and that we have more capacity than we once did to hold ourselves through that. Now, let's explore a few ways that this fear of abandonment can impact our relationships. There are lots of these, right?
0:11:53.42 → 0:12:49.39
There are a lot of tentacles, there are a lot of branches that come from this tree. But some of the ones that occurred to me while I was preparing for this episode were a desire to be chosen really fully and almost like, I want you to be obsessed with me. Because if you are so desperately in love with me and you think I'm the most incredible person in the world and you can't live without me, then you probably won't ever leave me. And that feels like I'm derisking on that fear because you think I am an indispensable part of your life. Whereas if you would be perfectly fine without me and you're just choosing me and it feels a little bit more balanced and less intense, then that might feel riskier that I'm going to lose you because you aren't as attached and dependent upon me as I might be to you.
0:12:49.51 → 0:13:08.46
Another way that it impacts us is this primacy of connection, right? And again I've spoken about this on the podcast a million times. For the anxiously attached person, connection is king. It is absolutely top rung. It is everything.
0:13:09.23 → 0:14:12.65
Prioritise and protect the relationship at all costs, that is the most important drive for us in creating safety for ourselves. If I can protect the relationship, I can protect myself. And we can see how that is related to this fear of abandonment because I don't trust that I would be okay if I had to deal with either you being in relationship with me but being emotionally absent or unreachable, or if you were to leave me or I were to leave you, the relationship were to end. I can't fathom having to let go of you and emotionally detach from you because that feels impossible. So this primacy of the connection and if I just nurture the connection above all else, if I drop everything in my life to make sure that you're okay and we're okay and you're happy and you love me and we don't fight and don't want to rock the boat and make sure there's no threat to our relationship, then that feels like the way that I'm protecting against all of those fears.
0:14:12.81 → 0:14:42.44
Related to this is the tendency to overstay in unhealthy dynamics. Now I have been guilty of this. I know that so many people that I work with, people I speak to on instagram, struggle with this a lot. The inability to let go, right? It's like I just will stay and stay and stay and keep trying and keep pushing and one more time and one more chance and just a little bit longer.
0:14:42.89 → 0:15:42.33
Because again that inability to let go, that the resistance to decoupling, to disentangling ourselves emotionally, physically from this person who we have attached so tightly to that can feel like nothing would be worth, that nothing could be so bad as to justify that. And so the bar has to be so high in order for us to feel like a relationship is worth walking away from. That is usually an absolute last resort. And while I'm all for putting in the work to make a relationship work and not being overly flighty as soon as things get hard, anxious, attaches. And as I said, I've been absolutely guilty of this in the past, can take this to extremes where it's patently unhealthy, not working, really not supporting your well being and is so far short of what you really desire for yourself in your life.
0:15:42.40 → 0:16:09.84
And if someone had said to you before you were in the relationship, here's what it's going to look like, what do you think? Do you want to go ahead, you probably would say absolutely not. But when you're in it and you're so far gone you just can't let go, you just want to hold on a little longer. And I think that is related to this fear of abandonment, among other things. The last thing that I wanted to raise is the self abandonment piece.
0:16:09.97 → 0:17:05.06
And again, this could be a whole episode, but self abandonment in the sense of suppressing needs, going with the flow, people pleasing, just do whatever the other person wants, fearing that to be difficult is to be unlovable, which will lead to someone not wanting us. Right. Relatedly in conflict, we might raise something that's concerning us and then very quickly back down because we are too uncomfortable with the conflict. And the conflict feels like a precursor to abandonment or a precursor to the relationship ending, which, as we've just discussed, feels very unsafe and nothing feels worth it. So whatever need we were voicing that felt very important at the moment we were voicing it, when it's pitted against the possibility of the relationship ending or feeling threatened, it very quickly dissolves and becomes unimportant relative to the importance of protecting the relationship.
0:17:05.37 → 0:17:45.44
Right. So I think that again, in an indirect way, that fear of abandonment is driving our patterns of self abandonment and deprioritizing all of our very valid and genuine needs in relationship in favour of just keeping the relationship going and intact. Okay? So I hope that that has been helpful as a bit of a deep dive into the fear of abandonment, how it can show up and some of the behaviours and patterns that it can drive in our relationship. As I said, if this resonates with you, please do cheque out healing anxious Attachment we go into all of this and so much more in a lot of detail.
0:17:45.57 → 0:18:07.89
There's eight modules, 10 hours of video, guided meditations, workbooks notes. It's very comprehensive and over a thousand students have completed the course and it's got absolutely rave reviews. So if you are someone who struggles with anxious attachment, I would love to see you in there. Enrollment is open for another couple of days. Otherwise, thank you so much for joining me guys.
0:18:07.93 → 0:18:30.12
I hope you have a beautiful weekend and I will see you again soon. Take care. Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you want to go deeper on all things attachment, love and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a five star rating.
0:18:30.18 → 0:18:34.38
It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here and I hope to see you again soon.