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Maggie
Community Elder

Self Abandonment

 

THE BLOG
Self-Abandonment
As adults, our own well-being is our personal responsibility. Do you abandon yourself, making others responsible for you, and then feel abandoned by others when they leave you or don't take responsibility for you?
ByMargaret Paul, PhD , Contributor
Best-selling author, seminar leader and co-creator of Inner Bonding
08/14/2011 11:29am ET | Updated October 14, 2011
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.


If you feel alone, empty, anxious, depressed, hurt, angry, jealous, sad, fearful, guilty or shamed, you are abandoning yourself. In this article, discover the ways you might be abandoning yourself.
The Encarta® World English Dictionary defines "abandon" as: "to leave somebody or something behind for others to look after, especially somebody or something meant to be a personal responsibility."
As adults, our own well-being is our personal responsibility. Do you abandon yourself, making others responsible for you, and then feel abandoned by others when they leave you or don't take responsibility for you?
As an adult, another person cannot abandon you, since they are not responsible for you. We can abandon a child, an ill person or an old person -- someone who cannot take care of themselves. But if you are a physically healthy adult you can be left, but you cannot be abandoned by others. Only you can abandon you.
What are the ways you might be abandoning yourself?
Judging Yourself
How often do you judge yourself with comments such as:
"You are not good enough."
"You are inadequate."
"You are stupid."
"You are an idiot."
"You are ugly."
"You are not attractive enough."
"If you fail, you are not okay."
"If someone rejects you, you are not okay."
"It's all your fault that ... "
"You will never amount to anything. You are a failure. You are not reaching your potential."
... and so on.
Just as a small child feels alone and abandoned when a parent is harsh and judgmental, so our own inner child feels alone and abandoned when we judge ourselves. Self-judgment not only creates inner feelings of aloneness and emptiness, but it also creates feelings of anxiety, depression, anger, hurt, fear, guilt and shame. What do you do when you have judged yourself and created all these painful feelings?
Ignoring Your Feelings
When you feel alone, empty, anxious, depressed, hurt, angry, jealous, sad, fearful, guilty or shamed, what do you do? Do you attend to your feelings, exploring what you are telling yourself or doing to cause them? Or do you avoid them with some form of addictive behavior, using food, alcohol, drugs, nicotine, TV, work, shopping, Internet, sex, anger, blame and so on to avoid them?
When you ignore your feelings and instead turn to addictive behavior, you are again abandoning yourself. Once you have abandoned yourself, it is very common to project this self-abandonment onto others and feel abandoned by people or by God. Yet, as a physically healthy adult, the feeling of abandonment is being caused by you, just as most of your other painful feelings are being caused by you.
Making Others Responsible for You
Once you judge yourself and then ignore the pain you have caused, it is quite likely that you turn to others for the love and approval that you are not giving to yourself. Your inner child -- the feeling part of you -- needs love, approval and attention. When you abandon yourself with self-judgment and ignore your feelings, the wounded child part of you turns to others for the love you need. Because the child part of you is desperately needy for love, you are likely to become manipulative to get that love -- becoming angry and blaming or, conversely, being overly nice or compliant and trying to do everything right. You have handed your inner child away to others for adoption, hoping another person will give you the love you so desperately need. You become addicted to approval, attention and/or sex.
The more you make others responsible for giving you the love, attention and approval you need, the more your inner child feels abandoned, leading to more addictive behavior to fill the emptiness and avoid the pain of your self-abandonment.
The way out of this is to start paying attention to your feelings -- putting your attention inside of your body instead of always focusing outside. The moment you feel badly, notice what you are thinking or doing that is causing your pain. The painful feelings that come from your thoughts are your inner guidance system's way of letting you know that what you are thinking is not true, that it is not in your highest good.
Ask the highest part of yourself, "What is the truth?" Notice how you feel when you attend to your feelings and tell yourself the truth, rather than judge yourself, ignore yourself and make others responsible for your feelings.
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9 REPLIES 9

Re: Self Abandonment

Thanks for posting this @Maggie  - I found it very interesting - I have wondered a great deal how otherwise healthy people could feel abandoned

 

Dec

Re: Self Abandonment

@Owlunar  There seem to be similarities to self sabotage I think, for me anyway.

Re: Self Abandonment

Hi @Maggie 

 

This is a great topic to discuss

 

I think self-sabotage is a form of self-harm - I agree with you - and there is so much information in the article I am amazed

 

Perhaps I should explain - my son was 16 when he was detained in Juvenile Detention - he had BPD and seemed unable to understand that his behavior was the cause of his being there - he had broken the law and at the time I was unaware of so much of what he did and why - including self-harm - and I think he must have felt abandoned when he was in Juvenile Detention but I could not bring him home and had to tell him so and he ended his own life  

 

But I think that to begin with he was not a mature 16 and his MI made it hard for him to understand and he had not been left alone in the forest but to him he felt abandoned as if he had. He just didn't understand. I had done everything possible for him and I don't feel guilty at all

 

The article explains how he must have felt - and I am glad you have posted it here for me to read and re-read - I am really grateful for that.

 

Thanks - Dec

Re: Self Abandonment

@Owlunar  I don't know what to say other than you know you gave your best, and that's good enough. You have come through a lot, and I only know it briefly.

I'm learning many adults don't grow up. That might sound strange, but finding mature adults is rare in my environment, myself included. What's lacking I wonder.

Re: Self Abandonment

Thanks @Maggie  and @Former-Member 

 

Thanks for your kind thoughts - it has been a hard road but at this stage of my life I am able to use some of what I have learned through life and share it - this makes my journey worthwhile

 

I have recently started a thread on Self-Love and Self-Hatred - I could tag you there if you like -  I am trying to understand some of these issues myself - it's a pretty deep subjects

 

It is possible for a mature adult to feel abandoned at times when something smacks us in the face. When my children were still only babies my then-h and my son and I were in my coupe - then-h driving - another car crashed into us and we all just got out of the car unscratched - it was an horrific scare and my daughter who was only a few months old and not thriving was with my parents - thank God for that

 

The next day my mother drove the kids and me home and left us and I went into delayed shock - that is a pretty hard thing for anyone - it has no bearing on age or anything else - I felt abandoned but I had my sick baby and my two year old to care for and somehow dragged myself together - and really never thought how abandoned I felt that afternoon - and I understand now that I was vulnerable to my mother's thoughtlessnes and really had grown past her in maturity already - and no she could not be upset - pity about anyone else - she was to abandon me time and time again and I got used to it and long story short - I had to cut her out of my life and I did

 

But after reading the article you posted I can see this - I don't have BPD - my emotional discomfort is more in the areas of grief and living with chronic pain and I have had reactive depression and still feel over-anxious at times - but as the years pass things have become easier - I have changed so much in life

 

But you ask about adults who don't grow up. That's hard to answer - like - what does growing-up or being an adult mean? - I guess the answer to that would be that as adults we are able to care for ourselves or seek the help we need - I do think I read that in the article

 

And somewhere along the road I realised I was not going to be rescued from my overwhelming situation with my son and would have to do this alone and to my delight it worked

 

You've given me a lot to think about - are people with MI really capable of caring for themselves? Is this something they will learn? Maybe it's because some people do not start making unpopular decisions effectly and get punished for their mistakes - somewhere in my journey I learned to ask myself "Have I learned anything from that mistake?" I make sure that the answer is eventually "Yes - I have - I will not dine there again. I will get a new hairdresser? I can argue with professional people in my life. I might be wrong - equally - I might be right

 

Perhaps people self-abandon because they have unmet needs and that's not a wrong thing - it just is that they have not yet learned how to meet those needs themselves - even to seeking out the help they do need and making the most of the help they can find

 

But there is really nothing definitive about juvenile-adults or adult-juveniles - we can all be unhappy and need someone to talk to at times

 

After all - life is a learning-curve - 

 

Thanks for your thoughts about my son - I know I did all I could for him - he lived a destructive and tumultous life - I know he is at peace now whatever lies beyond our life here - as in the words of Don McLean - Starry Stary Night

 

#I could have told you Vincent - the world was never meant for one as beautiful as you#

 

This applies to so many people - including many people here - 

 

I have a lot more to think about

 

Dec

Re: Self Abandonment

@Owlunar  There is so much in your reply here, I will have to read and re read. Thankyou for so much insight,

Yes, please tag my into your thread.

Re: Self Abandonment

Thanks @Maggie 

 

I am so pleased you are taking the time - and I will tag you do my thread

 

Dec

Re: Self Abandonment

Hi @Owlunar and @Maggie thanks for sharing.  A lot to ponder in this for Me.  

Re: Self Abandonment

That's great @Gazza75 

 

It gave me a lot to think about too

 

Dec

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