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CLINICAL GUIDE 3
(if you have any questions at all having read our clinical guides simply call on 07702155267 and we would be pleased to help).
WHY DO I FEAR THAT OTHERS WILL ALWAYS LEAVE ME?
THE TERRIFYING THREAT OF ABANDONMENT.
A trauma informed clinical guide to the underlying childhood reasons and attachment patterns to explain the fear of aloneness and abandonment that may feel threatening, terrifying and isolating.
The Terror of Aloneness
As a way of living in which you may have come to experience the meaningful relationships with partners and perhaps close friends as containing a constant threat of losing that relationship, and perhaps even part of yourself with it, it can feel like constantly living on the edge of abandonment, of being left alone in the world (which can be explored in more depth in our theoretical model).
You may feel that there is no-one who loves or likes me enough to stay with me; that anything may jeopardise the relationship; perhaps a constant fear that as soon as I do, or feel I have, done something wrong, I will be left; that any angry word from them will remind me that they will leave; that if I am not always on my best behaviour, always trying to do things right, then they will leave.
This is such an awful fear inducing, anxiety creating, way of being. Quite possibly along with the constant worry of being deserted and perhaps an inevitable conclusion that you will be completely alone you may also carry those dreadful accompanying bodily feelings like nausea, a sick stomach feeling; perhaps headaches; perhaps you carry such tension that you may may suffer from cramps, back or other physical pain or symptoms; an in depth understanding of these feelings can be found in our main clinical guide.
As sentient human beings, being in relationship is crucial to our existential survival. When we fear abandonment and believe that we will be always alone and out of meaningful relationship we can feel the terror of rejection and may plunge into feelings of hopelessness. It may be like believing that we are unlovable and have no worth.
We start from the principle that you were not born like this: at CCRTT we understand at depth how these beliefs come to exist and how deeply they are held and with such conviction. Such is the power of early life experiences in forming our beliefs about who we are and what we can expect from our world.
At CCRTT we also believe that change into a different set of beliefs and experiences is possible.
Why Does This Fear Feel So Real?
When we first see clients who suffer from this reality it is striking that this is their world: the reality of the world you live in has been an ever-present conviction. A conviction that brings with it anxiety, perhaps even fear, which is always hanging around waiting to tip us into an inevitable doubt. Perhaps it has been around for as long as you can remember and has become beyond question.
The roots of such thoughts will almost certainly have been around for a long time and naturally the longer a pattern exists without challenge the more deep rooted it becomes. The nature of the origin is also key to an understanding of the convicted reality.
Our individual reality is shaped by our earliest experiences which are laid down in our minds as neuronal connections. Those connections, unless and until they are given different experiences, form the basis of our life assumptions and they become more and more hardwired if they remain unchallenged. These are not simple thoughts but convictions that may feel like they pervade you. No wonder such patterns can feel so real, as you may be trapped in a world and cycle of threat.
How is it that I have come to believe this about others and relationships?
Relationship lies at the heart of our meaning and purpose in being human and feeling meaningfully alive for ourselves. It is perhaps hardly surprising therefore that if we believe that those who we have come to know and love, whether as life-partners or friends, will at some point desert us then we can begin to understand how this conviction can be such a source of threat and fear.
There are two elements that work in tandem to create this intolerable set of circumstances:
- the first is that there is a belief that these special people will reject and abandon us and with that comes the question of understanding how this belief comes to exist and why.
- the second is the meaning and implications of this threat to us which creates the consequent feelings which may include for example loneliness, hopelessness, isolation, pointlessness, worthlessness.
When you are conscious of these fears it may be that this is all you are aware of, that the headline of ‘people always leave me’ is utterly overwhelming. Perhaps it is just too difficult to think of this being ‘just who I am’ and there is nothing I can do about it. Much of it may be to do with feeling safe: when there are others around, it is then that I feel safe. Perhaps when you meet new people there is doubt or perhaps even an expectant hope that this person may be different until your stronger beliefs of desertion and abandonment take over.
There are reasons, good reasons, that you have been left with this tragic view of life and people. At CCRTT we work with exactly these sorts of problems: belief that people are unreliable, untrustworthy and that we do not have enough meaning to them to make them want to hang around; there are very good reasons for this for which you can learn more in our main Clinical Guide. We are very experienced at helping clients like you to come to a different set of beliefs. So, what is it that happens that leaves us with these beliefs in the first place.
Understanding how early life can shape our beliefs.
Perhaps we can peer a little deeper into what may be the beliefs behind your convictions. One starting point may be to think about the extent to which you feel you have a worth to others and the extent to which you believe this for yourself. It would be common, for example, for those who fear desertion and abandonment not to believe in their own worth.
However, we are not born with these convictions. Our infant selves are not capable of thinking like this. When the infant is born it simply knows fear. It is also the time when the mind is shaped. This happens primarily through early experiences of others: primary carers, extended family, siblings: more information on these implications can be found in our Foundation Clinical Guide..
During this time your infant mind is registering new experiences at the rate of 1m new neural connections/second. These early life connections are laid down as implicit memory. Think of it as being your hard wiring and the underpinning foundations of your belief systems of your place in the world and with others. These very early experiences become our convictions.
Infants think in very binary terms: black and white, good and bad. In neuroscientific terms their pre-frontal cortex is insufficiently developed to process experience in any sophisticated way of understanding experience which simply therefore gets labelled in terms of safety. Do I now feel safe and comforted or unsafe and fearful.
Where our primary carers, for their own developmental reasons, cannot give us appropriate love, care and comfort we come to believe that they are not available; we are left feeling vulnerable, that no-one is there and also that we must not have any value because otherwise they would respond. This is often referred to as attachment anxiety: there is more on attachment anxiety in our main Clinical Guide. Being consistently left in a position of vulnerable threat and fear is the source of Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
In addition, if we have also suffered at any point from any desertion perhaps from death or divorce or similar then a further reason for a sense of traumatic abandonment will be laid down in as a conviction that this is how people, especially those we depend upon, behave.
How does this early life experience then become my adult conviction?
The problem with infant memory is that it is laid down without being processed – without being questioned and internally reflected upon. This memory is therefore held as a conviction in our brain and it is that conviction about ourselves, and millions of other connections, that shape our personality into adulthood.
Where these convictions are unhelpful to us we create strategies, known as defences, to protect ourselves in this perceived world which also begin in childhood. These defences are intended to protect us from the feelings of threat, hurt, rejection, abandonment that accompany and are consequent on from these early life memories.
Where we feel that there is a threat of being rejected and deserted we can adopt strategies that will we hope persuade people that we have a worth and that we are worthy of their love and attention. These are known as ‘conditions of worth’. A further underlying tragic consequence of these early life experiences is that we can feel that we have no intrinsic worth – the whole subject of self-worth and self-esteem is covered in greater depth in Clinical Guide 4.
We have not been left with a self-confidence and certainty about our own self worth that means we are able to exist without these fears that we suffer. We might think of this as being rooted in our inability to believe in and have confidence in who we are: we just have not been given that affirmation and love that has left us with that life giving belief.
We therefore adopt a defence of using things like gifts, or generosity or good deeds to persuade others that we do have a worth and that therefore they might not leave us. These defences become part of our hard wired way of being. The further tragedy is that they often only partially work and we still continue to encounter the fears that eventually people just leave.
Eventually life can become too overwhelming; we work hard to be likeable but still we become overwhelmed. Perhaps we have worked so hard and then someone has left and we are deserted again. We can feel even more hopeless and helpless and seek help. CCRTT can, and successfully do, help people just like you.
Can these patterns of fear and doubt about people and relationships be changed?
If it is a universal truth that we exist from and in a relationship then it is perhaps understandable that to be certain that others will always desert us is an especially painful place to exist. How can we feel safe in the world if there is always a threat of aloneness and existential loss of meaning.
While therapy has always had a successful track record with clients who take the step into therapy it has also been held in doubt. Thankfully we now have the neuroscientific evidence which demonstrates that apparent convictions that feel so painful and impossible to shift can be changed.
Neuroscience has demonstrated that by giving ourselves consciously different experiences the established patters of our neural pathways can be changed. This means that these unhelpful convictions can be changed and more information on this process can be found in our main Clinical Guide 1.
What we mean by ‘consciously different’ is to be fully aware that we are making a different choice and response to a set of circumstances. In doing so we engage the reasoning processes of the thinking part of our brain, the pre-frontal cortex, rather than the implicit memories contained in our long terms memory known as the Limbic system which tell us that people will go, we are worthless and all the other unhelpful convictions.
This is hard work because we are challenging ourselves to believe a different narrative. However, you are not alone. This is, in part, the role of therapy.
How Psychotherapy initiates and facilitates change: the journey to a better life.
Often our clients will come to CCRTT with their fear of being deserted and abandoned as something that has felt like it has been eternally present; that they cannot recall what it was like not to feel this underling sense of fear; that not only will people leave but I am then destined to be on my own for ever.
We have discussed above some of the characteristics of the internal world of those who live with this uncertainty. The conditions under which this pattern comes to exist and the underlying causes and reasons may never have been questioned. It just is. It is how I was born can be a common response.
The Psychotherapist will work empathically and compassionately with you to explore what your mind and developing sponge-like brain may have encountered to leave the mind convinced of these patterns and for that then to become sewn in to your personality. The work and process of Psychotherapy is explained in greater depth in our main Clinical Guide.
Much of who we are is held in our unconscious minds in such a way that we are unaware of how it is that we respond to certain circumstances in certain ways, some of which are profoundly unhelpful; the subject of toxic relationships s covered in greater depth in Clinical Guide 2. In therapy the therapist facilitates an exploration of your early life experiences and helps you to make sense of the possible underlying experiences that have shaped you.
The source of the minds unhelpful convictions can be exposed and with that understanding will support you as you begin to challenge these deeply held patterns. In challenging the patterns you will ask yourself to behave differently, see that you can survive and consciously notice these differences.
In this way the unhelpful neuronal patterns will be pruned and new ones based upon these differently interpreted conscious overt experiences will be laid down. In and through this process you will change and experience life through a different more beneficial lens.
I need to make a change - what next?
In a world where life is intended to be built on forming relationships of trust it is a terrible tragedy that your experience of relationship is one where the primary experience has been that of desertion.
Psychotherapy is built on relationship and in circumstances such as yours we model the therapy on profound and authentic empathy and compassion. Your pattern will be based originally on some form of experience of relationships. The legacy that you endure is completely understandable to CCRTT and we would like to support you as you come to your own understanding and thereby resolution. We will support you on your journey of change: one that we intend should leave you with a capacity to trust and to enjoy the richness of deep relationship. You owe it to yourself. We exist to help you to make the most of the rest of your life.
If aspects of this guide reflect your own experience, psychotherapy can help you understand how these patterns developed and, importantly, how they can begin to change.
We offer psychotherapy both in person in Cheltenham and online throughout the UK. If you would like to discuss whether this approach feels right for you, we welcome you to get in touch for an initial conversation by using our contact form or simply call 07702155267.
