Abandonment Trauma And Relationships

When we experience abandonment trauma we self-sabotage our relationships with friends, family, and partners. We do this because we are afraid of being left and abandoned once again. We are constantly pulling away, testing these relationships and wanting.. needing them to chase after us, needing them to stay. We go above and beyond to pull them close, just to push them away to protect ourselves from the inevitable. 

I remember when so was about 11, my family and I were on our way to mount pleasant, a place we would go often together for our mini getaways. I can’t remember what triggered me, but I starting saying terrible things to my dad. “I hate you”, you’re mean” My dad had always been an amazing dad. I was and still am a daddy’s girl. I was excited for our vacation, I felt so much love for him in that moment, and I was triggered. The feeling of happiness, comfort, and love I felt at that moment was as a threat, which triggered fight or flight. I said these things to somewhat give my dad an “out”. My dad didn’t yell, but shook his head and sadly said “okay”. I don’t know how that made me feel in the moment, but I do know my dad never abandoned me, or stopped loving me.. but I continued to test both of my parents in a variety of ways throughout my childhood. 

As I got older this evolved into doing the same with friends and boyfriends. With friends, my fear of being left out, ditched, and not accepted consumed me. I always felt like they were talking about me behind my back. With boyfriends I had major trust issues. I would be so scared of getting hurt and being left, that I would betray them and leave them first. I couldn’t handle the thought of them hurting me and leaving me first. I’d push everyone away first and sabotage my relationships because my subconscious put me into fight or flight. 

My abandonment trauma began the moment I was separated from my birth mom. Her smell, the sound of her voice was there, and then it wasn’t. Creating the “primal wound”. My brain remembered when I felt love, comfort, and happiness, it would be taken away. My subconscious was there to “protect” me from feeling the same trauma. 

I could never figure out why I would do this. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. I wanted to stop. I needed to stop. What I was doing was self-destructing and I didn’t feel protected.. I felt broken. 

When I began my healing journey is when I finally realized there was nothing wrong with me. What I was feeling was real. I just needed to understand the why behind it. They why is what is helping me heal from the root of the trauma. Although this particular wound is irreversible, I can now recognize these emotions, acknowledging why it’s there, and change my reaction to it. 

My adoption, My Trauma

Moment of Realization

These last few weeks I have been doing a lot of research on parenting. I have two children, ages 8 and 4. My 4 year old has struggled with anger and behavior problems. “Why does he do this?”, I thought. I blamed him for his behavior. What I have learned is, his behavior was a reaction of mine and my husbands reaction to his emotions. He needed us, and instead of us looking past the behavior to figure out the cause of the behavior we reacted with frustration, anger and rejection. what he needed was the opposite. He needed us to let him know it was okay to feel these big emotions, and comfort him. We started “non-reactive parenting” and noticed a change the first day! More about this later, but understanding the connection between emotions and behavior is what brought me to finally remember my own traumas. 

I think my life changed twice. The day I was separated from my birth mother, creating the “primal wound”, and then again when I was told I was adopted. 

I was adopted into the most loving, supportive family. They did everything that was said to be “right”at that time as far as adoption. 

As I sit here and try to put an emotion with how I felt, I can’t. What do you mean you’re not my real mom? And that’s not my real dad? “Your birth mother wanted to give you a better life”, “you should be so grateful and happy”, “you were chosen for us”. Everything my mom said was positive, uplifting, and aimed at making me feel as good as I could about the situation. What I realize now, is that those words can’t control what the brain feels. I was confused, hurt, curious, angry and a million other emotions at the same time, but was being told I should feel happy and grateful. This only made me doubt my own feelings and confuse me even more. 

It was that moment everything changed. I become aggressive, and angry. I would punch and kick holes in walls. I would react to small things or nothing at all. I would scream “why did you buy me”, I would fight with my mom, act out in school, self-sabotage everything. 

Back then, you would punish your child for their behavior and that was the right thing to do. But l, I was bursting with emotions that weren’t being validated or acknowledged, and my body was screaming for help. This came out as anger. I now am beginning to understand I must’ve felt unheard and not understood. I felt like I lost trust in everything and everyone, and had some major abandonment trauma. I started lying, all the time, about everything, no matter how big or small. I now am coming to realize I was lying out of fear of being abandoned once again. I felt I was unlovable and “bad”, and something must be wrong with me. I needed my anger, confusion and other emotions to be validated, rather than corrected with what society believed an adoptee should feel. 

I thought maybe, just maybe, writing out my journey will not only help me, but help others in similar situations. 

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