Reflection
The Fear of Abandonment: Where It Comes From, What It Destroys, and How It Heals
The fear of abandonment is the persistent terror that the people we love will eventually leave us, even when nothing suggests they will. It is almost always rooted in childhood, and almost always in attachment. There is a famous experiment in attachment theory, Mary Ainsworth’s Strange Situation: the caregiver leaves the room, then returns, and the child is observed. Some children remain stable, emotionally regulated; others cannot. Behind the second group one often finds an inconsistent parent: sometimes loving, sometimes unavailable. One also finds the great traumas, the losses, the neglect, the difficult separations of childhood. The work of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth remains the best map of this territory: it is generally the anxious and fearful-avoidant attachment styles that carry this fear.
And the fear does not stay in childhood. It is a prominent characteristic of borderline personality disorder, of anxiety disorders, of complex PTSD, and of dependent personality disorder.
A patient, and a permission
I remember a patient I had been working with for a long time. When I went on holiday, I had to tell her one or two months in advance, so that she could process it. And I gave her a rare permission: to text me during my break, to reassure herself that I was not disappearing. As a psychotherapist, in principle, there is no contact between sessions. In her case, the frame first had to prove something her childhood never had: that someone can be absent without abandoning.
Details have been altered to protect confidentiality.
The self-fulfilling prophecy
In a love relationship, the fear of abandonment often works as a self-fulfilling prophecy. You are so frightened that the other will leave you that you begin to control. You cling. You monitor, you call, you test. And that behaviour becomes unbearable for the other person, who eventually leaves. The fear has manufactured exactly what it dreaded. It is one of the most painful mechanisms I see in my consulting room: the person does not lose love because they are unlovable; they lose it because they cannot believe that they are loved.
What it looks like
The signs are recognisable: clinging, the constant need for reassurance, monitoring the phone and social media, the tests you set for the other person, jealousy, panic at the smallest separations, the difficulty of being alone. And sometimes the opposite: leaving first, before you can be left. It is also the ground on which emotional dependency grows, and the ground the narcissistic abuser knows how to exploit.
The work: building a secure attachment with yourself
How do we help? First, awareness: identifying your triggers, learning to recognise them at the moment they fire, and learning to move through them. Then, and this is the heart of the work: developing a secure attachment with yourself. Practising, constantly, self-soothing: deep breathing, grounding, kind self-talk. Building a positive sense of identity. And practising self-compassion, self-love.
On self-love, I want to say something. When a therapist asks you, do you love yourself?, be a little wary: it is a question that keeps psychotherapists in business, because nobody knows how to answer it. What does it mean, to love yourself? It depends on the morning; it depends on the mood. The question that interests me is more objective: did I take loving actions toward myself today? Did I brush my teeth? Did I eat breakfast? Did I try to present myself as well as I can? Did I wear warm clothes in winter? Did I do my hair? If I take loving actions toward myself, then I am loving myself, whether I feel it or not. Actions can be counted; the feeling often lies.
Expressing instead of controlling
The second movement is inside the relationship: improving communication. Instead of reaching for the control mechanisms, the monitoring, the manipulation, expressing: I feel worried, and I am afraid you will abandon me. That sentence, said out loud, does what ten strategies of control never will: it gives the other person the chance to reassure, instead of forcing them to flee.
The therapies, and the extremes
In terms of approaches, DBT, schema therapy, EMDR and attachment-focused therapies have proven themselves. The people around you count too: having others with whom you can say what you feel. And one must be honest: in extreme cases, this is long-term therapy, because what was built by years of inconsistency is rebuilt by years of constancy. That is exactly what the therapeutic relationship offers: the first relationship in which absence no longer means abandonment.
I see patients in English and in French, at Harley Street in London, in Paris, and by secure video. See also emotional dependency, borderline personality, narcissistic abuse, and the work on trauma. Book a consultation.
Download the free guide: this essay is part of the book The Hold: Recognising Narcissistic Abuse, Understanding the Fear of Abandonment, and the Way Out, with seven art therapy exercises. Download it freely (PDF). No sign-up, no email: it is a gift.
On the most bewildering attachment style: Disorganised Attachment.
To see where you stand: the codependency and emotional dependency test.
