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Abandonment in early childhood can affect a person for the rest of their life, resulting in low self-esteem, shame, and insecurity about whether they will ever be loved and cared for, or whether they can even count on it in the future. Abandonment need not be physical, as in a parent leaving due to divorce or death. It can be emotional, like when a parent isn’t present emotionally or simply withholds love and affection. Emotional abandonment can also lead to codependency in future adult relationships as a result of deep seated fears, feelings and perceptions of rejection.
Inability to Sleep Alone
These fears play a large role in adult relationships, and are a major reason why many adults cannot sleep alone. Sleeping or being alone can cause a person to feel empty and unable to meet their own needs. Relationships can fill that need, but a person with an abandonment history can feel lonely even in a relationship. Later however, the dependency on the relationship can turn into an addiction.
Walking on Egg Shells
The fear of abandonment can cause some to have very low self-esteem – feelings that they are never good enough or worthy of being loved. They go through life in a relationship walking on egg shells whilst hiding their flaws. Trying to make themselves needed, often tolerating abuse in the process, all in an attempt to avoid being alone and therefore rejected yet again.
Any new relationship break-up will be difficult to deal with and can potentially trigger childhood abandonment memories, in addition to losing part of themselves – i.e., those missing parts that were replaced by the relationship.
Attracting Lousy Relationships
These needy people often attract poor relationship choices by their subtle pleas for attention, or may push a potential partner away. The risk of codependency is real. The other person becomes their everything. The center of their new world, even becoming an obsession. Obsessions are an attempt to protect themselves from deeper emotional pain. These types of relationships can become an obsessive fantasy of what they would like to experience in a relationship or to fulfill happy memories of when life was better. Obsessions are driven by fear and pain. The fear can be of abandonment, rejection, or of being unloved. These fears and memories prevent the person from living in the present, robbing them of any kind of a life.
Mother’s Effect on Baby
Mothers play a much larger role than many realize. Young babies are so dependent on their mother that they aren’t yet aware they are physically separate! Every touch or lack thereof affects the baby. The way a mother holds, touches or responds to the baby impacts him. A mother’s anxiety, insecurity or impatience, even her tone of voice and facial expression are all communicated to the baby clearly. Research studies show that even if a mother is expressionless when talking to the baby this will cause the baby to get upset. It is therefore easy to understand how important the psychological needs of a child are, and the enormous effect of a parent leaving the relationship can have on their future.
This report is not a diagnosis. We hope this information can guide you toward improving your life.
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