You Can Never Be Abandoned Again
Most of my clients seeking to be secure want to feel and know at their core that they won’t be abandoned. That they’ll be safe and kept. What they don’t know is that they’re the ones in charge of doing the keeping and creating the safety.
They often don’t believe me when I say there is no one person outside of them that can provide just the right environment and say just the right words and behave just the right way at just the right time to make them feel sustainably whole.
Yes, hearing “I love you and I agree with what you said earlier” or finally feeling a warm hug after an argument has settled down are incredibly satisfying, regulating and often necessary relational repairs. On the flip side, what you may have noticed is that even when you get reassurance, it doesn’t quite hit the spot and you constantly need to hear more. Or that no amount of hugging makes you feel loved even though you think it will. Or you feel so overwhelmed with triggers that you have meltdowns or outbursts that have brought on shame and felt outside of your control.
Despite how uncontrollable these, often anxiety-filled, examples sound, they are all cues asking you to give yourself a lot more attention and care. While relational security is a collaborative effort, for continuous and true felt security, you are always a critical and often underutilized resource to yourself.
Worthiness, lovability, security, acceptance, attention etc. are all resources. If you decide that these things can only be given to you by someone outside of you, then you’ve effectively and psychologically created scarcity and anxiety. Realizing that these are resources that you innately have and can create more of, releases the urgency and belief that these can only come from other people.
The truth here is that even a “perfectly secure” partner or a newly transformed and thoughtful parent won’t give you the security that you think it will.
Finding out other people aren’t your core answer might sound disappointing, confusing or incorrect. However, the truth is that to recognize your own power within yourself is a monumental freedom.
It means you don’t need to wait for them to understand, validate or say the right thing because you can say what you need to hear and validate your own experiences. It means that you don’t wait to feel worthy of quality time or affection because you prioritize quality time and affection with yourself and/or take steps with integrity to get your needs met. It means you don’t have to outsource your security and transformation. It’s empowering to know that you have answers and resources.
What a privilege it is to have the responsibility to give care for another, to have someone special to get to know intimately enough that you can anticipate their needs. An important someone asking for your attention, entrusting you to get close to them and believing in your ability to tend to them. This person is you. Feel what an honor it is to be the person that gets to commit to knowing, caring and loving you so well that you never have to worry about feeling worthy of attention, whether or not you’ll be accepted or whether you’ll be kept.
Allow this to bend your mind a bit. It’s worth it to note that any childhood experiences of abandonment are rooted in your innate vulnerability and powerlessness. As a child, other people were making choices on your behalf and those choices could fully turn your world upside down. You were truly at the mercy of what and how adults around you believed and behaved, how they treated you, what they allowed you to do or express and how regulated they were or weren't. (With the consideration that adults all have varying levels of self-autonomy and self-authority) you are now an adult with much more autonomy and authority in your own life, someone “abandoning” you now likely doesn’t have the same consequences as it did when you were a child.
You might be saying “I can’t do this myself. It won't work.” It’s understood that you might be feeling this way. You are encouraged to delay your judgement about whether or not it will work and give it a try anyway. Consider if you’ve been repeating a pattern of seeking reassurance and how, ultimately, that hasn’t worked. So, give yourself a new consistent practice, one where you have much more influence on the outcome. New things feel weird and ineffective at first. Give yourself the chance for this to become familiar and effective with ongoing practice.
Now that you’re curious, you are wondering how you would practically apply this concept. Think of one recent scenario where you were mildly triggered and felt that you were missing worth, love, security or some other resource. Follow the A.I.R. acronym below with two considerations, one, that you do it without self-judgement and, two, that you commit to trying even if it feels silly.
Attention (Bring your attention to the trigger, notice what’s feeling sensitive)
Inquire (Ask yourself and fill in the blanks “I would feel love/secure/worthy etc. if someone said or did ____.)
Respond (Complete the action for yourself from step 2)
That’s it!
Look how accountable you are! You’re already doing the work!
You might be wondering what this all has to do with being in relationships with other people. Let me be clear, overall, our safety and security within relationships, societally and globally is a shared responsibility. Not just our own. We are interdependent beings and we receive great benefit by experiencing mutual support. The essential lesson here is simple. Our relationship with ourselves is significant and transformative and the power we have with ourselves is underestimated and underutilized.
Ultimately, the wish that you might have that others change in order for you to feel safe and kept has shaky outcomes. Your energy is much better spent on recognizing the power in your own responses to yourself and your accountability to yourself. This is why it’s so empowering for the truth to finally be revealed that you have the recipe for your own security and you never have to leave it in someone else's hands.
You not abandoning you does not preclude others from doing so. What it does do, though, is even more powerful, it strengthens your belief in yourself that you will be okay even if they do. It soothes you and allows you to be present in your body and less triggered when you feel the movement of someone else. It fortifies you against others' abandonment. Because at the root, when you feel that abandonment is on the horizon, it feels like a core truth. Thus, when you have a solid notion that you’ll be “kept”, you’re way less likely to feel the anticipated internal disaster of someone else leaving you — even if the being “kept” is by you. When you are your own anchor, you can never really be abandoned again.
A different, more regulated and contained response lives in you believing and understanding that you’re okay and “kept” despite abandonment from others. It doesn’t mean that pain will disappear in conflict or disconnection, but it does mean a more regulated and more front brain accessible “you” will be available through these interactions simply by you knowing how to respond to you. You knowing that you have you and, thus, can’t be thrust into the abyss of abandonment.
Your security is yours. Literally.