Psychological and mental problems are often dismissed as not problems at all, which only reinforces them and makes the condition worse. One such psychological problem is the fear of abandonment, which can affect your life more profoundly than you care to admit.
What first needs to be understood is that the fear of abandonment is very different from feeling insecure, or feeling left out in all the relationships in your life. It is the complete conviction that when someone abandons you, you will not be able to carry on without them. There are many reasons why people develop such fears, and it is more common than is openly admitted. In fact, you might be suffering from a fear of abandonment and not know it at all.
Suggested read: 7 signs of abandonment issues you CANNOT ignore
One of the main causes of developing such a fear is the role of parents and parental figures in childhood. Death of a parent or divorce might lead to abandonment issues which might continue to plague a person well into their adulthood. However, it is not only separation from a parent which might lead to such fears. Even the lack of emotional support and love and care from people one would normally expect things like that from, might lead to feeling abandoned and left out in your later years. This constant fear of being personally rejected can affect you in more ways than one.
Here are some ways in which you can determine whether you have a fear of abandonment or not.
1. You find it difficult to trust someone completely
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When you fear being abandoned, you find it immensely difficult to trust someone completely, especially someone you don’t know very well, because you are primarily afraid of being emotionally invested in them. Trusting someone requires much more emotional effort than loving someone, which is why you tread the waters very carefully when it comes to investing your trust in another person.
When you suffer from a fear of abandonment, you constantly feel as though the person you are with will leave you, which is why you feel wary of trusting them in the first place. This in turn makes things worse for everyone because not only do you constantly crave for company and love and affection, but when people are willing to give it, you are unable to trust them, or trust yourself to take what they have to offer.
2. You dwell a lot on your past
As I have mentioned above, one of the main reasons why people suffer from a fear of being abandoned is because of some trauma that they might have experienced in the past, or in their childhood. One of the signs of your unnatural phobia of being left alone is not being able to let go of that past. If you find yourself constantly comparing your present situation with that of your past, and if the smallest, most random things in your present reminds you of what happened before and if you feel the need to talk about it with every new person you meet, then it is possibly because you try to tell everyone about your fear of being abandoned, without consciously realizing what you are doing.
A constant reference to the past implies an inability to detach oneself from it, which is regressive for your development in the present. It is debilitating and almost acts like a handicap when you are trying to adjust to new people and situations – this is what prevents you from giving good things a chance.
3. You constantly look for flaws in people
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After conducting several psychological experiments, it has been observed that people who suffer from an acute fear of being abandoned are unable to appreciate the positive aspects of a person’s personality upon meeting them. Even if you have been in a relationship with a person for a long time, it is likely that you seek out all their flaws and accost them for the smallest of mistakes and have no trouble ticking off everything that you think is wrong with them. This is a sign that you are suffering from an inability to see the inherent goodness in people, which again boils down to not being able to trust them.
4. You are almost always in a relationship, or craving for one
People who are unable to stand the thought of being alone oftentimes ensure, by some way or another, that they have a companion. Even though you do not really fall in and out of love very often, you seem to go in and out of relationships very often, and even if you are not in a relationship, you are constantly thinking about one. Lack of a relationship also leads to other mental problems like anxiety and depression and reinforcement of your fears.
Suggested read: 12 ways your abandonment issues affect your love life
5. You feel resentful when you are excluded
You find yourself feeling resentful a lot of the times when you are excluded from a group plan, or if your partner chooses to do something with their other friends or even their family, where you are not invited. Things like these are completely normal, except, in such occasions, you don’t feel normal at all. You feel insecure and resentful because your fears play up, making you feel as though they have chosen someone or something else over you, which is not always the truth. You feel as though they don’t need you, when in reality, you are afraid of how much you need them.
6. Small things make you jealous and insecure
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Just like you feel resentful when you are excluded from a plan or when someone chooses to do something else other than hang out with you (although with completely innocent and harmless intentions), you also start feeling jealous and insecure after the smallest of fights, after the most insignificant of altercations, and even the introduction of new people into the lives of the people that you care about. If you suffer from a fear of abandonment you feel a possessiveness and dominion towards the person you become overly attached to, because you constantly feel as though you are replaceable.
7. You sabotage your relationship just to test your partner
This is more an effect of your condition, rather than a sign that you have a fear of being abandoned, but it is a telltale signal nonetheless, which should lead to some serious self-evaluation. Because you are constantly afraid of someone leaving you, you are always testing them and ensuring that they are completely committed to you, which is unnecessary because they are committed to you anyway. Not only do you do this with people you are romantically involved with, but with your friends as well, just to determine how deep their affection for you is, and how likely they are to leave you. Not only is this absurd, but it is also harmful for your relationship, and this in fact might turn out to be the reason they ultimately leave you. Ironic, isn’t it?
8. You have very low self-esteem
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In order to determine whether you have the fear of being abandoned, you don’t need to constantly be telling yourself “I am afraid someone I love will leave me.” There are a lot of other ways in which this fear can manifest itself, including in the form of severe low self-esteem. When you are afraid of people leaving you, it is mostly because you think you’re not good enough (which is completely untrue). You are not only questioning and over-analyzing other’s motives, but yourself as well.
Suggested read: 12 tips on how to cope with abandonment issues in relationships
9. You end relationships before the other person can
If you have noticed that none of your relationships last for too long, then it is time to question why it happens, and how many times you have been the cause of these breakups. I won’t be surprised if you realize that almost all the relationships you have been in have ended because you chose to leave the person and not the other way around. Even though this might sound counter-productive for someone who apparently suffers from a fear of abandonment, there is a psychologically sound explanation for this as well. When you are interacting with someone intimately and emotionally, because of all the other reasons and signs mentioned above, you are unable to commit yourself fully because you are constantly afraid they will leave you, so you end up leaving them instead. Your leaving them is a screwed up way of empowering yourself and protecting yourself from that engulfing fear of being left alone.
There are a number of things you can do to get over your fear of abandonment, but the most important thing to remember now is that no matter what the cause of your fear, it is the reason for the abysmal social life and social anxiety that you have right now; it is a handicap that needs to be fixed, so that you can bloom as a person, and learn to take chances and let good opportunities come your way, despite the risks.
Featured image source: Shutterstock
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