So for the last two weeks I've been suffering serious Abandonment issues.. Real bad.
This really has nothing to do with anyone other than ME.
It is MY issue and mine to deal with but it is still VERY painful and frighting.
The confusion and sadness gets overwhelming and it brings me to a very dark place.
This is one of my many personality traits that came with me growing up under the circumstances that I did.
It is, among other things something that I am constantly working on.
To become a better version of myself.
To evolve in to the person that I was always meant to be.
Hopefully this will give you some insight to what it's like to be me.
Fear of abandonment is very strong in ACAs and differs from the fear of rejection.
Adult children of alcoholics seem to be able to handle rejection and adjust to it.
Fear of abandonment, however, cuts a lot deeper because of childhood experiences.
The child who experiences living with alcoholism grows into an individual with a weak and very inconsistent sense of self, as we have already discussed.
This is a very, very critical self which has not had the nurturance it needed.
It is a hungry self and, in many ways, a very insecure self.
This is caused by the fact that you never knew when, or if, your parents would be emotionally available to you.
You expected unpredictability and inconsistency.
Once the drinking began, you simply did not exist.
Your needs would not be met until the drinking episode and any accompanying crises were over.
There was no way to predict when this would occur.
What a terrible, terrible feeling.
No matter what you did to try to prevent it, it would happen anyway.
Some children living in this situation continue trying to get their needs met, and others give up entirely.
Those children who give up entirely are not as anxious to enter into adult relationships as are those who still hold onto the fantasy that maybe, just maybe, this time things will be different.
The constant fear, however, is that the person you love will not be there for you tomorrow.
In an attempt to guard against losing your beloved, you idealize the relationship and idealize your role in the relationship.
Your safeguard against being abandoned is to try hard to be perfect and serve all the other person's needs.
Whenever anything goes wrong (and in life, things go wrong), and when there is conflict (and in life, there is conflict), the fear of being abandoned takes precedence over dealing with the pertinent issue which needs to be resolved.
This fear is so great that it is not unusual for ACAs to completely lose sight of the actual problem.
