Overcoming your abandonment issues is not a one-man’s job but it begins with you. Sometimes your deep-rooted abandonment issues can affect your most important relationships. You’re always on the edge of your seat because you’re anticipating the moment your boss will fire you or your partner will break up with you. You’re always thinking that one way or another, that’s how everything will end or even worse you jump the gun and do the abandoning yourself before it’s done to you. If that sounds like you, you’re probably suffering from unhealed abandonment wounds. You’re still dealing with some of your earlier abandonment issues from your parents or your friends or what you were conditioned to believe as a child.

Abandonment wounds start itching when you’re triggered by a change of behavior that reminds you of the moments that you were abandoned or the moments before your abandonment. People who have experienced neglect from their parents or separation or those who have been through a traumatic experience especially during childhood are more likely to develop abandonment issues. That being said, aside from therapy, with the right kind of self-awareness, self-care, and monitoring of your emotional responses, you can overcome your fears of being abandoned and navigate your way through healthier bonds and relationships.

More often than not, your abandonment issues can truly affect your choices in relationships and in life. There are two types of people in this scenario, people who alienate themselves and become detached from everyone because they’d rather deal with everything alone instead of trusting someone, getting attached and risk being abandoned again, and people who cling too tightly to any kind of relationship, even if it’s toxic because they fear being alone. Other behaviors include over-giving in relationships, people-pleasing, attention-seeking, picking unavailable partners, and possessiveness.

The journey of healing your abandonment issues begins with the awareness that you haven’t been operating from the part of you that’s trusting and loving, you’ve been operating from the part of you that’s fearful and anxious. You also tend to generalize instead of just honing in on the experience or the person, you make it a general assumption about people and life. Regulating your emotions is also crucial to avoid overreacting to those who trigger those old wounds.

By educating yourself about the causes of your abandonment issues and what tendencies you have as a result of it, you can understand yourself better and start working your way into more trusting and loving bonds and you can start feeling more secure in your workplace. Also, by realizing that you play a big role in fulfilling your unmet needs and desires, you will be able to take that kind of pressure off people and start making choices that complement your life instead of just filling a void or repeating the same old cycles of abandonment.