3 Signs You’re Suffering from an Abandonment Wound in Relationships
We all live with abandonment wounds. Often they stem from the way our parents or caregivers treated us. But later in life they show up in relationships, where we feel rejected or betrayed.
These feelings might not stem from big, traumatic events – sometimes they develop from subtle, ongoing dynamics where we don't feel safe to be ourselves.
Understanding when our abandonment wounds are showing up means we can deal with them more effectively. In this episode, Lorin offers practical ways to heal, focusing on self-awareness and emotional regulation.
We start by becoming aware of how we react to those feelings of rejection when they come up. We then need to practice self-compassion and patience.
Exposed or unaddressed abandonment wounds can lead to strained relationships and constant anxiety. We can find ourselves stuck in a cycle of fear and mistrust, unable to build healthy connections. But, by observing our reactions in relationships, and noticing when feelings of abandonment surface, we can take those first steps toward healing.
Mentioned in this episode:
Healing the Abandonment Wound
A 2½ hour virtual workshop with Lorin for women and men
Healing the Abandonment Wound
A 2½ hour virtual workshop with Lorin for women and men
Transcript
An abandonment wound is one of the most common wounds that we experience in this life.
Speaker:Maybe you were physically or emotionally abandoned by your parents or caregivers.
Speaker:Or later on in your adult life, you felt abandoned in an intimate relationship.
Speaker:Or you have experienced betrayal, you were betrayed in a relationship and you developed an abandonment wound, it's often directly linked.
Speaker:Now.
Speaker:It doesn't necessarily have to be this very big experience that you remember.
Speaker:It could have been any relationship dynamic where you felt that not all of who you are was welcome.
Speaker:Where you felt you couldn't express and embody all of who you are because it didn't feel safe, for instance.
Speaker:This can also lead to an abandonment wound.
Speaker:It doesn't have to be something gigantic.
Speaker:It can be a very subtle thing that takes place over a longer period in a relationship.
Speaker:Today we will go into the three signs that you are struggling with an abandonment wound in relationships.
Speaker:Some of these signs might blow your mind because they're not necessarily traced to an abandonment wound.
Speaker:They will allow you to truly understand this at a deeper level, understand at a deeper level what you might be experiencing in relationships.
Speaker:And at the end of the episode, I will share with you practical ways and steps, how you can heal an abandonment wound, including my own favorite practice and techniques that I have used to heal my own abandonment wounds.
Speaker:Welcome to the Masculine and Feminine Dynamics podcast.
Speaker:My name is Lorin Krenn and I'm a coach, author, and hypnotherapist.
Speaker:I help you to understand masculine and feminine dynamics.
Speaker:Let's dive in.
Speaker:Sign number one, you have a fear of rejection.
Speaker:A fear of rejection is intrinsically connected and linked to having an abandonment wound.
Speaker:Psychologists refer to this as wearing abandonment glasses, meaning you filter the world through this fear of rejection rather than seeing the world as it actually is.
Speaker:And what is this filter?
Speaker:This filter is a question, but this is not a question you ask yourself consciously.
Speaker:It runs in the background in your subconscious.
Speaker:And the question is as follows: am I being rejected?
Speaker:And by filtering the world and relationships specifically through this question, you experience life in a different way, and here is the thing.
Speaker:The moment this question gets answered with, yes, this immense pain that you have experienced when you were abandoned, whether physically, or emotionally resurfaces.
Speaker:Now here is the thing.
Speaker:It doesn't necessarily mean that you are actually being rejected, that you're actually being abandoned.
Speaker:If your mind interprets it or there is a strong emotional trigger and you see it in that way, that question gets answered with, yes, I am being rejected right now.
Speaker:And then this old pain.
Speaker:This, this pain that very, some people just experience it to this varysing degree.
Speaker:For some people, it can literally feel as if they are going to die.
Speaker:They feel an immense sense of hopelessness, despair, shame, and immense pain.
Speaker:I have helped many people work through this, but I have personally experienced this in my life.
Speaker:When my father died early in my life, I developed a very strong abandonment wound, and I felt that life through this lens of am I being rejected right now, and this question would get answered for totally illogical reasons.
Speaker:I would think, oh, I'm being rejected or abandonment right now, even though it wasn't actually happening.
Speaker:And I felt as if I was going to die.
Speaker:I felt so much pain arise.
Speaker:I had no idea how to cope with this.
Speaker:So if you are experiencing this, I want you to know you can heal this and you are not alone.
Speaker:Also, this fear of rejection.
Speaker:It's often paired with shame.
Speaker:There is a sense of deep shame around you feeling this vulnerable, and you feeling this fragility, and having this constant fear that you are being rejected.
Speaker:And this shame that you feel perpetuates the fear of rejection as it adds more pressure.
Speaker:And everything that adds more pressure to a wound or to a fear that you are experiencing, doesn't allow you to actually be in a state of compassion, be in a state of non-judgment, and for you to surrender, to accept what you are experiencing.
Speaker:Surrender, compassion non-judgment, acceptance is, is the beginning of healing.
Speaker:Without it, there can be no healing, so what the shame ultimately does, it keeps you stuck.
Speaker:It keeps you stuck because it doesn't allow you to, um, begin the journey of healing or begin the process of healing this pain.
Speaker:Now, how does a fear of rejection show up practically in your intimate life?
Speaker:There are many ways, but these are the two most common ways.
Speaker:Number one is you become overly needy.
Speaker:And when you become overly needy, you might find yourself scanning constantly in your intimate life.
Speaker:Whether the other person still loves you, is still committed to you, or whether they're going to reject you, or are in the process of slightly rejecting you.
Speaker:So it can, for instance, when my father fell ill and these three years of him battling cancer, he was emotionally distancing himself from me, which of course, because he felt so much pain, he didn't know how to cope with it.
Speaker:And I felt this deep sense of abandonment, but it occurred at this subtle way.
Speaker:More and more it felt as if he was distancing until it felt as if I had no father figure anymore, even though he was still alive, there was no emotional connection.
Speaker:So later on I would constantly scan, are they rejecting me right now or are they in the process of sadly starting to reject me, right?
Speaker:So this, the reason I'm sharing this with you is because this might be playing out.
Speaker:It's not like they're banning me fully right now.
Speaker:It's this subtle process that can cause so much anxiety ,and then you are constantly scanning.
Speaker:And what happens when you are constantly scanning and you are totally identified with that, what happens is, it leads you to feeling more rejected.
Speaker:Why is that?
Speaker:Is it because they are rejecting you?
Speaker:Maybe, but not necessarily.
Speaker:In most cases, what happens is when you become overly needy, you become inauthentic.
Speaker:When you are overly needy and you are scanning and you are trying to see do they still love me, you disconnect from your power, you disconnect from your authentic state of being.
Speaker:And we can always, at a deeper level, perceive someone else's nervous system.
Speaker:That's how connected we are.
Speaker:And the other person can feel your state inside.
Speaker:And when your state is one of neediness and you are not able to express that, or you're not able to work with that, and you're totally identify with it, then they feel you as inauthentic.
Speaker:They don't understand this necessarily, conceptually unconsciously, but something deeper and archaic and primal within them puts them on guard with you, because they can feel that you want something in that moment, but you are not what, expressing it in a conscious way because you are going through unconscious programming, so to speak.
Speaker:You can sense that they are a little bit like on guard with you, and that is then seen as affirmation that they are rejecting you right now.
Speaker:And this is then what perpetuates the cycle of you becoming more needy, more needy, more needy, and at worst, losing yourself entirely in it until they leave you, not because they don't love you, but because you have lost yourself entirely in that.
Speaker:You have disconnect from your truth, from your heart, from your power, from your true state of being.
Speaker:And then what happens?
Speaker:A voice says, see?
Speaker:I always get rejected.
Speaker:I always get abandoned.
Speaker:Here is the self-fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker:The other common way this shows up is you abandoning them before they can abandon you, which is a paradox because as you push people away and abandon them, you feel deeply lonely.
Speaker:And you, you can actually not build the healthy relationships, of course, that you want to experience.
Speaker:What's happening here is you are overly protecting your heart.
Speaker:So when you are needy, it's like you are handing your heart to the other person and say, do whatever you want with it.
Speaker:I will please, I will be needy.
Speaker:I will chase, I will do whatever to get any sense of love.
Speaker:Here it's the other way around.
Speaker:You don't let the other person into your heart.
Speaker:And the moment it gets challenging, the moment it gets deep, the moment this abandonment wound is touched in any shape or form, you abandon them before they abandon you.
Speaker:There are many people who are unable to actually have deep relationships because the moment anything goes deep, they sabotage their relationship by pulling out, provoking, starting an argument, unconscious ways of self-sabotage.
Speaker:So once again, the self-fulfilling prophecy occurs, everyone abandons me, everyone rejects me, I'm not good enough, I'm not worthy.
Speaker:And some people are so stuck in that, that it can literally not be in healthy relationship with anyone.
Speaker:Not their friends, not their coworkers.
Speaker:No, no one in, and of course not in their intimate relationships.
Speaker:You abandon them before they abandon you because you are so afraid of being rejected and feeling that old pain.
Speaker:But of course, by abandoning them first, you experience this pain.
Speaker:Again, you are not protecting yourself from the pain.
Speaker:You are just keeping it alive and trying to hide from it.
Speaker:Sign number two, you have a fear of commitment.
Speaker:Struggling with an abandonment wound is often directly linked with having a fear of commitment.
Speaker:Commitment is perceived as extremely unsafe, as this thing of they can leave me at any moment, they can abandon me at any moment, and that feels extremely scary.
Speaker:And commitment fears can be so sneaky because we can so easily spiritually bypass a fear of commitment.
Speaker:It's because once again, there is so much shame around it.
Speaker:It takes an incredible level of radical honesty with yourself and, and maturity and depth to be able to say, wow, I've got a fear of commitment.
Speaker:That's really hard to acknowledge.
Speaker:That is seen as very shameful.
Speaker:You're not supposed to have that.
Speaker:And that shame then leads you to unconsciously mask it.
Speaker:It might be masked by things such as I feel more free on my own.
Speaker:Now, there's nothing wrong with being on your own and settling only for the right person.
Speaker:You should absolutely do that.
Speaker:However, if you say, I am more free on my own, and you are not opening yourself to the possibility of a relationship, then ultimately you are hiding.
Speaker:I believe you.
Speaker:You might feel more free on your own, but you are hiding.
Speaker:Why not open yourself to the possibility of having an amazing relationship?
Speaker:Can you see the distinction?
Speaker:One is I feel happy on my own, but I am open to an amazing partner or the right person entering my life.
Speaker:The other is I want to be on my own because that's where I feel safe and protected.
Speaker:And that is linked to a fear of commitment.
Speaker:And of course at a level deeper, it is an abandonment wound.
Speaker:Another one is, I am a free spirit.
Speaker:I'm a free spirit.
Speaker:I'm adventurous and I just need to explore life and all these kind of things.
Speaker:All the melodies are often things we kind of adopt or use unconsciously to mask a fear of commitment.
Speaker:Because what we're essentially saying there is that, again, we need to somewhat protect our adventurous spirit.
Speaker:But my question to you is you can experience the deepest adventure and deepest depth by devoting your entire heart and soul to the right person, and going to the deepest steps with them.
Speaker:Another way that fear of commitment can show up is they weren't right for me.
Speaker:So always focusing on the flaws.
Speaker:Of course, you should not be in a relationship that truly doesn't feel in alignment.
Speaker:However, a fear of commitment can show up that you're always looking for the flaws.
Speaker:And guess what happens when you always look for the flaws?
Speaker:You are going to find flaws.
Speaker:No person is perfect, and this then holds you back because by.
Speaker:Over exaggerating the flaws, you are not able to create a deep and meaningful union, because you are overly focused on that, and that is then being used as an excuse that they weren't the right person.
Speaker:No, they're not the right person because of this, because of that, because of this, because of that.
Speaker:The funny thing is people who have a high standard of perfection, often themselves are not the embodiment of that standard in most cases.
Speaker:So it's a kind of total contradiction in that sense.
Speaker:And ultimately we can only expect others to do what we embody ourselves because that's the energy we bring into the world.
Speaker:The world or reality I live in is that what I embody.
Speaker:I get back from the world, and if I don't embody that, then I cannot expect that from someone else.
Speaker:these are all ways how we unconsciously mask a fear of commitment.
Speaker:We are afraid of truly acknowledging that this is at the core.
Speaker:And what is the fear?
Speaker:The fear is by opening ourselves, the vulnerability and fragility of trusting another person and, uh.
Speaker:Investing all your energy, and ultimately so much time into that person with the possibility they can abandon you, create so much fear, so much anxiety that the abandonment wound manifests as a fear of commitment because you feel more protected when you are not taking that huge risk.
Speaker:However, you are actually not protected.
Speaker:You are in a state of pain and you are hiding.
Speaker:Life is about opening your heart.
Speaker:You cannot go to the deepest steps as long as you are hiding from true commitment.
Speaker:Sign number three, you have trust issues.
Speaker:An abandonment wound often manifests as having trust issues.
Speaker:This can be especially painful in your intimate life.
Speaker:You constantly question their intention.
Speaker:You doubt the other person, and this changes your energy and they can feel it.
Speaker:At worst, it leads to you checking their texts, not believing them, and an immense sense of jealousy.
Speaker:At a more subtle level.
Speaker:It expresses itself as relationship anxiety.
Speaker:You have this constant sense of anxiety that you cannot trust them.
Speaker:This can be often linked to betrayal trauma that you've experienced, or any relationship dynamic where you felt deeply rejected, or you felt that you had to suppress certain parts of yourselves, where you felt that not all of you was safe to be embodied and to be expressed.
Speaker:And now there is this deep fear, what if I'm going to end up in the same situation again?
Speaker:So now that manifests as trust issues.
Speaker:And while it is only healthy to protect your heart, to acknowledge when the other person shows up in a way that crosses your boundaries, here it is in overdrive.
Speaker:Little moments can lead to extreme distrust.
Speaker:You questioning their character, questioning their relationship, right?
Speaker:Little moments of challenge, of tension of the imperfect nature of life.
Speaker:Sometimes there is just a challenging, tense moment.
Speaker:Sometimes you misunderstand each other, sometimes you.
Speaker:express an old wound or your inner child becomes activated.
Speaker:All these things are welcome in a healthy, mature relationship because it's the place where you work and work through them safely and connect even deeper.
Speaker:But here, these little moments create these immense sense of relationship anxiety.
Speaker:And if you're constantly doubting the relationship, questioning them, your state changes.
Speaker:And, and, and if it's really, you identify yourself too much with it, then what's going to happen is your partner's going to feel that.
Speaker:And feeling that the other person doesn't trust us is very, very painful, because also it then doesn't allow us to fully trust them, so it then creates distrust from the other person, and once again, where does this in the end then lead to if it's unchecked and you don't work on it?
Speaker:You getting abandoned, you being rejected.
Speaker:Now, when we talked about the commitment, a fear of commitment, that is where you basically try to hide from that self-fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker:But hiding does not mean you heal it.
Speaker:Some wounds can only be healed.
Speaker:In relationships and the abandonment wound at the deepest level can only be healed in relationships.
Speaker:So you cannot hide.
Speaker:You have to lean in.
Speaker:And there you can heal it at the deepest level.
Speaker:Which brings us to the conversation of how do you heal an abandonment wound.
Speaker:Healing and abandonment wound is about learning to regulate your nervous system.
Speaker:As you learn to regulate and self-soothe you increase your window of tolerance.
Speaker:As you increase your window of tolerance, you are able to be present with the pain without a coping mechanism.
Speaker:As you are able to be present with the pain, without running away, without escaping, without numbing, without running, without becoming needy, without scanning, without anything, you are able to kind of keep the experience inside.
Speaker:Not keeping it and suppressing it, but rather than it spilling outwardly and you getting needy or running, it, it's something you can hold within.
Speaker:And as you are able to be present with the emotion, the old pain of feeling abandoned, you are naturally able to integrate it, to heal it, because you are now able to tolerate it.
Speaker:And that's where you want to get to.
Speaker:You don't want to get, well, you want to of course get entirely, you want to heal it entirely, but if you have this mindset of I need to get rid of it, then that's too far thinking into the future, blocking you from actually taking the steps needed right now.
Speaker:The first step is to be able to tolerate it.
Speaker:As you are able to tolerate it, you are able to be present with it.
Speaker:As you are able to be present with it, you are able to process the pain.
Speaker:And that doesn't necessarily happen immediately.
Speaker:It doesn't, there's no big bang and suddenly it's all gone.
Speaker:Or at least in most cases there isn't.
Speaker:It's a gradual journey.
Speaker:But the gradual journey is not a problem if you are able to tolerate it.
Speaker:What's, What's so challenging is when you are not able to tolerate it, because then you need to escape it somehow, and that escapism causes so much pain and prevents you from experiencing the meaningful and deep relationship and relationships that you truly want to create.
Speaker:Very, very powerful practices to regulate your nervous systems are the following.
Speaker:Hypnotherapy.
Speaker:I'm a hypnotherapist myself.
Speaker:It's a big part of the work I do, I blend hypnotherapy with the work I'm doing, and it's an incredibly powerful, powerful tool to work with the subconscious.
Speaker:Hypnotherapy allows you to go deeper because you can be conceptually aware that you have an abandonment wound, but that doesn't mean you are working with your subconscious.
Speaker:It's almost like your conscious awareness is blocking you in a sense from working with your subconscious.
Speaker:And what we do with hypnotherapy is we bypass the conscious minds and we are able to work with the subconscious directly.
Speaker:The place where the limiting belief I always get abandoned lives and is perpetuated and where this kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, comes from.
Speaker:Another powerful way would be cold immersions would be EFT, emotional freedom, tapping.
Speaker:Any somatic healing practices to name a few.
Speaker:TRE for instance, or somatic breath work release practices, shaking trauma release, any trauma release practices ultimately, and and there are so many others.
Speaker:At the end of the day, it's about trusting your intuition as your intuition will guide you to the right healing practice.
Speaker:But I want to give you some tips and a powerful framework around this.
Speaker:Tip number one, do not overstimulate your nervous system.
Speaker:Learning to regulate your nervous system is about number one, slow, number two, gentle, and number three, one thing at a time.
Speaker:Not 10 things at the same time, because then it resembles again this total overstimulation that we are experiencing in the world.
Speaker:You are totally awesome and expect this, duh duh duh, and from that state, you're actually not able to relax.
Speaker:And if you can't relax, you cannot heal, because you are in the sympathetic portion of a nervous system, this kind of fight or flight state is activated and you need to be in your parasympathetic, which is rest and digest.
Speaker:That part needs to be activated in order for you to be able to process the deeper pain, for you to deeper heal.
Speaker:So you want the emphasis to have on slow, gentle, and one step at a time.
Speaker:So some speaking about this, you might feel a sense of relief.
Speaker:Your intuition will guide you, but stick with something, unless of course it makes you feel worse, then don't.
Speaker:But stick with something.
Speaker:Make it a regular part of your practice and you will increase your window of tolerance, of being able to work with this.
Speaker:And the moment you can tolerate it, you can heal it.
Speaker:It's just when you can't tolerate it, that then it becomes stuck and then you feel that you can't heal it, and there's this constant sense of despair.
Speaker:One of the things I did not do until I learned that I had to do this is I knew I had a strong abandonment wound, but I never laser focused, on working with it, laser focused on a specific practice that allows me to help to tolerate the pain.
Speaker:And once I started doing that, I was able to have these moments of embodied experiences where I was able to hold it without projecting it outwardly, or escaping or numbing it.
Speaker:And these little moments change everything.
Speaker:One brief moment of experiencing this creates such powerful momentum that when you stick with it and commit and devote yourself to this healing journey, you can heal it.
Speaker:And there is light at the end of the tunnel.
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