Free Yourself from Abandonment Anxiety & Insecure Attachment

CEUs and Masterclasses are available at AllCEUs.com hey there everybody and welcome to this episode on a cognitive behavioral approach to addressing abandonment anxiety i'm your host dr dawn elise snipes in this presentation we're going to examine the cognitive behavioral approach we're going to define abandonment anxiety explore the roots of it and identify some cognitive behavioral techniques in order to help people address it so just a quick recap if you're not familiar with the cognitive behavioral approach the cognitive behavioral approach asserts that our thoughts feelings behaviors and perceptions all interact with one another so our thoughts

for example if we're in a negative mindset then that can have an impact on what we perceive when we are in a unpleasant mood our brain tends to focus more on the threats in the environment when we are in a happy mood our brain actually pays more attention To some of the positive things so our thoughts affect our perceptions our thoughts can affect our feelings if we're having pessimistic or negative thoughts it can increase feelings of anxiety or anger or depression our thoughts can affect our behaviors you know if you think that something is getting

ready to go wrong then you may actually take behavioral steps to change it and you can see from this uh presentation from this slide that all of those things interact and anywhere you start whether you start with behaviors or thoughts or perceptions each one of those is going to interact with the other one so i'm not going to go into super detail with that because there are plenty of other videos on cognitive behavioral but it's important to have a general understanding of the cognitive behavioral theory when we start talking about abandonment anxiety because abandonment anxiety

incorporates both thoughts about abandonment perceptions of people and the world and our feelings about others and about ourself which results in behaviors Whether you're a counselor social worker psychologist pastor or even a caseworker for the department of children and families you're likely going to encounter people with abandonment anxiety unfortunately it's true abandonment anxiety results in an ongoing undercurrent of stress and in other episodes we've talked a lot about the hpa axis or our threat response system when people fear abandonment when people fear anything it keeps that threat response system kind of amped up a little

bit so there is a constant or semi-constant undercurrent of anxiety kind of waiting for that other shoe to drop if you will when that hpa axis that threat response system stays activated for too long it starts causing actual changes in the brain it contributes to stress-related health problems including autoimmune disorders difficulty managing blood sugar cardiovascular disease circadian rhythm disruption emotional dysregulation which is when somebody goes from feeling flat or maybe even okay to having an extreme reaction to a situation i call it flat to furious They can have negative affect which means they feel depressed

anxious angry guilty any of those dysphoric feelings and and when we feel that way that is an indication that our neurotransmitters are also starting to become imbalanced because our neurotransmitters help us feel our feelings people who have this underlying current of anxiety are going to be more likely to notice perceive the threats in the environment and people's non-verbals even you know just minut micro expressions which they may interpret pessimistically or negatively which contributes to and enhances their feeling of unsafeness all of this kind of adds up to difficulty developing healthy relationships um because there's a

difficulty trusting others when people with abandonment anxiety start to get into relationships they start noticing those micro expressions they start noticing things and assuming that it means that they are getting ready to be abandoned most people have a certain amount of anxiety in relationships because when you're in a Relationship you tend to become at some point vulnerable and that person becomes important in your life and this could be intimate relationships this could be your best friend whatever but when you start telling them things that you don't tell everybody when you start becoming vulnerable when you

let them into your heart so to speak you have made yours made a choice to make yourself vulnerable because you trust that person to not hurt you however it is natural when you're vulnerable to have a wee bit of anxiety here and there and the difference is with abandonment anxiety the person experiences this fear of abandonment this person experience experiences this anxiety nearly constantly and it can be overpowering and it negatively impacts one or more areas of their life so they may be constantly watching their significant other or their friend for any indication that that

person is going to abandon them maybe their best friend went out with somebody else to do something on the weekend and that can be perceived by somebody With abandonment anxiety as an indication that they are getting ready to get kicked to the curb many times abandonment anxiety started with a traumatic experience now this can be a traumatic experience from childhood when the person didn't have a secure attachment with their primary caregivers and they got a lot of messages about the safety and predictability and trustworthiness of others and their own lovability or and you know it

can people can unfortunately have both traumatic childhoods and traumatic adulthoods but you don't have to have the traumatic childhood sometimes the abandonment anxiety begins after a traumatic event in adult life and not all abandonment anxiety results from somebody willfully leaving sometimes the a person will suddenly pass away and that is perceived as abandonment you know it's not that the person chose to pass away but all of a sudden that person's no longer in your life and you're left kind of floundering and sometimes especially if this happens a lot or enough it can be extremely terrifying

to get close to anybody because because people Become afraid that either you're gonna willfully leave or you're going to pass away so either way you're gone when people experience these traumatic experiences memories of the traumatic event are triggered whenever the person is faced with similar situations in the future so whenever they start to get close to somebody or want to get close to somebody or they're in a relationship and someone does something that reminds them of a prior relationship that ended badly they default to those memories that they have because those memories are kind of

what guide our ability to predict the future so when they get into these relationships and are vulnerable they may rely on outdated scripts or memories to predict the current person's future behavior and this is a big challenge when dealing with abandonment anxiety and just relationships in general not holding your current partner or friend hostage for the mistakes that people in your past have made could they make them sure are they definitely going to make them well you can't predict the future so it's important to use those past experiences to Inform your awareness but to also

use the current context and we're going to talk about context when we get into coping skills but use the current context to say okay in the past when something like this has happened when i've started to feel vulnerable then i've been abandoned okay but in the present context what facts do i have to support the belief that this person is going to do the same thing so anyway when when people with abandonment anxiety get into relationships and are vulnerable or even think about getting into relationships and think about becoming vulnerable they can have high levels

of anxiety triggered because it hurts so much before this may result in self-preservation behaviors what i call them they may become rejecting they may just say okay i'm going to cut bait right now don't want to go down that road not safe or they may start criticizing the other person in order to try to you know that they don't think it out this way it's very um they don't mean to try to cut somebody down but if they start criticizing the other person they may feel like they can Make the other person less likely to

leave because they've lowered that person's self-esteem they may result in a resort to clinging very clingy behaviors where they're texting all the time they're calling all the time their partner their friend can't go anywhere without them or exhibiting high levels of jealousy you know there's a lot of different ways that people may try to protect themselves from abandonment and from a survival standpoint it can kind of make sense you can see you know how in some way this behavior might make sense in order to try to prevent the person from getting caught unawares or being

abandoned unfortunately these behaviors are often unhealthy and create a self-fulfilling prophecy so when they start becoming clingy or jealous or excessively critical or rejecting oftentimes it does end up pushing the other person away so the other person leaves this reinforces their belief that nobody's trustworthy or safe and quote everybody leaves so we create this self-perpetuating cycle or we see it being created What do we do well the first thing when people have experienced abandonment whether it was when they were an infant a child or an adult they experienced a trauma they were led to feel

unsafe and disempowered so the first thing is to start creating safety we are not going to get outside of our comfort zone if we don't can't even feel safe in that you know if we don't have a comfort zone it's hard to want to move forward so we need to help people start to feel safe and the first step i usually work on with people is to help them create a secure attachment with themself and i know that sounds kind of weird but a lot of times people with high levels of abandonment anxiety have been

chameleons they have not been living authentically because they have been trying to be whatever that other person wants in order to prevent them from leaving so i've created the mnemonic visceral and i like it because safety as well as relationships are very visceral we feel them in our gut so validation is the v in visceral we need to help people start providing themselves Validation of their feelings and this is where we start talking about mindfulness and becoming aware of how they're feeling and accepting non-judgmentally i am feeling anxious i am feeling angry i'm feeling confused

whatever the person's feeling encourage them to start becoming mindful of what their thoughts feelings and needs are and validating them saying okay this is how you feel we're not judging we're not saying it's good or it's bad we're just saying i acknowledge that you're feeling angry or anxious or whatever right now that's the first thing and for a lot of people uh they've been raised with shoulds and accepting how they're feeling non-judgmentally is really a whole lot more difficult than you might think it is so i encourage people not to rush through this really start

practicing becoming mindful and validating how they're feeling non-judgmentally now the interesting thing with emotions is emotions are our body's way of communicating with us when we feel happy our body's saying do that again when we're feeling anxious or angry our bodies saying there might be a threat so i'm going to Give you a bunch of energy so you can go check it out it's kind of like the smoke alarm of the body if you will and it's important to recognize that be just because you feel angry or anxious doesn't necessarily mean there's something to be

angry or anxious about in the present context it could be memories from the past that are coming up and projecting and telling you what you should expect so it's really important to recognize that feelings are there for a reason and if i acknowledge that i'm feeling anxious i validate it and i say okay i'm feeling anxious not good not bad it just is then i can make take steps to check it out ensure my safety and address those feelings so validation to enhance emotional awareness is first i stands for intimacy and connection and this means

becoming connected with yourself learning how to be authentic knowing what your thoughts wants and needs are and that is self-intimacy a lot of people operate on autopilot and that is not connected that is not a self uh indication of self-intimacy so people need to start exploring when they validate their feelings They validate their thoughts wants and needs and then they start asking themselves they develop this intimacy this curiosity to understand their point of view and their default schema they start saying okay i'm curious why am i feeling anxious right now what about this situation is

triggering my anxiety what's my point of view and you know what are the default schema which are our memories if you will what are the memories that are telling me or triggering these feelings right now and again are they accurate in the present context s stands for safety and boundaries and it's important to do this with other people but it's also important to do this with ourselves recognizing being able to talk to ourself and use distress tolerant thoughts and what i mean by that is instead of saying i can't handle this it's going to overwhelm

me i i can't go on using distress tolerant thoughts that say this is really unpleasant and i know i can get through it so creating safety in in your own head can be really helpful and then learning how to start setting Boundaries and you're not going to set a lot of boundaries with yourself but you're starting to help the person set boundaries with other people so recognizing where they are you know if they are in a meeting if they're at work if they're out to eat with somebody encouraging the person to become aware mindfully aware

of their thoughts wants and needs and recognize that those are mine they may not be sally's or gyms or bobs these are my thoughts wants and needs right now and you know they can have their own i am here they are there so part of setting boundaries is recognizing where you end and the other person begins c stands for consistency and predictability and we need to be consistent and predictable with ourselves when we feel anxious when we feel angry when we feel depressed when we feel hungry whatever it is consistently being mindful and reacting in

a predictable way what we're doing is learning how to nurture ourself when we start creating this secure attachment with ourself number one we're modeling to other people what we deserve number two we're learning what we deserve And and number three we're creating our first potentially healthy relationship so consistency and predictability is really important now not everybody is as structured as i am and you know living by uh schedules and that sort of thing but being predictable in your responses to yourself when you're hurting when you're sick when you're tired predictably responding and trying to get

yourself what you need e stands for encouragement and nurturing for self-efficacy so you want to be able to help the person start encouraging and being their best their own best cheerleader because we don't always have people that are going to cheerlead for us and it's important that people can feel confident and confident in their ability not only to live life but to accomplish the things that are important to them helping people start learning how to set those smart goals specific measurable achievable relevant and time limited can be really helpful because then they can start seeing

progress and i encourage people uh when you're working with clients to have them set micro goals what is your goal for today or Maybe even what is your goal for this meeting you know or this dinner that you're going to it's not about changing henceforth and forever more it's about seeing progress being able to get through situations that were triggering before without being as triggered r stands response for responsiveness to help with coping and problem solving and it's important that people start developing coping and problem solving skills but in order to do that they first

have to identify what's causing their distress you can't fix something if you don't know what's wrong um you know think about if you have a leak at the house you know the water pressure is down but you got to figure out where it's coming from before you can even start trying to solve the problem so that responsiveness is really important and part of it involves helping people learn skills that are effective for them to cope with distress a stands for authenticity to feel feelings and grieve losses and it's really important when you acknowledge your feelings

you know that validation acknowledge that you feel sad You feel a loss for example being able to allow yourself to move through the grieving process instead of trying to box it up and shove it back somewhere in the back of your head allowing yourself to experience that grief authentically and move through it and finally l stands for love and that's the unconditional kind recognizing that you are different than your behaviors you know so it's really important to help people see themselves as lovable see themselves as worthy yes they're going to make mistakes they're going to

do things that they may not like they may regret but they are not regrettable when you're working with people to help them develop the secure attachment with themselves you know going through the visceral mnemonic and then asking them how could they how do they currently fill or fail to fulfill these needs in their relationship with themselves a lot of times they do some of them a little bit you know what we want to do is enhance that improve that so they create that secure relationship with themselves And then have them explore how do they fill

or fail to fulfill these needs in their relationship with others when they're working not talking with their child their best friend their significant other in what ways do they validate that person in what ways do they try to understand that person's point of view and engage in intimacy and connection in what ways do they help create safety in what ways are they consistent and encouraging and responsive in what ways do they allow that person to be authentic in their relationship even if they don't agree you know that person could be really upset about something and

you the your client may not agree but their ability to set those boundaries and allow others to be authentic is so important and how do they love others unconditionally not based on what do you do for me but i love you for you so that's the first part and that that takes time this is not something you do in a group or an individual session and bada bing it's done um a lot of people it takes them several weeks to work through this and really start creating that authentic secure relationship And attachment with themselves start

to get to know themselves because a lot of times people with abandonment anxiety have been on autopilot for so long they're just completely disconnected the next step is to create what i call outer safety for change and this is involving relationships with others and we're still using that visceral mnemonic but it's important for people at this point you know and the first step was to look at how they engaged or how they fulfilled these needs for themselves with themselves the next step was to examine how they fulfilled these needs for others that they want to

be in relationships with the third step is to start looking at the important people in their life and saying okay now how does this person fulfill these needs for me in what ways is this person validating supporting intimacy and connection safe consistent encouraging responsive in what ways do they allow me to be authentic and in what ways do i know that they love me unconditionally and that can be really challenging it for a lot of people because especially for people with Abandonment anxiety a lot of their relationships are often unhealthy so it's going to be

important to examine you know what aspects of this relationship are healthy and what aspects aren't and then looking at in what way can people be counted on and and who can be counted on and for what so not everybody in your life for example is going to be encouraging and we would love to have that in in the perfect secure attachment ever the person is always going to be encouraging but that's not always the way it happens humans are imperfect relationships are somewhat imperfect so looking at the relationships the person has you know for example

who do they know who they could count on to be encouraging and what can the client do to help others fulfill these needs and that is sort of a paradigm shift but a lot of times other people don't either don't understand how to have a secure relationship so this is new to them too or they don't know the needs of your client so it's important for the client to be able to start Articulating what they need explaining for example that when they're upset you know maybe they can say something like you know when i'm upset

i don't need you to solve the problem and i'm not trying to push you away whatever it's helpful if you can validate that i'm upset you can acknowledge that i'm upset you don't have to agree with me but acknowledging that you see that i'm upset is helpful uh intimacy and connection you know talking with your significant others and and and having the client be very clear with their significant others about what they need in terms of intimacy and connection and what that looks like helping clients educate their significant others about all of these concepts like

boundaries and consistency you know what does it look like you know we've all heard about the different love languages what does it look like for your client to receive encouragement nurturance and unconditional love you know that's going to look different for different people so if the client assumes that other people know what they need they assume other people are Going to read their mind they're often going to be disappointed and may feel rejected it is important to create safety we've talked about you know relationship with self relationship with others it's important to also remember that

this work may feel overwhelming and people sometimes can get all consumed by it and that's really not what we want it's important to keep be mindful of what's going on but becoming all consumed by it can be exhausting and can lead to other difficulties additionally you know when you try to think about when you tried to cram for an exam for for school a lot of times you miss some of the finer details if you throw yourself in and try to get it done in you know overnight or in a week when you were supposed

to be using the entire semester it's important to encourage people to set boundaries set limits on how much time each day they're going to engage in processing or self-enhancement behaviors now they need to do some each day but they also need to be able to breathe so to speak because this can be really anxiety-provoking work that being said it's Important to make sure that people identify two or more supports that they can call if they start getting overwhelmed this could include a therapist a pastor the crisis line whomever but we want to make sure that

people are safe if they are exploring prior traumas or if they are starting to do something that feels scary to them we want to make sure that they've got a safety net some people do better if they do the work with others around so they don't feel totally isolated so they may do it you know in their room but when their roommates are there and this is all about again creating safety whatever helps that person feel safe and finally encourage them to join an abandonment recovery or similar support group it's helpful to be able to

connect with others who have an idea about what it feels like about what you might be going through and there are some that are online there are some through different churches there are some you know just go online do it do a online search to see what sort of Relationship and abandonment recovery groups are out there so we've created safety let's talk about a couple of skills the first one and in cognitive behavioral therapy we often talk about is the abcs but here we're going to talk about the abc def's of distress regulation distress regulation

will be important when people are exploring past issues as well as abandonment fears when they get triggered in the present so what can people do a stands for awareness encouraging them to be mindful of how they're feeling it doesn't mean trying to change it or get rid of it it means non-judgmentally accepting you know we already talked about that and validating b stands for breathing and this is focused breathing so breathing in for a count of four to six holding for a count of four and then exhaling for a count of four to six that

slower breathing will help slow the heart rate and lower people's blood pressure now you can do biofeedback with it if you've got a fitness tracker or some other device that monitors your heart rate You can watch and see your heart rate actually starting to decline which can be reinforcing the nice thing about biofeedback is when you're focused on that number on your fitness tracker or or whatever you're using to monitor your heart rate you're actually diverting your attention to that and away from whatever triggered the anxiety okay so we have being aware so you can

engage in early intervention you notice that you're starting to feel not okay and you want to do something about it focused breathing in order to down regulate that hpa axis in order to reduce the stress response cued progressive muscular relaxation is something that you can learn to do and it involves starting from the head and working all the way down tensing and releasing each muscle noticing the difference between tense and relaxed and basically it's a whole body scan now the cue comes in because every time you relax your muscles you say a word like breathe

or it's all good or whatever phrase or word you want to say so in the future your brain is actually Connected to that cue so when you say that cue your body will start to relax it's really kind of cool and you're thinking how could this work well i'll give you an example think back to school when you used to you know go in sit down in class and if the teacher said clear your desk your heart rate would go up or at least mine would and the fear response would trigger so the phrase clear

your desk was uh q was a cue for your anxiety response because you knew that probably meant a pop quiz was coming so cues actually can be very powerful d stands for develop distress tolerance thoughts it's really important that people are able to talk to themselves when they're feeling anxious or angry be able to sit with the emotion feelings don't go away just like that like flipping a switch it takes a little while when you get angry or anxious for that feeling to move on so distress tolerant thoughts help people develop the skills to be

able to sit with those feelings and not feel overwhelmed by them or not feel like the emotions are too powerful E stands for express now this doesn't mean you know start screaming or anything generally um journaling can be very helpful when people are feeling distressed writing down what they're anxious about just getting it out of their head can be helpful or if they've got someone that they can call or text with to articulate their feelings again sometimes just getting it out uh and hopefully getting someone or yourself to validate how you're feeling you know okay

i i noticed that i'm feeling really anxious right now or you know somebody else saying i i hear that you're feeling terrified right now that can be extremely powerful at helping people feel less out of control so expressing yourself actually can be very helpful with distress regulation f stands for focus and what i mean by this is move your focus when we are distressed if we focus on the anxiety if we focus on the thoughts and we replay those thoughts over and over again that anxiety will build kind of like a tidal wave or a

very loud stereo so one technique you can use is the knob imagine using the knob Or the side of your the volume control on your mobile device and seeing that volume go down so what you're doing is seeing the intensity the volume of that noise of that distress go down another technique i use with people is i i call it shelving and they can either write down their distress on a card and put it in a box and literally put it on a shelf or they can envision themself taking that issue whatever it is putting

it in a you know imaginary box and putting it on a shelf knowing that they will come back to deal with it later and what's important with this is we generally don't think super clearly when we are in that fight-or-flight mode when we've got a bunch of adrenaline just coursing through our through our veins so shelving things is a way to say okay this is important and i want to give it my full attention when i can give it my full attention right now i need to focus on down regulating and getting back into a

clearer headspace which takes us to s scheduling worry time you know we're talking about abandonment anxiety here so worry time is when you go and get all those Boxes off the shelf from the day and you process them and you acknowledge your anxiety and you examine the thoughts that were contributing to that anxiety another technique that is very very useful is changing unhopeful thinking styles and cognitive behavioral therapy it's oft they're often referred to as cognitive distortions that just sounds so ugly we want to help people identify unhelpful thinking styles that they use and the

function and alternatives so the four big ones that i often see when working peop with people with abandonment anxiety are personalization mind reading catastrophizing and over generalizing so let's think about personalization what is the function of taking everything personally somebody scowls at you they must hate me somebody says gives you some constructive feedback and you personalize it and say that must mean i am a horrible person or i am useless or a failure the function of that often is self-protective when people personalize that it is a way of keeping them from being caught unawares keeping

them from being harmed if you will so alternatives Alternate explanations the person who scowled at you you know what are three other reasons that that person may have scowled at you or the person who was rude to you in the grocery store you know maybe they were directly rude to you but is that because of you or what are three other explanations you know maybe they their car broke down today they got into a fight with somebody and you know i don't know some a third thing you know there are a lot of things that

could put put people in a bad mood and you just unfortunately happen to be in the way separate the person and the behavior instead of telling yourself i am a failure when you get feedback about something you did wrong separating that and say i failed at i am a good person i am successful i am but the behavior you know i didn't do that so well mind reading and jumping to conclusions this is another strategy that helps people predict or think they're predicting the future in order to prepare ahead of time unfortunately we can't predict

the future so when we mind read or jump to conclusions a lot of times we're using outdated Schema we're using information from old memories that may not be accurate in the present context so it's important to get the facts if somebody is acting sc orally and the person doesn't know you know maybe the person's abandonment anxiety is triggered does that mean that they're getting ready to be abandoned well not necessarily that's an assumption they're jumping to conclusions they're reading the other person's mind they're assuming they know what the other person's thinking so it's always important

to get the facts what are the facts in this situation which often comes down to asking somebody are you angry with me or did i do something to offend you or you know fill in the blank so getting the facts is really important or maybe their best friend went out with somebody else on the weekend instead of jumping to conclusions and saying well they like this other person more than they like me asking the person you know i noticed that you went out with with sally this weekend and you know and and didn't include me

i'm wondering if i did something to offend you or if you like her Better than me or whatever the case may be but actually asking the person why did you do that it is a fair question catastrophizing again protective yeah get get the trend here all of these are in some way trying to protect the person from being caught off guard and being abandoned so if they're in a relationship with somebody and they have a fight or a disagreement catastrophizing would say okay this person's going to leave me and i am going to be alone

forever and always well that spiraled quickly encouraging them again to examine the facts you know yes you had a disagreement yes the person asked for some space what else what other facts do you have that let you know that they're going to leave you and that you're going to be alone forever c stands for control what aspects of this situation do you have control over you know if the person asked for some space well okay you don't have control over that except for to give them their space you can't get them back sooner what do

you have control over you have control over how you react In the present moment you have control over what you do with your time and your energy you have control over the way you respond to them whether you respect their boundaries or not and p stands for probability given the facts in the situation and if you do the things that are within your control that are helpful what is the probability that the worst case scenario is going to play out and over generalizations when something bad happens it sticks out in our memory and we try

to keep ourselves safe by remembering that unfortunately sometimes it becomes over generalized to statements like all people always leave the function again is to help us predict the future so we can try to protect ourselves how do we respond to over generalizations specifics and if somebody says all people always leave let's find some exceptions to that and yes some people have left some people have willfully left some people have died some people have You know whatever what are the specifics in each situation and are there exceptions in your life and are there exceptions in other

people's life if you're saying that all people always leave then that would indicate that there is no stability in anybody's relationships anywhere and the abcs activating event what happened so you're the person is just be bopping through the day and something triggers their abandonment anxiety so encouraging them to jot down the abcs what happened that triggered their abandonment anxiety maybe they texted their best friend and their best friend didn't respond that can be terrifying okay so that happened the consequence happened really fast their anxiety was triggered which resulted in what behaviors did they engage in

what were their feelings what were their thoughts okay so activating event resulted in abandonment anxiety being triggered going back and examining what were the automatic beliefs what were the thoughts that started racing through your head that led to you feeling anxious so it's really important to encourage people to at the very least When they experience abandonment anxiety when it gets triggered to write down the activating event so they can go back later and process okay i know what happened and i know what the consequences were now let's figure out you know non-judgmentally going back to

that intimacy and connection let me figure out what was going on in my head what were my thoughts that were telling me that this was a bad thing then you go back and dispute the beliefs some of them are going to be right sometimes you know i'm not saying that they're wrong but you want to examine them what were the facts in context if you had the belief that that meant that that person hated you okay what are the facts in context what are the controllable aspects of the situation um and what is the probability

that the person um or the abandoned activating event was going to lead to abandonment so activating event you got into a disagreement with your best friend consequences you had your abandonment anxiety triggered and started spiraling now what is the probability That having a disagreement with your friend was going to lead to abandonment especially if you address the controllable aspects for example apologizing if that was appropriate and this is where a lot of the relationship skills come in very handy learning how to validate people's emotions even if you don't agree learning how to listen and empathize

we're going to talk about those in a little while but some of those are the controllable aspects of the situation and then e stands for evaluating your reaction um recognizing once the person has gone through and disputed their beliefs and decided which ones were accurate restated some of their beliefs to be more accurate and less extreme okay now they have factual information so was there reaction that abandonment anxiety was that an effective response to the situation if not what could have been a more helpful response now the people have created safety and have a couple

of tools in order to deal with the stress and start evaluating and altering their automatic beliefs and and schema It's time to start gathering information have them name the problem and describe the symptoms so the problem is abandonment anxiety but what are their symptoms physically how do they feel when their abandonment anxiety is triggered physically how does this abandonment anxiety impact their their health and well-being affectively how does their abandonment anxiety impact their emotions a lot of times people have complex emotions so they have abandonment anxiety and they may have some anger they may have

some depression and a sense of hopelessness so we want to look at what how does the abandonment anxiety contribute to the person's overall mood cognitively how does the abandonment anxiety alter or inform the way the person perceives the world and interprets the world and solves problems environmentally how does the abandonment anxiety contribute to or detract from their sense of safety and the big one relationally how does the abandonment anxiety impact their relationships in what ways is it affecting their relationships with their Co-workers with their friends with their children with their family you know the list

goes on then have them describe the course of the problem when did it start for some people they can't even remember when it started because they were so young that's fine um for others it started later that's cool too we just want to have an idea when did it start what may have triggered it and for people whose abandonment anxiety started when they were very very young they may not really understand what happened some people will say i was adopted or i was put into foster care or my one of my parents walked out on

us or something okay you know that's a that's a clear precipitating event but others for other people it may be more ambiguous and we'll explore that a bit later but we want to know if they have any ideas about what triggered it what beliefs do they currently hold that contribute to the problem so when they start thinking about relationships when they start thinking about abandonment what are the thoughts that come into their head and sometimes i'll have them spend two to three minutes just thinking about being in a relationship or thinking About abandonment and jotting

down everything that they think sort of free association if you will to get an idea about all of those automatic thoughts for people who don't like to write they can also just record it and then you can run it through a transcription program so we have talk to text and then you can see what's going on and then examining each of those beliefs for their accuracy and helpfulness in the current context now all of our experiences impact the way we perceive the world the way we perceive others the way we perceive even nonverbal communications and

the way a person perceives the world is theirs but is it helpful in the current context so re-examining does for example people who grew up in an environment where there was a lot of domestic violence large nonverbal movements may be very threatening may trigger anxiety for them however in the present context with this person what do those large movements mean for me when i get excited the more excited i get the bigger my my hand gestures get and a lot of times that's happy excitement So it's important to help people explore their beliefs in the

current context so instead of saying every time somebody uses big hand gestures it means danger saying in the past when people have used big hand gestures it meant danger so i need to be aware however it's important to evaluate every situation in the present context encouraging people to explore their core beliefs what messages did they receive from their caregivers both through words and behaviors about their lovability so thinking back to when they were an adolescent a child an infant as far back as they can remember behavior is communication so if a caregiver was not responsive

ignored the child only responded when there was something to be critical about you know that sends a totally different message than the caregiver who is responsive and loving and gives them positive attention so what messages did they receive about themselves and about others through their caregivers behaviors as well as their words so we want to Look at their their core beliefs about their own lovability are they lovable are they good enough what information what messages what beliefs did they form about relationships you know they observed their caregivers interacting so what messages what did they learn

about relationships from watching and listening to their caregivers and what did they learn from their caregivers about the safety and trustworthiness of other people what beliefs have they developed as a result of abandonment or loss as an adult so first you're going to look at childhood and some people as i mentioned earlier with abandonment anxiety had an okay childhood so the first part of this they may have gotten positive messages about their lovability and relationships and trustworthiness of others and then in their adult life they've just had a series of devastating losses or like i

mentioned earlier they could have had an insecure attachment all the way through childhood and it just perpetuated into adulthood either way what beliefs has the person Developed as a result of abandonment or loss as an adult and i put loss in there because remember when people die it can be it feels sometimes like abandonment it is a significant loss and when we think about do i want to become vulnerable to somebody again just to risk having them disappear you know death as a loss also comes up in addition to willful abandonment what thoughts do they

have when people abandon or reject them or seem like they are getting ready to reject or abandon abandon them and a lot of people with abandonment anxiety engage in that jumping to conclusions and mind reading so they notice micro expressions they notice slight changes um and they assume that they that they know what the person is thinking and that it's nefarious which can lead them to start having these abandonment thoughts really early on as i mentioned behaviors communication and children who had adverse childhood experiences received messages early abandonment experiences can communicate to the child you

don't matter you're not loved or you're not safe you know a two-year-old who gets abandoned can't take care of Themselves that's terrifying um insecure primary attachments so maybe the caregivers were there but we're not responsive we're not validating we're not encouraging we're not loving and that often results in either neglect or abuse when the caregivers are emotionally unavailable to the child or physically unavailable to the child or abusive to the child it communicates work beliefs like you're not worthy of care or you're a bad person yes children make mistakes yes children get punished they get

put in time out whatever but that doesn't mean they're a bad child it means they made a bad choice and then adult experiences and related schema um we want to encourage people to examine their beliefs related to abandonment or loss and their beliefs related to their ability or inability to form or maintain healthy relationships if they've had prior traumas they may have developed insecure attachment which results in behaviors that are characterized as either codependent or personality disordered i don't like to put labels on things i'd like to look at what behaviors does the person Exhibit

and how do those either help or hurt them in terms of maintaining healthy relationships encouraging people to go through each one of these things and identify how these experiences shape their belief about their own acceptability and other people's trustworthiness and examine each one of the beliefs one by one using that facts control and probability method so what are the facts about your early abandonment experience you know what parts of that were within your control and especially for children a lot of it wasn't in their control it was had more to do with the adult being

unable to cope or deal and probability you know what is the probability that that situation given what you know about what you had what you could control in it what is the probability that it means that you are not lovable or whatever the belief is other core beliefs and i know we're going through a lot of core beliefs but sometimes it helps to approach it from slightly different angles because different things come out so again you're going to examine these core beliefs in each of these four areas using that Facts control and probability method when

people fear losing someone that's important to them they may fear rejection you know the reason i'm afraid of losing something important to me is because i fear rejection i fear that if they go away it means i'm unlovable or nobody wants to be with me so encouraging people to explore their abandonment beliefs and identify rejection themes i may fear losing somebody that's important to me because i'm afraid of losing control i'm afraid of vulnerability so i may have thoughts like i should never get into relationships because people can't be trusted or i have no control

over whether they stay or leave and and it's too scary to be vulnerable isolation i will never find someone else and people always leave or the unknown i do not know where i can find someone else i can't function without this person in my life or i don't know who i am if i'm not such and such as best friend or such and such as spouse or such and such as parent so there are a lot of beliefs that Go along with abandonment anxiety and many of them maybe not all but many of them can

be categorized in terms of one of these four themes or maybe the the belief taps on multiple of these core themes so examining the individual's beliefs identifying the facts and separating the past from the present so in the past when they interacted with people when they were five what did they have control over in the present when they interact with people now that they're 25 what do they have control over there's a big difference between safety and all those things once a person becomes an independent adult explore with the person what behaviors that they have

that contribute to abandonment and this is a really touchy area to go into with a lot of people because it's scary to think that they may be contributing to it unfortunately we recognize when working with people who have abandonment issues a lot of times their frantic efforts to avoid abandonment actually end up contributing to the abandonment So looking at people's behaviors when they can step back and objectively look at their past relationships and say yeah some of these things i did probably weren't helpful okay you know in the moment it was a survival mechanism in

retrospect we see that may not have been the best choice so how do those behaviors develop to help the person stay safe this is where we want to validate and look at the context in that context at that point in time i believe that people do the best they can with the tools they have so that behavior developed how did it develop to help them stay safe how are those behaviors currently negatively impacting their relationships so if one of their behaviors is to start becoming extremely clingy or the opposite to walk out to just break

up it's like okay fine started to hit a little rough patch we're done in what ways are those behaviors currently negatively impacting their relationships and what could they do instead that would help them feel safe and secure it keeps coming back to safety remember the core of abandonment the core of trauma is a feeling of unsafeness and Disempowerment so we want to help people continue to explore what can i do to stay safe and by creating that secure attachment with themselves and eventually working on their self-esteem they start developing a sense of wholeness where they

don't feel like they are inadequate or or they don't feel like they're incapable of dealing with life on their own you know so we want to help people feel empowered and and safe in their own skin even if other people aren't necessarily around them and then starting to feel safe and empowered in relationships to engage to be vulnerable and sometimes to step away if it's not a healthy relationship if they woke up tomorrow and didn't fear abandonment and rejection how would life be different and how would it be the same most people have some things

that are going right in their life maybe it's their work maybe it's their dog maybe it's their house but identifying the things that are going right is just as important as identifying what they would like to be different and creating that holistic view of what life will be like when they've addressed this issue What strengths and resources do they have that can help address their fears of abandonment and rejection maybe they have people they can call on like a pastor or a counselor maybe they have a strong faith maybe they have books that they are

reading that are helping them understand whatever it is let's explore these have them write a narrative of two or more relationships that have resulted in abandonment start out you know writing the narrative then going back and evaluating were things ever good if so in what way you know a lot of relationships start out good so how were they good at what point did things change and why you know really looking back and saying you know what was going on here that all of a sudden led to this pivot what did the other person do what

did that behavior communicate about the other person's feelings and needs maybe the other person started withdrawing what did that communicate about that person's feelings and needs at that point in time maybe they weren't being effective at communicating but if we look at their behavior And think back to the conversations what were they trying to communicate what did the client what did the person do in the relationship and what did that behavior communicate about that person's feelings and needs what if anything and that's important if anything could the client could the person have done differently in

the relationship that may have led to a different outcome you know maybe they decided um as soon as the the relationship started to hit a bumpy patch to terminate it just fine no too much stress i'm out okay well obviously that led to the end of the relationship is there a different way that you could have handled it that may have resulted in getting through that patch what are the three more most important reasons the person wants to address their fears of abandonment and rejection this helps with motivation what obstacles might interfere with their ability

to progress in their journey for example if they're in currently unhealthy relationships that's probably going to be unhelpful because those relationships may underscore or fulfill Their beliefs about abandonment and lack of trustworthiness and low self-esteem it can also be an obstacle that interferes with their ability to progress because they may not feel like they deserve any better they may not feel like they're lovable or they may rely on other people to provide them external validation in order to give them permission to be okay who is supportive of their efforts to address their abandonment issues and

if they say no one then where could they find support so this is again important we need to start encouraging some sort of support for the individual whether it's support groups or professionals or or whomever once we've gathered some information we've started disputing thoughts we've started trying to modify unhelpful beliefs then moving into baseline monitoring over the next few weeks each time they notice they're experiencing anxiety about abandonment have them write down what's happening that activating event what their thoughts are the beliefs that they're having what images are going through their mind and sometimes people

think in images or flashbacks instead of words so images Can be very helpful what are their feelings all of them not just anxiety but anxiety anger guilt depression what have you and in what ways is the current situation similar to past situations so basically it's encouraging people to identify what past memories are being triggered what past feelings and experiences are being triggered in the present moment and then exploring that and saying okay in what ways is this present moment similar to and different from that past situation at the end of each day and then again

at the end of each week review the logs to find common triggers and core beliefs that are still problematic continue to use the facts control and probability approach to address and start to modify those or at least challenge those unhelpful core beliefs and then help the person start to become empowered on a scale of 1 to 10 one being totally terrified of abandonment most of the time and 10 being totally secure in their ability to maintain healthy relationships that's not totally secure that nobody's ever going to leave that's not Realistic it's totally secure in their

ability to maintain healthy relationships and let go of unhealthy relationships so on a scale of one to ten where are they now what one to three things will they do each day not can they do but will they do each day to help them move toward the next point on the scale they can identify things like practicing mindfulness to identify needs wants triggers and core beliefs developing a secure relationship with themselves that visceral mnemonic that we talked about cognitive restructuring to address unhelpful thoughts self-esteem building activities improving boundaries and assertiveness skills what i call empathy

and attribution that means listening to other people learning how to listen without defensiveness to understand the feelings and needs of the other person and themselves in the current moment and then attributing those feelings and needs appropriately so they're communicating with somebody who is angry recognizing for example where that anger is coming from maybe they did something You know they're in a relationship with somebody their roommates and they left the cap off the toothpaste and the roommate just like flies off the handle okay empathy i see see that you're angry about this and you're frustrated that

i left the cap off the toothpaste again but attribution encourages the person to look back and say all right i did something that irritated this person but it really was probably on only a one or a two on a scale of one to ten so i wonder what else is going on in their life that is making them so angry right now the anger is not all about me and proactively begin to connect with others in a safe and meaningful way and this is called graded exposure so initially they may engage with others on like

a discord server or online chat room or a support group or an online support group and then gradually put themselves out there a little bit more where they're meeting people face to face and you know maybe it's meeting with a hiking club to go face that to go hiking you know there's not a lot of self-disclosure during that but that's being in in a group and for people who fear rejection for people who Fear abandonment then just starting to develop a group of people that they can do things with is a huge step towards starting

to create meaningful connected relationships most people have a certain amount of anxiety in relationships because when you're in relationships you're vulnerable and that person is important to you abandonment anxiety is an issue when it negatively impacts multiple areas of a person's life when it starts impacting their health their sleep their mood their work their concentration etc addressing abandonment anxiety means first creating safety then identifying and addressing the thoughts feelings and situations that trigger the anxiety and becoming empowered by implementing new skills and modifying outdated and inaccurate beliefs