If you feel alone, empty, anxious, depressed, hurt, angry, jealous, sad, fearful, guilty or shamed, you are abandoning yourself. In this article, discover the ways you might be abandoning yourself.
The Encarta® World English Dictionary defines "abandon" as: "to leave somebody or something behind for others to look after, especially somebody or something meant to be a personal responsibility."
As adults, our own well-being is our personal responsibility. Do you abandon yourself, making others responsible for you, and then feel abandoned by others when they leave you or don't take responsibility for you?
As an adult, another person cannot abandon you, since they are not responsible for you. We can abandon a child, an ill person or an old person -- someone who cannot take care of themselves. But if you are a physically healthy adult you can be left, but you cannot be abandoned by others. Only you can abandon you.
What are the ways you might be abandoning yourself?
Judging Yourself
How often do you judge yourself with comments such as:
"You are not good enough."
"You are inadequate."
"You are stupid."
"You are an idiot."
"You are ugly."
"You are not attractive enough."
"If you fail, you are not okay."
"If someone rejects you, you are not okay."
"It's all your fault that ... "
"You will never amount to anything. You are a failure. You are not reaching your potential."
... and so on.
Just as a small child feels alone and abandoned when a parent is harsh and judgmental, so our own inner child feels alone and abandoned when we judge ourselves. Self-judgment not only creates inner feelings of aloneness and emptiness, but it also creates feelings of anxiety, depression, anger, hurt, fear, guilt and shame. What do you do when you have judged yourself and created all these painful feelings?
Ignoring Your Feelings
When you feel alone, empty, anxious, depressed, hurt, angry, jealous, sad, fearful, guilty or shamed, what do you do? Do you attend to your feelings, exploring what you are telling yourself or doing to cause them? Or do you avoid them with some form of addictive behavior, using food, alcohol, drugs, nicotine, TV, work, shopping, Internet, sex, anger, blame and so on to avoid them?
When you ignore your feelings and instead turn to addictive behavior, you are again abandoning yourself. Once you have abandoned yourself, it is very common to project this self-abandonment onto others and feel abandoned by people or by God. Yet, as a physically healthy adult, the feeling of abandonment is being caused by you, just as most of your other painful feelings are being caused by you.
Making Others Responsible for You
Once you judge yourself and then ignore the pain you have caused, it is quite likely that you turn to others for the love and approval that you are not giving to yourself. Your inner child -- the feeling part of you -- needs love, approval and attention. When you abandon yourself with self-judgment and ignore your feelings, the wounded child part of you turns to others for the love you need. Because the child part of you is desperately needy for love, you are likely to become manipulative to get that love -- becoming angry and blaming or, conversely, being overly nice or compliant and trying to do everything right. You have handed your inner child away to others for adoption, hoping another person will give you the love you so desperately need. You become addicted to approval, attention and/or sex.
The more you make others responsible for giving you the love, attention and approval you need, the more your inner child feels abandoned, leading to more addictive behavior to fill the emptiness and avoid the pain of your self-abandonment.
The way out of this is to start paying attention to your feelings -- putting your attention inside of your body instead of always focusing outside. The moment you feel badly, notice what you are thinking or doing that is causing your pain. The painful feelings that come from your thoughts are your inner guidance system's way of letting you know that what you are thinking is not true, that it is not in your highest good.
Ask the highest part of yourself, "What is the truth?" Notice how you feel when you attend to your feelings and tell yourself the truth, rather than judge yourself, ignore yourself and make others responsible for your feelings.
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First, I think just about all humans at one time or another have judged themselves with statements on your list. Even the more emotionally healthy ones.
"As adults, our own well being is is our personal responsibility" Really? We aren't to ever depend on others? EVER? I thought in order to feel "connected" we had to allow ourselves to be vulnerable, to have a certain level of acceptance and approval from our peers. To allow others to lift us up when we fall down. We weren't meant to live in isolation. We need others don't we? I don't mean depending only on others approval as opposed to approving of ourselves. But still, I think we do need others somewhat.
I do get that as an adult you technically can't be abandoned. But seriously, is it really that black and white? I'm pretty sure that there are many, many, men and women who had partners abruptly leave them, and perhaps they were merely "left" but they did truly feel abandoned. As well as other forms of betrayal by others, taking advantage of kind and trusting people. People do hurt other people. Sometimes those feelings are valid and the blame needs to go where it belongs. Not to the victim, to the perpetrator.
So for example, if you ever feel abandoned, then you can in whatever ways be responsible for that feeling, and therefore, cope with the feeling of being abandoned again in whatever ways that you can. So this goes above and beyond say, pleading to the other person that he MUST stay with you and not abandon you, for the sake of not disturbing you or arousing your anxiety of being abandoned and not being able to cope or live on your own. Basically, this is a rather egocentric way of living. You are saying, that others must adjust according to your own wishes and feelings so that they do not disturb you, and therefore, not having to be faced with your problems. The real problem here, is that you are not sufficiently independent, and you can not sufficiently live on your own.
Agreed:there is a healthy way of dealing with the inner critic. I also agree in the article allowing your feelings, and being aware of them, is important instead of "numbing". A popular choice in our culture today. We are responsible to feel what we feel, be aware of what we are feeling, express it in a healthy way to others we believe we can trust.
All I'm questioning here is, that as humans, we rely on others in relationship. I understand co-dependence pretty well. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about someone you really trusted, then they turn on you, it's a shock. It can cause a deep sense of shame and humiliation. But yet they aren't responsible to you. You are responsible for dealing with it. If you ask them to talk with you, explain it, help you understand, etc. It's okay for them to just say, "That's your issue" "See ya!"
Common "New Age" quesitons: "What have you thought or done to attract this whatever terrible event/person into your life?" "How are you responsible" again I have say. doesn't always apply. I think this is baloney! Some people are manipulative and use this crap to avoid responsibility. Doing real harm to another. It's invalidating and dehumanizing. It isn't right. Just my opinion.
So basically, she has explained that the creation of an idealized image is an attempt at an all-around "solution" to the problem, when the child growing up realizes that he can not get the love and warmths and a feeling of security that he needs from others for him to grow as a healthy human being. Instead, as you have described, he feels torn apart, divided, isolated; he "develops a feeling of insecurity, anxiety, and a lack of belonging". And the reason why he feels so torn apart is that instead of consulting his real feelings when relating to others, he must come up with "necessary coping strategies" to cope with his general anxiety that he has towards others. This makes the importance of his real feelings and wants less and less - "it does not matter what he feels, as long as he is safe". He becomes increasingly alienated from his real feelings and thoughts and wishes.
...continued.