Abandonment

[birdesh]

Abandonment seems to be one of the main composant of BPD. How to overcome that experience and heal into a steadier sense of self ?

I know I experienced feeling of utter devastation about being abandonned during my therapy.

And as far back as I can remember, I've been living alone -as if I was reproducing abandonment in a never-ending fashion. Now I'm not as alone as I used to be, but it is still bad. I want to find a way to alter that state.

Could you share your thoughts, insights and recovery hints about abandonment ?

Here's a text about abandonement found on the net

Everyday there are people who feel as if life itself has left them on a doorstep or thrown them away. Abandonment is about loss of love itself, that crucial loss of connectedness. It often involves breakup, betrayal, aloneness. People struggling with abandonment issues include those going through the ending of a relationship as well as searching adoptees, recently widowed, and those suffering the woundedness of earlier disconnections.

Abandonment represents core human fear. We have all experienced it. When a relationship ends, the feelings harken all the way back to our lost childhoods when we were helpless, and dependent. Our adult functioning temporarily collapses.We feel shattered, bewildered, condemned to loneliness.

Abandonment is a cumulative wound containing all of the losses and disconnections stemming all the way back to childhood. Abandonment is:

• A feeling

• A feeling of isolation within a relationship

• An intense feeling of devastation when a relationship ends

• An aloneness-not-by-choice

• An experience from childhood

• A baby left on the doorstep

• A woman left by her husband of twenty years for another woman

• A man being left by his finance for someone 'more successful'

• A child left by his mother

• A friend feeling deserted by a friend

• A father leaving his marriage, moving out of the house, away from his children

• A child whose pet dies

• A little girl grieving over the death of her mother

• A little boy wanting his mommy to come pick him up from nursery school

• A child about to be 'replaced' by the birth of another sibling

• A child needing his parents but they are emotionally unavailable

• A boy realizing he is gay and anticipating the reaction of his parents and friends

• A teenage boy with his heart twanging, but afraid to approach his love

• A teenage girl feeling her heart is actually broken

• A woman who has raised a family now grown, feeling empty, as if she has been deserted, as if the purpose of her life has abandoned her

• A child stricken with a serious illness or injury watching his friends play while he must remain confined to braces, wheel chair, or bed

• A woman who has lost her job and with it her professional identity, financial security, and status. Now she is left feeling worthless, not knowing how to occupy her time - - feeling abandoned by her life's mission

• A man who has been 'put out to pasture' by his company, as if obsolete

• People grieving the death of a loved one report feelings of abandonment

• The dying fear being abandoned by their loved ones as much or more as they fear pain and death

• Suicide is an excruciating form of abandonment

• Abandonment is all of this and more. Its wound is at the heart of the variety of human experiences, and is found in the uniqueness of each person's life.

[pip]

Birdesh

Je suis tres desolee

[Betsy]

birdish.. i am struggling with that too at the moment.

trouble is most of the people who abandon me are still in my life, still in their roles.. they are physically here.. so i dont know if i am wrong or not.. very confussing and probably of my own making.

sucks

bets

[JTBadBug]

I have not found a solution to this problem, if and when I do I will be happy to share the concepts bringing about a successful change.

[Vorpalblade]

The reality that you must experience yet another abandonment in order to recover from Boderline Personality Disorder is explored.

A borderline who cannot recognize or who refuses to recognize and subsequently articulate his/her intra-psychic pain is stuck. Even in a therapeutic situation or relationship there is little that can be done until the borderline develops a certain amount of self-awareness. There must be a willingness on the part of the borderline to admit and acknowledge that much of what she thinks she knows and much of her relational style is:

a re-enactment of past trauma

not age-appropriate and

further alienating him/her from self and others which then causes even more pain that is "felt" and expressed in destructive self-sabotaging ways; namely through rage, push/pull, needy-demandingness, lying, sudden cold distancing, manipulation and so forth.

Does this mean that one can never change?

For the time that one stays reticent and holds to one's cognitively-distorted beliefs it would be highly unlikely that one could then change. If one continues to perpetuate his/her "victimhood" and does not choose to take personal responsibility one will continue to live out one's past as well as visit it upon others. However, once borderlines begin to understand that there are aspects of their behaviour and relational styles that are further defeating their attempts to have their needs met -- and begin to be open to taking a look at what they are doing and how they are affecting others, change is then not only possible but it is a natural consequence of such self-examination.

How does change occur?

Change is brought about through incremental steps of increased self-awareness. The process of increasing one's self-awareness usually involves therapy, as well as reading relevant books. Also extemely important to the process of increasing self-awareness is a willingness and a determination to do what it takes to tolerate being around and with other people. (Without resorting to any "old, borderline" behaviour) It is also vital to break any pattern of isolation. This means also learning to behave in ways that make it possible for others to welcome your being around them. This change in behaviour must come first. You cannot wait to change how you feel first. How you feel will only change over time and after you have had new, different, and corrective interpersonally-relational experiences with other people.

It is the new relational experiences with others that provide the ground-work for the borderline breaking with habitual patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving which are directly related to one's past. Through learning to relate to others age-appropriately, over time, and through the processing of experiences and interpretations in therapy a borderline can then continue to change and grow.

In my experience of BPD, what I most needed was to grow up emotionally. The backbone of my recovery from BPD had all to do with changing the cognitions that were not age-appropriate and that were patterned ways in which I maladaptively thought. The way in which I thought caused me to feel certain ways and the ways that I felt caused me to act more like a child than the adult I was "supposed to be". I had to see through my own behaviour. I came to realize that I had been living my life rather on an auto-pilot from the past (very patterned) and that I was relating to everyone as if they were my parents and or abusers. I was perpetuating my the cycle of abuse from my past. While I was very abused in my formative years my relational style was not only one of "constant victim" (often unbeknownst to me). It was also one in which I unconsciously projected and transfered onto others (anyone I knew or related to) the abuse that I had suffered. I was a victim of abuse as a child. I believe that it was the abuse which made it impossible for me to "grow up". I was not able to develop a healthy personality due to the abuse and inconsistent parenting I was exposed to. So, as I got older, if I related to anyone at all (I mostly isolated myself from others) I was abusive to many people. Borderlines are often abusive to themselves and to others. From my experience, I believe this is because this is how we were taught by example or through circumstances of neglect and enduring the deprivation of the meeting of our basic needs to relate.

In order to change the abusive ways in which I related to others I had to totally break with everything that I learned (in my dysfunctional family of origin) about relating and relationships. This meant that the sum total of any identity that I had formed had to be abandoned and re-formed. In order to heal I had to do the one thing that was most pivatol to my acquiring BPD in the first place; I had to endure being abandoned all over again. This time though, I had to abandon myself as I had been abandoned over and over again by others. What was different though was that I was abandoning my false-self whereas all of my life in continuing to make "borderline" choices I had been re-abandoning my "real-self".

How is the abandonment wound central to healing?

Stated in an oversimplified way, the essence of BPD is this abandonement wound. It is the original wound that causes so much intra-psychic damage. It is the wound that is the abyss that one is sucked into in the absence of having a "self", an "identity" an understanding of oneself and one's place in the world. Why? Well to have an understanding of self, identity and place in the world one must have a stable sense of a world. In order to have and hold a stable sense of the world around you (in your formative years) it is essential that one's needs be met. When you live in a state of perpetually unmet nurture and emotional needs you simply cannot develop a healthy personality. This is the plight of each and every borderline.

Rather ironically, then, this abandonment wound must be, in effect, turned in on the borderline, by the borderline, if the borderline is to recover. What does this mean? It means that in order to recover from the initial or orginal abandonment wounds that essentially "caused" the formation of a borderline personality one must abandon all one knows about one's fractured self (incomplete self--unintegrated self) in order to find one's authentic idenitity and healthy personality. It's a bit like "Humpty Dumpty" falling from the wall when a borderline starts to peel away the layers and layers of maladaptive coping skills enmeshed within defense mechanism after defense mechanism. There comes a point where a borderline must further break to allow for the putting back together of his/her authentic self. This further break is the ultimate experiencing, all over again, of the original abandonment.

"Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding." (Gibran)

It is very very painful. It is the degree to which one can grieve and release the pain of the past plus the pain of the always changing unfolding present that will determine the extent to which one can recover. I experienced this in my recovery as I gained more and more self-awareness and had to concede that though I had felt like a victim encased in the shell of my original abandoment....I had indeed abandoned myself through a series of choices that I made from my teen years up to the age of 30. (11 years after I was diagnosed) (When I began this process of "authenic self" discovery) It was essential that I abandon all the old ways that I thought, felt and acted. (In order to do this one must overcome the natural feelings of resistance that will come up) Though it felt like I was being "annhiliated all over again" there was also a very strong sense that I was finally achieving the much needed separation from my parents. I had lived my life as an extension of my abusive past. I had not formed my own "authentic identity". I had continued to live my life like a helpless victim when, in actuality, though I was victimized and abused as a child, I then made choice after choice that kept sealing my fate and worsening my personality disorder.

How can one recognize recovery?

Recovery begins when we can cut ourselves free of the patterns. A borderline can begin to do this the "second" he/she chooses to. Though it is scary and painful and means walking through the darkest inner-caverns of your aching being -- abandoning the "false-self" in search of your "real-self" will lead you to recovery. Recovery is underway when we stop making the same unsuccessful, unloving, self-sabotaging choices out of some abandoned, wounded sense of helpelessness and begin to take responsibility for who we "never were" who we aren't, what we don't know, and what we don't understand -- in the search for and fulfillment of who we can be, who we really are and we can learn and go to know and understand -- and how difficult it is (certainly feels) to think that we deserve to belong and that we have the a responsibility to not inflict abuse and pain upon ourselves or upon others just because we were so hurt ourselves.

In order to be on a path to recovery you must also break with old patterns of relating to others. You must be vigilant for the people that are just not good for you. The ones with whom you quickly find yourself somewhat enmeshed in old dynamics with. It is as important to pay attention to the over-all dynamic of any relationship as it is to pay attention to your part of it.

The way to stop the hurt, and to begin to recover is by facing your abandonment wound head on. Borderline Personality Disorder wharps the mind, fools the senses, traps the true you, deep inside of the false you that you grew up being to survive what you had to survive. It is only by walking down that proverbial dark path that one can find the light of "healthy thinking", "healthy relating" and a non-personality-disordered-existence. You must remove the many layers of masks and uncover your true face and then learn how to tolerate the vulnerability it takes to show the world your true face -- who you really are, once you discover that for yourself.

There is peace to find. There is hope. There is a way out of the pain. It takes time. You will learn new behaviours, ways of thinking, coping and social skills as you make an effort to expose yourself to relating to others for who they are as opposed to who you have "held them up to be" (namely people in your past) It takes work and effort. If you are borderline, you know how much it hurts. If you want to recover, you must be willing and ready to accept some pain. Break free from your past. Abandon all of your old beliefs, your maladaptive coping skills, (the acting-out, the acting-in, the self-harm, the suicidal gestures, the push/pull etc etc) and know that with determined effort and skilled professional help you can heal that abandonment wound and find your authentic self.

Know that once you choose to actively walk the path of recovery it will be a slow process. Be thankful for this though. As you break each old pattern of thought and behaviour and work to process it all, grieve it, and release it, know that your healing will unfold at the pace at which you can handle it. Each of us is different with regard to that.

In summary, while change and recovery demand that a borderline, in essence, experience yet another "abandonment" there is such reward in the final living of past trauma and then letting it go. It will be replaced with new and very rewarding expereinces, feelings and relationships. Borderlines can change with determined effort to do so. Borderlines will not change and recover unless they make the decision to do so. That choice is an individual one. There are other mitigating circumstances and co-morbidity realities with other conditions that can compromise a borderline's ability to awaken to "authentic self". As with any other disorder, or challenge in life, the choice to change and to recover can only be made by the individual and no one in anyone's life can effect this for anyone else.

As someone who has healed from BPD I can honestly say that the pain of yet another abandonment and learning how to be here for myself and to take care of myself has been such a rewarding experience. There is life after BPD. There is life without BPD. Recovery awaits your decision and choice to "walk that way".

© Ms. A.J. Mahari - December 26, 1999

[wednesday]

The above makes alot of sense to me.

The abandonment feeling I experience is feeling frantic to some degree. It happens repeatedly every day. I desperately want someone to come and make everything feel all right and I will do anything to get that to happen.

Ironically, real peace comes when instead of this mini acting out, I actually deal with my aloneness by myself.

Sometimes this is self soothing, sometimes I can find a distraction like a good film and sometimes by doing something constructive.

I had this feeling now, this is why I am here. I wish I could get it to go away entirely.

[Louiza]

Im totally struggling with this too at the minute. Sometimes it seems to hit from no where, other times it feels totally just that I have these feelings.

I tend to test those around me alot to see if they are going or staying, and I shut the walls around me too, when I feel its possible someone might be getting ready to leave me.

I try to keep telling myself to stop "acting up" when I fear someone might leave, and try and seperate what is real and whats not. Another thing I feel helps me is talking through these feelings first with someone impartical, then talking to the person concered. The talking things through really helps me, looking at the bigger picture.

However saying all that, I wish there was a way to expell the feelings altogether, to me it feels like such a paralyzing panic over taking my mind.

[birdesh]

I'm afraid of being abandonned all the time. That fears shows in the most trivial situations, like waiting for someone who's late.

Now I'd like to find a way of reversing that crippling emotion that rears its ugly head far too often.

[Trace]

I am currently working on my self awareness right now in therapy. Next week is my llast session for 5 weeks and have been talking about this with my T. It hit me suddenly that the awful feeling of abandoment I am feeling toward her, is actually my old feelings off abandoment from a long time ago that are being triggered by the break. When I said this in session I immediately saw my T as the person she is and not the fantasy figure I believe her to be. Yes I will miss seeing her and our time together over the summer, but the real hurt is stemming from a long time ago. The feelings were already there. In one way this makes the upcoming break from T easier as I am more aware off the "real" relationship I have with T, that is, that she always comes back as our past 2 yrs together has proved to me. My fear that "she" is leaving me is yet again transferrance of past feelings and experiences. These past feelings can feel so real in the today, my mind seems to have grown distorted by them, ie, I was abandoned so IT will happen again! but that is life, people do come and go and I am not a child any longer I have my own coping ablities THIS TIME. So it is time to finally mourne what happened a long time ago and grief the losses involved with that and know that Life does indeed carry on. BUT of course this is such a long hard haul!

[Betsy]

logic and reality is the only counter for emotion. practice is the only way to make them effective when used with/against emotion.

just my oppion