✍️ Editor’s Note:
Zalman is my therapist—and my secret weapon.
When I was unraveling, he didn’t just offer support. He helped me see the patterns running my life and gave me language sharp enough to cut through them.
His insights show up everywhere in Permission to Be Powerful—because they changed me. Now I want them to reach you.
This is your introduction to Zalman, LCSW. You’ll be hearing more from him.
—Anton
Dear Permission to be Powerful Reader,
A Text Therapy client recently asked me about the impact of abandonment on her relationships and struggles.
"I keep abandoning myself in relationships but I’m not sure how to make it stop. I overgive because I’m terrified of abandonment, but the catch-22 is I’m abandoning myself right???"
Great question. Very real and common, and many people struggle with it.
Always wows me how we can feel more empowered and safe and secure and welcomed to be real, authentic, and honest in Text Therapy, and get to the core issues.
Here's what I shared:
"Right! people treat us the way we treat ourselves. and we treat ourselves in the way we say our parents, siblings, friends, teachers, etc. treat us.
Try to make some time each day to do the very opposite of abandoning yourself: being there for yourself. ask, wonder, be curious about "what am I feeling?"
Or, contemplate a moment during the day when you were triggered and ask "what was I feeling?"
Use a feelings chart if you want to help yourself tune in and really name the feelings.
In that way, you pay yourself – your Inner Child – attention; tuning into her and sending her the message that she's valued and worth your time.
Then, as you notice her feelings, without judgment, you give her a sense of unconditional acceptance.
That she's valid and worthy: worthy of your time to stop what you're doing for a few moments and tune into her, hear her, listen and understand, and be accepting.
As you practice a bit each day of being present and not abandoning yourself, you'll be more and more attracted to, and attracting, types that are solid and reliable, not looking to abandon you, and ready to commit to you and stick with you."
Life Patterns are a blind attachment to the image we formed, received, had pushed on us, absorbed, and were trained to believe about ourselves.
The Abandonment Life Pattern strongly features the feeling that the people closest to you will leave and you will end up alone forever.
Those with the pattern tend to cling too tightly to others when they hold on to this belief and wind up pushing people away.
Even normal experiences of separation cause anxiety and agitation and are seen as threatening. As a result, people struggling with the Abandonment Life Partner often wind up causing the very abandonment they fear occurring.
Beginning of The Abandonment Life Pattern
Abandonment begins in the first years of your life before you knew the language or had words to
describe your experience. As a result, even as an adult there may be no thoughts
connected to the experience of the Life Pattern. When you do try to describe your abandonment experience, it sounds like, “I’m all alone,” “No one is there for me.”
The early onset of this Life Pattern leads it to wield tremendous emotional force, and even slight separations trigger intense reactions.
Primarily, Abandonment is brought on by deeper or more intimate relationships, and may not be noticeable in groups or casual relationships. The most powerful triggers are caused by separations from loved ones.
In addition, the separations do not have to be real, or occur physically, in order to trigger a strong emotional reaction to the Abandonment Life Pattern.
Rather, you’ll be overly sensitive and frequently assume others’ intent to abandon their innocent remarks.
Still, the most powerful triggers of Abandonment are real loss and separation such as divorce, someone moving or going away, and death.
Two Types of Abandonment Life Pattern
There are two types of abandonment, produced by two types of early childhood environments.
The first type comes from an environment that is too secure and overprotected.
This type represents a combination of Abandonment with lots of dependence: a belief that they can’t survive alone; that they need a strong figure to guide and direct them through daily life.
Many people have a strong Abandonment Life Pattern but without an issue of dependence.
They belong to the second type, where the LIfe Pattern was caused by instability in childhood emotional connections to the closest people: mother, father, sisters and brothers, and close friends.
Where the Life Pattern arose from instability, then you experienced an emotional connection that was then lost.
As a result, you cannot bear to be apart from the people you love because of the way you feel without them.
You feel lost without them, thrown into nothingness, and unable to self-soothe.
— Zalman, LCSW
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