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THE ABANDONMENT ISSUE The majority of BP’s are not capable of maintaining healthy relationship for many and varying reason. One such reason is abandonment or imagined abandonment. But who actually abandons who? This depends on the people involved in the marriage/relationship, the circumstances of this relationship unit and the degree of Borderline Personality Disorder that is being experienced. It may be that the partner can not take any more of their BP’s actions and decides that to maintain themselves they must leave. But it can also be the BP who does the abandoning. To some BP’s they reach a point in their relationship where their partner is getting too close as far as they are concerned and to balance this they "push away" or "act out/act in to a point where they force their partner to leave. Other people have experienced where their partner has just up and left, some never to be seen again, others returning in a week, a month, a year. There are so many reasons behind their line of thinking but the main thought is that they believe that they are going to be abandoned anyway – so get in first and the pain will be less. They may pick up on their partner not being as happy as they were (possibly due to the way they are acting) but the BP sees this as their partner not loving them any more. Some have thought that their partner was the best thing that could ever happen to them but because of their illness they believe that they will eventually destroy the relationship so they should get out now. BPD based on childhood issues could leave the BP thinking that everyone who has ever loved me abandoned me therefore my special partner will too. Others just get angry over what they believe may or may not happen and run away until they are hidden again amongst those who don’t know them. To abandon someone won’t hurt me therefore it must be good. BP’s often walk away from friends, relationships, even family without saying a word or explaining their actions. Yes, all of this is inter-linked with so many other issues – fear of who they really are, fear from what they have found out they are, fear that if the person/s in their life may find out the truth, and fear that no one will ever love them the way they will be loved. I would like to quote a passage from a woman (A.J. Mahari) who has recovered from BPD and runs what I consider to be the most successful and helpful site in America for BP’s (with many Non’s reading her articles with interest, gaining a lot of understanding to their missing why’s). AJ wrote - My experience with abandonment taught me that it was better to abandon others before they could abandon me. I lived like that for quite some time. It is a painful place to be. It is a place of illusion. The illusion being that one thinks if they abandon the other first it won't hurt like being abandon. The truth is that when any relationship or friendship ends or is abandoned or withdrawn from it hurts, whether you are the one ending it or not. Borderlines often don't understand this. They look at everything as black and white, right and wrong. What hurts is black and wrong and what feels better is right and white. If it hurts at all to relate to you right now, then a borderline will thrust or project that hurt out on the nearest person they are relating to/with and push away, withdraw and or both thinking that this gives them "control". The belief that to operate this way is "control" is the biggest illusion of all. Often the borderline withdraws, stops relating, ends friendships etc quickly and without explaining anything -- often they don't understand this behaviour themselves and then isolates. Once in this place of isolation they rarely if ever go back because they simply don't know that they have that option (in the cases where the option might apply -- ie a friendship-- not yet dead, or a relationship with a relative). Once you get put in the black-bad category you are then split -- gone, cease to exist or you are gone and become the running focus of the isolating borderline's anger pretty much unceasingly. Borderlines, having been damaged in a way that stunts their emotional growth, until they repair the damage, are often very emotionally immature. They cannot relate age-appropriately. They will not likely be "adult" in terms of taking responsibility and so forth. Therefore, it is only natural to assume -- realize that borderlines do not know how to love. They are unaware of who they are. Therefore they cannot love themselves. Anyone who does not know, love and respect "themself" cannot respect and love any "other". If you are a non-borderline be careful that you are not locked into some pattern of unrealistic expectations of a borderline. Unless they are actively involved in therapy and recovery you are more likely to get hurt severely than you are to be loved. "if you cannot love and respect yourself as a person then you will never be able to accept nor feel the warmth and love that someone is offering you". ~mjtacc~ The Abandonment Wound It is very common for a person with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) to have deep issues with abandonment, both real, actual abandonment, and abandonment that is perceived by them. (or perhaps is thought to be about to take place) It is one of the "traits" or diagnostic criteria for BPD. In my own case what I know about this abandonment is that I was abandoned (in the sense that my needs were not met) as a young child. This abandonment was both a lack of met needs and a lack of emotional nurturance. What I believed I learned from this abandonment was not to trust anyone, that "they" will not be there when I "need" them to be there. This was the case in my initial or "original wound" (Bradshaw). That state of panic, of hunger, of unfulfilled need, experienced by me as abandonment, coupled with the emotional abandonment that actually took place and was not just perceived as such by me, taught me that I was not important, that I was not worthy, that me and my needs were not respected. From this, then, subconsciously I derived much. Instead of growing up with some semblance of trust and inter-dependence, and a healthy sense of risk and need I was left "needy". This "neediness" was then viewed as "bad" or "less than" in my family. I learned to hold this anger, the anger of frustrated needs, and to feel shame for needing anything. We all have needs. It is healthy to have needs that require answering. As a child it is up to someone else to meet those needs for us until we are old enough to meet them for ourselves. I was wounded. I had been abandoned and perceived further abandonment. I lacked nurture. There was no love in this. I learned to hate. I learned to focus on all that I did not have. I became egocentric. As young children we are the center of the universe. It is when these feelings are carried over into adulthood that we see the term "borderline" applied to those with these residual aspects of the early stages of development. I learned how to expect and even set-up recurring abandonment as a theme in my life. Loss after loss after loss....it took me years to "get it." When I "got it" I found that no one else can truly abandon me now. I am an adult and when I meet my own needs people are free to come and go as they please in my life. I do not perceive this as abandonment anymore. I am not the center of the universe anymore. (not even in my head) I was first abandoned. My needs were not met. I did not develop trust. I did not learn to love. I did not experience what it felt like to be loved or nurtured. I learned to abandon myself. Time and time again, as I grew older, I would abandon myself. For years I did not know this was the case. All I knew was that I was agitated or angry again and that it was someone else's fault. I developed a pattern of re-creating situations of abandonment in my life. Some would argue I did this because it was all that I knew. No! I would argue that I did this in search of, ever seeking, the "fix" to the "original abandonment". I was trying to have the situation play itself out in a way that would once and for all satisfy me, make sense to me, make me feel better. An abandonment wound is a hole in the soul. I learned through the course of my healing that all of the recapitulation in the world was not going to yield me with the results I had so needed years and years ago. Nothing could fill the hole in my soul. I was wounded. Like any wound, it hurt profoundly. And like any wound it can not be un-wound, or undone, no, it must be healed. As I came to better understand the aspects of my behaviour with regard to the re-playing of my infancy/childhood and trying to capture what had eluded me all of my life, in therapy, it all started to become apparent. I was not going to get another "parent", it was now up to me to be the parent that the child aspect of me so needed, and had always needed. It would only be through hindsight, after I was well on my way to healing the hole in my soul, my original abandonment wound that I would realize that there was only one way to heal it. I had to be the one to heal it. It was up to me. It was my hole, my soul, my wound, my problem. Blame, or what have you, mattered not anymore. I was tired of hurting. In order to heal this wound all I had to do was get "real", get "honest", about it and with it enough to "feel" the pain, to grieve the losses and to learn to let them go. As I did these things, my life began to change. I was a changing person. I learned to be alone. I learned to soothe myself. I learned that my feelings are my own and that no one has the power to make me feel anything. I choose what I feel. I had two parents that failed me miserably. I am not entitled to anymore parents. People that come into my life, friends, or lovers, are not doing so to re-parent me. This may sound simplistic but it is one of the base sources of why borderlines are not able to sustain consistent long-term relationships (friendships). It is that neediness, those abandonment fears, that lack of trust along with the "acting out" of your past and the looking to "other" to do what you need to do for yourself. Each of us must take care of ourselves. When you, as a borderline, demand that another take care of you, when they try, they then effectively abandon themselves. Then you have two wounded people. I slowly began to alter my behaviour to the point that I no longer played out and re-played out the past and the abandonment wound. Instead, I took responsibility for my pain and for what I needed in the present. I cried rivers of tears. I journalled so much I must have used a forest of tree's worth of paper. I learned that I had been projecting my original abandonment wound and all my associated fears of abandonment onto anyone that I came even remotely close to. The reason was simple, I was not taking care of myself. I kept looking to others (even way into adulthood) to take care of me. It is this very demanding that others take care of you that so drives them back and or away, thus leaving you yet again, "abandoned" and "wounded". In the end, sooner or later they must go, in order to save themselves and their own health and sanity. Until a borderline accepts personal responsibility for their own pain and their own needs and their own inability to meet their own needs the past "holds" (owns) your feelings and keeps them at bay (hidden from you) in the guise of some "outside monster" that will annihilate you should you dare to try to feel what you actually feel. This is where the pain of illusion and myth and a lack of understanding of what is real, in the big picture, from what we think is real in our own "egocentric" picture keeps you stuck and a prisoner to borderline thinking. And you are responsible for this. Once you reach adulthood, it is yours. It belongs to no one else but you. So central to BPD is this issue of abandonment, that as painful as it is rather than heal it, over and over again, borderlines, tend to re-feed it. Until you look deeply into this process you will not realize that you are the one feeding your own fear of abandonment and that you are the one choosing to not trust others. Granted, how are you supposed to trust others to be there for you when you still refuse to be there for you? No one can give you what you most need......NO ONE! You are the only person that can find your way to the ache, to the base of that pain, to giving appropriate, healthy expression to that pain and to setting it free, letting it go and to the change that you require to end your borderline agony. You will be abandoned for as long as it takes you to learn that you are the one that is abandoning and re-abandoning yourself. You are the one that is pushing others away with your behaviour. You are sending mixed messages. You are too "needy". You need to learn how to be who you are, and then to be okay with that person, and most importantly of all, how to be alone with that person that you are, and meet your own emotional needs. Only after you have worked this through cognitively and emotionally grieved it will you have room to learn how to love and be loved, to know others and to trust others to know you. Only when you have helped yourself (through therapy too) grow past the wounds of your childhood and emotionally become the adult that you physically became (perhaps years ago) will you begin to know life beyond abandonment. Life beyond abandonment involves living in a place called "healthy risk" and "appropriate vulnerability". There is no being a closed book. There is no living behind wall after wall. No one, aside from you, has an obligation to chase you behind all the walls that you use to protect yourself from the very pain that you keep re-inflicting upon yourself. Abandonment is real. (Whether actual or perceived) To the sufferer it is REAL! It is excruciatingly painful. It does not have to go on. You can make the difference that you need to make to find happiness and peace inside. Yes, it hurts to heal. But in my estimation, from where I stand now, it would have hurt far more to have remained the same (as I was) and to not be experiencing so much of what I am now. Abandonment does not have to be a lifetime experience. Once you find yourself, grieve the past and learn how to be there for yourself in the present you will not ever again have to feel that "original abandonment" again. It takes courage to walk into the pain that it takes to heal your abandonment wounds. As one who has done it, let me tell you, it IS worth it. Don't abandon one more minute of your here and now, or your tomorrow to your yesterday. Take the past's power away. Find yourself and love yourself enough......it will be enough.... and the ache of nothing ever being enough will also also pass....stop re-abandoning yourself and blaming everyone else. Helpful links http://www.soulselfhelp.on.ca/AJ.html and http://www.bpd411.org/engulfabandon.html "I'm not abandoning you, I am just loving you from a place that is acceptable to you" ~mjtacc~
ASSERTIVE "WIN-WIN" RELATIONSHIPS LOVING MYSELF If I can't make myself happy, others can't do it for me. If I can't make myself happy, how can I contribute much to the happiness of others. Why would someone want to stay in a relationship with someone who is miserable?
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