The legacy experienced for those who have suffered from abandonment issues can lead to tragic outcomes if gone untreated.  The abdication of emotional bonds from those in your family are astoundingly painful and is often passed on to future generations.  The Family Constellations concept for treating such problems comes to mind for dealing with painful events that can have an ancestral beginning.  The dissonant cycles of abusive behaviors are dreadfully common in human genealogies which continue to pass along maladaptive behaviors to future generations.

When challenged with emotional deficiencies from the time you are a child, you become a member of the disenchanted, the forsaken ones that have more difficulty in the journey they travel as opposed to those whom do not suffer from such liabilities.  I have spent a lifetime in consternation to uncover questions about the foundations I have inherited from the family I was born into.  I have learned through my investigation just what may possibly be the single most identifying personal issue I have to work out; one that stems from feelings of abandonment as a child.  John Lennon has spoken about his early formative years growing up with loss and abandonment issues during his lifetime.  Many of his issues stem from his early years growing up.  The complications in his life when viewed from knowing that he suffered from such a condition makes sense when looking back upon his life in hindsight.  The song Mother from his first solo album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band in 1970.  It is a self-evident affirmation of his misery.

It comes as no surprise that abandonment issues often stem from early childhood trauma and losses, according to Claudia Black, Ph.D. and author of the Psychology Today article, “Understanding the Pain of Abandonment.” Those losses may take the form of an absent, inadequate, or abusive parent. For example, a child who is routinely ignored by parents or who is physically or psychologically injured by them begins to believe that he is powerless and unworthy.  These children may internalize a message that they cannot rely on others to be there to protect them.

Perspective

When you think of the words “abandon” and “abandonment” in a family context, what comes to mind?  How would you define “abandonment” to an average 10-year-old?  Have you ever felt abandoned?  Have you abandoned someone?  What would you say is the opposite of abandonment?  Can you describe (a) why some people abandon others, and (b) how abandonment affects typical kids, adults, and families?

What is “Abandonment”?

For our purposes, abandonment is a relationship dynamic that occurs when an adult or child voluntarily…

• denies or ignores key responsibilities (a role) that someone expects them to fulfill, like parental or marital obligations, and/or they…
• choose to end an existing relationship with someone else despite their partner/s not wanting that.  This is specially traumatic when the abandoned one depends on the other person for something important, like a child or disabled adult does.

Abandonment can be psychological (indifference, apathy, “coldness,” lack of intimacy); and/ or physical.  Psychological divorce occurs when one or both cohabiting mates abandon the other and their marital vows, roles, responsibilities, and relationship primacy.

Discussion of abandonment usually focuses on an adult leaving or quitting. Family members can be equally affected if a child or grandchild “runs away from (abandons) home.”

Other types of abandonment occur when a person voluntarily gives up a dream, a cause, a belief, membership in a group, hope, the will to live, a lifestyle, and/or physical possessions.  When circumstances force giving any of these up, that’s an involuntary loss, not an abandonment.  Do you agree?

Some traumatic relationship and role “abandonment’s” are not intentional. They occur when the person is severely wounded and unable to form appropriate bonds and maintain relationships like parent-child, mate-mate, and friend-friend.  A common sign of this is thinking or saying “You were never there for me.”

What Causes Abandonment?

Opinion – an adult or child abandoning a family is usually caused by effects from the inherited ancestral [wounds + unawareness] cycle.  Quitting an assigned or chosen role (like parent, grandparent, husband, wife, partner, sibling, son, or daughter) and/or a relationship can occur because…

• the role (responsibility) or relationship was unwanted, and/or was accepted without understanding what it required; or…
• the person feels chronically overwhelmed by responsibilities and/or stress (discomforts) in a relationship, role, or group (like a home or family); and/or…
• s/he feels incompetent, guilty, and ashamed of “failing” a dependent person and/or obligation; and s/he…
• (a) doesn’t see how to correct these stressor’s, and loses hope of improvement; or (b) s/he doesn’t want to correct them.

Each of these reasons is promoted by the person being psychologically wounded and unaware + making unwise role and relationship choices + lacking knowledge and problem-solving (“coping”) skills.  How does this compare with your belief about people who abandon their dependents, parents, and/or obligations?

How Can Abandonment Affect Kids and Adults?

Abandonment impacts occur when…

• an unborn child is unwanted, resented, and mistreated,
• one or both parents are harsh, unresponsive, and/or absent to a young child;
• parents divorce, and the absent parent chooses little or no contact with their kids or ex,
• a young child’s parent or caregiver dies or becomes mentally disabled,
• young or overwhelmed parents give up a child for adoption,
• biological parents turn over the care of their young child to an older sibling, relative, nanny, day-care adult, sitter, or au pair. And abandonment impacts occur when…
• a young child is hospitalized for some time and deprived of regular contact with her/his mother or parents; and…
• a parent chooses a job that requires her or him to be away from home for weeks or months at a time, like foreign military service.

Impacts on the Family System

To fully appreciate the causes and multi-level impacts of adult or child abandonment, view the affected multi-generational (“extended”) family as a dynamic system.  Psychological or physical abandonment changes a family system’s roles, roles, rituals, and traditions, subsystems, and social interactions in complex ways.

These concurrent changes cause temporary or long-term anxieties until family members adapt to them and stabilize.  They may lower the family’s nurturance level (“functionality”), and usually cause most or all well-bonded family members significant losses which need to be mourned over time.

Impacts on Children

The childhood and long-term effects of excessive parental absence can range from moderate to severe, depending on a child’s age, gender, their bond with the absent adult (weak > strong), and their extended family’s nurturance level (low > high). Common experience suggests that when young children are physically abandoned by a parent or caregiver – or if a primary caregiver is “emotionally unavailable” (can’t bond) – the kids are “badly hurt.” Their hurt is a mix of…

shock, if the abandonment was unexpected and/or explosive; and…

confusion – many mental questions and uncertainties about the abandonment and what it means; and…

shame (“low self-esteem”) – feeling unlovable and unworthy, even if other adults are genuinely nurturing and attentive; and perhaps their hurt includes…

guilt’s – feeling (irrationally) that they did something bad or wrong that caused the abandonment; and/or…

fears of (a) bonding with some or all adults / men / women; and that (b) their other caregivers may also abandon them, and they will die; and healthy kids feel …

grief over (a) involuntarily broken bonds, and later, (b) over lost hopes and fantasies of reunion.  If a child is raised in an ”anti-grief” family, s/he can unconsciously carry unfinished mourning into adulthood as periodic or chronic “depression.”

Another impact that may not become clear until adulthood is the effect of parental absence on a young child’s sense of gender identity.  Typical young girls need a father-figure’s affirmation and appreciation of their femininity. They also need consistent maternal modeling “how to be female” and delight in the daughter as a special, beloved girl.  Boys need to see how a father (“a man”) behaves, and to learn how to manage and appreciate their masculinity – specially how to relate to women and other men.

If these hurts are intense enough, an abandoned child can develop emotional numbness and/or selective “amnesia” (repression) to protect themselves from recalling and re-experiencing their abandonment trauma and losses.  One or more of their personality subselves may be living in the past, and still fear the searing pain of re-abandonment.

These effects are often magnified because parental and spousal abandonment usually signals (a) a low-nurturance (“dysfunctional”) home and childhood, and (b) significantly wounded and unaware caregivers and ancestors.

Minor kids can be also be stressed by other family members’ reactions to the abandonment.  If some family members scorn and vilify the adult or child who left, biological kids are forced to choose between loyalty to their absent parent or sibling, and other relatives.  Older, less-wounded kids may be able to detach and not align with either side without excessive guilt or anxiety.

Impact on Inner Kids

Parental abandonment pain can nourish the development of psychologically powerful inner children like these.  Each upset Child evokes one or more devoted Guardian subselves which ceaselessly try to soothe and protect them in various situations.  Collectively, these normal subselves can disable the resident true Self and detract from the development, self-confidence, and holistic health of the child.

Some previously abandoned teens can seek love, acceptance, and security through promiscuity or frantic trial primary relationships.  Others can seek it through gang and/or athletic membership, drama, and/or fantasizing of reunions.

Choices like these can mute but not heal the root causes of original abandonment pain.  Unless kids’ caregivers are…

• aware of abandonment dynamics and impacts,
• proactively reducing their own psychological wounds, and…
• grieving their own losses effectively, then…

abandonment impacts add to the stress the adults must manage. Self-motivated wound-healing often begins in midlife if the adult hits a true bottom.

Impacts on Adults

The effects of adult abandonment on themselves, their partner, and other family members depend on…

• whether each person is usually guided by their true Self or not.  The greater any psychological wounds and unawareness, the greater the impacts;
• the bonding, loyalties, and priorities of each family member.
• the effectiveness of the family members’ thinking and communication,
• the quality of social support that each member has,
• whether the abandonment was…
  • impulsive and sudden, or planned and foreseen, and…
  • caused by a romantic or sexual affair, and…
• the affect of the abandonment on the family’s financial stability and security; and…
• the family’s grieving and anger policies, and religious or ethnic traditions.

Depending on factors like these, the abandoning person may feel significant regret, guilt, shame, anxiety, relief, frustration and/ or remorse for a time, or chronically.  S/He may need to privately or socially distort what happened [e.g. deny it, and/or choose a victim role (“I had no choice!”)] to justify their “irresponsible,” “selfish,” or “immoral” behavior.

These compound emotions and related thoughts can add to the impact of the adult’s unhealed wounds from their own childhood, and may promote addictions, self-neglect, and relationship avoidance’s and “cutoffs” with key family kids, adults and supporters.

Abandonment and related cutoffs and “strained relations” can cause all family members significant losses and stresses.  Unless the family is pro-grief and intentionally working to reduce psychological wounds and unawareness, these stressor’s may significantly lower the family’s nurturance level. T hat raises the odds that the next generation will inherit and spread the toxic effects of the [wounds + unawareness] cycle.

A major impact variable is whether family adults criticize, scorn, and shun the abandoning adult, or view her or him with compassion as a helpless victim of childhood neglect.  Typical adults will need to be guided by their true Self to feel genuine compassion and forgiveness.

Unaware and uninformed lay and professional people risk focusing only on the abandonment and its effects, rather than on the primary problems causing it (above) and how they affect the family system.

Adapting to Abandonment

source: from break the cycle – http://sfhelp.org/gwc/abandon.htm

A therapy client whom I’ll call Marvin came in to reduce a significant depression .  Our initial inter-view strongly suggested he was had survived a low-nurturance (neglectful) childhood.  He said that his son had just turned six – the same age as when Marvin’s father had left his mother and him to fend for themselves. She never told him why his father left, so he had to invent his own explanations.

His wounded mother couldn’t provide a pro-grief home, so young Marvin repressed his normal feelings of confusion, anger, loneliness, and sadness.  He said that for years he feared he had done something that drove his father away.  When I suggested that his “depression” might be long-overdue normal grief for his profound childhood losses, he said he felt “relieved.”

Over some weeks, I invited him to tell me how his father’s abandonment had affected him as a boy, man, and divorced father.  As he examined and described that, normal emotions surfaced, including bouts of healthy tears and intense anger at both parents.

Marvin became interested in learning healthy grieving basics (Lesson 5) so he could protect his young son from blocked grief.  As part of his own mourning, he decided to confront his mother about his father’s leaving and her “never talking to me about it.”  He eventually stopped meeting with me as his “depression” gradually faded.

When an adult or teen abandons their mate or family, all members and close friends experience at least temporary stress from significant losses and family system changes.  Though details vary, there are several common personal tasks that family adults and kids need informed support with:

• admitting and grieving (accepting) a web of losses (broken bonds), starting with “making sense” of what happened, and why;
• self and mutual forgiveness;
• admitting and reducing excessive guilt’s and shame to normal;
• adjusting and stabilizing family roles, rules, rituals, loyalties, priorities, and identity;
• maintaining or improving the family’s nurturance level; and…
• reducing fear of re-abandonment to normal – specially in young kids.