Abandonment (emotional)
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Emotional abandonment is a subjective emotional state in which people feel undesired, left behind, insecure, or discarded. People experiencing emotional abandonment may feel at a loss. They may feel like they have been cut off from a crucial source of sustenance or feel withdrawn, either suddenly or through a process of erosion. Emotional abandonment can manifest through loss or separation from a loved one.[1]
Feeling rejected, which is a significant component of emotional abandonment, has a biological impact in that it activates the
Impairment and treatment considerations
Feelings of emotional abandonment can stem from numerous situations. According to Makino et al:
Whether one considers a romantic rejection, the dissolution of a friendship, ostracism by a group, estrangement from family members, or merely being ignored or excluded in casual encounters, rejections have myriad emotional, psychological, and interpersonal consequences. People not only react strongly when they perceive that others have rejected them, but a great deal of human behavior is influenced by the desire to avoid rejection."[4]
Our perception of rejection or of being rejected can have a lasting effect on how an individual acts.[5][6][7] One's perception may impair one's ability to establish and maintain close and meaningful relationships with others.[5][8]
Individuals who experience feelings of emotional abandonment are likely to also experience maladaptive thoughts ("irrational beliefs") and behaviors such as depressive symptoms and relationship avoidance and/or dependence. This may cause abundant difficulty in daily life with interpersonal relationships and social settings. While such maladaptive thoughts and behaviors are sometimes present in the context of certain psychological disorders (e.g., borderline personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, depression, anxiety disorders), not all individuals who experience feelings of emotional abandonment will meet criteria for such a psychological disorder. These individuals may function within normal limits in spite of the presence of these emotional difficulties.[9][8] Such feelings should only be considered by a mental health professional in conjunction with all available information and diagnostic criterion prior to drawing conclusions about the state of someone's mental health.[9]
When treatment is deemed appropriate by a mental health professional, there are several treatment plans that are helpful in improving maladaptive thoughts and behaviors commonly manifested in those who feel emotionally abandoned. For example, cognitive processing therapy (CPT) is effective in treating depression, anxiety disorders, and PTSD.[10] Emotion focused therapy (EFT) is effective in treating depression.[10] Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is effective in treating negative emotionality and impulsive behaviors commonly seen in those diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.[11][12]
Another form of therapy that is suited to this population is acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). ACT focuses on an individual's avoidance of painful emotions and memories. ACT techniques are designed to cultivate thought processes that are focused on being present in the moment and accepting uncomfortable or painful thoughts and feelings. Reframing maladaptive perceptions of one's thoughts to adaptive perceptions of thoughts and committing to aligning one's behaviors with one's goals and values is fundamental to ACT treatment.[11] Just like the process of arriving at diagnostic conclusions, all modes of therapy and treatment plans should be based on individual presentation and should be evaluated by a mental health professional before beginning treatment.
Separation anxiety
Separation anxiety, a substrate of emotional abandonment, is recognized as a primary source of human distress and dysfunction.
Owing to the
Psychological trauma
The depression that might accompany abandonment can create a sustained type of stress that constitutes an emotional trauma which can be severe enough to leave an emotional imprint on an individual's psychobiological functioning. This can affect future choices and responses to rejection, loss, or even disconnection.[25] One after-effect of abandonment is that of experiencing triggers. These triggers are linked to our primal fear of being separated. This type of fear is referred to as primal abandonment fear. We fear being left alone and having no one to take care of our needs. People usually first experience anxiety as a fear of being separated from their mother[26] This sensation is stored in the amygdala – a structure set deep into the brain's emotional memory system responsible for conditioning the fight/freeze/flight response to fear.[27] Primal fear may have been initiated by birth trauma and even have some prenatal antecedents.[28] The emotional memory system is fairly intact at or before birth and lays down traces of the sensations and feelings of the infant's separation experiences.[29] These primitive feelings are reawakened by later events, especially those reminiscent of unwanted or abrupt separations from a source of sustenance.[30]
In adulthood, being left arouses primal fear along with other primitive sensations which contribute to feelings of terror and outright panic. Infantile needs and urgencies re-emerge and can precipitate a symbiotic regression in which individuals feel, at least momentarily, unable to survive without the lost object.[22] People may also experience the intense stress of helplessness.[31] When they make repeated attempts to compel their loved one to return and are unsuccessful, they feel helpless and inadequate to the task. This helplessness causes people to feel possessed of what Michael Balint calls “a limited capacity to perform the work of conquest – the work necessary to transform an indifferent object into a participating partner.” According to Balint, feeling one's ‘limited capacity’ is traumatic in that it produces a fault line in the psyche which renders the person vulnerable to heightened emotional responses within primary relationships.[32]
Another factor contributing to the traumatic conditions is the stress of losing one's background object. A background object is someone on whom individuals have come to rely in ways they did not realize until the object is no longer present.
Post-traumatic stress disorder
Some people who experience the traumatic stress of abandonment go on to develop post traumatic symptoms.[38] Post-traumatic symptoms associated with abandonment include a sequela of heightened emotional reactions (ranging from mild to severe) and habituated defense mechanisms (many of which have become maladaptive) to perceived threats or disruptions to one's sense of self or to one's connections.[39] Such symptoms are all very common, regardless of how traumatic the event. They include "recurrent intrusive memories, traumatic nightmares, and flashbacks. Avoiding trauma-related thoughts and feelings and/or objects, people, or places associated with the trauma. Distorted beliefs about oneself or the world, persistent shame or guilt, emotional numbing, feelings of alienation, inability to recall key details of the trauma, etc." These symptoms all stem from devastating events that can have lasting effects on the brain through adulthood.[40]
There are various predisposing psycho-biological and environmental factors that go into determining whether one's earlier emotional trauma might lead to the development of a true clinical picture of post-traumatic stress disorder.[25] One factor has to do with variation in certain brain structures. According to Jerome Kagan, some people are born with a locus coeruleus that tends to produce higher concentrations of norepinephrine, a brain chemical involved in arousal of the body's self-defense response.[41] This would lower their threshold for becoming aroused and make them more likely to become anxious when they encounter stresses in life that are reminiscent of childhood separations and fears, hence making them more prone to becoming post-traumatic.
Borderline personality disorder
The most distinguishing symptoms of borderline personality disorder (BPD) are marked sensitivity to rejection or criticism, and intense fear of possible abandonment.[42] Overall, the features of BPD include unusually intense sensitivity in relationships with others, difficulty regulating emotions, issues with self-image and impulsivity.[42] Fear of abandonment may lead to overlapping dating relationships as a new relationship is developed to protect against abandonment in the existing relationship. Other symptoms may include feeling unsure of one's personal identity, morals, and values; having paranoid thoughts when feeling stressed; depersonalization; and, in moderate to severe cases, stress-induced breaks with reality or psychotic episodes.
Autophobia
Autophobia is the
References
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- ^ a b American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing.
- ^ a b Sloan, Denise (2016). "Cognitive Processing Therapy for Post Traumatic Stress". Division 12 of the American Psychological Association. Archived from the original on 2019-07-08. Retrieved May 24, 2021.
- ^ a b Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (2014). Abnormal psychology (6th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
- ^ Psychological Treatments. (2016). In Division 12 of the American Psychological Association. Retrieved from https://www.div12.org/treatments/
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- ^ a b Hofer, Myron. "An Evolutionary Perspective on Anxiety." In Anxiety as Symptom and Signal, edited by S. Roose and R. Glick. Hillsdale: Analytic Press, 1995. p. 36.
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- ^ Coe, Christopher, Sandra Wiener, Leon Rosenbert, and Seymour Levine. "Endocrine and Immune Response to Separation and Maternal Loss in Nonhuman Primates." In The Psychobiology of Attachment and Separation, edited by Martin Reite and Tiffany Field. San Diego: Academic Press, 1985.
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- ^ Sapolsky, Robert M., Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1994 and Sapolsky, "Social Subordinance as a Marker of Hypercortisolism," Social Subordinance, Annals New York Academy of Sciences, pp. 626-638.
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- ^ Anderson, Susan (2010-08-12). "Helping people overcome the aftermath of heartbreak and loss". Susan Anderson. Retrieved 15 February 2016.
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- ^ Hofer, Myron. "An Evolutionary Perspective on Anxiety," in Anxiety as Symptom and Signal, pages 25-27.
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- ^ Seligman, Martin. Helplessness: On Depression, Development and Death. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1975.
- ^ a b Balint, Michael. The Basic Fault: Therapeutic Aspects of Regression. Evanston: North Western University Press, 1992.
- ^ Winnecott, Donald W. "The Capacity to be Alone." In The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment: Studies in the Theory of Emotional Development. Madison: International Universities Press, 1965; Robertiello, Richard, and Terril T. Gagnier, PhD. "Sado-masochism as a Defense Against Merging: Six Case Studies." Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy 23, no. 3 (1993) pp. 183-192.
- ^ a b Weiner, Herbert. Perturbing the Organism: The Biology of Stressful Experience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
- ^ Tiffany Field, "Attachment as Psychobiological Attunement: Being on the Same Wavelength," in The Psychobiology of Attachment and Separation, pp. 445-448.
- ^ L. Monti-Bloch, and B. I. Grosser, "Effect of Putative Pheromones on the Electrical Activity of the Human Vomeronasal Organ and Alfactory Epithilium," Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 1001.
- ^ Pert, Candace B. Molecules of Emotion. New York: Scribner, 1997’ and Panksepp, Jaak, Eric Nelson, and Marni Bekkedal. "Brain Systems for the Mediation of Separation Distress and Social Reward." Annals NY Academy of Sciences 807 (1997) 78-100.
- ^ Goleman, Daniel. The Emotional Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New Insights. North Hampton, Mass, 2011.
- ^ Susan Anderson, The Journey from Abandonment to Healing: The Five Stages that Accompany the Loss of Love. Berkley 2000, page 27.
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- ^ Kagan, Jerome. The Nature of a Child. New York: Basic Books, 1984.
- ^ a b Borderline Personality Disorder. The British Psychological Society & The Royal College of Psychiatrists, National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (UK). 2009.
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ignored (help) - ^ Gould, Dr. George Milbry (1910). The Practitioner's Medical Dictionary (2nd ed.). Philadelphia: P. Blackiston's Son & Co. p. 101.
External links
- Quotations related to Abandonment at Wikiquote