A Walk Through Adulthood
I’m afraid… afraid of what might happen if I don’t change my ways. Afraid of walking right through this path. I’ll come out shinning on the other end… but I’ll do it afraid. That’s what I know to be the key of success… do it afraid, do it anyways.
So here I am trying to voice what I want to do… I want to be able to open up about my abandonment issues. There always comes a point in my life where I always go back to the same scenario regardless in what area of life I’m navigating at the moment.
How you do one thing is how you do everything… Think about that.
In my job, I’m always terrified I’ll get randomly fired as I have been before.
In my relationship, I’m always terrified he’ll abandon me as I’ve been abandoned before by both friends and family.
In my finances I’m always thinking that my financial stability will unreasonably vanish away from me.
In my relationship with that which is greater I always fear that I’ll the universe will forget about me. For I’m a strong believer in the orderly fashion of the universe.
For so many years, I’ve struggled with abandonment. Remember that part where I said I always come back to?
It happened when I was three and then again some time during my pre-teens. I was abandoned by the people whom I loved the most, my family.
At the age of three, mom wasn’t allowed to come to my class’ Christmas event. I was the only child without their parents there. It felt weird, mom cried and I just felt as alone as ever. Three years old, alone in a family Christmas activity all because my mom’s boss did not let her participate from that event. My mom worked in the school I studied it which makes it more painful because she was so close yet so far.
During my pre-teen years, I developed attitude problems. I emotionally lashed out many times. So much so that neither my mom nor my dad wanted to spend time with me at all so I spent it alone at a police station while things “cooled off.” Needless to say, the emotions tied to that situation are of complete and utter loneliness and despair.
When studying life coaching… I learned two things that come alive during this writing… Our beliefs dictate our experiences and our experiences confirms our beliefs.
The second thing I learned was that during childhood we develop our meaning of the world. We can’t change what we lived, but we can change the meaning we gave it.
So, here I am, a grown-ass woman trying to cope with her abandonment issues. Trying to get myself to internalize that the people who love and appreciate me won’t randomly leave me, and if they do… it’s something that I can survive.
The problem is that despite the fact that I know I can survive it, I don’t want to fall into the subconscious self-sabotaging pattern of pushing people away so that my reptilian brain can find a way to bring to life that abandonment which it knows so well it can survive.
That’s the kind of loop many of us get stuck in life for years and some of us never truly exit it. Luckily, I have the NLP and coaching tools to be able to step away from myself and work to get things done. I can ask my boyfriend to hold me accountable and make sure that I change this self-destructive behavioral patterns.
Not everyone is lucky enough to have someone support them through their emotional struggles. If you’re one of the lucky ones that has them, please find a time where you’re emotionally sober and communicate with them how you’re feeling and where you think your emotions and patterns are coming from. They’ll support you every step of the way.
I’m still struggling with my abandonment issues, but I know that once I speak to my boyfriend about this when I’m emotionally sober, he’ll support me every step of the way.
Moral of story: dare to be vulnerable with those that you carry dear to your heart. They will hold the space for you if you deliver your message for help in an emotional sober and non-attacking manner.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!