Poll: The Five Stages of Abandonment - Susan Anderson, MSW

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The Five Stages of Abandonment
Susan Anderson, MSW

Everyday there are people who feel as if life itself has left them on a doorstep or thrown them away. Abandonment is about loss of love itself, that crucial loss of connectedness. It often involves breakup, betrayal, aloneness. People struggling with abandonment issues include those going through the ending of a relationship as well as searching adoptees, recently widowed, and those suffering the woundedness of earlier disconnections.

Abandonment represents core human fear. We have all experienced it. When a relationship ends, the feelings harken all the way back to our lost childhoods when we were helpless, and dependent. Our adult functioning temporarily collapses.We feel shattered, bewildered, condemned to loneliness. As we apply the tools of recovery, at the bottom of abandonment’s pain, we discover a wellspring of positive change.

Abandonment is a cumulative wound containing all of the losses and disconnections stemming all the way back to childhood.

Here are the five stages of abandonment: Shattering, Withdrawal, Internalizing, Anger, and Lifting – introduced in the book JOURNEY FROM ABANDONMENT.

1: SHATTERING - Your relationship is breaking apart. Your hopes and dreams are Shattered. You are devastated, bewildered. You succumb to despair and panic. You feel hopeless and have Suicidal feelings. You feel Symbiotically attached to your lost love, mortally wounded, as if you’ll die without them. You are in Severe pain, Shock, Sorrow. You’ve been Severed from your primary attachment. You’re cut off from your emotional life-line.

2: WITHDRAWL – painful Withdrawal from your lost love. The more time goes on, the more all of the needs your partner was meeting begin to impinge into your every Waking moment. You are in Writhing pain from being torn apart. You yearn, ache, and Wait for them to return. Love-withdrawal is just like Heroin Withdrawal – - each involves the body’s opiate system and the same physical symptoms of intense craving. During Withdrawal, you are feeling the Wrenching pain of love-loss and separation – - the Wasting, Weight loss, Wakefulness, Wishful thinking, and Waiting for them to return. You crave a love-fix to put you out of the WITHDRAWAL symptoms.

3: INTERNALIZING – you Internalize the rejection and cause Injury to your self esteem. This is the most critical stage of the cycle when your wound becomes susceptible to Infection and can create permanent scarring. You are Isolated, riddled with Insecurity, self- Indictment and self-doubt. You are preoccupied with ‘If only regrets’ – - If only you had been more attentive, more sensitive, less demanding, etc. You beat yourself up with regrets over the relationship and Idealize your abandoner at the expense of your own self Image.

4: ANGER – the turning point in the grief process when you begin to fight back. You attempt to Reverse the Rejection by Refusing to accept all of the blame for the failed relationship, and feel surges of anger against your abandoner. You Rail against the pain and isolation you’ve been in. Agitated depression and spurts of anger displaced on your friends and family are common during this turbulent time, as are Revenge and Retaliation fantasies toward your abandoner.

5: LIFTING – your anger helped to externalize your pain. Gradually, as your energy spurts outward, it Lifts you back into Life. You begin to Let go. Life distracts you and gradually Lifts you out the grief cycle. You feel the emergence of strength, wiser for the painful Lessons you’ve Learned. And if you’re engaged in the process of recovery, you get ready to Love again.[/color]

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The Five Stages of Abandonment
Susan Anderson, MSW

Everyday there are people who feel as if life itself has left them on a doorstep or thrown them away. Abandonment is about loss of love itself, that crucial loss of connectedness. It often involves breakup, betrayal, aloneness. People struggling with abandonment issues include those going through the ending of a relationship as well as searching adoptees, recently widowed, and those suffering the woundedness of earlier disconnections.

Abandonment represents core human fear. We have all experienced it. When a relationship ends, the feelings harken all the way back to our lost childhoods when we were helpless, and dependent. Our adult functioning temporarily collapses.We feel shattered, bewildered, condemned to loneliness. As we apply the tools of recovery, at the bottom of abandonment’s pain, we discover a wellspring of positive change.

Abandonment is a cumulative wound containing all of the losses and disconnections stemming all the way back to childhood.

Here are the five stages of abandonment: Shattering, Withdrawal, Internalizing, Anger, and Lifting – introduced in the book JOURNEY FROM ABANDONMENT.

1: SHATTERING - Your relationship is breaking apart. Your hopes and dreams are Shattered. You are devastated, bewildered. You succumb to despair and panic. You feel hopeless and have Suicidal feelings. You feel Symbiotically attached to your lost love, mortally wounded, as if you’ll die without them. You are in Severe pain, Shock, Sorrow. You’ve been Severed from your primary attachment. You’re cut off from your emotional life-line.

2: WITHDRAWL – painful Withdrawal from your lost love. The more time goes on, the more all of the needs your partner was meeting begin to impinge into your every Waking moment. You are in Writhing pain from being torn apart. You yearn, ache, and Wait for them to return. Love-withdrawal is just like Heroin Withdrawal – - each involves the body’s opiate system and the same physical symptoms of intense craving. During Withdrawal, you are feeling the Wrenching pain of love-loss and separation – - the Wasting, Weight loss, Wakefulness, Wishful thinking, and Waiting for them to return. You crave a love-fix to put you out of the WITHDRAWAL symptoms.

3: INTERNALIZING – you Internalize the rejection and cause Injury to your self esteem. This is the most critical stage of the cycle when your wound becomes susceptible to Infection and can create permanent scarring. You are Isolated, riddled with Insecurity, self- Indictment and self-doubt. You are preoccupied with ‘If only regrets’ – - If only you had been more attentive, more sensitive, less demanding, etc. You beat yourself up with regrets over the relationship and Idealize your abandoner at the expense of your own self Image.

4: ANGER – the turning point in the grief process when you begin to fight back. You attempt to Reverse the Rejection by Refusing to accept all of the blame for the failed relationship, and feel surges of anger against your abandoner. You Rail against the pain and isolation you’ve been in. Agitated depression and spurts of anger displaced on your friends and family are common during this turbulent time, as are Revenge and Retaliation fantasies toward your abandoner.

5: LIFTING – your anger helped to externalize your pain. Gradually, as your energy spurts outward, it Lifts you back into Life. You begin to Let go. Life distracts you and gradually Lifts you out the grief cycle. You feel the emergence of strength, wiser for the painful Lessons you’ve Learned. And if you’re engaged in the process of recovery, you get ready to Love again.[/color]

[northerndragon]

I can generally demarcate the point at which I went through all five of those stages when my uBPDxw left.

[C12P21]

I wish I had read the book initially when my r/s ended, it would have helped me to understand what was happening to me not only mentally and emotionally but physiologically, too. I read the book this spring and it helped. I am in the lifting stage now but had to work through the shattering and rage, sometimes I was just stuck!  Excellent article. Thanks for sharing!
C

[sea5045]

3: INTERNALIZING – you Internalize the rejection and cause Injury to your self esteem. This is the most critical stage of the cycle when your wound becomes susceptible to Infection and can create permanent scarring. You are Isolated, riddled with Insecurity, self- Indictment and self-doubt. You are preoccupied with ‘If only regrets’ – - If only you had been more attentive, more sensitive, less demanding, etc. You beat yourself up with regrets over the relationship and Idealize your abandoner at the expense of your own self Image.

I had read this book four years ago when healing from another relationship, and think because of childhood abandonment issues this is always the process for me.  However, I did try to go LC with my ex and I thing that the reason NC is so powerful is each time I reached out to her I re-opened the wounds of the internilization stage, the self doubt, the scarring the being heart sick at realizing they don't even feel this stuff. Almost like self harming to continue to try and "be friends". I am back 3 weeks no contact and these feelings have already healed which is great but, this huge progress for me.

RAGE? Have had none so I wonder if I will eventually get there? We Shall see

[GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT: Are you on the right board?]

GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT: Are you on the right board? This board is for members with failed or failing relationships that want to detach from their relationship and relationship wounds. If you are still analyzing the decision to stay, please post on Undecided: Staying or Leaving All members living with a pwBPD should learn to use the Stop the Bleeding tools - boundaries, timeouts and other basic tools - to better manage the day to day interactions with your partner. If you have questions on any of the tools, feel free to go over to Staying: Improving a Relationship with a Borderline Partner and ask for help. :-)

[spiralthorns]

I think I'm probably in the internalizing phase.

[puglover]

Another book for my list!

Do the stages of abadonement have to go in a particular order?
Because I shuffle between 2-3 and always with an air of optimism.
Can you revist them? How long does it last for?

[SurvivedLove]

1: SHATTERING.
This is somewhat how I felt last year in April.
My dream, our dreams as we had talked about them were shattered. I felt very hopeless, I was in shock and I cried all the time. I didn't have suicidal thoughts per se, but I did get overwhelmed by the "I wish I don't wake up in the morning, rather that than this pain" feelings when I went to bed.

2: WITHDRAWL
I went through some of this one too. In April and the first half of May. I wanted him to come back, yet I didn't. I knew he was bad for me, knew he was just gonna hurt me again, because I already had a feeling that the man I fell in love with was a fata morgana, an image created by him for me to believe in. Just as I had. I lost a lot of weight and stopped functioning properly for a while.

3: INTERNALIZING
I wasn't really isolated. I had some good friends who were trying to protect me, to keep my mood up and comfort me when I cried. I did manage to really laugh a few times, forgetting him and the pain for longer and longer at a time. In the latter half of May, I only really thought of him when I was alone and bored, or when he was right there in my face, so I tried to spend most of my time with friends and to ignore his presence as best as I could. It failed a few times and I broke down in tear. I still idolized the image I fell in love with, but the "it was only an image" was settling deeper and deeper into my core. I had regrets. I regretted not walking away at his first betrayal of me. I regretted not having taken care of me, but having comforted and assured him instead.

4: ANGER
Odd to say, but I think this phase was with me throughout the 3 previous ones. Mostly because I knew that his reasons for dumping me like he did were pure BS. In his mail he had thrown blame all over the place but ultimately it was all my fault. And since I recognized this pattern from our disagreements and arguments during the relationship, I was fairly quick to say "oh Hell no, you cannot blame ME for YOUR failings". I did see the mistakes I myself had made. But they had nothing to do with the things he claimed at all.

From mid June to early November I sometimes went through some of these stages. But as we had gotten back in contact and were "trying to give it a real chance, starting from a different place", it was mostly the Anger stage that popped up every now and then, especially when he started acting a bit possessive or when he crossed some boundaries that he was aware I had. For a while it really felt like things were starting to go better on his part. The more I treated him like a friend only, the more he seemed to wanted to show me that he wanted to be more than a friend. I didn't respond overly enthusiastically to his flirtings or his jealousy of my male friends, but I didn't withdraw from him either. I stayed pretty neutral, apart from the few times we talked about where we "were with each other now". Those two times were the only times that I expressed anything more than just friendship towards him.

5: LIFTING – your anger helped to externalize your pain. Gradually, as your energy spurts outward, it Lifts you back into Life. You begin to Let go. Life distracts you and gradually Lifts you out the grief cycle. You feel the emergence of strength, wiser for the painful Lessons you’ve Learned. And if you’re engaged in the process of recovery, you get ready to Love again.[/color]
This started for me in mid October. I begun to use my right to say no to doing stuff with him and did my own things instead. I hung out with friends more and more and he often tagged along. I didn't refuse him tagging along, but my focus was on having fun with them, not having with him. And the more I focused on my friends over hi, the more intent he became at "showing off" that there was more between us than friendship. Cute nicknames that he used to call me when we dated, preferably in front of others. Buying me things and telling me about it in front of others. It embarrassed me at times and I started to feel trapped. And in December, I felt strong enough to let him know that "Hey, you're not my boyfriend, so can we stop the gift giving?" AND live with the consequences, already having a feeling of what those would be.
Since this year started, I have had two relapses into Withdrawl and they have lasted for less than an hour each. He's less and less on my mind. He's not the first thing on it when I wake up, nor the last thing on it when I go to sleep.
I think of him, or rather, I think of what the relationship did to me and who it turned me into when I read these forums. I think of his reactions that are spot on what many people here describe. But I don't think of HIM. I don't miss HIM or those things.
Today I am going to the doctor to get a referral to a psychologist. Because I do need to know why I fell for his fata morgana in the first place, so I can avoid it happening again.
And I am feeling better just knowing that this place exists and that I can come here and talk to others who's lived through the same.
   

[happiness68]

I'm between withdrawal and internalizing.  I wish I could rush myself through the phases to get the pain to end.  The only time I get peace with myself is when I sleep and even then it's broken sleep and also sometimes dreams, dreams of him even, thankfully most dreams I don't remember.

[Wimowe]

I recognize these stages from my own experience.  I'm emerging into Lifting although I'm still feeling anger.

[gina louise]

Hmmmm.
My moving through some of these stages began when we were still living together. It's taken months for me to see and accept how erratic and damaging his actions were. How self centered and hateful towards me (his wife!)
With some friends taking his side and saying he was just a "dry drunk" I struggled with the "is it just me?" phase for a while. trying vainly to be better, fix it from my side.
If it looks like abuse, screams like abuse, and feels like abuse it doesn't matter what the rationalizations are. It's abusive.

Now after two months free and clear the FOG has burned away, and I feel very detached.
Determined  NEVER to be that vulnerable or defenseless with him or anyone that acts that way towards me-ever again. More self protective. Aware.
Vulnerability is a good thing if you are with a partner or friend that can support it-not use it against you in the end.

I feel like am into the Lifting stage. Planning and doing and enjoying for myself. Emotionally rested. If that makes sense.   
GL

[happiness68]

Good for you Gina Louise - you give me hope ;-)

Hmmmm.
My moving through some of these stages began when we were still living together. It's taken months for me to see and accept how erratic and damaging his actions were. How self centered and hateful towards me (his wife!)
With some friends taking his side and saying he was just a *dry drunk* I struggled with the "is it just me?" phase for a while. trying vainly to be better, fix it from my side.
If it looks like abuse, screams like abuse, and feels like abuse it doesn't matter what the rationalizations are. It's abusive.

Now after two months free and clear the FOG has burned away, and I feel very detached.
Determined  NEVER to be that vulnerable or defenseless with him or anyone that acts that way towards me-ever again. More self protective. Aware.
Vulnerability is a good thing if you are with a partner or friend that can support it-not use it against you in the end.

I feel like am into the Lifting stage. Planning and doing and enjoying for myself. Emotionally rested. If that makes sense.   
GL

[FoolishOne]

I am just now reading this book...   so far looks like it has something to offer.

F1

[Wooddragon]

i feel i am heading into the lifting stage but i have been consistently internalizing all the way through the other stages and sometimes feel like my own worst enemy