On and On, Reckless Abandon

 Something's wrong, this is gonna shock them...

For those of you who grew up around the same time as I did, you *might* recognize those lyrics. If you don't, it's an old Blink-182 song. Ya know, back before Tom left and the group basically fell apart. But I digress. 

Anyway, in thinking about abandonment, that was the first thing that popped into my head mostly because it was the first song I remembered with the word "abandon" in it, but strangely those lyrics also tie into yet another thing that has been subconsciously going on in my brain for God knows how many years. Yes I know that abandonment and reckless abandon are actually different things, but I think both of those things have been at play in the way I decide to do things or situations I have stayed in for too long. 

Ok, so let's keep going with this journey I've been having in therapy. I've gone through this heart-wrenching breakup, the world is going crazy, I was furloughed from my job, and had no idea what to do about anything. I know my increased levels of anxiety were absolutely coming out as I was talking to my therapist and I'm sure she was a few steps ahead of me in knowing some of the reasons why I had such bad anxiety and worry. At this point, I had now recognized and started to understand that I have deep feelings of not being good enough and always being worried what everyone else will think (see my previous blog post for more about this). Thankfully, I'm working on those issues and trying to get better as I go along. But she knew before I did that there were probably even more core wounds causing issues.

Sometimes you can identify what you think all of your issues are and only try to get help to navigate through those specific issues. But then you get a dose of reality and find out that most of us probably don't even know some of the things we carry with us, deal with on a daily basis, or allow to affect our lives and relationships. Of course, my therapist probably already bet money that I was also suffering from a fear of abandonment. 

Excuse me, what?? I wasn't left at the fire station, I didn't grow up in foster homes, my parents have always been involved in my life. How in the world could I possibly have a fear of abandonment if I've never been abandoned?

If I'm being honest, she didn't tell me that I had this fear and I would have never, ever identified this in myself. In all the stories and situations I was telling her that have occurred in my life, she was probably hearing something that I couldn't. She had an interesting way to try and get to the root of the cause and to get me to realize and understand that I had this wound imprinted on my brain. It's a process used in therapy called EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitizing and Reprocessing). I know it's gonna sound weird, but stick with me. Basically, there's a small device with two "tappers" as they call them that you hold on to. They vibrate back and forth between your hands and you're supposed to follow those vibrations with your eyes. As this is happening, you're supposed to start recalling memories that impacted you from childhood to present day. By doing this, and following the physical feelings, apparently your brain brings repressed memories to the surface and it's able to reprocess these memories in a way that doesn't emotionally impact your life as severely anymore. I guess just having the awareness that you're "safe" and that these things that happened in the past are in the past and have no bearing on you as a person now can help you not hold onto them or allow them to subconsciously impact your life anymore.

Now, I won't claim to really understand this in any other depth. Science was never my strong suit and even if you explain the neurotransmitters and chemical things to me, I won't have any idea what you're talking about. All I can tell you is that I do understand the brain is a funny thing and there's a lot more going on in our subconscious than most of us would ever guess. The brain tends to hold on to things that impacted you as a way to help protect you. So when one of my classmates made me feel rejected, my brain remembered that so in the future, I could (hopefully) protect myself from being rejected. Part of the problem though, is those associated and stored emotions from that situation will make you act and react to things in your adult life in very particular ways and in a lot of cases, it doesn't serve you well. For example, if I start to feel rejected, I also start to feel anxious and then might become clingy to get some kind of reassurance to show me I'm not actually being rejected. 

I'll admit it. I was very skeptical about this whole EMDR thing when I heard about it. It certainly didn't seem like something that sounds so simple could pull out deep and buried emotions from my subconscious brain. I didn't get it. But holy shit! My therapist set me up and then had me try to think back to my earliest memories of not feeling good enough. I started to tell her stories I had mentioned before from school when I was little. I told her things that I went through with my parents as a young teenager. I mentioned a few situations from past relationships. Nothing I hadn't already told her in other sessions. Then she started to push me to think not only about how those things made me feel emotionally, but where I was feeling things physically as I was bringing up these situations. Certain things made me feel like I could cry. Certain things had my shoulders and shoulder blades really tensed up and pulled back. Guess what? We also physically carry emotional issues in our bodies. Neat. I wonder if that's why my back hurts all the time (spoiler alert: that's definitely a part of it). 

She started to ask me what felt bad about the situations I was explaining and I told her. She asked why I thought I was feeling that way. And then something really crazy happened. I was digging deeper and I was thinking of these situations in greater detail and depth than I every really had before. Up until then, I could tell you things that upset me as part of my story and that was that, but I didn't recognize that it meant I had never truly processed those feelings and emotions or learned that they don't (or shouldn't) hold power over me anymore. Somehow, the vibrations and the eye movement and whatever was going on in my brain helped me realize why all these stories have hurt me so much and have continuously and unknowingly impacted my life.

The biggest thing that came out of this first session was that even though I had never been physically abandoned, I had felt emotionally abandoned by the people I was closest to and the people I trusted. I won't go into the details, but when I was 13, 14, and 15, I had dealt with different situations with my mom and my dad that had made me feel less important to them, but I didn't realize that's what I was feeling until recently. Now, I was able to explain those feelings in context of having felt emotionally abandoned by my parents at a time when I was pretty impressionable and trying to navigate growing up. Naturally, a child is extremely connected to their parents and trusts them, even if you don't trust anyone else. Not feeling that way, even for a short period of time, can and will stay with you unless you become aware of your own emotions and then try to deal with them or reprocess them. 

I have to put this side bar in here. I love my mom and dad. They have been there for me and I don't have to doubt that they love me. They've both shown me that, especially in supporting me as I've gotten older and being able to open up more about things in my life and the things I've been through. The fact that I felt emotionally abandoned at one point, doesn't mean that they intentionally did that or that it has continued to be that way. I've also looked back on those situations with grace for what they were dealing with at the time and that they were probably reacting based on their own subconscious minds and emotions. Having awareness of all of this is the important part.

Ok, so now I know I also have a fear of abandonment. Now what? Well I made another realization in that same therapy session right after we were done with the EMDR process. I have felt emotionally (and physically) abandoned in romantic relationships, especially in my most recent one where I allowed myself to be completely vulnerable and trust him 100%. In the past, I have been cheated on, ghosted, lied to, and broken up with, usually when things have seemed great or at least pretty promising. That's a painful thing to feel when you allow yourself to try to trust another person, especially if you've learned that the people you trust still hurt or abandon you. And because I've subconsciously had this fear, I've acted certain ways to try and prevent being abandoned again. My clinginess and neediness can definitely be attributed to this (and so many other fears). It all falls under this anxious attachment style that I have, too. Other attachment styles might avoid getting too close or truly committing to others so they don't have to worry about eventually being abandoned again, but since I've been used to getting reassurance and validation from others to calm my fears, I need people in my life and I need to do things to them or for them so that I won't end up abandoned. 

I also constantly try to show partners how much I care by the things I do for them, and everyone should care about their partners and do things for them, but sometimes I might go a little overboard. All this time I thought I was properly showing my love, meanwhile my brain was telling me to do these things to prove my worth so I wouldn't be abandoned again. If I can show you how great and thoughtful I am, you won't leave me. Please don't leave me! And yet, I've been left multiple times. It's not because I'm not worthy of being loved, but maybe it has been, partially, because my actions and reactions were coming from a place of fear coupled with a lack of understanding. Add in also never feeling good enough and this is a recipe for disaster. Sure, not everything that happens is all because of me. Other people have their own issues and things at play too, but like I've said before, I can only control myself so I have to understand myself and the things that I've done. 

That leads me into the reckless abandon piece of this puzzle. The best description of reckless abandon that I've seen is going "all in" into something impulsively without thinking about consequences or worrying about the bad that could come from it. Strangely, I think my fear of abandonment has caused me to do things with reckless abandon in my life. In the past, I have quickly jumped into relationships without trying to really know anything of depth about the other person. Regardless of if that other person was good for me or if I even really liked them, as long as they showed interest I latched on and then became so scared of being abandoned, even if I knew it wasn't a good situation or had proof of wrongdoings (my ex-fiance, for reference). I wanted someone to be so dedicated to me and then I would hold on to them so tightly so I wouldn't be abandoned by them. Guess what? That doesn't work.

I've also had reckless abandon in friendships. I don't want my friends to leave me either, so I'll impulsively go along with things they want to do, even if I think it might be bad for me or something I'm not really interested in. I've done things against my better judgement, or when I've needed sleep, or even when I just didn't feel like doing anything. I'm so scared of being left that I'll give up myself and not worry about what could come of that. But you know what happens anyway? Of course you do. They end up abandoning me for other things, other people, other situations. So now, all those crazy, impulsive things I did just to be with them don't matter anyway and have only left me hurting and doubting myself even more than I did before.

I act with reckless abandon to try to feel connected and then not be abandoned...and to try to feel good enough, which if you can't tell by now, is also wrapped up in this. It seems that our main core wounds are related and play off of each other, so it's no surprise that not wanting to be abandoned and not feeling good enough both make me act certain ways. The hard part is trying to learn how to let go of these fears when you haven't had a whole lot of proof to refute them, but I suppose that's where hope and trust come in to play. And yes, trusting people has betrayed me most of my life. Holding on to hope has let me down most of the time. I've still ended up feeling abandoned. 

So I need to stop also abandoning myself to try and please everyone else. I haven't been there for me, I haven't loved me, I haven't been my authentic self. In fearing abandonment, I have abandoned myself the most and that's held me back. It's caused me to look to others for fulfillment and security, so when that stops, I panic. I need to be there for myself first and foremost so that way others in my life are a nice addition, but if they do leave, I still have a me that I enjoy and can rely on, as long as I stop abandoning myself. And the people who will be in my life when I'm showing my authentic self are less likely to leave, too because the version of me they like or love will be the same version of me all the time. It's not an easy shift to make, but I'm starting to work on it. Starting is the most important thing we can do.

If you want to know more about EMDR, click here. If you're in therapy and think this might help you, bring it up with your therapist to see if they're trained in this process.