Childhood Psychological Abandonment
Most people have heard the term abandonment and know it affects children in various ways. However, what most people do not understand is that abandonment adversely affects those adults who have survived it.
This article’s primary focus will be to define abandonment and to investigate how it affects adult survivors.
What is Psychological Abandonment?
Emotional abandonment occurs when one loses a loved one through either physical or emotional separation. Abandonment leaves survivors feeling rejected and alone to face the world.
The result of such treatment is abandonment trauma, an intense emotional response with behaviors occurring at any age and carried on into adulthood. Major abandonment incidents cause much emotional pain and can impact how you perceive yourself and how you relate to others in your life.
The word trauma is described as an emotional and psychological response to one or more events that are distressing, painful, and disturbing. Therefore, abandonment trauma is experiencing or perceiving any sort of desertion that was extremely painful for you. This type of abandonment is often related to times when you felt neglected, threatened, or forgotten.
Abandonment during childhood may or may not have been on purpose. Still, because children have a limited understanding of their world, they may interpret some situations as abandonment.
Physical abandonment is not the only type of event that may be traumatic for a child. Emotional abandonment also highly impacts children and adults, including growing up with a dismissive parent and experiencing emotional abuse at any point during your life.
How Does Abandonment Affect You As a Child and Now
There are many effects that you, as a child, felt because of abandonment that cause changes in your life as an adult. In a review done in 2021, the researchers found that there is a link between early insecure attachment and attention hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) formed later in life. The nature of how the two are linked is not fully understood at this time1. Of course, ADHD is a lifelong affliction that changes the outcome of people’s lives. Insecure attachment is when an individual relationship contains elements of mistrust and anxious or avoidant elements without a secure base2.
In other words, an insecure attachment occurs when the child cannot count on their parent or caregiver for security or comfort.
Without a secure attachment with another human being, children facing early-life adversity, deprivation, or threatening situations cannot form working unimpeded memory functions or the ability to control their impulses.
As adults, these children grow up with a lack of ability to regulate their emotions and have formed some forms of mental health problems, including dissociative identity disorder.
The Major Causes of Abandonment Issues
Early life experiences in childhood are the main culprit of having formed abandonment problems. Neglect, trauma, abuse, and parenting styles are a few of them. Below, we go into greater detail on the causes of abandonment issues.
Loss of a parent. Losing a parent to incarceration or death will cause a child to experience and keep experiencing relationship-related anxiety.
Alcoholism in the home. About 14% of children with parents who have developed alcohol abuse disorder go on to develop separation anxiety4.
Elongated periods of parental absence. Often, this type of abandonment is not intentional, as parents may be forced to work, be involved in a military deployment, or leave due to a divorce. No matter the cause, deliberate or not, these children feel an acute sense of abandonment.
Abuse. Abusive parenting styles, including committing physical, verbal, sexual, emotional, or narcissistic abuse or even not showing enough affection, leave a child with abandonment issues.
An unstable home life. Children in foster care who move from location to location often grow up feeling abandoned.
Parental mental health problems. Children whose parents have mental health problems are often not fully present for their child and can cause the child to develop abandonment issues.
Recognizing That You Have Abandonment Issues
Those who experience abandonment issues will show signs and symptoms; however, they are different for everyone. Some of the most common signs, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders V (DSM-5), are as follows:
Difficulty keeping healthy relationships. People who have abandonment issues are more likely to remain unmarried or become divorced. These survivors may experience their relationships in a cycle of clingy or otherwise unhealthy behaviors. They may misbehave in the relationship by asking for constant reassurance and engaging in attention-seeking behavior3.
Feeling Anxious and Fearful in a Relationship. Survivors with abandonment issues often feel their loved ones are leaving or worry about being alone. They also often feel they are letting others down.
Psychiatric Symptoms. People with abandonment issues may also have problems concentrating, have high levels of irritability, experience suicidal ideation, and are likely to develop other psychiatric conditions such as an anxiety disorder.
Ways to Overcome Abandonment Problems
It is possible to overcome abandonment issues and learn to cope with those that linger. You can treat your issues and improve your relationships and your life5.
Talking to a mental health professional is the best and most recognizable way to treat your abandonment issues. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) are two types of therapy commonly used.
CBT is considered the frontline treatment for all issues concerning abandonment. With this treatment, the therapist helps you reframe your negative thinking and behaviors.
DBT involves emphasizing self-acceptance and learning to regulate your emotions. This type of therapy is very effective for abandonment issues, including those experienced by those who have formed borderline personality disorder.
Sometimes, medications are needed to help people experiencing abandonment issues feel better. These medications, known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) drugs, affect the chemical signaling of the brain. These medications are often prescribed for up to six months before being tapered off.
Ending Our Time Together
I have experienced abandonment myself and understand how it has affected my life. The abandonment I experienced, like many of you, happened when I was a child.
Children are highly vulnerable to abandonment and child abuse because they are entirely dependent upon their caregivers to meet their every need. Unfortunately, child abuse and abandonment have become an epidemic in American society.
The only way we can end this cruel practice is to look at its causes and change our attitudes toward children and their parents. Children need to get noticed by the adults they encounter. When abuse is suspected, there needs to be an examination of the family dynamics from which they come.
Adults must receive education that children are the most important people in the room regardless of the parent’s addictions or childhood abuse they encountered growing up.
Ultimately, it is up to all adults to end this scourge on our society. If you suspect abuse or abandonment (which, of course, is a form of abuse), please tell someone in authority. You could save the children and their parents great pain and suffering. Adults can relearn how to parent despite their personal experiences. We must prioritize that, or we will all suffer the consequences.
“Young children, who for whatever reason are deprived of the continuous care and attention of a mother or a substitute-mother, are not only temporarily disturbed by such deprivation, but may in some cases suffer long-term effects which persist.” – Bowlby, J., Ainsworth, M., Boston, M., and Rosenbluth, D. (1956).
“Trauma is personal. It does not disappear if it is not validated. When it is ignored or invalidated, the silent screams continue internally, heard only by the one held captive. When someone enters the pain and hears the screams, healing can begin.” – Danielle Bernock.
References
- Wylock, J. F., Borghini, A., Slama, H., & Delvenne, V. (2023). Child attachment and ADHD: a systematic review. European child & adolescent psychiatry, 32(1), 5-16.
- Abdul Kadir, N. B. Y. (2020). Insecure attachment. Encyclopedia of personality and individual differences, 2260-2266.
- Feriante, J., Torrico, T. J., & Bernstein, B. (2023). Separation anxiety disorder. StatPearls.
- Vaughan J, Coddington JA, Ahmed AH, Ertel ML. Separation anxiety disorder in school-age children: What Health Care Providers should know. Journal of Pediatric Health Care. 2017;31(4):433-440. doi:10.1016/j.pedhc.2016.11.003
- Fraley RC, Roisman GI. The development of adult attachment styles: Four lessons. Current Opinion in Psychology. 2019;25:26-30. doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2018.02.008