It wasn’t until recently that I discovered a core wound that had been driving my life for the past four decades: a fear of abandonment.
Many of us have core abandonment wounds—it’s hard to grow up in our society without them. For me, I believe that they started the day I was born. As a premature baby, I was put into a plastic box for the first six weeks of my life. I was separate from the world, left out, and this conditioned me to feel as if something must be wrong with me. I created the belief, “I am unlovable and don’t fit in.”
Maybe your fear of abandonment started when you were left to cry in a crib or playpen, bullied at school, or lied to by someone you cared about. When we are wounded at a young age, we cannot handle the pain, so it’s only human to resist it. This is when we split away and start to operate as a fraction of our true selves.
Then, later in life, especially when we fall in love or get closer to a new person, these old wounds become activated. They can cause friction when our beloved gets angry, withdraws, gives attention to someone else, says mean things, doesn’t tell the truth, misunderstands us, etc. Suddenly, the pain that has been pushed aside all these years comes roaring to the surface.
We think that we are reacting to the present situation, but what is really happening is that the old, unhealed abandonment wound has been working its way to the surface and now is in full eruption mode. We might find ourselves suddenly enraged or falling apart with intense tears.
If and when this happens, take a moment to recognize it as an important time of deep healing. These unprocessed emotions are coming to the surface so they can be transmuted from fear into love for good.
