Crazy, Desperate Love and Abandonment Issues

Some anxious individuals have never known the security of feeling safe and that the people they loved would be there for them. And so when they grow up and find someone who meets their innate needs to be loved, they try to hold on as a child holds onto a security blanket. Extreme patterns of behavior, either through desperate clinging or distancing from others by keeping a wall up, can become a driving force in an insecure person’s life. Desperate love can turn to anxiety, anger and then out right hate.

Fear states can induce a lack of trust of themselves, of others and for some, God. There can be abandonment of the self by the self. The child feels that people gave up on them so they give up on themselves. Little children can feel so discouraged and helpless at times that they can give up on themselves causing a split off part of the personality. In my opinion, giving up on yourself is the greatest form of abandonment. Part of the healing work using an Inner Child technique is reconnecting with this part of the psyche that abandoned the self and doing a forgiveness ceremony.

Neurologist and trauma specialist Robert Scaer who wrote The Body Bears the Burden discusses illness and medical procedures causing post traumatic stress disorder. Abandonment issues are often unrecognized but take their form in frantic, clinging, needy behavior. There can be excess time and energy spent on asking “Why, why, why has another person left them?” instead of accepting that other people do not stay around to meet their personal needs but have journeys of their own to accomplish.

This anxious hollowness inside that confuses love with unmet early dependent needs can take many forms. Some of the ways the insecure attachment style causes problems in relationships and plays out in later life include:

• Intense fears of being alone and making partners and children “emotional security blankets.” (I can’t take care of myself. I need others to calm my overly anxious feelings. You must be here when I’m upset or I rage!) Sometimes these angry behaviors along with other destructive ways of acting make up a diagnostic category called Borderline Personality Disorder.
• Unrealistic overwhelming panic, fear of death and fears of losing a loved one. (Don’t leave me; I’m nothing without you.)
• Demands that others listen to unnecessary details of one’s life and sharing too much of personal, intimate information and feelings. (You don’t understand so I have to make you understand.)
• Repeatedly falling in desperate, crazy love quickly with high emotionality with a partner who turns out to be unavailable. (“I might as well face it, I’m addicted to love.”)
• Desperate, needy love attachments that place unreasonable demands on their partner’s validation of them. (You must listen to my feelings because my parents didn’t! You must take care of my anxiety, jealously and insecure feelings.)
• Phobic-like reactions and separation anxiety when being left alone. (I panic when left alone so you must stay with me.)
• Unresolved grief issues that accompany the inability to let go of loved ones who have passed over. (I can’t go on without you.)
• Staying in relationships that aren’t healthy or are abusive relationships. (Even though you neglect or abuse me, I can’t leave because I “luv” you desperately.)

Neediness puts a strain on relationships whether you are a man or woman. Abandonment issues can be addressed though doing a self-assessment and setting goals to make one’s self an independent mature person. Inconsolable losses need to be addressed. This is deep inner work that connects you to your True Self. Here are some of the developmental mind/body/spirit tasks for those individual who acknowledge they were raised in a home where they did not feel safe and now feel needy and unworthy:

• To break the core beliefs of being unlovable, unworthy and undeserving. (Psychological Reversals are negative core beliefs that you can’t change that keep you from healing.)
• To forgive one’s self for being overly needy and acting out negative beliefs of desperation.
• To flush out the icky stuff-the resentment, fear and anger when people pull away and come to terms with life’s injustices.
• To learn to regulate the disturbing emotions and move into clear thinking.
• To accept that not only is it appropriate to be alone, but essential to getting a balance between being with others and alone in one’s own company.
• To understand that nothing and no relationship are permanent in the world. Loss is part of life.
• To practice deep breathing to become grounded and stay present in one’s body when distressed.
• To find one’s sense of safety in a world that can be seen as uncaring and unsafe.
• To take care of one’s emotional needs of being cared for, validated and loved.
• To connect mind and heart to create congruence through positive intention.

Abandonment issues are to be recognized for what they are-deep-seated fear beliefs that most likely came from some traumatic events in life where your basic needs to feel safe and connected to loving people were not met. Demanding others meet your emotional needs and providing calming for you only makes them frustrated with you and makes them want to get away. In the long run, you and only you are responsible for your unmet psychological needs.

Trauma cannot be talked away. Sometimes talking about it brings up the feelings of being helpless and hopeless and retraumatization happens. A larger approach is needed to work through old emotions held in the body. The amygdale, which is the brain’s main fear center, becomes over excited and reactive. With stress and trauma, the amygdala secretes the stress chemicals cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine. Trauma-reduction techniques bring us back to the thinking, rational, problem-solving parts of our brain-the prefrontal cortex. Energy psychology and other mind-body approaches help take down that emotional reactivity in the amygdala and limbic center of the brain that activates emotion.

So what helps with those deep beliefs of unworthiness and being unlovable? We are body, mind and spirit. Trauma can be decreased with mind-body techniques which assist the process of healing. The Emotional Freedom Technique, Collarbone Breathing, Tapas Acupressure Technique, The Healing Code, visual imagery and Thought Field Therapy are some that you can learn to do on yourself. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, Rapid Eye Recovery, Mindfulness Training, Hakim, Somatic Experiencing and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy require that a trained therapist help you. Go to the Association for Energy Psychology therapist list or google findatherapist.com with the zip codes around you and look at the different profiles of the therapists and their specialties.

See Gary Craig, the founder of EFT, demonstrate the procedure on YouTube at or do a search using his name. Tap along with him on your issue and you will feel better!