The Fear of Abandonment
When we speak about the fear of abandonment, we’re not talking about a small fear. It’s a deep, inner state of terror.
But you know what? This fear is just your inner world calling you to look within.
It’s not a fatality. You can move through it.
Breath halts, chest tightens, a lump in the heart, knots in the throat and stomach, tense muscles, a body in pain—too much pain. The mind clouds over, and suddenly everything becomes blurry. A real inner distress, but not a single word comes out. What word could possibly describe the state of terror I’m in? A deep urge to cry, but no tears on my cheeks. That hurts even more. I’m frozen. Air no longer flows through my body, I’m suffocating. Will I ever breathe again? I can’t move. I think I’m dying. I want to disappear, to run away, to no longer exist. It’s all too much. Yes, that’s the word: too much. Finally, I cry.
That’s how the fear of being abandoned shows up for me: chaos, a true state of distress and terror. For so long, I was unable to understand or express what was happening inside of me in those moments. Honestly, I didn’t connect it to the abandonments I had experienced in the past. I was living in this near-constant chaos without the slightest idea why I felt that way. So I kept telling myself that something was seriously wrong with me. That state of confusion led me to fear myself even more and to hate myself even deeper. It was an endless cycle.
Activity 1 – Explore Your Fear of Abandonment
Objective: Understand how the fear of abandonment shows up for you.
Journal prompt:
Recall a time when you were afraid of being left by someone you loved. Describe that scene with as much detail as possible. If it's easier, you can place yourself in the role of an observer.
What triggered this fear? How did it show up physically in your body? What emotions were present? What were your thoughts? What exactly scared you about the idea of being left? What did you need to feel reassured? What made you believe you could be abandoned? Was it your perception or a concrete fact?
The fear of being abandoned is one of the main symptom of the abandonment wound and the root of most other symptoms: co-dependency, fear of being alone, lack of security, isolation, and staying in toxic relationships—all arise from this deep terror.
Ultimately, it’s the fear of being left, rejected, replaced by the people we love.
I genuinely believe that for many of us, we’re not just talking about fear—we’re talking about terror.
Being abandoned represents, in most cases, the scariest thing imaginable for someone who carries the abandonment wound.
If you’re there, I’m with you on that. I’ve so often felt like there was nothing worse that could happen to me than being abandoned again. Love stories felt like both the most exciting and the scariest thing at the same time. And although I still feel that fear in certain situations today, I’ve learned to understand it, accept it, and make peace with it, so I no longer let it destroy me or my relationships.
How Does It Work?
It’s important to understand that the body remembers everything. All your past experiences are stored in your body as energetic imprints, called trauma when they stem from deep wounds.
After a traumatic event, the nervous system—responsible for managing experiences and emotions—often goes into survival mode. This means the sympathetic nervous system, which triggers fear and anxiety responses, becomes activated and can remain that way for years. That’s why a near-constant feeling of fear and stress often lingers.
The nervous system has no concept of time; to it, the traumatic event that happened years ago is still happening now. So, the abandonment you experienced in the past is still perceived as a real and present danger, which shows up today as the terror of being abandoned again.
Healing therefore requires regulating the nervous system in order to reestablish a genuine sense of inner safety and help the body understand that it is no longer in danger.
Activity 2 – Identify the Origin of Your Fear of Abandonment
Objective: Understand how past abandonments have impacted your life
Journal Prompt:
What types of scenarios in your current life tend to trigger your fear of being abandoned? In what ways do these situations remind you of something you've experienced in the past? This might show up through sensations, emotions, circumstances, etc.
Are you now able to visualize how your past wounds are affecting your present and how your fears are showing up? Write down what comes to mind.
Certain events, situations, or bodily sensations can unconsciously echo the original abandonment you experienced in the past and trigger what is known as a trauma response. In that moment, your body feels like you’re at high risk of being abandoned again. It will then send out danger signals, pushing you to adopt all kinds of survival behaviors.
The first step toward healing is always to become aware of what you’re experiencing in the present, then of the past events, in order to understand how the past is impacting your present. Through this understanding, it becomes possible to recognize the root of your fears and behaviors, to meet them with compassion, while slowly deconstructing them and reclaiming your power over your choices.
The most essential thing to remember is this: what is in the past belongs to the past and no longer needs to define your present. Today, it’s no longer about surviving, it's time for you to live.
Activity 3 – Exploring the Impact of Your Fear of Abandonment on Your Relationships
Objective: Become aware of how your fear of abandonment may have sabotaged your relationships and identify the reality of your expectations toward others.
Journal Prompt:
Take a moment to reflect on how your fear of abandonment may have affected your relationships up until now.
What kind of actions did it push you to take?
a. Accepting everything from the other person, even at your own expense
b. Running away and isolating yourself at the first sign of difficulty
c. Trying to control the other person out of fear of losing them
d. Giving too much
e. Blaming the other person for your own suffering
f. Not daring to express your desires and needs out of fear of being misunderstood or rejected
g. Smothering the other person with expectations and a constant need for love and attention
h. Struggling to listen to the other person and consider their needs
i. Avoiding taking responsibility during conflicts
j. Feeling overly guilty during conflicts
k. Other (please specify)What were you expecting from the other person?
a. Constant presence
b. Repeated proofs of love
c. Unconditional support and total attentiveness
d. To be their center of attention, their absolute priority
e. Other (please specify)Were these expectations realistic and balanced? Or were they trying to fill an inner void?
What insights has this reflection brought you?
The fear of abandonment can be deeply destructive—toward yourself, your surroundings, and your relationships. It pushes us to sabotage what we have, as if we didn’t deserve it. It simply doesn’t allow us to be happy.
The thing with the abandonment wound is that it leads us to adopt a whole set of limiting beliefs, one of the most powerful being: “I will always end up being abandoned.” And unconsciously, we do everything we can to prove ourselves right. That’s what drives us to sabotage our relationships.
We tend to push boundaries and place greater and greater expectations on our partner, telling ourselves: “If they don’t do this for me, it means they don’t love me.” We resist the idea that the other might need space. We want to be the center of their attention, but whatever they give us never feels like enough.
Then come the criticisms, the even more demanding requests, until the other person starts to feel overwhelmed and incapable of meeting our needs. Eventually, what we feared the most happens: the relationship ends. And this confirms our belief: “I was right. I’m not worthy of love. I always end up being abandoned.”
In conflict situations, it also becomes difficult to take responsibility for our part. The other person becomes the source of our suffering, and we’re often unwilling to hear their point of view, their emotions, or to consider their needs. Communication is broken, preventing any constructive dialogue that might help both people understand each other and grow together.
In some cases, the fear of abandonment becomes so paralyzing that it prevents someone from expressing who they truly are—their needs, their desires, their thoughts—because they’re afraid of disappointing the other person and being left. They may seek to merge entirely with their partner, forgetting who they are and what their values are.
They might accept anything from the other person, even the worst, because nothing feels more unbearable than the idea of being abandoned again. But by doing so, they end up living the very thing they fear the most: being abandoned—through abandoning themselves.
The abandonment wound doesn’t show up the same way in everyone, and it may even look different from one relationship to the next. But in every case, it ends up sabotaging our happiness.
Fear of Abandonment and co-dependency
When we were abandoned as children, it created such a deep void within us that we try to fill it through external means, particularly through relationships. In my case, it was mainly romantic relationships. We then find someone who seems to be our savior — the one we’ve been waiting for, who will finally fix what feels broken inside. Their presence becomes vital, and the thought of losing them is terrifying: we become dependent on their presence, their attention, and their love.
However, like any human being, this person has flaws and turns out to be far from the perfect ideal we imagined. The emptiness remains, the disappointment is deep, and the fear of abandonment intensifies.
You are looking for a savior, not a partner.
That’s why you become overly attached to them: your life, your survival, now depends entirely on them.
But the truth is that no one but yourself can save you or fill that inner void.
I personally experienced this through many relationships, and not always in the same way. Sometimes, I would push the other person’s limits — almost like testing their love to see how far I could go before they’d leave me.
In other situations, especially with toxic partners or at the start of a relationship, I did everything to please the other person. I wanted to be perfect for them, even if it meant completely forgetting myself and destroying myself inside.
In every case, the other person’s love and attention felt absolutely essential to me. I depended on their presence and energy just to function.
And even though I genuinely wanted to be in a true, loving, and safe relationship, my fear of abandonment prevented me from it — because the fear of abandonment has the power to sabotage both yourself and your relationships.
I also realized that a part of me wanted to feel abandoned in certain situations — which led me to sabotage my relationships. It’s deeply contradictory to be terrified of abandonment and, at the same time, to seek out that very feeling. When I became aware of this, I genuinely thought something was wrong with me. It just shows how complex our inner world can be.
Here’s the explanation: our nervous system is like a magnet — it’s drawn to what’s familiar, not necessarily what’s healthy. It prioritizes comfort and safety in what it already knows, even if that brings suffering. So we’re instinctively pulled toward situations that recreate the emotions we grew up with.
When someone grows up with fear and pain, embracing a healthy way of living can feel uncomfortable and even threatening, because the unknown doesn’t feel safe. Subconsciously, they’ll try to recreate what they’ve always known: fear, pain, and suffering. Sometimes, that’s the only reality that feels acceptable.
Fear of Abandonment and the Need for Control
Fear breeds an excessive need for control. Having total control over a situation brings a sense of safety. People who suffer from abandonment fear will often try to control everything about their environment and their relationships. They’ll want to know everything about their partner: their exact schedule, who they’re spending the day with, who they’re messaging, etc. The idea of not knowing, of being in the dark, is simply unbearable.
This often goes hand in hand with intense jealousy: the person wants to control their partner’s relationships and, ideally, choose who they can talk to or not. Once again, this behavior tends to sabotage the relationship by smothering the other person.
Control is also a way to predict different outcomes and avoid surprises or disappointments. Knowing what will happen, when, and how, feels like protection. But the truth is, no one can have full control over the future — what’s meant to happen will happen.
Control therefore traps us in a cycle of expectation and disappointment, because nothing ever happens exactly as we imagined, and nothing ever fully lives up to our hopes.
Learning to let go — though extremely uncomfortable and difficult — is true liberation. It greatly reduces disappointment and, most importantly, allows us to experience the magic the universe has to offer. I understand this may be hard to believe depending on where you are in your healing journey, but every experience has a purpose: to serve your highest good by guiding you closer to yourself and your life’s purpose.
To move out of that fear of being abandoned, you must learn to love yourself and appreciate your own value. You can’t feel safe in your relationships, nor understand the value you hold in others’ eyes if you don’t first acknowledge your worth.
You don’t need someone else to feel whole — because you already are. But you’ll be able to feel this only once you start to look within. You are worthy. You are enough.
I know how hurtful it was to be abandoned. I know what it’s like to feel broken, like you probably feel right now. But believe me, you’re not broken, and you don’t need to be fixed or saved. You just need to find yourself again, to take care of yourself, and to go slow.
Take your time. Hold compassion for yourself. This is your journey — a journey of love, patience, and understanding. It’s not about performance.
So look within. Reconnect with your inner child and your inner teen. They have so much to tell you, and they don’t need anyone else but you.
I promise: you’re not meant to be abandoned for your entire life. You no longer have to be afraid.