Is FAB ruining your life?

Fears of abandonment (FAB)arise from instability in the early years of a persons life. This instability contributes to insecurities. These insecurities manifest in multiple ways including anxiety, defensiveness, giving up, people pleasing, clinging including stalking, and substance abuse and other mood altering behaviors.

Fears of abandonment is the basis for many of the symptoms that make it possible for mental health professionals to diagnose a person with a personality disorder. A personality disorder is described as repetitive patterns of behavior that are dysfunctional and maladaptive so as to decrease the life satisfaction and fulfillment of the person with the disorder and the people that person has relationships with.

Fears of abandonment can take over a person's life and tell her/him that the world is a unstable place where people wind up leaving you alone to fend for yourself physically, emotionally, socially, mentally, and even spiritually. The fears of abandonment have convinced the person that without connection, acceptance, and belonging with the special other, the person will die.

Fears of abandonment will convince people that they shouldn't fall in love and become attached  because they will be devastated if they lose the relationship.

Fears of abandonment can create jealousy and paranoia when the person experiences the loss of their partner's attention and/or loyalty whether real or imagined.

Fears of abandonment can become stronger and more insistent when there is a physical and/or emotional separation from the person the sufferer is attached to.

Fears of abandonment make a person believe that no one will ever be committed to them and loyal and they are doomed to a life of loneliness and insecurity.

Fears of abandonment can be so tricky and devilish as to make the person accuse others of not being loyal and faithful, thereby pushing and driving them away, and bringing about the very situation of abandonment and rejection they feared. This is called a "self fulfilling prophecy" when the very thing the person feared is brought about by  his/her own self sabotage.

How can one manage FAB to decrease and maybe even eliminate its influence on one's life?

To be continued

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Fears of abandonment arise from early life experiences of instability

As human beings we all have a need for connection, acceptance, and belonging. Without it, beginning as children, we experience the world as unstable and unpredictable. How does a child cope with these feelings of insecurity? There are many ways and the predominant way of coping with this instability is influenced by temperament along with other factors.

How do these feelings of instability work for you?

Do you worry a lot that people you care about will leave you or die?
Does it seem that people come and go a lot in your life?
Do you find yourself getting anxious when people are late or tell you they have to go?
Do you find yourself not trusting people and not believing what they say?
Do you find yourself clinging and demanding more togetherness than the other person feels comfortable with and thereby pushing him/her away and your worst fear comes to pass?
Is this fear of abandonment a "viscous cycle" that seems to happen over again and again in your relationships and makes you miserable a lot of the time?

The desire for connection, acceptance, and belonging is normal. The way that people sometimes manage this desire and handle it may not be and cause problems.

What are some constructive ways of managing this desire for connection and acceptance and some destructive ways?

To be continued

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Talk therapy helps reduce anxiety by naming the fears

Labeling your fears helps to reduce the fear research has shown.

I have told my clients for years that naming the problem helps. I say to them, "If you can't name it, you can't manage it. So naming the problems is 90% of strategy of minimizing and eliminating it." Research bears this assertion out.

This activity in Narrative Therapy is called "externalizing the problem." The narrative therapy slogan is "The person is not the problem. The problem is the problem. So what's the problem."

Finding a name for the problem takes some creative effort sometimes, but once it's named, it is much easier to deal with it successfully.

Dr. Freud, the father of psychoanalysis said, "You can either talk it out or act it out. It is always better to talk it out." This study of labeling or naming the problem is further evidence that talk therapy works.

For more on this research click here.

Can you provide a non anxious presence to others?

Amy Banks writes in her book, Wired To Connect, "A new field of scientific study, one I call relational neuroscience, has shown us that there is hardwiring throughout our brains and bodies designed to help us engage in satisfying emotional connection with others." p.3 Dr. Banks then goes on to describe four neural pathways which she describes as the smart vagus nerve, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, the mirroring system, and the dopamine reward system.

The first neural pathway has to do with the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system more commonly known as the "fight/fright/flight" response when we are threatened and/or stressed.

Banks asks us to consider our relationships with the 5 people we spend the most time with or spend the most time thinking about and on a scale of 1 - 5 with 1 being none, 5 being always and 3 being half the time, rate how we experience these relationships one at a time with these questions:
I trust this person with my feelings: This person trusts me with his/her feelings; I feel safe being in conflict with this person; This person treats me with respect; In this relationship, I feel calm; I can count on this person to help me out in an emergency; In this relationship it's safe to acknowledge differences.

In Bowen theory, the concept of anxiety is very important. People have different set points of anxiety with some being very high strung and others very laid back. On a scale of 1 - 10 how anxious are you most of the time? What would help you lower your usual level of anxiety and tension? There are many ways of doing this from chemicals, whether medications or other drugs licit and illicit, and behaviors such as relaxation and meditation and "chilling out."

In your relating to other people to what extent are you a non anxious presence? It is providing a  non-anxious presence which Edwin Friedman, one of Murray Bowen's students, believed to be the most important therapeutic contribution of a psychotherapist. The question is how does a person achieve a low level of anxiety so that he/she can be a non anxious presence with other people?

To be continued