Welcome to Life Unedited Sanctuary.
Where reality happens.
I'm Tiffany.
And I've been a licensed clinical professional counselor for 21 years.
I call myself a reality therapist.
And today I'm going to be talking about the Reality Therapy Theory.
On abandonment versus abandonment issues.
And abandoning ourselves.
I have abandonment issues is a statement I hear quite often in counseling sessions.
As an avid reality television connoisseur,
I hear it just as often,
If not more,
In the shows I consume.
Quite frankly.
Everyone could possibly make that statement to some degree of truth.
Well some degree of truth as defined by google's ai overview abandonment is defined as quote the act of leaving a person thing place or idea permanently and completely with no intention of returning end quote Everyone has had someone leave their lives in one manner or another.
Abandonment can be related to one of our parents or caregivers leaving the family at some point in our younger years.
They can also be related to a parent,
Friend,
Or partner withdrawing emotionally from a relationship.
They can also be tied to being given up for adoption or when an important person in our lives dies.
This list could go on and on.
Abandonment can be further broken down into different types,
Such as physical,
Emotional,
Financial,
Or even self-abandonment.
Which is really the only true type of abandonment and will be addressed in detail further into this reading.
The issues attributed to abandonment include the inability to trust,
Need for reassurance,
Clinginess in relationships,
Or even avoidance of relationships,
And self-sabotage or codependence in relationships.
I'm going out on a reality-based limb here and say that the issues related to abandonment are stories we tell ourselves,
Founded in unrealistic expectations we and society place on people and relationships.
Self-abandonment.
Through the process of domestication in early childhood,
We are taught to abandon our capital S self.
Capital S Self is the authentic us born into this world.
At birth and at death,
We are the most genuine self we will ever be.
Within moments after we are born,
Our capital S self begins to dissipate.
This is due in part because of how we are raised.
I'm absolutely not pointing a finger of blame at the people who raise us.
It is just a nugget of reality that the people who raise us have a part in shaping us,
And it is in that shaping that our capital S self-authenticity is modified into lowercase s self to fit into our families of origin,
Our friend groups,
With classmates,
And society as a whole.
That process of capital S self-abandonment cannot be changed.
It is what it is.
It can have significant effects on us.
For example,
We can feel like we've lost a sense of ourselves and not feel comfortable in our own skin.
It can undermine our confidence,
Sense of self-worth,
And value.
Lots of people get to a season of their lives when they begin to question these things about themselves and seek all kinds of remedies looking to get back to themselves.
Another way self-abandonment can affect our lives is when we project our abandonment of capital S self onto relationships around us.
We blame parents,
Caregivers,
Friends,
Partners,
Life events,
And so on rather than go inside and recognize how we gave up our capital S self in favor of our lowercase s self.
We can also abandon ourselves by giving up on us,
Losing hope,
Failing to take care of ourselves,
Eroding our own trust in ourselves.
These are examples of depression.
When we sit with the reality of capital S self-abandonment,
We can recognize the root of our abandonment issues.
It begins with us.
It is not in our control,
And no one is to blame for it.
This is very much different than what people say every day in therapy sessions,
Online,
In conversations,
And on reality television programs when they're stating,
I have abandonment issues.
Let's tease that apart from a reality therapy radical acceptance perspective.
First,
Let's remind ourselves of Google's AI overview.
The definition of abandonment is,
Quote,
The act of leaving a person,
Thing,
Place,
Or idea permanently and completely with no intention of returning,
End quote.
The definition as it is written is not concise because the act of leaving is not the real issue.
The issues are caused by an unstated underlying expectation that we have of a person or persons not leaving.
As mentioned above,
All issues related to abandonment are stories we tell ourselves based on unrealistic expectations we and society place on timelines of people and relationships.
How about an example for more clarity?
Therapy client.
Quote,
My father left my mother and I when I was around 18 months old.
I didn't have a father figure growing up and I have abandonment issues because he left.
I don't trust myself or men.
Relationships I've had end because the man thinks I am too needy and clingy and I do everything in my power to please them.
So my man picker must be broken.
My greatest fear is being alone,
So I probably put up with more than I should.
Reality explanation.
There is an expectation that because a person contributes to the creation of a child,
Whether it is the biological father or mother,
That person is supposed to play a paternal or maternal role in said child's life.
This could be wildly unpopular,
Except that it is real.
Not every person who contributes to the creation of a child is going to play a paternal or maternal role in the child's life.
Technically by definition.
It does mean the child is abandoned by the leaving parent.
It does not mean the abandoning creates the issues the client is attesting to.
The issues are created by the client's expectations that their absent parent was supposed to stay.
In the example,
The client said she was 18 months old when her father left.
Too young to even have memories of her father being in her life.
What she knows about him,
She has been told or learned.
She grew up without a father figure.
Okay.
Mothers can be both for their children.
What the client knows about the role of fathers.
She,
Again,
Has been told or learned.
So she has created a story about how a fantasy father could have impacted her life,
In addition to the expectation that her biological father was supposed to fill that role.
And because of his choice to leave,
She has dysfunctional issues that interfere in her having healthy relationships.
The foundation of reality therapy is that everything happens for a reason,
And radically accepting that sometimes we know the reason,
And sometimes we don't.
Continuing with the example,
Let's say that the father had a substance abuse problem and chose that life path over parenting.
Reality therapy would say that his substance abuse problem was part of his soul lesson plan and parenting was not.
It could also be said that growing up without a father was part of the client's soul lesson plan,
And the substance abuse of her father took him out of her life as part of fulfilling that plan.
There's another factor to consider.
What if he had stayed?
Substance abuse problem and all.
This probably wouldn't be the fantasy father she created a story around,
And he could have just as easily left her with unfulfilled expectations of what she believes a father was supposed to do and be.
The client is operating from a lowercase s as well.
We know this because most of us are.
The signs of this are her admittance of not trusting herself,
Using relationships to try to heal a story she created around her lack of a father,
Blaming her lack of a father for her dysfunctional behaviors in relationships,
People pleasing and compromising her boundaries in relationships to assuage her fear of being alone.
Healing from abandonment looks like remembering capital S self and integrating back to that true self we entered the world as.
The example client can begin this process by dropping the story of what a father is supposed to do and be,
And radically accepting that her father was not in her life.
Period.
She does not have to like that or agree with it.
Just accept that it is true.
We can talk about how her mother was able to fill the paternal roles and what the client learned from her mother.
By doing this initial work,
The client is able to step back into the power of her own truth,
Rather than giving her power over to her story,
Which is not true,
And an argument with the reality of what happened versus what we think should have happened.
This is the beginning of the healing,
And it is a process of constant practice of accepting our reality.
I remind people that accepting does not mean liking or agreeing with what's happened.
It's being stuck in our stories that perpetuate the issues,
The arguing with the reality of what happened.
The arguing plays a role in our lack of trust in ourselves.
Our capital S self wants to believe our reality and our lowercase S self,
Our ego,
Wants to remain stuck in our story.
Even though our story is uncomfortable or dysfunctional,
It is better than the unknown outside of the story.
The dissonance created by our argument with reality erodes our self-trust and confidence.
Our inability to trust ourselves makes it impossible to trust anyone outside of ourselves.
Thus,
The client's inability to trust men in her relationships.
Next,
She said her relationships end due to her neediness,
Clinginess,
Codependence.
This is the client's lack of trust in herself as well.
Of herself looking for trust and validation from her relationships.
Her fear of being alone is,
Again,
Related to her lack of self-trust and confidence,
Based on her ego story being something the client can,
Quote,
Control,
End quote.
I have control in quotation marks because control is an illusion we tell ourselves,
And that adds to the dissonance we feel.
The illusion that we can control our story makes us wary of what is not our story,
Which in this case is being alone.
And that is another example of unknown outside the client's story.
I hope all of this is coming together clearly.
It all comes back to the domestication of lowercase s self,
Which can also be called ego.
The abandonment,
By its definition,
Is true.
A parent left without intention of returning.
That is sad,
And it's true.
That abandonment is not the cause of the issues.
They are the result of the expectations and stories our ego makes up around that abandonment.
When we let go of the expectations and stories and accept the reality,
We have a chance to heal from our sadness and lean into our capital S,
Self.
