Break-ups are hard...there is just no way around that fact. Oftentimes breaking up is hard, even when YOU are the one ending it! Even when you know breaking up is the best thing in the world that you could do for yourself, it can be painful and emotionally disorienting. Break-ups, of all kinds...from the agreeable friendly kind to the knock-down-breakdown kind...are likely to bring up our abandonment and belonging issues.
Regardless of how long the relationship lasted, it is likely that for a time you felt a sense of "belonging" with this person. A feeling of completion and connection that made you feel safe, known, and wanted...if only for a short time. If it's a longer relationship than these feelings of belonging were likely to be more deeply etched into your psyche. When that feeling is "taken" from us in a break-up or we decide to remove ourselves from it, then it is likely to trigger abandonment feelings both in the moment, but also any that we have experienced in the past.
So many people have experienced some form of abandonment in their childhood. It could have happened in the form of divorce, death, a parent leaving the family, traveling, work, war, addiction, abuse, adoption, etc. A lot of times relationships ending can be especially painful for people who have suffered a big abandonment in their childhood. When we are little, we often times will suppress our hurt, scared, angry, confused, betrayed, and sad feelings in relationship to the loss in order to survive and get through it.
Suppressed feelings don't go away. They just hang out in the places of our memory that go unnoticed by our conscious mind. This hiding place is what a lot of healers, therapists and mystics call the Shadow. When we experience difficult moments that take us out of our day to day stream of (and striving for) happiness...like a breakup...we begin to emotionally dip into the suppressed memories and feelings of the past, which makes the feelings in the "here and now" even more intense. It is normal and natural to do this, especially if you have experienced a trauma.
Abandonment is traumatizing to children because we are naturally attached to our parental figures because we have a primal need to have that bond...so it is nothing to be ashamed of, yet a lot of us do feel shame and may not even be aware of it. There can be a lot of shame associated with being abandoned because we lose our sense of belonging and that can make us feel unwanted and different than others and so, in order to cope, we learn to hide and minimize the feelings we have as kids all the way into adulthood.
This suppressed shame can explain why we so often feel a sense of shame when someone breaks up with us or we are unable to make a relationship work...we feel ashamed for being "unwanted" and we feel shame in not being able to make a relationship last or having made a poor choice in a mate. If you have never felt abandoned emotionally or physically in your past then you are rare and lucky! You may still have some abandonment and shame feelings come up though. For you it may be a different kind of intensity that is linked with the unfamiliar shock of someone choosing to not be in a relationship with you or you may worry that you are not living up to the potential of your families reputation/tradition for having solid and sound relationships.
Once we understand the full scope of why we feel the way we do, we can begin healing the core stuff that led us to this experience in the first place. Our suppressed and unconscious grief from past abandonment can attract to us similar experiences through relationships with people who will play out the previous drama with us. I believe this is orchestrated by our spirits so we can become conscious of what needs healing in us through the experience of pain. Pain causes us to grow when we would rather just stay the same.
No one wants to go through life with a conscious or unconscious feeling of abandonment, shame, and a sense of not belonging in the world. When a break-up triggers these feelings in us we have the choice to grow bitter or depressed and live as a victim, or we can feel our feelings and learn how to be there for ourselves. We can learn how to feel a sense of belonging from within. We can comfort the inner-child that still feels hurt and lost due to events of long ago. It is amazing what a little awareness and allowing of feelings can do for a person.
The process of healing from a past abandonment and a present break-up can feel and look messy, but it is fertile ground for personal and spiritual growth. As we heal our wounds and let go of shame we grow into whole adults who are conscious and ready to have relationships that last. The first step towards creating that is in mending your relationship with yourself through understanding what experiences and events have left behind a residue of grief that needs to be consciously felt, expressed, and let go of.
Be kind to yourself and thank you for reading :-)
Peace to All,
Ann
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