The 5 Soul Wounds – 2. The wound of Abandonment

“Abandoning someone is leaving them, not wanting to take care of them”

According to Lise Bourbeau, abandonment is the second of the five fundamental soul wounds, which prevent you from being yourself. This soul wound is unfortunately as deep as it is common. Whoever feels “abandoned” suffers an attack of its being. He feels threatened in its right to exist.

Wound                          Abandonment
Mask                             The Dependent
Greatest fear               Loneliness
Greatest need             Attention
Parent                           Of the opposite sex

After having devoted a first article to the wound of REJECTION, today, I propose we look into the wound of ABANDON.

Our soul wounds are at the origin of most discomforts and evils (physical or psychological) generally manifesting themselves by wearing a particular societal mask, depending on the circumstances of the moment and the situations encountered.

Awakening of the wound

“When a child is born, he knows deep inside him that the reason he incarnates is to be himself while living through multiple experiences, until he manages to love himself through them.” L.Bourbeau

According to Lise Bourbeau’s theory, to be perfect themselves, a child must become aware of the consequences of the experiences they will have during their lifetime.

However, from our early childhood, we realise that daring to be ourselves disturbs the world of adults. We deduce that being yourself, naturally, is NOT a good thing.

To this first universal awareness is quickly added another for children who will suffer from abandonment.

“Dad or mom can go away, turn away from me.”

The onslaught that causes the original hurt is in most cases brought on by a trivial lack of communication on the part of the parent of the opposite sex during childhood. A disaster for a small child who is just beginning his emotional learning. This awareness in children is particularly painful. This is the precise moment when the fear of being alone is imprinted in his mind. He understands that he must rely on the other to survive and for that he needs to be understood.

“The dependent is ready to do anything to be loved”

How do you recognise the “dependant”?

Abandonment is a very special, very deep wound. It is the result of a tense context, a stressful situation that led you to feel the imminent departure of your parent of the opposite sex when you were still very young. Perhaps it was just an unfortunate set of circumstances that you misinterpreted, or on the contrary, a real situation that shaped your current family life. Still, the wound of abandonment is common. Many people suffer from it to varying degrees.

The dependant attitude it creates has an unfortunate tendency to get him into trouble and get him stuck in inextricable relationships, fuelled only by the fear of the other’s departure.

The dependant manifests itself in 2 different ways depending on the individual and the circumstances:

  • Create dependency: dependents, often unconsciously, create difficulties or even health problems to attract the attention of their loved ones. Problems that mainly serve to attract attention.
  • Helping to get out of dependence: some “victims” like, on the contrary, to play the role of “Saviour” by trying to extricate someone they love from a difficulty. Once he has succeeded, he does not hesitate to let it be known. He may have regular back pain due to the load of responsibilities that symbolically weighs on his shoulders.

Lise Bourbeau specifies an attitude characteristic of “dependents” which consists in systematically letting other people pass in front of him when he walks in a group. He prefers to let himself be guided when the opportunity arises.

It is in this posture that he feels best, because his greatest fear is loneliness. The anxiety of being alone terrifies the dependent who is intimately convinced that he will not be able to manage it. The idea of ??loneliness causes great anxiety in addicts.

Being understood has nothing to do with being loved.
TO LOVE IS TO ACCEPT THE OTHER EVEN IF YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND IT

What to understand from the attitude of “dependent”?

Abandonment is the second wound. The one that appears second in the life a child. It is not to be taken lightly, because it creates the anxiety of loneliness.

According to the observations made by Lise Bourbeau, the person who suffers from this hurt will present a long and thin body, but soft. He presents a slower and sometimes lethargic attitude.

The psychological reaction to a feeling of abandonment is the interior collapse, the collapse of the structure. If the sag is visible on the outside (hunched back, etc.) this suggests that the wound is particularly serious. Muscularly the “dependent” is rather underdeveloped which testifies to his lack of tone.

The mask of this person is “the dependent”. Each time in his life, the dependent is confronted with a situation that reactivates his feeling of abandonment, he overreacts. He can create family conflicts by simple anguish of not being supported, encouraged. Emotional dependence supposes that the person who feels abandoned places himself in the capacity of victim or saviour within his family and on the occasion of any type of relationship (friendly, professional, etc. […]. An attitude that can tend to create conflicts against the background of psychodramas.

The dependent manifests a great need to be supported more than helped

How to help an emotional dependent?

Since he feels a compulsive need to be supported, when he has to make an important decision, the “dependent” often asks for the approval of those close to him. We must, I believe, not hesitate to give attention to the dependent people whom we love and who need it so much. They are looking for support much more than real help. Of course, it is a question here of remaining in “fair” proportions which do not overflow more than reason on the bearable balance of each one.

How to recover from emotional dependence?

The good news in all of this is that it is never too late to heal, to get rid of this very cumbersome mask of dependency to finally be yourself and to consider life and its relationships with others in a new way. Healing your wound allows you to be more independent, less dependent, emotionally.

If we repress our painful memories, they anchor themselves deeply in our unconscious. The risk is that one day, the straw will break the camel’s back and the pain will become too much to handle.

By confronting abandonment we experienced with our same-sex parent, we can release all the energy we used to hide it and use it to build our lives by being ourselves.

The stages of deconstruction

Healing comes through experimentation more than intellectual understanding. The more we allow ourselves to be dependent, the less we will do so in the future. To deconstruct his injury pattern, you simply have to go through the steps of constructing the mask, upside down.

  • Step 1. Become aware of the mask you wear
  • Step 2. Being revolted by this realisation, having difficulty accepting their share of responsibility, preferring to blame the causes of their suffering on the parent “in question”. The intensity of the revolt depends on the degree of acceptance.
  • Step 3. Give yourself the right to have suffered from abandonment and to have resented a parent. Be compassionate with yourself. It is during this phase that we let go by having compassion for the parent concerned.
  • Step 4. Become yourself again by ceasing to believe that wearing a mask is vital for protection. Integrate that life is only a sum of experiences that serve to learn what is good for you.

The wound of abandonment is in the process of healing when we begin to assert ourselves, to take the place that is ours.

I will come back, in the coming weeks, with precision on each of the 5 injuries, so that you can, behind your screen, get an idea of ??the injury(ies) that could correspond to you. It seems that we all experience at least 2, very rarely all 5 at the same time! Phew!

Sources

Lise BOURBEAU, Heal Your Wounds & Find Your True Self: Finally, a Book That Explains Why It’s So Hard Being Yourself!

You may also like : The 5 Soul Wound #The wound of Rejection

You can join Cindy’s monthly Women Sacred healing circle for deep healing experiences at the Light centre London Belgravia.

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