Before continuing, I want to encourage everyone that has a fear of abandonment to seek professional help or therapy to overcome their struggles. I’m not a trained professional and somebody that has dedicated their life to helping the lives of people who struggle with these kinds of issues is significantly more well-equipped to help you than online resources. Seek therapy or professional help first before consulting the internet. 

However, I get the struggle. I remember so many of my own therapists being negligent or not truly helping me understand or overcome the underlying issues I had. Additionally, you may not have enough money to seek therapy, or you could be a minor that has parents who won’t pay for therapy. 

I never wrote this with the intention of completely eradicating your fear of abandonment. Getting rid of your fear of abandonment entirely is difficult and will require a lot of work as well as help that isn’t within the scope of my abilities. Nevertheless, as someone who has struggled with intense abandonment anxiety but is getting better as the days pass, I can offer you some tips and coping strategies that you could use to manage and control your abandonment anxiety. 

You deserve every good thing that happens to you, and I hope these tips on overcoming your fear of abandonment can be one of those good things. 

1. Treat yourself like you matter and prioritize yourself first 

Before we talk about codependency, I just want you to remember that codependency makes you far from being an unlovable or difficult person in your relationships! From my experiences, I’ve seen people talk about being codependent on a person as this terrible thing someone can do in a human relationship and even being something that singularly justifies ending a relationship or a friendship over. This just isn’t true. Codependency is just like any other flaw in a relationship and is just as worthy of working through in a relationship as any other flaw. Always keep in mind that the other person is just as responsible for helping to communicate and work through any codependency you may have as you are in growing out of your codependency, and a human relationship requires both people to put in equal effort in helping each other grow and develop! 

Everything aside, codependency is an issue not because of any harm that it brings to others, but because of the harm it brings to yourself. 

Codependency runs feral with the fear of abandonment. Codependency is when a large portion of someone’s emotional state revolves around the support, approval, and validation of only one person. When one develops a fear of abandonment, one great attribute to it would be the intense personalization of all your mistakes and flaws as well as doubts about your self-worth. To make yourself feel secure, you then seek the approval and validation of the person you’re codependent with. This kind of emotional attachment isn’t secure and can often fester into a fear of abandonment, or a fear of losing the person responsible for so much of your emotional stability. 

Although this wouldn’t help you overcome your fear of abandonment immediately nor prevent people from abandoning you, prioritizing yourself first helps you become a more emotionally independent person and therefore could potentially help to reduce your fear of abandonment. 

Moving forward, I always want you to remember this: you’re an absolute catch. 

You’re an absolute catch in a sea of fish that doesn’t care nor have the capacity to pour as much love as you do. Think about what makes you a wonderful human because I can promise you that you are. People should consider you a gift to have in their lives because of your passion for the things you love, your kindness and patience in the face of trouble, your loyalty towards those in your life, and many other things that make you a gift. Think about it this way: having a fear of abandonment indicates that your soul is much more dedicated to others you care about than other people. 

You’re the best comforter and validator you can ever get. Soothe yourself and your inner child as if it’s worth soothing. Sit down with the most vulnerable version of yourself and give them all the support, comfort, and validation they needed to hear. Everything that you’d tell yourself is everything you deserve to hear from others, but congratulations! You reassured yourself and your own needs through comforting yourself instead of relying on the validation of another person that you can’t control. 

2. Seek healthy human relationships and communicate in those relationships 

 One ironic thing about the fear of abandonment is that there’s a reason why it developed. Whether that be an abusive or neglectful household, narcissistic or controlling exes, or poor friendships, there’s a relationship where your fear of abandonment stems from. You may have felt betrayed or neglected by some of the most influential relationships in your life and internalize that everyone will do the same thing. 

But not everyone is like those that have hurt or abandoned you. 

One great step you can take for yourself is to try your best to make secure and supportive relationships with people that will love you, support you, and help you grow as a person. I know that it’s quite hard and you may not have those yet but just try small and connect with people that pop up in your life. However, don’t settle with just anybody and pay attention to any poor or toxic character traits that you notice in them and communicate with them. Always remember that the other person in your human relationships is just as responsible for communicating with you and improving themselves as much as you are. 

One common thing that pops up in the relationships of people who fear abandonment is resentment. People who fear abandonment are often either so worried that bringing up their needs will create conflict and lead to abandonment or that their needs aren’t nearly as important as the other person (goes back to what we were talking about with codependency) that they never bring up their needs or boundaries to the other person. This can lead to you or the other person becoming resentful and leading up to a potential outburst and a weakened bond in your human relationship. 

Communication and boundaries in your human relationships are essential. One step you can take for yourself is to communicate your fear of abandonment, insecurity, or even jealousy of other people. If the other person isn’t doing something wrong that’s triggering your fear of abandonment, then don’t correct them or ask for more attention. However, just let those that are close to you or will be close to you in the future once you make these relationships that you have this fear. If the other person has a negative reaction to you trying to communicate how you feel towards them, then so be it. It defines their character and not yours, and you deserve human relationships where you feel secure and understood around the other person and don’t feel like you’re walking on eggshells. Communication allows you to express your feelings in such a way that you build genuine understanding and validation with the other person. The other person’s awareness of your abandonment issues and self-defense mechanisms allows openness to conversations on your emotions and ways that you can feel more secure, enabling your trust in them and accelerating your growth. 

3. Go into the roots of why you developed your fear of abandonment and understand that your emotions don’t reflect the reality of your current relationships 

Emotions and rejection sensitivity in abandonment anxiety are often much more intense when triggered by another’s actions in a human relationship, with those emotions sometimes even going overboard and harming your human relationships. However, your emotions or assumptions about the human relationship you have are often wrong. It’s not often that the worst-case scenario occurs in your human relationships, and one bad egg from the bunch doesn’t mean that all relationships will end up with the other person leaving you. 

If you were to leave with anything, I want you to remember this: the people in your human relationships right now are very distinct people from those that have hurt you and created your traumas in the past. Most people in your human relationships or those that will be in your human relationships will treat you and react differently than those who didn’t give you what you needed. 

Never assume the actions of the other person without properly communicating with them first. For example, a friend or a partner not texting or calling as much as you’d like doesn’t mean that they don’t care about you, but it could also mean that they’re busy, that they’re emotionally drained from their social relationships, or even that they may want you to contact them first. Assuming is one of the worst things you could do with abandonment anxiety, as abandonment anxiety often blows out the reasons of the other person’s upsetting actions disproportionately to the reality of the situation. Always practice good communication. 

As an extension for when you find yourself overthinking and mentally exaggerating the reasons for distance, I want you to practice a certain type of self-regulation that will also help you get closer to yourself. Whenever you feel yourself going in a spiral because of the intrusive feeling that someone will abandon or betray you, I want you stop in your place and recognize that you’re feeling something extremely intense, whether that be sadness, anger, fear, or another emotion. Then, I want you to think and trace back to the specific events that may have induced such a feeling and a reaction out of you. Recognize that event that may have created that feeling and sit down upon it. Understand your traumas. Think about why you felt that way. Then, go back to your current situation with your human relationship and think as to whether what they’re doing is reasonable and consider if the emotions you feel reflect reality. This can help you understand your emotions and think logically about your relationships instead of being fueled by pure emotion, aiding you in better managing your human relationships and abandonment anxiety. 

Abandonment anxiety is such an intense daily battle, and it can sometimes make you feel that nobody understands your core struggles and that you have no choice but to face your pain alone. However, I promise you that people who are truly worth your time don’t want to see you suffer and want to support you and your improvement. The weight of the anxiety, pain, and hurt that you feel is every bit worth taking seriously from others as much as is the space your abandonment anxiety takes up in your head. You deserve every bit of love and care that you give to others, and your steps to that self-love that will help you begins in places like this one.