Dismantling the Fear of Abandonment

Chapter 1: Every Person Faces Fear of Abandonment

Dismantling the Fear of Abandonment.
It took me many years to wake up and realize that I needed to create this course, perhaps one of the most meaningful I have ever made. For so many years I myself have been dealing with different versions of fear of abandonment, watching how it explodes in my face in so many different ways. And through all the courses I have created over the years, each born from challenges I faced in myself and in others, it never occurred to me to focus specifically on this topic. It never occurred to me to apply my usual method when I meet a difficulty, whether my own or another’s: to turn it into a course, or a new book. This is my tool, my way of healing, understanding, and growing.

Even when the subject is one I personally struggle with, simply sitting down, pressing the record button, and entering the creative space draws out from me deep and meaningful knowledge. Many times, through working on a difficult subject, I discover that after a year of such creative work something inside me begins to change, to release, to heal. I sometimes wonder how I managed to go on until now without giving this subject its proper expression. But apparently everything has its right timing, its moment of ripeness, when one can finally say with honesty: yes, this is me, I carry this, I live with fear of abandonment, and it is not an easy one. Now I set it as a goal for healing, as something I wish to take apart piece by piece, to dismantle the fear of abandonment.

This journey will unfold through eighteen chapters, divided into six parts. Each part will include three chapters revolving around one central theme. I already recommend to you, and also to myself, to return to these materials again and again, to let them seep inward. Because this is not just psychological information—it is emotional, spiritual, and creative healing knowledge. It is meant to work not only in the realm of rational understanding, but deeper, in the experiential, emotional, and creative dimensions of the mind and soul. These are the places where true healing and transformation occur.

In this first chapter I want to establish a simple but essential foundation:
Fear of abandonment is a universal phenomenon, an inseparable part of human existence.
There is no human being who does not have some measure of fear of abandonment. We are built with it, born with it, live with it, and each of us encounters it in our own way.

Why do I say this? Because it is important to understand that this fear is not a symptom of “weak” or “problematic” people, but an expression of a basic human need—the need for belonging. In my view, there is nothing more vital to a human being than the feeling of belonging. For the sake of belonging, people are willing to do things that no one would believe they could do. From the fear of losing this belonging, people act in ways that are hard to understand. Fear of abandonment is, in essence, fear of losing belonging, and it carries within it a genuine sense of existential danger.

Before we go deeper, we must establish one fact clearly: you have fear of abandonment, your friend has it, your partner has it, your mother has it, your children have it, and your grandchildren will have it too. It is a universal human trait. Why is it so important to recognize this? Because when fear of abandonment arises, one of the most painful and embarrassing human experiences, the person also feels a deep sense of alienation. They feel strange, abnormal, “not okay.” This feeling of isolation intensifies the pain.

When too much pain accumulates within us, we get stuck. That is why, at the very beginning of this journey of dismantling the fear of abandonment, it is crucial that we reconnect to our shared human foundation and remember that we are all touched by the same pain. Even if people around us do not admit it, even if they seem indifferent, even if they are the ones who abandon, fear of abandonment is active in them as well. It simply takes on different forms.

There is no person without fear of abandonment. And if it seems that there is, it is likely someone deeply disconnected from their emotions, unable to feel the pain of separation and loss. That is a rare and unhealthy condition. The normal state is ours, the one that fears abandonment deeply. Fear of abandonment is a fundamental component of every relationship. It touches the potential for loss, the possibility of departure, and it always accompanies us, even when we are unaware of it.

It exists. It hurts. It frightens. It disrupts our thinking and decision-making far more than we tend to realize. Often, we take various actions in an attempt to reduce the risk of abandonment—but those very actions only amplify the fear. When we experience fear of abandonment, there is also an inner voice that whispers: “It’s only me. Only I feel this way. I am too weak, too dependent, too different.” No. This is an illusion. The fear is universal. It arises in every human being under the right conditions.

I am not saying this to free myself from responsibility for healing, but to create a shared foundation. We are here to dismantle the fear of abandonment. I assume that anyone reading these lines feels how personally this topic touches them. It is important to understand that we are dealing with a profound human and social phenomenon, so deep that one cannot really exist without it. The question is not whether it exists, but how powerful it is, how much it governs our lives, and to what degree we can learn to recognize it, to face it, to negotiate with it, to dismantle it, and to release the excessive control it holds over us.

We will not erase fear of abandonment. We will learn to befriend it. We will learn to grow through it. We will lower it from the position of judge and ruler and turn it into a humble teacher in our process of evolution. Because as long as we live, love, create, and connect, fear of abandonment will be there. And this fact is not bad news, it is an invitation to a journey of healing and growth. This is our journey here, yours and mine, through eighteen chapters devoted to dismantling the fear of abandonment.

Self-Reflection Questions (recommended to answer in writing):

Why did you choose to study and experience this course in particular?
What would you like to write here, in up to two lines, about your own fear of abandonment?
How do you feel toward your fear of abandonment—do you fear it, feel ashamed of it, feel embarrassed, or something else?
In what ways do you think your fear of abandonment influences your relationships?
What would be your greatest gain from dismantling your fear of abandonment?

Chapter 2: To Die and Be Born

I feel grateful for the privilege of creating this course, of touching a subject so significant, so common, and so influential in human life, in such a deep and far-reaching way. Fear of abandonment penetrates almost every corner of life, visible or hidden, conscious or unconscious. I am glad to have the opportunity to offer tools for coping, tools that can bring insight and compassion to the places where we get stuck before the fear that we will be left, that something will be taken from us, that someone will disappear, that we will be ignored, that we will be rejected, that we will be made unnecessary or unwanted. All of these are different versions of the same deep fear.

This chapter, the second in Part One, continues the understanding that fear of abandonment is a universal phenomenon present in every person. This time we will deepen the link between fear of abandonment and fear of death. If we can see this connection, we will understand why this fear is so threatening. Hidden within fear of abandonment lies the deepest fear of all, fear of death. The rational mind protests and asks, what is the connection, why death, someone just did not answer the phone, or went away for a few days. But the emotional consciousness does not operate according to such logic. It holds deep memories, early experiences of loss, of rupture, of uncertainty. Every small distancing touches those sensitive buttons and presses on the memory zones where our original fear of death is recorded.

When those buttons are pressed there is no room for logic. The person shifts into survival mode. There is a sense of real danger. One cannot think clearly, cannot breathe deeply, cannot persuade oneself that this is not the end of the world. From within, it feels like the end of the world. If we add to this the self-judgment that often accompanies the experience, “How can I be so weak,” “Why am I not calm,” and the judgment from others, “Why are you making a drama,” “Get a grip already,” we receive a double distress, both the activation of fear of death and internal and external condemnation for its very activation.

To understand the depth of this fear we need to acknowledge a simple fact, that we as human beings have great difficulty with our mortality. We live, create, build, plan, fall in love, and in the end it all ends. It is hard to grasp. Western culture represses the subject of death. It does not talk about it, does not treat it as part of life, and creates the illusion that all that exists is here and now. Thus the fear of death is not addressed, only pushed into the unconscious.

When someone distances from us, disconnects, falls silent, or ignores us, this fear awakens through a back door. Not through a direct thought about death, but through the feeling of disconnection, as if “everything is dying now.” We are thrown back into those ancient places of helplessness and total dependence. I can testify about myself. I know today that the root of my fear of abandonment lies already in infancy. I was a baby whose mother at that time could not provide natural mothering. She was not ready, and I spent long hours alone in a playpen, crying, waiting, without touch, without warmth, without being cleaned, without communication. In such moments a baby experiences a real fear of death. The baby does not know if anyone will come, does not know if there is someone who will see them. It is not only the baby’s fear of death, it is also the mother’s fear of death within the baby’s experience, that she is absent, not expected to return, that all is dark and lifeless.

This is my story. It is not an excuse for outbursts or harsh behaviors when I experience abandonment, but it explains the ground from which this fear rises. From here a great opportunity becomes clear, to make this fear into soil for spiritual growth. If every time I experience fear of abandonment I am actually encountering my fear of death, then I am being given a rare opportunity to look directly at my most basic fear. Not to run from it, but to remain with it for a moment, to feel it, to acknowledge it. To say to myself, “I am afraid to die. I feel as if I am dying now when I have been left.” This is mine. This is my fear. And it is your fear, and the fear of every living person.

There is no person without fear of death. There is no person who will not experience it in some way when faced with rejection or rupture. In each person it is awakened differently, yet it always touches the same existential core. Here another dimension arises that came to me one morning while walking the dog, those moments when insights are born. It seems that within human consciousness there is a basic error, and this fear expresses it. The error is in the perception of separateness. We experience ourselves as separate, cut off, isolated, yet this is a distortion of our true essence.

In healthy development a baby learns to move away from the mother and still feel that she is with him. The baby builds within an “object constancy,” an inner sense of the loving figure’s existence even when she is not physically present. The baby carries parts of her within, and sends parts of self to her. In this way the connection is preserved even when bodies are apart. There is no absolute disconnection, but a temporary movement of distance.

Within fear of abandonment there is a spiritual invitation to return to this state. If in moments of fear I can pause and practice creative imagination in which I send parts of my energy to the person who left, and at the same time receive into myself parts from that person, memories, feelings, shared moments, I create a new connection that does not depend on physical presence. This is a practice of spiritual love.

This practice also expands the understanding of fear of death. When I fear that one day I will die and everything will end, I can remember, I will leave parts of myself here, and I will take parts from here to there. The connection between life and death does not break, it changes form. This is the spiritual truth, there is no real separation, only a change of phase.

This understanding does not erase the pain, yet it begins to sow within us seeds of transformation. It allows us to meet the fear where it can become a teacher. This is where healing begins, where the true dismantling of fear of abandonment begins. From the encounter with the fear of death, a new consciousness is born, a consciousness of continuing life, of connection that is not dependent on time and distance, of dying and being born again and again.

Self-Reflection Questions (recommended to answer in writing):

How do you feel about the phrase “fear of death”?
In your view, when fear of abandonment is at full intensity, is it similar to fear of death?
When fear of abandonment is especially strong, do you feel as if something “dies inside” on an emotional level?
Take a moment to check, what is truly frightening when someone important to you distances from you, what is the primary fear?
What do you think now about what you wrote in the previous question?

Chapter 3: Accepting What Is

Chapter Three is the third chapter in the first part of our journey. There are six parts to this process, and each part contains three chapters, a total of eighteen chapters. Each video and each chapter in the book is accompanied by questions and also a prayer. The questions and the prayer are intended to help us internalize the process, to process the material not only with the mind but also with the emotions, the breath, and the soul. One can go through this process alone, yet it is highly recommended, if possible, to go through it in a group, because something different happens in a group. There are reflections, resonance, support, and an opening for healing through others. In any case, even if a person does it alone, the very listening, the contemplation, the lingering with these materials is already a healing process in itself.

The entire first part deals with a simple yet immense truth, fear of abandonment is a universal phenomenon. There is no person without fear of abandonment. It is an inseparable part of human life, part of the inner structure of the psyche. One of the most important keys to healing is the moment when a person is released from the feeling that “something is very wrong with me.” The moment they understand that they are not abnormal, not defective, not an exception. It may appear in them with greater intensity, or in a different form, or earlier in life, yet they belong. They are part of humanity.

As long as a person lives with a sense of being an exception, “only I am like this,” “only I am stuck with this,” “only I cannot get over it,” “only I panic so quickly,” as long as they live this way, they also live with the feeling that they do not belong. That sense of non-belonging, which is itself part of the root of fear of abandonment, only deepens the wound. It is therefore very important to understand, there are people in whom fear of abandonment is more evident, perhaps because they are more aware of it, perhaps because they tend to admit it more readily, perhaps because in their relationships it is triggered more frequently, and perhaps because they inherited from their parents or from childhood an extra sensitivity around places of separation, rejection, or loss. But none of this makes them different. It only means that in them this mechanism is activated more strongly, earlier, more clearly, and therefore they may have more opportunity, and perhaps even more responsibility, to do real work with it.

We all fear abandonment. We all fear rejection. We all fear the possibility that we will not be relevant, not wanted, not part of the group. We all fear being outside the circle where everyone laughs, shares, and appears connected. This is a basic human fear, and it lives in us like breathing. We fear being abandoned just as we fear dying. It is an existential and natural fear, and one cannot live a human life without it. The question is only how we relate to it.

Many times fear of abandonment intensifies and appears as a disrupting factor, intrusive and too strong. Then it invites us to look at it and to address it. Some choose to give it attention, and some prefer to run from it and pretend it is not there. Yet the mere fact that it exists does not make us weak, dependent, or abnormal. It simply points to a place within us that needs healing, a place that asks for care and presence.

When we walk down the street, when we sit on a bus, when we work with people, when we see famous or successful people, each one of them, without exception, has fear of abandonment. It is there, it breathes within them, even if it is not visible. Any person placed in a situation that activates this point of sensitivity will be activated. The strongest, the calmest, the most experienced. It is simply part of the human structure.

From here I want to arrive at the heart of Chapter Three, which is also the gateway to the real healing process. The therapeutic aim, the beginning of every process of dismantling fear of abandonment, starts with consenting to its presence. I consent to the fact that I have fear of abandonment. I stop waging war against it. I stop judging myself for it. I stop telling myself that I ought to be past it already, that I ought to be “grown,” “mature,” “strong,” “no longer needing this.” I stop lashing myself with questions like, “Why am I not getting over it,” “Why am I so dependent,” “Why am I clingy,” “Why can I not simply let go.”

As long as there is self-criticism toward this phenomenon, which is human, universal, and natural, I have no real chance to heal it. As long as I try to flee from this part of me, or torment myself for its existence, or try to “fit myself” to social norms that tell me I should not fear abandonment, I cannot truly know myself. I cannot touch the pain that drives me.

Why is this so important. Because behind every significant fear of abandonment there is always a story. There is pain. There is an experience that did not receive a place. Sometimes it is pain from lack of touch, lack of attention, lack of security, from an event of loss, from a separation that did not heal. It can be an old and deep memory that the body remembers even if the conscious mind has forgotten. The fear appears to signal, here there is pain. Here is something that asks you to come closer, to listen, to embrace. If I try to bypass the fear, I am in fact bypassing the pain. If I bypass the pain, it remains. It will not disappear. It will continue to generate fear again and again in order to remind me to come to it.

Therefore I say, the therapeutic aim begins with consent. I consent to the fact that I have fear of abandonment. I consent to stop fighting it. I consent for it to remain here, for me to feel it, for me to breathe into it. I consent for it to speak to me. I consent to listen to it. Because it has something to tell. It is not my enemy. It is a messenger that has arrived to provide me a direction for growth. It has come to teach me about a part in me that is in pain, that longs, that was left alone, that needs transformation.

When I consent, when I say to it, “It is all right. I see you. I am not running away. You may be here,” the healing journey can begin. Not when I “defeat” the fear, but when I stop fighting it. Not when I “erase” it, but when I allow it a place. Only when there is space can the pain appear. Only when pain appears can it also begin to release.

Behind fear of abandonment stands pain. Just as behind every other fear, fear of elevators, fear of public speaking, fear of snakes, stands pain. That pain is an important marker. It points me toward a part of me that did not receive what it needed. When fear is awakened the whole body responds. The body trembles, the heart races, the stomach tightens. Yet behind all of this there is pain. It is not truly fear as much as it is pain.
We are not so much afraid of abandonment itself as we are afraid of the pain that accompanies it.

Perhaps I can manage alone. I can occupy myself, find new activities, new people. But none of this touches the heart of the matter. The heart of the fear is the pain. The pain that appears when someone touches me and then disappears. When I feel I have lost connection. When I am left with the memory of something warm that was and is suddenly gone. If I am not willing to consent to the presence of fear of abandonment, I am not willing to consent to the presence of this pain. If I am not willing to consent to the presence of the pain, there is no space in me to release it. It will remain and will continue to speak to me through fear, through intrusive thoughts, through bodily sensations, through patterns in relationships. It will continue to try to awaken in me the call to come to it, until I hear, if I consent to listen.

Therefore, to begin dismantling fear of abandonment I must first consent that it is here. To say to it, “You are all right. You have a role. I am willing to learn you.” I want to know the messages you bring me. I want to understand why you appeared precisely now, precisely in this situation. I want to give space to the memories and emotions you touch.

When I allow myself to remain within this fear, when I do not run from it and do not act automatically from the illusion of fear, which is in fact an inability to bear pain, when I say to it, “You may be here. I see you, and it is all right that you are here,” a small window begins to open within me. Through that window the pain can begin to find new channels of movement. It begins to reveal itself, and I can meet it with new eyes, softer eyes. This is where healing may begin. This is where the dismantling can start. Not through struggle, but through acceptance. Not through an attempt to vanish from the experience, but through presence within it. Not through repression, but through faith that what hurts in me is part of me, a part that asks for love.

When I say to myself, “It is all right. I have fear of abandonment. I remain within it and I learn to become calm in its company without changing it. I accept it. I listen to it,” I begin to feel something change in my relationship with this difficult phenomenon. From here, as the journey continues, we will be able to touch the pain itself, which manages fear of abandonment from behind the scenes, to identify its sources, and slowly dismantle the bonds it has woven around me.

Self-Reflection Questions (recommended to answer in writing):

Do you regard your fear of abandonment as a legitimate part of your personality?
Are you willing to undergo a process whose first step is to embrace your fear of abandonment and to understand it?
How do you feel about the possibility that the first thing you will do when fear of abandonment appears again will be to increase your love toward yourself?
Do you have other fears that significantly affect your life?
If yes, please write a few lines about them and examine how much you can accept their existence with love and without self-judgment.

Chapter 4: Noticing the Role of Pain in the Experience and Lingering with It

Chapter 4 opens Part Two, and Part Two is a very significant part.

Everything here is significant, yet here the significance becomes sharper. Here begins the way out of the tangle. Part Two comes to clarify in a way that cannot be mistaken. Fear of abandonment is an experience of pain and loss. Whoever experiences fear of abandonment experiences pain and loss in the present. They truly experience it now. Even if the situation itself is not “supposed” to arouse pain at such intensity, this is still the lived experience. The moment we learn to sharpen our understanding of what is being felt in those moments, we will know better how to respond. Usually we miss the real story. We are drawn very quickly into a drama with someone important to us in the present. A particular person before whom fear of abandonment awakens only happened to be there because we needed someone to trigger it in us. Sometimes someone fills that role for us, and at other times the reverse, we do it for someone else, even when we are not aware of it.

It is not that this person is truly “abandoning.” It is the deep pain that remembers to awaken and to remind us that there are cracks in the structure of our primary emotional attachment, cracks that can lie dormant until the situation that reawakens them occurs.

Therefore we need understanding, a mirror image that tells us what is happening, what is truly happening inside while the emotional part is so stormy, so strong, so persuasive, that it is hard to see the real story. When we do not see the real story, we cannot address it. This is the subject of Part Two. Fear of abandonment is an experience of pain and loss. We must not belittle it. It is significant, it is strong, it echoes. When we understand, grasp, and recognize, we can begin to bear the experience and set out with it on new journeys.

For this I propose a simple model, based also on accepted psychological theories, which in my view is directly connected to the question of whether fear of abandonment will be significant and in charge, or weakened and even irrelevant. Here is how I understand it. When the interpersonal relationship is relatively healthy with regard to closeness and distance, there is always the sense that a part of me is always with the other person, and a part of the other is always with me. This is a mutual inner bond, similar to the balancing form of yin and yang. Within the white there is a “representation” of black, and within the black there is a “representation” of white, and these mutual extensions are what allow the relationship between them. The extension of “black” within “white” helps it remain connected and cooperative, and the reverse as well. When fear of abandonment is significant, it is a sign of difficulty for you to feel this paired mutual experience, and not only in romantic partnership. It happens also with friends, with parents, with children, with any figure with whom there is an emotional tie.

In every such relationship the relationship will be considered healthy if I am able to feel that thanks to the acquaintance, the friendship, or the family bond, a part of me has gone forth from me, made its way, and is now with the other side, and in reverse, a part of the other side is within me. Then, when the other person distances, there is my extension that continues with them wherever they go. This extension “watches over” emotionally so as not to lose them, as long as of course they themselves want to continue the relationship. In reverse, their extension within me preserves their presence in me. I do not lose them, they do not “disintegrate,” and I can remain in connection even when the distance grows, because the relationship has already ensured that a part of them remains in me. This grants security. It is an inner knowing that even if they distance, they are with me. Then it is not “abandonment,” but a phase in the healthy movement of the relationship.

Where is the pain found.
The pain sits upon the difficulty to reach this natural and healthy state. This is a difficulty that takes shape at a very early age. In the first years of life this ability is built between the infant and the parent. The infant learns to move gradually from a state of “attached” to a state of “more distant.” Again and again, through a sequence of gestures and experiences, the infant internalizes the mother or father, distances a bit, and develops separateness while carrying them within. When the primary relationship is relatively intact, the infant succeeds. When there are difficulties in the personality, in the environment, or in the care for the infant, the process can get stuck. Later in life a significant difficulty to distance will arise, and no less significant difficulty to accept the distancing of the other, first with the parents and then in every relationship.

The inability to “hold” within me a part of the object, the person, and to know that a part of me is also “now” with them, creates great pain. It produces a harsh experience of loneliness. If every time the person distances they are as if “erased” from me, because I cannot manage to leave a part of me with them and a part of them with me, all the connecting mechanisms and the sense of relationship shift into a state of failure. They went out the door, walked a bit, and within me there is a tragedy. There remains no “presence” with them to preserve the felt relationship even from afar. Then I become tense, I am anxious, I am in pain. It hurts. It hurts to feel again and again so alone, even though in actuality I am not alone. I am with me. No one has truly abandoned me. Yet because I did not succeed in developing this basic human social component that allows flexibility with distance and separateness without experiencing disconnection, I experience great pain.

Pain is something we try to move away from. We cannot bear sharp pain for long. We have countless defense mechanisms, mostly operating automatically, only so that we do not feel. Therefore there are relationships, people, and conditions in which we will experience the pain of abandonment even when there is no actual abandonment, only because this ability is shaken in us. Sometimes we do not even know that this ability is shaken. We do not know the model. This does not exist only in romantic relationships. How much can a parent let go of a child who goes out into the world. How secure does the parent feel because they “left parts” of themselves in the child throughout the years of parenting and bond, and therefore the child will not forget them.

Now I return to the subject of the chapter. There is pain here. Pain is being experienced. When fear of abandonment is activated we want to begin practicing a change of inner concepts. Instead of saying “I am anxious,” we will refer to the pain. We will say to ourselves the direct expression, “Now it hurts. This pain belongs entirely to me,” and if possible also, “All that I am experiencing now is only pain. This pain is meant to tell me something important about myself. I will try to listen and to become calm within it.”
Changing the language will not immediately set everything right, will not provide all the explanations, will not heal overnight, yet it will begin. It will place the truth in the correct place. When I say “I am in pain,” I grant myself the resonance of the true story, of what is really occurring. This truth is sharp and uncomfortable, yet it is also the chance for its transformation, because the moment the authentic pain is exposed and open, there are psycho creative means to work with it and even leverage it for growth and release.

When there is the possibility to feel this pain, this wound, this “hole,” there is a chance to begin building the original healthy model. From within, it too became disrupted and lost its correct way in the past. The possibility of its restoration is always present because this is the healthy nature of the human being. I recommend reading more about the healthy nature in the book The Psycho Creative Temple.

When this model goes through a process of cultivation and remembering it can operate within and change the sharpness of the pain and the great anxiety that is tied to an event that is perceived within as similar to “abandonment.” This is a very big step on the way to dismantling fear of abandonment. For fear of abandonment sits upon the lack of proper activity of this model. This model can, as said, be restored, as is the case with all forms of the healthy human nature. What a relief to discover that it is possible. Whoever wants and is ready to invest in healing their fear of abandonment, here are the first building blocks. To see that the outer drama is only an echo, to recognize that the inner place asks for renewed connection, to call things by their names, pain and loss, and to remain there one moment more, until the thread begins to be woven anew.

Self Reflection Questions (recommended to answer in writing):

What do you usually do when you encounter emotional pain within yourself?
To what extent have you recently improved your ability to linger and remain with such pain?
What do you do when you want to get rid of emotional pain as quickly as possible?
Do you now recognize the role of the experience of pain within your fear of abandonment?
What do you intend to do differently than before when this pain returns?

Chapter 5: Within Fear of Abandonment There Exists a Present Experience of Loss

As I like to say in almost every chapter, this is a very important chapter. Perhaps this is part of my experience as I come to gather the information within me and to identify the significance of every chapter. I write the chapter and then, when I begin to work, the information begins to flow. This chapter is important for anyone who experiences fear of abandonment, and this time no less important for the one opposite them, the one who may be accused of abandoning, the one upon whom the abandonment is projected, the one who is drawn into the story and becomes part of it. We will give them a place, we will give them language, we will give them context. What I say here may create a little more dialogue and understanding between both sides, and also between the person and themselves, because we will look more closely at this experience, we will know it better, and we will add names and features that will help to contain it, to grasp what is happening there, and even to identify with and deepen the empathy toward our friend who is experiencing it, so that we can help them cope, instead of saying that they are “not all right,” “exaggerating,” “dramatic,” and the like.

So, here is Chapter Five, and let us pay attention to it. Within fear of abandonment there exists a present experience of loss. I repeat the title because every word in it is important. Within fear of abandonment there exists a present experience of loss. Not a fear of loss, which is perhaps easier to assume, but a current experience of loss. I am not speaking of the fear that the friend will go and will not return, will not call, will not respond, and here is the proof, two hours have passed, “they left me,” “I am abandoned.” That is not the central story. As I said before, there is pain there that stems from the weakness of the structure, the connecting thread that is supposed to place my representation with them and their representation with me. This weakness creates pain. Now I add in order to help the one who experiences this to better understand what they experience and why it is so hard. At the time of fear of abandonment we experience loss now. Not “I am afraid of losing,” but “I have lost.”

From here, we can understand, at least a little, behaviors of someone who feels they have been abandoned. They try to hold on, because in their experience the loss is about to occur. There is no inner debate. There is no possibility to question. It is happening. Loss. Loss. Loss. Actual loss. This is a movement of traumatic repetition in which real losses from the past reawaken, losses that did not go through processing, mourning, healing, and integration. The wound remains open. Just as every wound in the body signals itself with pain and bleeding so that it will receive care, so too here. The pain is the signal, “Care for me.”

When you experience fear of abandonment, and it intensifies when the important person distances, and sometimes even earlier if it is known that they will distance in a few days, the experience of loss has already opened. That is it. It is already happening. You have already lost. It is already lost. It cannot be fixed. This is the experience, even if it does not match reality. The present relationship only reactivated the mechanism. In that moment, you are in loss.

To connect, let us remember that each one of us has losses they have experienced. The sharp and inconceivable pain of loss, the inner hollow, the experience of death, the experience of helplessness, “this is it, it is lost, it disappeared, it dissolved, it faded, it is no longer.” This is a hard sequence of experiences. We will recall a significant separation, the death of a dear person, being ejected from a social circle we wanted to be part of, not being accepted to a desired place when others were accepted. We will also remember the loss of status, livelihood, opportunities, property. Real loss, and we will remember how hard it was to adapt, to accept, to digest. How surprising it is, disappointing, unsettling, wounding to self confidence and to trust in life. As in the body, when a part of the skin is injured or cut, there is loss of tissue, there is pain, until scar tissue grows and partial healing is formed that carries a memory.

Fear of abandonment, in the end, is the sense of a meaningful and deep wound that has just opened. Sometimes I am not connected at all to the original story. I do not know from where it comes. It is too far, too repressed, not processed, not ventilated. Then it jumps. It jumps with tremendous speed, takes over the consciousness, and grants the experience of pain tied to loss, a loss that feels as if it is happening right now. Right now. At times it returns again and again with the same person, almost “once a week.” Again the experience of loss, again helplessness. This is very hard. Whoever remembers the acute period after a significant loss will remember how hard, complex, and painful it was. Now, let us imagine that a similar experience reawakens with the rise of fear of abandonment.

To dismantle fear of abandonment we must know it better. To restore that inner structure that allows me to let a person distance without experiencing that I have lost them, we must first recognize the experience of loss that arises from the deficiency. If I do not have the connecting thread, if I do not have these mutual representations, then the moment a beloved person goes out the door I experience real loss. This is an emotional reality. It is hard for one who does not feel this to understand it in that moment. They too carry the potential, yet in that context and at that time it is not activated in them. Perhaps they will begin to understand me when they grasp that what I am experiencing in this moment is actual loss. This is my problem, and the responsibility to address it is mine.

The next time fear of abandonment appears we will suggest to ourselves a movement inward. We will remind ourselves. What is happening now is not necessarily that this man or woman is “leaving forever.” They are a figure present in the environment who activates us. What is happening now is that we are subject to pain and to the experience of loss.

From here the question will be asked between me and myself. How do we help ourselves in this place? This is no longer connected to the other person. They can embrace, they can love, and we will not ask to limit them, yet we will also not leave ourselves so shaken. How will we do this? We will continue to examine this in the next chapter.

Self Reflection Questions (recommended to answer in writing):

Do you resonate with the idea that within fear of abandonment, there exists a present experience of loss?
What can be done, in your view, to cope better with such an experience when it awakens?
Do you think there are losses in your past that you have not yet addressed fully?
Can you now embrace those losses within you and give them a loving and supportive place?
Is it possible, in your view, that fear of abandonment actually comes to help us care better for our losses?

Chapter 6: The Healing Mourning

Chapter 6 closes the second part of the journey. As I already said at the beginning of this part, this is one of the central and most significant parts in the whole process. It is impossible to truly move forward with fear of abandonment, it is impossible to make real change, without undergoing a deep change in the way we understand what is said here. Fear of abandonment is an experience of pain, and an experience of loss. The fear itself is only a secondary result of the pain. The fear arises from the pain. The fear is part of this deep blend of pain and loss that occurs every time fear of abandonment awakens within us.

There is something here that is very confusing, and because of this confusion we struggle to dismantle the phenomenon. We see the anxiety, the fear, the storm, but we do not identify what is truly happening beneath the surface. Therefore I want to propose here a new way of looking, a way that grants the person who suffers from fear of abandonment a genuine opportunity not to remain trapped in that same circle that repeats itself again and again, not to linger in the same familiar dramas directed by the old wound, but to move to a different place. To a place where there is potential for healing, potential for change, potential for a new inner management of fear of abandonment, a place where it is possible to look at it from the side, to understand it, to wrap it, to speak with it, to soften it. In this place a new freedom can be formed, an inner freedom for the person, a freedom that allows them, precisely from within their meaningful relationships, to rebuild that deep “connecting thread” that ties their soul to the souls of those close to them.

This thread, as we already spoke about in previous chapters, is an energetic thread. It is formed in every genuine human relationship. It allows me to feel that a part of me is with the other, and a part of the other is with me. This thread exists in all of us, yet at times it is blocked, disrupted, cut, or extinguished. This can happen due to early experiences, due to childhood trauma, due to old losses that were not addressed. We do not always know when this happened or why, but it can be rehabilitated. The flow of energy in the thread can be restored. The experience of togetherness can be restored even when we are alone. The capacity to feel connected can be restored even at a distance.

However, everything begins from one basic understanding. Fear of abandonment is an experience of pain and loss in the present. Not the fear that someone will go and not return, but a feeling of pain that says they already went and will not return, even when reality says otherwise. This is not a feeling of worry about the future but an experience of death in the present, an experience of loss that is occurring now. This is a moment in which the soul cries out, an inner cry over the loss of an important source of life, of connection, of love, of affection, of touch, of content, of meaning.

From here a new approach is born, an approach that begins to transform fear of abandonment from illness to a sign of healing, from phenomenon to message. For this purpose I propose the principle of this chapter. One must approach fear of abandonment as one approaches a process of mourning.

Fear of abandonment is in fact an experience of death. Emotional death. The loss of a vital element. The loss of a sense of continuity, of security, of relationship. Whoever experiences this experiences a real tragedy. From the outside it may seem dependent, childish, exaggerated, tiring. Indeed, it is not easy to be next to a person who projects their experience of loss onto others. It is heavy, it is exhausting, it demands a space that is not always available. Indeed, the other side is not supposed to carry all of it, because this is first and foremost an inner experience, an experience for which the responsibility lies with the one who experiences it. Yet if the relationship is important, if there is love, if there is commitment, it is worth deepening the understanding. This knowing can help both sides to cope differently.

Mourning is not an easy process, but it is also a healing process. It is the only correct and natural response to the experience of real loss. When a person experiences loss, the healthy way is to pass through a process of mourning. Here is the paradox. In most cases in which fear of abandonment is awakened, no real loss has occurred in reality, but the subjective experience is so intense that the psyche responds as if the loss is happening now.

This loss occurred once, in another place, at another time. It remained trapped within us as an unprocessed memory, as a post traumatic pattern that is activated again and again within different situations. In each person it awakens in different places, in couplehood, in friendship, in relations with children, at work, in ties with parents. This is an old inner tragedy that reawakens, which the person did not manage to digest in real time, because they did not have the tools to contain it then. Now, in the present, it awakens in the form of fear of abandonment.

What does this experience ask for? It asks to be listened to. It asks to be seen. It asks for a place. It asks that one will not be angry with it, will not blur it, will not run away from it. Because fear of abandonment is, in the end, an experience of loss in the present, and the only way to cope with loss is through mourning.

The correct inner response to fear of abandonment is to agree to be in the mourning that rises from within it. The mourning is mine. It is not the partner’s, not the friend’s, not the child’s, not the parent’s. It is mine. I have my loss, and I need a true emotional response to this experience.

As long as I fight the experience, as long as I am angry with myself, judge myself, or throw all the energy onto the person opposite me, I only distance myself from healing. Here is the place to say clearly. Distancing is a natural matter in a relationship. It is good that people distance. It is part of the breathing of every relationship. A healthy relationship always exists through alternating movements of approaching and distancing. Distance is not the enemy of love, it nourishes it. It allows space, growth, desire, renewal.

Yet in a person whose inner loss mechanism is injured, this distance activates pain. Something happens there inside. If we do not allow ourselves the possibility to be with this sorrow, if we do not allow ourselves to pass through the process of healing, we will remain imprisoned in a circle that repeats itself. The same experience, the same drama, the same projection, again and again and again. At times they will contain us, at times not. The response I propose here is not easy, but it heals. Its purpose is healing. If it is allowed to be, if it is not repressed, if one is not ashamed of it, it begins to release us. It opens the circle again.

Therefore, when I experience fear of abandonment, I want to say to myself a simple sentence. I am now in a hard experience of loss. I do not argue with it. I do not diminish it. I do not belittle it. I know that I am experiencing through a certain person, through a certain event, my loss. I know that this is fear of abandonment, and I know that within it there is one invitation, to mourn.

Fear of abandonment comes to awaken within me processes of mourning that never underwent processing. It may be that I will never know exactly what it is about. Perhaps I will not manage to reach the primary experience where it all began. However I know one thing. It invites me now to mourn. Not to fight, not to project, not to cling, to mourn. To mourn means to cry. It means to be with the pain. It means to agree to its presence. Not to say to myself that it is not all right that I have fear of abandonment, but on the contrary, that it is all right, it teaches that there is mourning for me to pass through.

The more I agree to this, the more I translate the experience of loss into an inner process of mourning, I begin to relate to fear of abandonment not as an enemy but as an opportunity. As an opportunity to know myself. As an opportunity to heal sediments of the past that never received the chance to be healed. How much it can contribute to us, that fear of abandonment, when we stop fighting it and begin to dismantle it from within. When we understand that our inner model has been shaken, and that we need mourning in order to rebuild it. Because mourning is the only way by which pain becomes insight, and insight becomes healing.

This mourning, like every genuine emotional process, has its own pace. At times it will last a day and a half, at times three days, at times only a few hours. As long as we grant it space, there is movement there. Mourning is not weakness. It is a deep breath of the soul. It is the healthy way of the psyche to heal itself. If it is ignored, it returns again and again. If it is allowed to be, it begins to release. It is what will allow us to begin, at last, to truly dismantle fear of abandonment.

Self Reflection Questions (recommended to answer in writing):

What are the first five associations that come to your mind with the expression “process of mourning”?
When you meet a person who is in mourning, what are the first feelings that arise in you?
If your fear of abandonment is in fact a kind of mourning, what can you do with it, differently than before?
Does this connection, between a state of mourning and fear of abandonment, now awaken new ideas in you for the road ahead?
Can you think now of ways to comfort yourself in such moments, as one comforts someone who is experiencing current and real mourning?

Chapter 7: Rehabilitating the Connecting Thread Between Me and My Surroundings

Chapter 7 opens the third part of the process. Like all the parts, here too there are three chapters, and the purpose is to take a central topic and open it in three channels that allow entry inward, deeper acquaintance, and the granting of more and more means to cope better with the task we chose for ourselves here, to dismantle fear of abandonment. Part Three deals with an interpersonal quality that has both emotional elements and spiritual elements. This is of the kind of things that cannot be proven to the end in a logical way, yet the more one goes inward one can sense and experience how meaningful this is. Part Three is called rehabilitating the connecting thread between me and my surroundings, and there, in fact, the story truly begins, in the place where my capacity and my skill to cultivate energetic, spiritual, and emotional ties with the environment has been harmed.

My view, and there are certain hints to this from quantum physics, is that everything is connected to everything in the end. We are connected to everything around us, certainly connected energetically to the animal world, and even more to the human world. One can imagine that human beings have connecting threads, threads of gold, within which energy flows. It is impossible to see them, just as it is impossible to see the meridians of Chinese medicine, and yet anyone who has worked with them knows that they operate. There are energetic threads that connect us to every person, and they are especially significant with the people who are important to us. These energetic threads are very connected to fear of abandonment. That is where it is found, that is where the defect is, that is where the blockage is, and that is where the original drama occurs. In the place where the connecting thread between me and another person suffers from a disturbance of flow, the healthy thing that is supposed to be formed between two who want to be in relationship cannot be formed, that a part of me will be within them and a part of them will be within me, just like the yin yang that I described earlier.

This model is important because it contains, in my view, both the secrets of the healing of fear of abandonment and the way to dismantle it, to understand it, and to heal from it. First of all, let us recognize the energetic link between us and all that exists. When we experience fear of abandonment we are in great pain, in the pain of isolation, in the pain of lack of belonging. This person went, and as if is not here. We experience a significant loss in the present, as was explained in Part Two. In those moments we will experience a disconnection, a sharp cut, as if the channel was cut, the person is present and is not present, my source of friendship, of love or of support is not present. This is the experience. Even if they call, and even if they only distanced a little, it may be that we will still not be able to exit the experience that they are not present. This experience does not reflect what is truly happening. The person is present, the person wants us, the person is interested in us, the person needs to go to places as part of the pattern of their life, and we too need there to be distances, because if there is no approaching and distancing there is no relationship.

However, there is within us a post traumatic pattern within the energetic threads that we learned to send to all that exists. There are partial blockages there that, with the proper trigger, close completely, like an artery that is blocked. Suddenly the channel is blocked for us, and this is very painful. The person went out, and the thread is experienced as if it was cut. This is the story. It is good to say, this is something that can be rehabilitated. This is an energetic channel, and it is possible to do plumbing for it, it is possible to do a catheterization, it is possible to renew the flow. This is a work, and it cannot take place without passing through the pain, without passing through the experience of loss, and without allowing myself to enter a kind of mourning, even if it lasts a day or two, following the experience of loss. There is no other way. When I allow myself the sadness it will receive legitimacy, I will take responsibility for it, I will not project it onto the other person, I will not claim against them that they are not all right because they distanced, I will not attach to them the label of the abandoning one. I will be occupied with my mourning, and even if the person who stands before me awakened it, any person who would stand in that same position would awaken it. Only when I experience the pain, agree to it, and recognize it, will I be able to begin to do the plumbing in this channel.

To heal pain I must pass through the pain. Like a plumber who cannot open blockages without meeting the unclean matter that accumulates in the pipes, so here. The work is not sterile. It requires contact with what is unpleasant to meet. One can receive help through therapy, coaching, accompaniment, yet in the end the person is the central spiritual plumber of themselves. They must understand that even with annoying neighbors there is a connecting thread. There is an energetic thread that ties them to those neighbors. If they want to do a work of awareness and development, they will ensure within themselves that in a positive way a part of them will move toward the neighbors and a part of the neighbors will move toward them, that they will be more connected and less in separation, and therefore less inclined to conflicts. This is the true secret for us to live in peace. Like a representation or an embassy, so that you and I will be more in peace than in war, it is important that you feel my part within you and that I feel your part within me, and that both representations remain active, alive, speaking with one another.

This is the thing we want to rehabilitate, and this is the thing we can rehabilitate. First, because the moment we understand the mechanism we can develop skill in it. Second, because this is a channel that truly asks that we relate to it, asks that we open it. It can be opened, it has the potential to open. What comes to teach us about this blocked channel? Fear of abandonment. Fear of abandonment is a signal that there is a blocked channel. The blocked channel creates the experience of pain and loss, creates an exaggerated illusion of separation, creates helplessness in the capacity to keep those close to me close, one big illusion. Precisely when this channel flows and there is less fear of abandonment, relationships improve, they rest on the healthy energetic component of yin and yang, a part of me within you, a part of you within me. If you go for a few days, a part of me goes with you, we are not truly separating to that extent, and a part of you continues with me and accompanies me here in what I do.

This is our central task in this part. We are collecting tools, we are recognizing pain, we are recognizing loss, we are allowing ourselves to be in mourning. Later we will meet more and more tools, all dedicated to the same goal, the rehabilitation of the energetic threads that we have with other people. Every person has such a thread, yet there are people with whom the thread is especially significant and therefore we will devote to them greater attention. This is a spiritual emotional worldview, the place where spirit and emotion meet, an invitation to exit the constricting experience as if I am only my body, and that the other there is something separate, and to open to the possibility that everything is connected to everything, and especially person to person. The secret for human beings to live better with one another and with themselves is attention to the connecting threads, the adoption of tools that do delicate plumbing for these channels, the opening of the blockage, and at least from our side to invite a state of peace and love that is based on mutual representations, a part of me within you, a part of you within me, and so we can come close and distance with the knowing that we continue to be connected. This is how fear of abandonment is dismantled.

Self Reflection Questions (recommended to answer in writing):

What is your view of this idea of an “energetic connecting thread between people”?
What feelings arise in you when you imagine that thread between you and the people close to you?
Can you imagine what happens to a person in whom this thread becomes almost inactive?
Imagine for a moment that this thread increases its flow between you and the world. How does it feel?
What changes will occur in your life, in your view, when you succeed in rehabilitating this thread in a significant way?

Chapter 8: Releasing the Illusions

Chapter Eight is the second chapter in Part Three. Part Three deals with rehabilitating the connecting thread between me and my surroundings, that subtle thread we feel less when fear of abandonment is activated. In moments of anxiety we are pulled into an emotional whirlpool, an experience that does not accurately reflect reality, yet the whirlpool is so intense, so persuasive, so activating, that it appears to be absolute truth. Our aim here is to learn to recognize the whirlpool as a whirlpool, to notice that it is movable, that we can work with it, that we can even derive paths and tools for growth from it, thanks to the pain we learn to identify behind it. Ultimately this is a process of relearning, a process that slowly removes the veil of illusion. The illusion is what prevents us from sensing what gives a person a sense of security in relationships, what reduces the threat in the possibility of abandonment.

It is important to recall that this happens in life. Partings happen, distances happen, they appear in different forms and frequencies. We can hardly hold anything by force. Yet the fact that things do indeed happen does not justify the takeover of anxious intensity, especially when in actuality no abandonment is about to occur. We are here so that we do not give the anxiety too large a place, and at the same time so that we do give it a place as a gate to learning, to healing, and to listening to inner messages that wish to come out through the symptom. Chapter Eight deals with the illusion of disconnection, the illusion of separateness, the illusion of loss, and the illusion of abandonment. Illusion.

Before addressing these illusions directly, I want to look at the place of freedom within fear of abandonment. In the first years of life, until about the age of two, we are meant to undergo independence training with our parents. Training in approaching and distancing. Small tests of reality: I step away, I check whether the parent exists also when I am not attached, I return to the embrace, and I gradually internalize the experience of a present parent even in their absence. When these trainings occur properly, an inner experience develops that allows distancing, that allows exploring, that allows being different, while knowing that in the end one returns. When the parent is internalized, I do not truly disconnect from them; I distance, yet I carry them with me.

When this process does not complete itself properly, the experience of freedom is shaken. The freedom to distance, the freedom to return, the freedom to be independent, the freedom to explore the environment, the freedom to hold a different opinion. As long as the knowledge has not been internalized that “it is permitted to distance and it is all right,” significant parts of the perception of freedom are harmed. Here the link is important, because fear of abandonment directly competes with freedom. When anxiety appears, a need to hold on awakens. To hold people, to hold situations, to hold plans, to hold movement. That nothing will disperse, nothing will be lost, nothing will distance. Intense fear of abandonment almost always collides with someone’s freedom. Not only with the freedom of the person we fear for, the one whose movement we wish to limit out of fear that they will vanish, but also and especially with our own freedom. If I do not allow myself acts of distancing, of experimenting with increasing space, if I am not able to enjoy movement and realize that “it is all right” and that one can reconnect, then the anxiety is not only a mechanism that tries to limit the other, it also limits me.

A central part of coping with fear of abandonment, and of healing the connecting thread, is returning freedom to operation within a relationship. The golden thread we described is meant to provide freedom of action, freedom of growth, within connection. In a healthy relationship, togetherness and separateness exist at one and the same time. There is no zero-sum game here, but a reciprocal system in which togetherness feeds separateness, and approaching feeds distancing, and vice versa. This is the healthy dynamic. Many times we do not manage to maintain it because early wounds awaken as fear of abandonment and disrupt the flow. Yet the picture of health is clear: a state in which there is an experience of freedom to approach and freedom to distance, when the connecting thread functions well, when the energy flows, when my representation within my partner or child is alive and breathing, and their representation within me is alive and breathing. One can approach, one can distance, nothing “explodes.”

Now to the core of the chapter. Chapter Eight speaks of illusion. The illusion of disconnection, the illusion of separateness, the illusion of loss, and the illusion of abandonment. They are all illusions. This does not mean that there will not be losses in reality, it does not mean that at times we will not be abandoned, it does not mean that everything dear to us will remain forever in our possession. The intention is toward the anxiety itself, which is often exaggerated, which amplifies fears, disrupts judgment, and seeks to cut our freedom and the freedom of the other. This anxiety rests on a well-cultivated illusion. The illusion that we are disconnected. The illusion that we are separate. The illusion that a loss has now occurred only because someone distanced. The illusion of abandonment. The common denominator of these illusions is an inner lack. A lack of what allows us to feel the connecting thread, a lack of what nourishes the channel.

Later, in Part Four, we will deepen into the component of lack, but even now we open a small window toward the answer. For the connecting thread, the thread by which we will heal fear of abandonment, to function properly, we must identify the illusions that divert us from the connecting experience, and restore to the channel what it lacks. How do we face an illusion? Telling ourselves “it is only an illusion” will not work. Emotional intelligence does not calm down from a logical proclamation. Try telling yourself in the midst of anxiety “this is an illusion of disconnection, everything is fine,” and you will discover that the pain continues to resonate. The anxiety continues to pound. Your body will demand external action, sometimes extreme action, to calm the storm, yet reality will not comply. What is missing in that moment, and what was missing back then in the place where we were so wounded? What is always missing? Love.

It may sound like a cliché, yet it is the center of repair. In the place where we are pulled into illusion and lose contact with the connecting thread, the thread that is meant to give inner security, we lose the natural flow of love. When the flow exists, one can say wholeheartedly to the person we are connected to: go gladly, I am with you there, go gladly, a part of you remains with me, a part of me goes with you, I will be happy to hear how it was for you, I will be happy to feel you even from afar. To arrive there, we must deliberately flow love into the place where it is lacking. We must renew the flow of energy in the thread, and begin with love.

How to do this, how much, and at what frequency, we will detail later. For now it is important to anchor the principle. The grand and persuasive illusion of disconnection, of separateness, of loss, and of abandonment can be addressed only with the tools of love. Self-love, love toward the other, love for the very existence of the connecting thread. Experience of disconnection, its answer is love. Experience of separateness, its answer is love. Experience of loss, its answer is love. Experience of abandonment, its answer is love.

We can already begin to imagine. Choose a person we fear losing, and look directly at the illusion of disconnection and separateness. Imagine the thread, the imagined conduit. Flow love through it. See in imagination how the flow reaches the other side, returns to us, goes out again and returns again, moving and returning, moving and returning. The more we can imagine and experience the flow of love, the more, in a wondrous way, the illusion will weaken. It will return; we will need to practice again and again, yet this is the direction. We have an illusion, a strong illusion, and we are going to work with it. The more consistently we do this, we will dismantle, brick by brick, the wall of fear of abandonment.

Self-Reflection Questions (recommended to answer in writing):

What happens, in your view, when the illusion of disconnection from a person becomes too strong?
What happens, in your view, when the illusion of separateness from people who are important to us becomes too strong?
What happens, in your view, when the illusion of loss during distancing becomes too strong?
What happens, in your view, when the illusion of abandonment turns into an exaggerated, overblown event?
How, in your view, can these illusions be softened and reduced, and replaced with newer and more pleasant experiences?

Chapter 9: Choosing to Rehabilitate the Connecting Thread and Making It a Life Mission

Chapter 9 closes Part Three, the rehabilitation of the connecting thread between me and my surroundings, and it also marks the halfway point of the entire journey. This is a stage that is highly recommended to pass through by repeated viewing or reading, because what passes here is not only knowledge but also energy that is imprinted in awareness through repetition, through an ever-deepening familiarity with the words, the story, the theory, and the worldview presented here. There is no need to strain to understand by logic, because it is not the logical part that does the main work here but the emotional, experiential part that gathers pieces of information and fuses them inside as one is exposed again and again to the same content. Repetition also melts natural resistances to new information, calms the parts of the ego that tend to defend against change, and even allows the ego itself to choose and say that perhaps there is something here that benefits me.

The central message of this chapter is a conscious choice to make the rehabilitation of the connecting thread a life mission. This is not a task only for those who suffer from a pronounced fear of abandonment, but a broad human need. The more present and felt the connecting threads between us and our environment become, the more violence, tension, and alienation between human beings will decrease. When felt connection guides us, our choices tend to benefit the whole rather than harm it. And yet we are still immersed in illusions of separateness, of disconnection, of loss, and of abandonment. Precisely here the opportunity is revealed to continue developing what we began in this part, and to add to the view of the connecting thread another layer of awareness to freedom.

As emphasized in the previous chapters, there is a built-in tension between fear of abandonment and freedom. One who experiences fear of abandonment often struggles to grant freedom to oneself. Many times it seems as if the other is the one insisting on their liberty, while deep inside it hurts that I myself struggle to move in freedom. From here a common phenomenon is born, the projection of the pain onto the figure present in the relationship, as if they are solely responsible for what I experience. A consequence of this process is the near automatic awakening of anger and, at times, the near automatic awakening of insult. Subjectively, the person who experiences fear of abandonment is not only afraid of a future loss, but experiences loss in the present, pain that is happening now. When the pain is so alive, it is very easy to dress it on the other, as if they are abandoning me at this very moment, and as if they are the source of my current suffering. Thus anger grows toward that person, who on another day could have been a different person.

There is psychological logic to the defense of anger. It tries to create communication, to protest, to prevent what appears to me as an emotional fact. Nevertheless, if we wish to rehabilitate the connecting thread, anger interferes. It distorts communication, invites conflict, increases anxiety, and closes the door to listening to the pain for which the anger arose in the first place. When pain is converted too quickly into anger, I may slide into a victim position, impose on the other the role of offender, and enter a repeating “movie” in which all participants are shaken. In this way a real difficulty, which was already decided to be addressed, becomes an interpersonal drama that closes the gate of healing.

The corrective choice is to recognize the anger that rises automatically and to delay our response a little. In that moment, instead of acting from anger, I turn inward to the work we learned here, to the cultivation of the connecting thread. I begin to imagine it, to flow energy through it, to allow reciprocal movement in it, a part of me with the other, and a part of the other with me. Precisely when pain, anger, and the experience of loss increase, an opportunity opens here to practice the new foundation. Not to turn the objective difficulty into a war, but to process it gently, to transform it into growth.

Rehabilitating the connecting thread is a personal, social, and cultural mission. To feel the thread between me and those I love, and to feel it also between me and others, and even between me and one who is experienced as an enemy. The thread exists; at times I simply forget it, stop tending it, or surrender to habits that weaken it. As long as I do not rehabilitate the connecting thread, I do not have true freedom; I limit myself and live inside a movie that repeats itself with changing actors. The good news is that one can step out of this movie, or at least shorten it and reduce its consequences. One can turn it into inner work of depth that teaches me about myself, strengthens me, and allows me to choose differently next time.

On the way to rehabilitating the thread, we will learn to create within us a holding, wrapping, and comforting space, a space to which we turn when anxiety awakens. In this space we will communicate our experience to others in a responsible and constructive way, while carefully avoiding bringing anger as a demand, as a condition, or as an expectation that the other will not be able to fulfill. We will remember that the pain that is activated is the material we want to process, and that fear of abandonment is requesting to remind us of an old wound, an emotional post-trauma, an inner child who is still bleeding. With that child we will act with patience, with compassion, and also with a softening hint of humor.

The thread can be tended, strengthened, the flow space widened, the rate of movement in it increased. We can encourage within us the knowing that a part of me is within the other, and a part of the other is within me, that they dwell there and breathe there, and it is possible to communicate with these representations even when distance grows. In this way fear of abandonment diminishes, and in this way the links that did not sufficiently develop in early age are rehabilitated, the capacity to distance while still feeling belonging, and the capacity to allow the other to distance while still feeling the togetherness.

From here the clear invitation is to see the rehabilitation of the connecting thread as a life mission. Not a one-time action, but a continuous journey in which we choose to return and practice, to return and listen, to return and flow love, to return and widen freedom. With patience, with self-compassion, and with a small smile along the way, this is how one can dismantle, in practice, fear of abandonment.

Self-Reflection Questions (recommended to answer in writing):

How do you relate to the word “rehabilitation”?
Does it seem right to you to invest mental resources in improving the functioning of your interpersonal energetic thread?
How will the people close to you respond when a positive change occurs in you on this topic?
Can you rest a little and dwell with yourself while imagining this thread expanding, strengthening, and flowing more efficiently than before?
What new things will you be able to do or sustain after such a change is realized in your life?

Chapter 10: Self Love

Chapter 10 opens Part Four, the second half of the process, and this part adds tools.
Before we add, let us briefly recall some of the tools already laid down:

To check whether, when I fear that someone will abandon me, I am in fact expressing the limitation I place on my own freedom, whether I fear being the one who distances myself and project that fear onto the other.
To remember to try to neutralize the anger component, even when it seems justified, because anger disrupts the capacity to balance and contain myself during the activation of fear of abandonment, and at times it merely masks sharp pain.
To remember the visualization of the connecting thread, the recognition that it always exists between human beings, and all the more so between those close to us.
Fear of abandonment is a sign of a disturbance in the flow of the energy of life, of love, of giving and receiving.
When there is a disturbance, there is lack, and our task is to rehabilitate flow, to rehabilitate the experience of mutual “representations,” my part that resides with the person dear to me, and their part that resides with me.

All of these form a basis for a long term coping pattern.
Now we will add three tools that I regard as pillars: increasing self love, reducing self criticism, and increasing creativity around the topic.
This chapter will focus on self love, and in Chapters 11 and 12 we will deepen into self criticism and creativity. Our inner title here is to love myself while I am anxious, and to grant myself the right to be me. Many times this part is omitted, and it is precisely the central one. It is the way I think of myself, see myself, feel myself during anxiety in general, and during fear of abandonment in particular.
If we clean the “glass” a bit, we will discover that at the center of the experience stands the drama of the relationship between me and me.
The plot may revolve around fear of losing a person, a group, a status, or a sense of belonging, yet the main suffering sits in my relationship with myself. That is where the pain is, that is where the sense of loss appears.

I invite you to recall a real and salient event in which you experienced fear of abandonment and to “be there” for a moment as if it is happening right now at full intensity, and to track from within the following questions:
How do I feel with myself right now?
How much do I value myself, how much do I respect, hold, have mercy on, understand, and support myself within this experience?

We will not be surprised to discover that the main difficulty is produced by a rapid deterioration in the way I relate to myself. Creativity narrows, flexibility contracts, rigidity grows.
It is easy to slide into self anger, self pity, a sense of failure and disappointment.
Behind the experience of loss in the present there often hides an attack on the self, a state in which not only did I experience abandonment from the outside, I am abandoning myself. I do not always notice this, because I project the pain onto an external figure.
Here self love enters as a vital resource, the necessity to flood the inner system with loving messages precisely in the hard moments, precisely when post trauma flares and the body is aroused.

We need there a deliberate flooding of love from within, a flooding of fondness and acceptance, and I state in advance, the effect is not always immediate.
At first it will sound artificial, at times dry, at times almost perfunctory. This is part of the way, this is how it works. When the situation is not acute and very stormy, when the breath is more regular, we can prepare, to increase self love in retrospect and for the future. We can comfort ourselves in advance for the next time, decide that we take an active role as inner comforters.
To say to ourselves, “Yes, this is unpleasant, it hurts, it frustrates and unsettles, and still you are allowed, you are allowed to feel this way.”

There is a deep reason that the connecting thread has not yet been flowing as we would wish. There is no point in adding anger, disappointment, and self judgment. These will only close more gates. At times there is also inner mourning that we must agree to go through, the pain is authentic, the anxiety is real. If in fact a real abandonment occurs, even then the anxiety will not change reality. What we can do is return to ourselves, hold ourselves, create a safer space, reduce damage, delay impulsive reactions, and remember how much good is stored within us even in the hour of storm.

Here all the tools join: the memory of the freedom I did not take enough for myself, the consent to put anger aside so it will not disrupt the process, the gentle supervision of the connecting thread that I imagine and flow energy through it, and the addition of self love as a softening and stabilizing remedy.

When I am anxious, I need me enlisted for my benefit, not as an approval for the drama, rather as an inner support that helps me not to exacerbate the story, to step a little back from the event, to remind me that I am all right, to slow down, to breathe, and to reduce the chance that I will act in a way that harms the relationship or me. In the end, again and again we return to the same ancient truth. The best remedy for most human pains is love. And what is missing for us during an attack of fear of abandonment? Love.
Not necessarily from that person, first and foremost from ourselves.

Therefore we will focus on self love.
We will smile at the mirror even when we do not have strength, we will practice loving statements inward even if they sound distant, we will soften the tone in which we speak to ourselves, we will choose words that comfort and do not lash. We will prepare ourselves for the moments when this challenging experience returns, so that in the hour of truth a loving inner language will be available to us, small reminders that the heart knows, and a benevolent presence based on a conscious choice. In this way we will recruit the skill, we will increase expressions of self love, we will agree to begin artificially and continue consistently, until the inner truth begins to change. This is not a quick magic, yet it is a path that slowly dismantles fear of abandonment, and in its place builds a new relationship toward me, a relationship in which I do not abandon myself, even when I am anxious.

Self Reflection Questions (recommended to answer in writing):

In your view, can you improve the ability to love yourself in the midst of anxiety?
What happens in your relationship with yourself when you meet fear of abandonment within you?
What do you think will happen, with time and practice, when you increase love toward yourself in the hour of anxiety?
Can you add and love yourself at such moments even if it seems to you not suitable at all?
Do you think that an increasing presence of love within you can truly drive significant change?

Chapter 11: Excessive Self Criticism

This is the second chapter in Part Four, and this part comes to grant us additional mental tools that are usually not sufficiently developed, yet they are essential for coping with fear of abandonment and also with parallel difficulties.

So far we have mentioned paying attention to our freedom, the extent to which we tend to limit our liberty and then project onto the other the need that they also limit their liberty, and thus to turn it into fear of abandonment.
We spoke of paying attention to anger, how much anger can interfere with us in meeting the original pain that feeds fear of abandonment, and how much anger gives rise to situations in which not only do we not cope with the anxiety, we also add unnecessary interpersonal problems.
We emphasized of course the connecting thread, the energetic thread that always exists between us and everything and everyone, and whose activity is especially significant with those close to us. In the experience of fear of abandonment it seems as if this thread is completely clogged, therefore a present loss is experienced, unbearable pain, while in fact it is a reenactment of very early experiences, the experiences of infancy in which abandonments were indeed felt, at least as an infant body experiences them.
When a trigger in the present reminds us of this, we are thrown there, into the familiar storm, and at times a general experience of disconnection from everything joins it, harm to the sense of belonging, as if the whole world rejects us. This is not what is really happening, yet this is how the infantile awareness “broadcasts” in those moments, and this is how the pain is felt.
It is important to acknowledge this and to call things by their names, because the very identification helps us observe, doubt, see the illusion, draw close to the pain, and begin healing and repair.

Within this experience of lack of belonging, within the great pain and loss of fear of abandonment, it is important to notice another component that intensifies the suffering, excessive self criticism. This is the focus of the chapter. We must invest resources in reducing self criticism at the time fear of abandonment returns, precisely then. Many times we do not notice this because we are already habituated to it. Something unpleasant happens and at the same time strong self criticism erupts, and guilt joins, which we will deepen into in Chapter 12, and a general sense of lack of worth forms, a sense of not being all right.

We will not always see this clearly because the pain covers it, yet the self criticism is there, and it is a significant part of the suffering.
It preserves problems, competes with self love, contracts creativity and flexibility, tilts judgment, and feeds the catastrophic illusion as if a disaster is taking place from which there is no way out.
Excessive self criticism has countless verbal versions: “I fail, I am not capable, I always ruin, I am embarrassing, I am dependent, I am the problem.” It tends to intensify especially during anxiety, and especially during fear of abandonment.

In infantile awareness, if I am abandoned, it means that something is defective in me. The infant, being egocentric by nature, experiences that everything happens because of him or for him, and when his needs are not met, he concludes that something is wrong with him. Thus an early pattern of self criticism is formed, of lack of self trust, of harm to self image and to the capacity to rely on the world and on oneself. Later in life this spreads to many domains.
The important good news is that one can cope with this pattern when one becomes aware of it, when one manages for a sliver of a moment to stop within the storm and notice that alongside the pain and the story, excessive self criticism is now operating.

Not rarely the criticism takes a third, a half, and at times more of the volume of the experience. It fixes us in place, leaves us captured by a single narrative, “I am not all right,” and prevents renewing, healing emotional flow. It is not easy to see this when we are immersed in outward projection or in anger toward the one who supposedly abandons.

As long as the excessive criticism is too dominant, we will not be able to create within us a soft space in which proportions can enter, in which it is possible to see that perhaps there is no abandonment here, that we can nourish ourselves, that there is a place to pause a reaction, to step back and wait, and to sense that the connecting thread has never ceased to exist. To dismantle fear of abandonment we need a broad inner space, a patient, containing, and supportive working space.

To create such a space we must turn to the self criticism and say to it clearly, “At the moment you are not welcome.” “I have no need for a flood of messages that I am not all right.” “Even if I made mistakes, I am willing to learn and correct, yet self attacks do not help, they destroy from within, they do not even allow clear taking of responsibility, they hide the real story, the infantile post traumatic pain that surfaces quickly.” “As long as I am sunk in ‘I am not all right, and they are not all right,’ I do not see the illusion, I do not identify the possibility to rehabilitate the thread, I do not manage to curb anger, I do not allow myself freedom, I am not able to love myself.” All this is “thanks to” excessive self criticism.

From here comes the practical step, to stop and observe the criticism when it appears, to identify how it produces guilt, how it broadcasts inward texts that are seemingly convincing, and how we can respond:

“Forgive me, we have exaggerated. I take responsibility, I acknowledge the projections I projected, and I bring them back to me, but this will work only if I support myself. It will work only if I build an inner protective envelope against my own attacks, only then will I be able to see the pattern, to identify where pain activates fear of abandonment, and to build mechanisms that help me get free more quickly.”

This is possible, and this is our work here. For this we will need to tell the self criticism that has grown since infancy, “Now you are less needed.” “Thank you for trying to protect, yet at this stage I need other tools, self love, breathing, pausing, imagining the flowing thread between me and the figures that are important to me.”

When we repeat this again and again, alongside all the other tools, together with renewing the flow of energy between me and the one who activated the story in me, and also between me and others, we will be able to reduce excessive self criticism, to place it in its proper place, and to free ourselves for the blessed work of dismantling fear of abandonment.

Self Reflection Questions (recommended to answer in writing):

Are you aware of a significant presence of excessive self criticism during anxiety?
What kinds of things does your excessive self criticism “say” to you at such moments?
Do you notice that there is a tendency to “believe” this criticism too much?
What do you think will happen when you set clear boundaries for this criticism and limit its possibility of expression?
Are you able now, in your view, to accept the existence of your fear of abandonment with understanding and without criticism even if it disturbs you in certain places?

Chapter 12: Emotional Creativity

Well, how are you? Have you begun to see this phenomenon from additional angles, to understand it a little differently, perhaps to identify within you new parts that can help you cope with it?

I believe so, because this very learning changes things. In this way you can make real change. Not to erase fear of abandonment, not to cancel it, but to learn to work with it. To learn to carry it, to understand it, to converse with it, to reduce its intensity and the space it takes up in your awareness, and even,yes, even to grow from it. Because when you work with it correctly, it can shift from illness to teacher, from obstacle to a gateway to growth.

This brings us to Chapter Twelve, the third chapter in Part Four, which deals with practical tools. Until now we have mentioned several tools that already appeared in previous chapters. For example, the possibility of seeing fear of abandonment not only as fear of losing someone else, but also as fear of losing my own freedom. The same anxiety that I project outward may have actually been born from my fear to move, to distance, to be myself, and to bear responsibility for my freedom.

We also spoke about the importance of early identification of anger. About the fact that anger, even when it seems justified, greatly interferes with our capacity to meet the original pain upon which fear of abandonment sits. It produces another complication, another barrier, another drama. Therefore we will want to be careful with anger, not to suppress it, but to identify when it is taking over and preventing us from listening.

We also spoke about the connecting thread, that energetic thread that links us with everything and with every person, and especially with those close to us. We recalled that when we experience fear of abandonment, this thread becomes blocked, clogged, sometimes as if it were cut completely. Then all our energy contracts, empties out, and we experience this as a loss in the present. Therefore we spoke about the visualization: to see in our mind’s eye this thread, to open it, to flow light, energy, love through it, and to allow it to operate again. To see how energy flows from it to me and from me to it, even when the other is far from me, even when they are busy, even when they do not answer me now.

We also recalled in previous chapters additional points, self love, reduction of self criticism, and the capacity to grant ourselves compassion and holding precisely in the hardest moments, when anxiety takes over and the heart contracts. All this now prepares us for this chapter, the chapter of emotional creativity.

But before I enter the depth of the topic of creativity, I want to add an important stratum that is connected to this entire process, guilt. From my point of view, as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist who has studied the human soul for many years, I can say with confidence that there is nothing more emotionally toxic than guilt. There is nothing that acts on awareness like an inner poison: weakening, paralyzing, confusing, burdening, and hurting, like guilt. It is not only painful, it is also unnecessary.

When we experience fear of abandonment, many times, alongside the fear and the pain, there is also guilt. I feel guilty for feeling this way. I feel guilty that perhaps I was not good enough, not strong enough, not smart enough. I feel guilty that perhaps I am exaggerating. And even when I project onto someone else, when I am angry, when I blame them, deep inside there is also a sense of guilt that I am like this, that again I am frightened, that again I behave in a way that will harm the relationship.

This guilt does not help. On the contrary, it makes everything even more complicated. It deepens despair. It distances from us the capacity to calm down, to understand, to hear ourselves. Guilt does not allow healing. It blocks healing. Therefore it is very important to be aware of guilt, to identify it when it rises, and to say to it: thank you, but not now. There are no guilty parties here. There is no courtroom here. There is human pain here, there are people who have been hurt, who carry within them old post traumatic layers that are still operating. That is all.

And it is precisely here that emotional creativity enters. This is the next tool we add to our toolbox, alongside self love, alongside reduction of self criticism, alongside the connecting thread. Emotional creativity means: to play. Yes, exactly, to play with what I feel.

The emotional play is not an escape from pain. It is a way to meet the pain in a new, flexible, alive, less frozen manner. When we are anxious, our entire system struggles to move. It enters constriction. Everything becomes rigid, crowded, airless. Play allows us to breathe again.

So what does it mean “to play”? It means to start speaking with myself, to write to myself, to sing to myself, perhaps even to sing myself encouraging words. It means to go into the shower and conduct a dialogue with myself in the warm water. It means to paint a small picture, even a doodle, that expresses something of the feeling. It means to record myself saying a few sentences, to let sound out, to move the body. It means to pay attention to my usual reaction, let us say I immediately enter drama, or immediately go silent and disappear—and to say to myself: wait, this time I will try something different. This time I will try to stay, or this time I will go out to walk by myself.

It also means to change my physical response. Perhaps I will go for a short run, perhaps I will go to the sea, perhaps I will take a deep breath and stay with the feeling without doing anything. Perhaps I will listen to music, perhaps I will speak with a friend, perhaps I will write a few lines in a journal.

A little humor is also possible. I can say to myself: “Here I am again at my annual abandonment festival,” and smile slightly. Not to laugh at myself, but to bring into the pain a note of aliveness. At times I can also permit myself comforting actions, yes, even a square of chocolate, if I do not suffer from eating problems. Yes, this too is a creative response. If it is different from what I am used to, it breaks a pattern.

Because this is the main point: we want to break the automatic pairing between anxiety and the anxious response. Usually we have a fixed route—stimulus, anxiety, familiar response: anger, drama, distress, withdrawal, cutoff. When we respond again and again in the same way, we reinforce this route itself, we preserve the anxiety.

But if I begin to play, I change the game. I produce surprises. I undermine the automatic mode. I turn the anxiety into a guest I can talk to. “Hey, anxiety, how are you? You came again? All right, let us see what we will do with you this time.”

And if I bring in new movement, my environment also responds to me differently. The people around me see something else. They feel more secure. They enter the drama less. Another space is created, cleaner, in which it is possible to stay in relationship without everything exploding.

Creativity is in essence a movement of life. It returns the flow of life to places where everything was frozen. It brings in color, scent, warmth. And when it enters, guilt also weakens, because I am no longer judging myself so much. I act. I create. I live. I become a creator, not only a reactor.

And when creativity awakens, self love also grows, because I relate to myself as a person who has value, as someone I want to cultivate. And self criticism weakens, because there is new movement that dissolves rigidity.

Thus, slowly, together with self love, with compassion, with reduction of criticism, with keeping the connecting thread, and with acceptance of the fact that there is within me pain I am still learning to tend, I learn to use my emotional creativity as a remedy, as a process.

Therefore, when fear of abandonment rises, try to play. Try to play. Even a little. Ask yourselves: what else can be done with this feeling? How can I breathe into it a bit of creativity, a bit of surprise, a bit of life? How can I widen the space in which I respond?

This is not a simple task, but it is a possible task. And every time we choose to respond differently, even a little, even by one breath, even by silence, even by a small drawing, we dismantle one more brick from the immense structure of fear of abandonment.

In this way, with small, playful, warm, connected steps, we truly begin to dismantle fear of abandonment.

Self Reflection Questions (recommended to answer in writing):

Anxiety has a strong experience of “only one way to see reality.” What do you think about challenging this effect next times?
For example, what do you think would happen if, during fear of abandonment, you pause your thoughts and reactions for a moment and say to yourself something like, “It is possible that I really do not understand what is actually happening here…”?
How do you feel about the possibility of “playing” with your sensations and trying to interpret them a little differently each time when fear of abandonment appears?
How do you feel about the possibility of “playing” with your responses and trying to change them a little each time when fear of abandonment appears?
Do you have ideas for ways to “play” with this unpleasant experience when it appears? What “game” can you play within yourself the next time fear of abandonment appears?

Chapter 13: Your Aloneness Is the Center of Your Existence. And That, No One Can Abandon.

This chapter opens Part Five, and it brings with it an especially deep question: are we, in fact, within the experience of fear of abandonment, the ones who abandon ourselves? Are the dramas we experience with other people, those storms, insults, pains, fears, nothing but inner dramas between different parts within us? The more this foundational assumption becomes clearer and more understood, the more our power to cope grows. Because if the story is mainly an inner story, between us and ourselves, we have much more capacity to influence than we imagine.

Something happens with another person, someone distances, disappears, returns, delays, or chooses to distance in truth. All these possibilities occur in reality, and the other person is the one who awakens in us what we call “fear of abandonment.” That is how it looks on the surface, but if we deepen our gaze, we will discover that in fact this is an inner conversation. As the song says, a person lives within himself, and everything we experience with others, even the hardest and most painful things, are actually reflections of relationships within us. It is not easy to understand, not easy to explain, yet this is the key to deep healing.

Let us use again the model of the connecting thread, which we have already discussed more than once. When we are in a meaningful relationship with someone, an energetic thread is formed that connects us. There is within it a flow of energy, love, attention, giving, and receiving. Through this thread the presence of the other is felt within us, and our presence is felt within them. This is what makes the relationship meaningful and important, a relationship that has mutuality, value, and emotional investment.

When a person distances from us, when there is a change in pace, or when they choose to distance for a while, we experience it as if our representation there, that part within us that we sent to them, is being taken from us. As if an inner organ were cut off. This experience is very painful, and it is meant to hurt, because our inner body signals deficiency. Something that was whole, balanced, is suddenly felt as injured.

And so we experience fear of abandonment. It is not only fear of the other, but a deep pain for an inner part that seems to have been taken from us. This is not under our immediate control, because the feeling is that the other person went with parts of us and left us lacking. This experience, which is very primal and infantile, is what drives fear of abandonment.

But when we understand this, the way of action also becomes clearer. If it is a person who is expected to return, a person who merely distanced temporarily, we can act differently. Instead of feeling that this part of ours there is fading, we will choose to increase our connection to that part. We will choose to cultivate the connection, not necessarily with demand or dependency, but with love and generosity. We will send messages, wish well, bless, show interest. We will remind ourselves that we are connected. We can say in the heart: “My part there is still operating, still existing, still alive.” Precisely at the time of distancing we can strengthen the thread, not out of fear but out of connection. This reduces the experience of abandonment, because we move from a position of victim to a position of active partner in the relationship.

And if it is a situation in which the person indeed parted from us, perhaps permanently, we will need the same understanding but in another manner. Alongside the pain, sorrow, and mourning, we will begin a process of returning our parts home. We will invite into awareness what we sent to come back to us, we will breathe it gradually back in, we will gradually release clinging, and we will keep in the heart the good memories. Not as a forced forgetting, but as a recognition that the extensions that were once sent can return to their source, and that the love that was can become a living, nourishing, not painful memory.

And this leads us to the core of the chapter. As a mature person, your aloneness is the center of your existence. It is the place from which everything flows and to which everything returns. And this is a truth that no one can abandon. No one but you. Because fear of abandonment, when examined in depth, is not fear that the other will disappear, it is fear that we ourselves will disappear, that we will fall apart, that we will lose parts of ourselves.

In other words, fear of abandonment is fear of inner disintegration. It awakens when it seems to us that parts within us, those parts we invested in, nurtured, and sent outward toward the other, were taken from us. Those extensions, representations, embassies of love and connection that were alive and operating suddenly feel disconnected. Not because they were truly cut, but because this is how we experience it. The anxiety itself is not logical, it is a primordial experience, yet it is emotionally real.

And what we lose there, first of all, is the understanding that our aloneness is our center. This aloneness does not depend on anyone. It cannot be abandoned unless we abandon it. When I surrender too much to the deceptive experience of “my parts were taken from me,” I abandon myself. I relinquish my presence, I lose contact with my inner center. Instead of assisting that part which is now in crisis, I abandon it too. I enter drama, stress, depression, despair, anger, paralysis.

To understand how deep this goes, we must remember that everything begins in early childhood. When an infant experiences a sudden absence of the caregiving figure, the existential anxiety that is created is similar to an experience of death. They have no tools to understand that the parent will return. They have no notion that the extension exists even when the physical contact disappears. This experience is stored in awareness, and at times continues to operate even in adulthood, when the mature awareness already understands, but the emotion still operates according to the same logic of an abandoned infant.

This part—the extension that did not develop properly—is what we want to heal now. And it can be healed. The way to healing is in understanding, in learning, and in internalizing that our aloneness is the center of our existence. There lies the stable basis to which we can return again and again, even when relationships change, even when people come and go.

Healing fear of abandonment is not finding a substitute for the one who left, and it is not the ability to keep the other from distancing. That is not the repair. The true healing is the restoration of our connection with ourselves, the improvement of the quality of my aloneness, so that it is capable of sending extensions of love, connection, and care without feeling that it falls apart every time one of them distances. The stronger my aloneness, the more flexible and resilient my extensions.

Therefore the fear of losing a loved person, the fear that “I will lose them,” is actually my story with myself. It is an inner dialogue with my aloneness, with my capacity to remain steady even when the threads loosen. I ask myself: do I abandon myself when I am so frightened? Do I agree too quickly to lose my parts that I invested in the other person? Are all the films, the dramas, the hysterias, and the panic at every delayed response in fact an expression of self abandonment?

Have I forgotten that my aloneness is the center of my existence, and that no one can truly take that from me? It is mine. No one can take from me what is truly mine. A small infant may still experience this differently, because they are dependent, because they do not know how to maintain love from within. But we, as adults, can. We have the tools, we have the knowledge, we have the capacity.

And this is what we are doing here. We return the power to us. Fear of abandonment is not between you and him, not between you and her, but between you and you. It is an inner relationship between your different parts, between the me that feels alone and the me that can contain and support. The more you strengthen your aloneness, cultivate it, know that it is rich, full, present, and valuable, the more you will be able to send freer extensions, to love without fear, to experience relationship without anxiety, and to be a partner in the world without a constant threat of loss.

The more you understand this in depth, the more you will dismantle another layer of fear of abandonment. Because every time you remember that your aloneness is the source of your power, you become less dependent on the reactions and presence of others. You become steady, quiet, secure, and precisely from this steadiness you are able to love more, to be more open, and to create relationships that are richer, freer, and far more pleasant.

This is the stage at which fear of abandonment begins to dissolve, because it loses its power of illusion. When your aloneness is no longer an enemy but a home, fear of abandonment loses its hold.

Self Reflection Questions (recommended to answer in writing):

What are your first five associations with the expression “alone”?
What do you especially love to do when you are alone?
What do you not love that happens or that you feel when you are alone?
How do you feel about the claim that at times we have a tendency to “abandon ourselves”?
What interesting things could you do the next time you are alone that you have not done until now?

Chapter 14: Stop the Anger and Disappointment, Turn Inward, and Befriend Yourself

If we have reached this point, it means we have already come a long way, each at their own pace, in their own way, and in what suits and is right for them. I believe that the accumulation of knowledge, especially when we watch again and again and practice, can provide tools to reduce the intensity of fear of abandonment, to invite renewed reflection, and to learn about ourselves through it. This is the aim of the entire process, and when we are at Chapter 14 out of 18, usually something has already begun to move. If not yet, there is a good chance it will move later, because each and every one of us has a personal story with this painful and common subject, a subject that is often not addressed enough, a subject that wraps shame, pain, misunderstanding, a source of conflicts and tensions, all because we do not succeed in dismantling fear of abandonment. My hope is that for you, this will allow a change in your relationship with the part that took shape in early childhood, the part that did not receive the appropriate space to build the knowing that even when someone close to me moves away, they are still within me. This is the foundation we are building here, and the restoration of the connecting thread within us can reduce the sense of shakiness and fragility when events arise that trigger fear of abandonment.

In Part Five we ask an especially significant question: in the midst of fear of abandonment, are we the ones who abandon ourselves? Is the story that forms in us in relation to a certain person not so much about that person, but first and foremost a reflection of an inner story with ourselves? Clearly, things happen in relationships and we respond to them, but if the activation is powerful, prolonged, and very familiar to us, there is a high chance that the source is mainly ours. The more we recognize that it is ours, the better we can manage it and project less onto others. From here a greater space of freedom opens for healing and for negotiating with the pains we have carried since childhood. Chapter 14 invites us to stop the anger and disappointment, to turn inward, and to deepen friendship with ourselves.

If it is true that during fear of abandonment we abandon ourselves, that is, we do not respond to our true needs in the situation, it is worth checking where we are making mistakes. It may be that what is happening is self abandonment. I am now abandoning important parts within me, abandoning the heart, security, and my connection with myself. If I do not succeed in creating contact with the part of me that is with the other person, then I am abandoning that part, losing it altogether. At such a moment it is worth pausing, noticing the reflex of anger, disappointment, and dread, and turning the gaze inward. To see fear of abandonment as a sign indicating that I now need an increased dose of befriending myself, an inner togetherness. The more I cultivate the experience of togetherness with myself, the less the distancing of a loved one will dismantle the assets I have with myself. They can take a part of me with them, but I can keep in touch with it, and when I keep in touch with the part that is with the other through behaviors and awareness, I am, in fact, keeping in touch with myself.

When a sense of inner fracture, dread, and a loud emotional noise arise, together with an impulse to protest, to change, to control, or to narrow reality, we can try to stop. To recognize that we have been pulled into an ancient story that still echoes within us and has not been resolved. The trauma remained trauma, the wound is open. The person before us is merely presenting the scene now, but did not create it. The deep message is that I now need to be a friend to myself. I need togetherness with me. Fear of abandonment produces a swift and intense illusion of loneliness: how will I be without, how will I flow and rejoice and be myself without them. This is an illusion. Good relationships are important to us, but no other person is responsible for the togetherness within me. The other can enrich and influence, but the inner togetherness is my asset.

The inner togetherness is linked to self love, to the reduction of self criticism, to creative expression, to choosing actions that nourish me, and to a sense of self worth. We indeed maintain relationships with ourselves through relationships with others; parts of us are represented in different people, and thanks to relationships we improve our relations with ourselves. Yet at the base of it all stands my togetherness with me. When fear of abandonment erupts, it is a sign that the inner togetherness has taken a blow, got confused, got lost. It is important to recognize this and conclude that precisely now an increased cultivation of inner togetherness is needed.

Each person can do this in their own way: a quiet reading of a book, a walk to a new place, a light and benevolent conversation that reminds me who I am, preparing a nourishing meal, resting, engaging in a loved activity, an honest talk facing the mirror, personal writing. The idea is to lay a clear bridge between stopping anger and disappointment, which are actually projections of the inner rupture onto another person, and turning attention inward. Stopping is not repression, but a conscious choice not to surrender to the automatic movement of anger. Anger and disappointment will arise because we are used to them, it is an early reflex. But here the inner adult enters, the one who learns and says: now is the time to improve my friendship with myself. Now is the time for a dose of self affection, pampering, an inner hug, while learning to restore the connecting thread with that person. To invest in the part of me that is present there, to allow distance not to be so distant within me, and at the same time, when the person is not present in the physical space, to understand that this is a sign that my inner togetherness needs my presence even more.

I invite you to examine what strengthens inner togetherness in you. Is it possible to explore this space honestly? Is it possible to speak with myself about my togetherness with me? The more the inner togetherness is whole, the smaller the tendency to abandon myself during fear of abandonment. Instead of moving away from myself, I return inward, I remember that the story began within me, will continue within me, and will change within me. Fear of abandonment is yours, and it can become a gift. Through it we learn about ourselves, heal ourselves, and connect what fell apart in early childhood.

Self Reflection Questions (recommended to answer in writing):
What happens within you when you are very angry?
What happens within you when you are very disappointed?
What happens within you when you strengthen your friendship with yourself?
What special gift can you give yourself soon?
Write three lines of appreciation, affection, and praise for yourself, without thinking much, without planning.

Chapter 15: Take Responsibility and Repair

We are dismantling fear of abandonment. We are already at Chapter 15 out of 18, and the process is moving forward. To advance in the task of dismantling fear of abandonment, it is recommended to repeat the process several times, preferably also in a group setting. Do not expect immediate results. Deep changes in personality do not occur quickly. If we wish for real transformation to take place, we must allow this process space, quiet, and time. We will go with it, observe it, learn it, expand it, add to it, and each of us will find our personal way to reduce the presence of fear of abandonment, to lessen the pain and suffering that it causes so many people.

Chapter 15 is the third chapter in Part Five, the part that asks whether we are, in fact, abandoning ourselves within fear of abandonment. Sometimes this component is larger than we tend to notice, because what is actually taking place is an inner process between me and myself, a process that becomes externalized toward another person but whose source lies within me. The more I recognize that it is a process between me and me, and the more I understand that the first work is with me and toward me, the greater the possibility that I can free myself from the entanglement of outer dialogues that do not allow observation of the real pain, because they are projected outward as anger, disappointment, pressure, and similar reactions. Chapter 15 invites us to identify self abandonment and self harm, to take responsibility, and to begin the repair.

It is important to emphasize that this chapter is not about guilt. There are no guilty parties here, no one who is not okay. When I say take responsibility and begin to repair, the meaning is to take responsibility for the story that is mine. Fear of abandonment is my story. It appears through a particular person because we need the actors who will re enact the ancient event, but it is mine. Beyond that, there is a component of self abandonment, the abandonment of my center, my balance, my joy, my independence, my creativity, and my peace. These are all assets that belong to me. They were never exclusively dependent on the presence of another person in my life. A benevolent relationship can enhance, expand, and refine what already exists in me, but it does not replace my inner foundation. Often it is a person who will continue to be in our lives, who merely needs distance for various reasons, and is expected to return and maintain a reciprocal relationship of growth and empowerment. Alongside this, we will remind ourselves not to project all the drama onto them, and we will re examine our question of freedom.

How much do I allow myself to distance? How much do I allow myself freedom? How much do I allow myself freedom even when another person distances from me? Within fear of abandonment, there are many matters of freedom. We also spoke about the need to neutralize, as much as possible, the anger and the automatic return to familiar reaction patterns, not because it is forbidden to be angry or disappointed, but because in this case it is simply not effective. This is my story. This is my work. Regardless of what the other person is doing right now, I am seeking to rescue myself, to maintain myself, to nourish myself, and to grant myself the right space so that I will not suffer so much. This is the place where we will want to identify self abandonment.

The connecting thread between my representation in the other person and their representation within me, the thread that symbolizes mutual flow, becomes dimmed for me during fear of abandonment. Many times, I abandon precisely this connecting thread. I abandon my way of communicating with that person even when they are far. This thread is a tool that allows both infant and adult to feel that the significant figure is indeed distant but still present, not disintegrating and not disappearing. For this reason, people who suffer from significant fear of abandonment tend, without being aware of it, to abandon the awareness of this thread as if it does not exist, and in doing so they dismantle not fear of abandonment itself but their own self wholeness, their ability to send stable and functioning extensions toward the environment so that even when the environment distances, mutual presence is preserved. During a severe anxiety attack, we dismantle this without realizing it. Hence the desire to stop dismantling, to learn to take responsibility for this, and to recognize that, without awareness, we chose to protect ourselves from unbearable pain through withdrawal, closure, giving up our tools, and calling for help that cannot arrive from the outside, because it is ours.

This is our self abandonment. This is our self harm. We give up mental tools we have developed over the years. We give up self love, self respect, the ability to be with ourselves, and the options for doing and being that are not dependent on the person who has distanced. There, we abandon ourselves. At this point, we must stop, release some of the drama projected onto the other, and bring our assets back to us.

We can say to ourselves in front of the mirror: I am with you. I am with you. I am not abandoning. I am staying here. I am staying here. And I am fine. We are fine. I acknowledge my assets, the love within me, my skills, the things I enjoy doing when I am alone, the many options available to me now that a close person has distanced. From here, the repair begins.

We take responsibility for the reflex that contracts, closes, and hardens. We declare that this is mine and begin to repair. The repair is expressed through an inner declaration: I love you. I am not abandoning you. I remain with you. I strengthen you. I support you. I gather all the assets back to me. At the same time, I nurture the connection with the other person even when they are far away. I practice the imagery of the connecting thread. I act. I look for my freedom now. I seek to release myself from the contraction. I choose not to abandon me.

Inner texts of this kind begin the process of repair, because fear of abandonment exists between me and me. Of course, there are interpersonal and relational issues that deserve to be clarified, agreements and terms of relationship, including the rhythm of closeness and distance, but that is a different discussion. When I am flooded and activated, I pause the relationship contract for a moment, turn inward, take responsibility, declare that I am not abandoning myself, nurture myself, and draw close to me. After I have gathered and strengthened my capacities, stopped the tendency to abandon myself, and moved from a painful and difficult state to a calmer and freer one, then I can return and discuss the relationship contract if I wish, to see what is comfortable for me, what needs to be repaired or changed, and what is right for both sides. But before that, I tend to the wound that is mine, I take responsibility for it, and I begin to heal it.

The process begins when I do not abandon myself and declare that everything I have remains in my possession.
It continues with the restraint of anger and disappointment, with a courageous exploration of personal freedom, and with the continued nurturing of the guided imagery of the connecting thread and the mutual representations, even when dear ones are far away.
All of these together outline the healing path I propose here for dismantling fear of abandonment.

Self Reflection Questions (recommended to answer in writing):
How do you feel now about the possibility that you can reshape your experience of fear of abandonment?
Are you now willing to write yourself a letter of support and love that includes a promise to do all you can not to abandon yourself anymore, even in emotionally complex situations?
Do you now agree that part of the experience of fear of abandonment also contains a kind of self harm you may not be aware of?
Can you forgive yourself now for moments when you hurt yourself without being aware of it?
How do you feel today, right now, about this process? What have you learned about yourself in this regard so far? What questions still feel open to you at this moment?

Chapter 16: Embrace Uncertainty

This chapter opens Part Six, the final part of the process, and its central task is to release the need for control and to reconnect to relationship and to life from within blessed uncertainty. Before we go deeper, it is important to recall the three lines of work that have appeared again and again so far. First, to examine honestly our personal freedom, where we limit it, how much we allow ourselves to distance at times from those we love, and how much inner legitimacy we grant this freedom. Second, to notice anger and disappointment and to refrain from letting them run the event, because when anger and disappointment lead, we lose access to the original pain, we learn less, and we move away from healing. Third, to recognize that at the peak of a wave of fear of abandonment we tend to abandon ourselves, to forget the connecting threads we have with others, to forget strengths and assets we have already acquired, and to be pulled into helplessness and pain that become unbearable. Here comes the standing invitation to go inward, to acknowledge the pain, and to give it space without being swallowed by automatic rituals that keep reenacting the anxiety.

The connecting thread remains the central compass. In every meaningful relationship there is my representation within the other person, and their representation within me. Even when they distance, the part of me that is with them continues to exist, and I can remain in conscious contact with that part. To feel this in practice, we need inner maintenance of imagination, of inner dialogue, of simple gestures of connection. Especially when the trigger appears, this is the time to remind myself that the thread flows, that a part of me is with them, and that a part of them is with me.

Now we add a practical line of work. If we have arrived at an experience of fear of abandonment, we have also arrived at an experience of lack. The distancing has stirred an inner space, a sense of emptiness, a feeling of shortage in nourishment and security. This is a conscious call to increase investment in myself in an intentional way, sometimes even deliberately and generously. This is the time to raise energy in pleasures with myself, with other friends, or in neglected areas. This is the time to add life supporting activities, even if at first they feel artificial. This response increases a sense of freedom, reduces preoccupation with anger and disappointment, and allows us to do something productive with the pain. This is not avoidance of pain. This is its channeling into a strengthening space.

Here is the heart of the chapter. Release control and connect from within blessed uncertainty. Fear of abandonment contains a strong need to control the situation, to narrow the range of distance of a dear person, to make sure we will not lose them. The stronger the anxiety, the stronger the search for control mechanisms. The healing challenge is the opposite. To loosen control as much as we can and to practice emotional connection while recognizing that uncertainty is a constant ingredient in human life. The only thing we know for sure is what is here and now. We do not have solid knowledge of what will happen in ten minutes, tomorrow, or next year. Within this frame we are invited to be in relationships, to invest in them, and to love, together with a quiet knowing that the future is not under our control.

There is no true commitment that can bind a person to us absolutely. There is no absolute harness. Even a relationship that feels certain and guaranteed is subject to the movements of life. People change, circumstances change, needs change. Sometimes a relationship continues in love for many years, sometimes for a few months, sometimes it changes form. We can, and it has value, invest, cultivate, deepen, strengthen, improve communication, expand love, and increase the resilience of the relationship. Yet all of this is done with the understanding that we do not have full control over distance, over time, and over the scripts that life brings.

Fear of abandonment cries a true cry at the infant level, where the disappearance of the caregiving figure is felt as an existential danger. At the adult level there is no existential danger here. There is pain, there is loss, there is mourning. All of it is real and painful, but it is not a threat to existence itself. Anxiety, like any anxiety, produces an illusion of absolute and immediate danger, and in this way it can activate us, shake our balance, and lead us to responses that worsen the situation. Practicing awareness of uncertainty calms this illusion. It allows us to look at the relationship with open eyes, to understand that part of the movement does not depend on me, and to choose anew the realistic scope of my intervention, which is mainly internal.

A practical task for work is to update our belief system outside moments of flooding. Precisely when we are not in an anxious wave, we will sit with ourselves and say, I want to be in relationship, to invest, to love, to build, and I am doing everything so that it will flourish, together with the recognition that I do not know for sure what will happen tomorrow. When the next trigger comes, we will remind ourselves of all the lines of work we have learned already, to expand freedom, to reduce anger, to give pain a place, to go inward, to invest more in relationship with myself, to deliberately increase nourishing and supportive activity, and to remember again that I do not have full control. If the person distances, they may want to return, they may be delayed, an unexpected event may occur. All of these exist within a space of uncertainty. This recognition is not passivity. It opens a door to active and sober choice in the places where I do have influence, mainly over the way I hold myself.

To give experiential form to releasing control, we can practice several daily gestures. First, inner update sentences. I am doing my part with love and presence, and I release the outcome. Second, practicing trust in the connecting thread, in the mind’s eye and in small actions, sending a warm hearted message, agreeing to rejoice in the joy of the one who is far, wishing them a good path, making a gentle request for updates without attaching a constricting expectation. Third, increasing life supporting action during distance, movement, creating, a friendly and non dramatic conversation, cooking, a singing shower, a walk, the sea, writing, anything that increases life. Fourth, to stop and breathe when the need to control arises, to pause automatic reactions, to choose not to manage distress through the other but to manage it within me, and only afterwards to approach dialogue. Fifth, practicing a language of blessed uncertainty. I do not know what tomorrow will bring, and still I choose love and presence today.

Thus we shift from reliance on imaginary control to leaning on inner stability. The more we can hold in awareness this lifelong task, to make this period meaningful within a field of uncertainty, the easier it will be to dismantle fear of abandonment. From within it a new capacity is born, to be in relationship without clinging, to love without constricting, to distance without falling apart, to come close without being swallowed, to send energy through the connecting thread, and to return responsibility for calm and security to the only place where they can truly be built, within me.

Self Reflection Questions (recommended to answer in writing):
How do you currently assess the level of freedom you can grant yourself these days?
How do you currently assess your ability to cope with situations of uncertainty that involve people you love?
How do you currently assess your ability to release the need for control in situations where releasing is usually hard for you?
How do you currently assess your ability to allow the people important to you to distance temporarily in a way that used to be too hard for you to contain?
How do you currently assess your ability to challenge the part of your personality that experiences “loss” where there is actually no real loss and to show it that it has gone too far unnecessarily?

Chapter 17: An Opportunity for Growth and Development

This is the next to last chapter in the process, and I again recommend going over the entire arc repeatedly. Watch again, listen again, let the psyche grow accustomed to the concepts, practice them, develop within them. We continue in Part Six, releasing control and connecting from blessed uncertainty, connecting both with other people and with ourselves, and finding the space that knows how to live, create, and communicate within uncertainty that becomes even more present when fear of abandonment arises.

Fear of abandonment is not entirely lying. The fear that if someone goes they will not return carries a kernel of truth, because we cannot control what will happen. Even the one who left is not in full control. At the same time, the processes we have done here show how fear of abandonment can become an opportunity, a lever for growth, a means for development, for better self knowledge, for increasing self love and self compassion, and for improving relationships. This is possible, and it is not easy. That is why we built this process, to hold together both truths, possible and not easy. The pain is great, sometimes unimaginable, and from within it change is born.

To benefit from the pain, we must move from mere coping to learning and transformation. As long as we are only in braking terror and pain, we survive but do not change. We will return to the anchors that laid the foundation for forward movement. Fear of abandonment points to difficulty in realizing our freedom. It invites us to notice the quick reflex of anger and disappointment, to see how they hide the childlike wound and to refrain from letting them run the event. It reminds us of the energetic thread that connects me to every person, especially to those close to me, and of the ability to cultivate my representation in the other precisely during times of distance, so that I will not experience that a part of me has been taken from me. It calls for increasing self love, reducing self criticism, and increasing creativity as complementary forces that soften the flooding. It also reveals a common phenomenon, self abandonment, and sometimes withdrawal and wall building. Walls protect, but they also suffocate. To heal we will want to make holes in them, to open air cracks, so that feelings can flow, the heart can move, and change can occur.

Here comes the simple and not simple truth. It will hurt. This pain rests on an early wound, sometimes pre verbal, whose intensity was felt by an infant or toddler who did not receive then the needed response. This pain is authentic. We are not faking it. There is no point in proving to ourselves that it is not real. On the contrary, we will give it recognition. Legitimacy. Pain may be. Fear may be. Temporary helplessness may be. We are not required to translate this into anger or blame. We are invited to recognize, to place a hand on the heart, and to say, it hurts now, and I am with me. This is how healing begins.

This pain also reminds us of another truth. Uncertainty is always here. Sometimes we build plans and are certain they will ripen exactly as we decided, but that is only a probability. Fear of abandonment shakes this denial and floods us, sometimes with excessive intensity, with the possibility that things will not be. We cannot manufacture certainty where there is none. What can we do? We can cultivate another kind of certainty, the certainty of the present. Here I am. Here I breathe. Here I feel. Here I create. Here I choose my next response. This is the only real certainty, and it is the base from which anxiety can be softened.

From here arises the practical task of Chapter 17. Respect the process and derive benefit from it. To respect the pain means to stop fighting it as an enemy and to begin working with it as a messenger. To derive benefit means to make the present more qualitative precisely during distance. If someone has distanced from me, perhaps a space has opened for me to fulfill a small delayed dream, perhaps to deepen a hobby, to expand a benevolent friendship, to go out to nature, to sing in the shower, to paint, to write, to cook, to learn a chapter in a book that has always waited. This is not escape from pain. This is its channeling into creating life. Every small action that increases life during pain weakens the automatic linkage between an anxious trigger and a constricting response, and this is where neuro emotional change begins.

The emphases for this gentle work return to everything we have gathered so far. Expand freedom in an intentional and safe way, even in small acts of healthy distancing. Reduce anger and disappointment in communication, pause impulsive reactions, breathe, choose soft words or choose temporary silence. Give pain a place and even allow tears. Increase self love in deeds and words. I am with me. I love you. I am not abandoning. Lower self criticism, stop the I am not okay sentences that lock in the flooding. Arouse creativity, play with sensations and responses, vary action patterns, break habits that maintain the anxiety. And remember, the connecting thread exists. We can send energy through it in the mind’s eye and in simple gestures of connection.

Thus, slowly and with patience, we move from coping to transformation. We do not cancel fear of abandonment with a single stroke, but we dismantle it into segments, shorten the duration of flooding, soften its intensity, and restore inner authority to ourselves. We do not control the future, but we influence the quality of the present deeply. We do not promise that the person will return, but we promise ourselves loving presence until the wave passes. There is born the great benefit of this painful encounter, the ability to live better within blessed uncertainty, to continue to love without clinging, to distance without falling apart, to come close without being swallowed, and to build within us a stable home to which we can always return. This is the summit of the work of Chapter 17. Respect the pain and make the encounter with it a gateway to growth.

Self Reflection Questions (recommended to answer in writing):
What is your current relationship with your emotional pains? What do you tend to do today when you are in pain?
What benefit have you derived so far from this process, in your opinion?
Do you now see the possibility that the pains you have encountered in your life have led you, in one way or another, to growth and development?
Are you able today to love yourself in times of emotional pain more than in the past?
What do you know today about yourself and about your anxieties that you did not know as well, say a year or two ago?

Chapter 18: Healing with Love

To dismantle fear of abandonment, Chapter 18. This phenomenon touches us at dizzying speed. Frightening memories, post-trauma, have a very fast onset. In a split second someone says or does something, we interpret it as distancing, and suddenly, as if from the ground, fear of abandonment appears. No one invited it, and yet it is already here. From zero to one hundred in a tenth of a second. Its intensity is felt throughout the body.

And yet, we have tools to dismantle it. We have tools to get to know it, to prepare for it, to reduce it, to circle around it, to play with it, to look it straight in the eyes. Little by little we become less frightened by its very appearance and more positioned as people who understand and act. If it has arrived, it means I need to work. To listen to the pains within me. To give space to the experience of loss that awakens, even if right now there is no actual loss in the present. To relate to what arises as an inner mourning process and to honor it. Instead of fighting, to acknowledge.

Let us remember the energetic thread that connects people. I can cultivate my representation within the other person, and I can cultivate their representation within me, even when there is distance. Let us remember the value of freedom, our own freedom, both when the person is distancing and when they are close. Let us ask honestly whether we prevent ourselves from legitimate distances, whether we limit our freedom and project this onto the other, trying to hold them tight for fear they will disappear. It may be that we fear we too will get lost if we distance. We will examine all this and see that most of it rests on fears and on illusions. It does not describe the present.

We are adults. It is not easy to abandon us. We have ourselves, our inner assets, our support networks, the activities we love. True, in theory things can change, but most often fear of abandonment rests on an image and not on present reality. It leans on old scratches from the time when truly significant figures disappeared just when we needed them. Back then it was painful and frightening. Back then it was existential anxiety. But that is not now. And because it is not now, the anxiety can be dismantled into small pieces. If it appears, it appears, and we are already equipped with tools to work with these pieces even when they show up quickly. To breathe. To smile gently to ourselves. To go inward. To invest in ourselves. To cultivate connection with the person who is distancing not out of panic, not out of anger, not out of disappointment, but out of calm and ongoing intention. To understand that this is a time that requires special attention, because the inner infant feels unsafe.

This is how fear of abandonment is dismantled. This completes Part Six, releasing control and connecting from within blessed uncertainty. Although the event is experienced as a parting, a reflex of control rises that competes with the natural dynamics of connection and distancing. It is impossible to maintain a relationship without cyclical movements of closeness and distance. Sometimes it is precisely the small distance that allows us to see, to be moved again, to fall in love again. Those who are wounded around parting and distancing will find difficulties there, and this is an opportunity to grow and to heal. It is important to emphasize that in most cases the anxiety rests on very little in the present. The more we practice seeing this, the more we will be able to identify the illusion and make dismantling easier.

The last chapter gathers all the tools and takes one more step. We dealt with our freedom. We spoke about neutralizing anger and disappointment. We gave space to pain and to mourning. We learned the connecting thread. We increased self love. We reduced self criticism. We adopted varied strategies of breathing, movement, writing, singing, a strengthening shower, walking in nature, creating, benevolent inner speech, turning to good friends, cultivating solitude. And now we add the most central strategy, love.

During a panic attack a person may forget love. This is natural. The system is flooded. There is no point in faulting them. Here the work is delicate and ongoing. We learn to bring more love into the space in order to soften fear. Fear is the absence of love. In childhood, when the figures of love distanced, we experienced a draining of love and therefore the threat became existential. Now, in adulthood, fear of abandonment invites us to increase love and benevolent contact, toward the loved person and toward ourselves. It is not always easy, especially when the inner noise is deafening. And still, after we have walked the process and learned its many facets, we can measure one small step and another small step of conscious love.

What does this look like in action? When the anxiety raises its head, we will mark for ourselves that this is a signal to increase love. We will choose gestures of gentle love. We will remain in a hug a little longer. We will wish a good journey. We will send a supportive message without demand. We will send through the connecting thread good words and an image of heart to heart. We will leave more good energy from us there. And we will say to ourselves at the same time, I am with me. I am not abandoning. I love. I breathe. I return attention to the present. We are not canceling the pain. We are cushioning it with love.

This does not contradict everything we have learned so far, it rests upon it. It is not bypassing the pain, it is embracing it. It is not controlling reality, it is releasing the illusion that one can control. It is not dependence on the other, it is an expansion of inner freedom and emotional resilience. In this way we show fear of abandonment that it is not running us. We choose love.

When we persist in this practice and repeat the whole process several times, we may find ourselves dismantling fear of abandonment into smaller fragments, shortening the duration of flooding, reducing its intensity, and increasing our capacity to live within blessed uncertainty. In doing so we give the relationship with the loved person better opportunities to improve, to soften, and to deepen. Thank you for being here. Thank you for the courage to look inward, to learn, to practice, to love. I too contend with fear of abandonment, and for me too this is an opportunity to turn pain into a tool for healing. We will be in touch.

Self Reflection Questions (recommended to answer in writing):
Are you now able to forgive yourself for moments in which your fear of abandonment ran you too much? Write a little, in writing. What happens when you forgive yourself a bit more?
Are you now able to smile at that part within you that sometimes loses contact with that interpersonal energetic thread mentioned here? Are you able to understand the difficulty that can exist in this matter, in you and in others?
How does love help you, love in every possible direction, in this process and in any subject in which you would like to proceed with less difficulty and fewer barriers?
Do you now think that it is indeed possible to “dismantle” your fear of abandonment, or at least to bring it to a level that is less disruptive and less significant? Please explain your answer.
Focus for a moment on a figure from your distant past, the first person who now comes to mind who was in your life a long time ago. Imagine yourself hugging this person without words, a prolonged hug. Who is this person? How does it feel to hug them? How does it feel to hug yourself?

Dismantling the Fear of Abandonment

Chapter 1: Every Person Faces Fear of Abandonment

Chapter 2: To Die and Be Born

Chapter 3: Accepting What Is

Chapter 4: Noticing the Role of Pain in the Experience and Lingering with It

Chapter 5: Within Fear of Abandonment There Exists a Present Experience of Loss

Chapter 6: The Healing Mourning

Chapter 7: Rehabilitating the Connecting Thread Between Me and My Surroundings

Chapter 8: Releasing the Illusions

Chapter 9: Choosing to Rehabilitate the Connecting Thread and Making It a Life Mission

Chapter 10: Self Love

Chapter 11: Excessive Self Criticism

Chapter 12: Emotional Creativity

Chapter 13: Your Aloneness Is the Center of Your Existence. And That, No One Can Abandon.

Chapter 14: Stop the Anger and Disappointment, Turn Inward, and Befriend Yourself

Chapter 15: Take Responsibility and Repair

Chapter 16: Embrace Uncertainty

Chapter 17: An Opportunity for Growth and Development

Chapter 18: Healing with Love

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Dismantling the Fear of Abandonment

Intuitive Painting in Home: Part 2

Cosmic Time: Book in Progress