Top 85 Abandonment Issues Quotes That Will Make You Feel Seen

This post contains some of the best abandonment issues quotes that will make you feel seen.

Abandonment Issues

Abandonment issues stem from a fear of loneliness, which is a form of anxiety.

It often begins in childhood when a child experiences a traumatic loss.

But abandonment issues can also begin in adulthood.

Signs of Abandonment Issues

Signs of abandonment issues in adults include:

Rejecting people before they can be rejected
Avoiding getting close to others
Extreme insecurity
Moving from one relationship to another or making many friends to never be alone
Putting up with poor treatment for fear of being alone

Abandonment Issues Triggers

The abandonment issues can be easily triggered. Common behavioral triggers may include:

A change in mood
A change in someone’s behavior (e.g., not hearing from them for a day when they’re used to calling every day)
An argument
Any behavior that can be interpreted as rejecting (e.g., a flat tone of voice; the other person is distracted while you’re having a conversation)
Any behavior that you experience as a disconnection
Periods of separation
Other relationships that the other person has that you perceive as threatening to your relationship
Not getting the reassurance that you need

Abandonment Issues Quotes

1. “What is abandonment?” people ask. “Is it about people in search of their mothers? Or people left on someone else’s doorstep as children?” I answer: Every day there are people who feel as if life itself has left them on a doorstep or thrown them away.” – Susan Anderson

2. “Abandonment is about loss of love itself, that crucial loss of connectedness. It often involves breakup, betrayal, aloneness—something people can experience all at once, or one after another over a period of months, or even years later as an aftershock.” – Susan Anderson

3. “Abandonment stings, even when it means freedom.” – Maggie Shipstead

4. “Anyone who abandons you is for teaching you how to stand up on your own two feet.” – Laura Clegg

5. “Abandonment survivors are sensitive, caring, and primed for love. But membership to this venerable group is not restricted to those able to achieve success in their relationships. Many continue the struggle to resolve the old abandonment wounds that stand in the way of finding love.”– Susan Anderson

6. “At times in life you have to leave people where they left you.” – Angel Moreira

7. “During this critical third stage of abandonment, your emotional wound becomes susceptible to infection, which can result in permanent scarring in the form of damage to your self-esteem. This is when you suppress your anger toward your lost partner and beat up on yourself instead. You tend to idealize your abandoner at your own expense. Any implicit or explicit criticism from your ex is taken to heart. You become preoccupied with regrets over the relationship, agonizing over what you should have done or what you could have done to prevent the loss. No matter how hard you try to fight back, your sense of self takes a beating.”– Susan Anderson

8. “If you leave someone at least tell them why, because what’s more painful than being abandoned; is knowing you’re not worth an explanation.” – Unknown

9. “Chasing unavailable people is self abandonment.” – Sheleana Aiyana

10. “Every child makes its peace with abandonment. That’s called growing up.” – Gregory Maguire

11. “It is that for all of its pain and intensity, abandonment serves as a catalyst for profound personal growth.”– Susan Anderson

12. “Abandonment cuts us to the core, but a piercing awareness survives. The stabbing pain lets you know you are alive. The ego is cracked open, the defenses torn away. All that remains is raw sensation and the body’s own urge to survive.”– Susan Anderson

13. “Because the place you are born isn’t necessarily the place you belong. I was born into a world that abandoned me, stole from me, rejected me; is it so surprising I found a better one?” – Unknown

14. “It is no wonder that people refer to abandonment as a knife wound to the heart. Physiologically, your body reacts as if your heart had truly been stabbed.”– Susan Anderson

15. “Like childbirth, abandonment forces a separation; you’re suddenly much more alone than you were before.”– Susan Anderson

16. “If someone hurt you, abandoned you, betrayed you… it says nothing about your meaningfulness but everything about their character.” – Krystal

17. “It is common for people to describe their abandonment as a kind of death. They report feeling dead, or wanting to be dead, or going through a spiritual death.”– Susan Anderson

18. “People need to know that they are not alone, that they have not been abandoned; but that there is One Who loves them for what they are, Who cares about them.” – Dada Vaswani

19. “Many also experience their abandonment as a physical, even a mortal wound. They make frequent references to words that describe critical injury and destruction to vital organs, references to broken hearts, stabs in the gut, knife wounds to the heart.”– Susan Anderson

20. “Better to accept the cold, hard facts of the situation: that abandonment is a powerful enough trauma to arouse your body’s self-defense system, to reactivate old emotional memories, and to create a temporary condition in which your need for attachment is uncomfortably intense. Coming to terms with the reality that losing your loved one is a real emotional crisis is a way to avoid the shame trap. This acceptance is an important step in the direction of becoming emotionally self-nurturing.”– Susan Anderson

21. “A fear of abandonment is a complex phenomenon in psychology that is believed to originate from childhood loss or injury.” – Arianna Beck

22. “Individuals with the fear of abandonment might tend to display necessary actions, and also thought patterns that affect their connections, inevitably leading to the abandonment they dread becoming a reality. This anxiety can be ravaging. Recognizing this worry is the very first step toward solving it.” – Arianna Beck

23. “The stage was set for your fear of abandonment by factors outside of your control. The story about your fear of abandonment (and additional core beliefs) is the result of factors that were present at your birth (temperament) and factors that were present in your environment. These are conditions that you couldn’t control as a child.” – Michelle Skeen

24. “For all abandonment survivors—those who’ve found love and those still seeking it—the impact of losses past and present can be found in the fragments of unlived life, unreached potential, and unfulfilled dreams still waiting to be redeemed through the process of abandonment recovery.” – Susan Anderson

25. “The worry of abandonment is the frustrating worry that individuals close to you will undoubtedly leave. Anyone can create anxiety of abandonment. It can be deeply rooted in a stressful experience you had as a youngster or a stressful relationship in the adult years.” – Arianna Beck

26. “Your feelings can largely be attributed to nature and nurture. When looking at the development of your fear of abandonment, it helps to look at nature versus nurture in the context of attachment style (nurture, i.e., your relationship with your environment, which includes your primary caregiver) versus temperament (nature, i.e., how you show up at birth).” – Michelle Skeen

27. “Unresolved abandonment is the root of self-sabotage.” – Susan Anderson

28. “As an infant, if you are left—abandoned—you will not survive. Your life, your survival, depends upon another person. To feel anxious and insecure about your primary relationship is frightening. This fear eclipses everything in your life—if you are focused on your survival you probably don’t have the capacity to focus on other things, and you certainly don’t have the luxury of responding to stressful situations with an ability to manage your impulses and desires. Every stressful situation is a life-threatening crisis to the insecurely attached child. There isn’t time to weigh thoughtful options to cultivate a response. You must react quickly and automatically.” – Michelle Skeen

29. “You may have a biological predisposition or temperament that makes you emotionally vulnerable. However, it’s likely that you struggle with fear of abandonment without an additional diagnosis, even though you may experience feelings of anxiety, depression, and panic when your fear of abandonment gets triggered.” – Michelle Skeen

30. “Abandonment means different things to different people. It is an extremely personal and individual experience. Sometimes it is lingering grief caused by old losses. Sometimes it is fear. Sometimes it can be an invisible barrier holding us back from forming relationships, from reaching our true potential. It can take the form of self-sabotage. We get caught up in patterns of abandonment.” – Susan Anderson

31. “Abandonment: a core belief that is formed as the result of physical or emotional loss; a lack of emotional support or connection; or an unstable or unreliable environment.” – Michelle Skeen

32. “With an abandonment core belief your thoughts may include: People who love me will leave me or die. No one has ever been there for me. The people I’ve been closest to are unpredictable. In the end I will be alone.” – Michelle Skeen

33. “When someone we love rejects us we often turn the anger we feel toward that person against ourselves and blame ourselves for the loss. In this way, abandonment acts like quicksand, miring us in feelings of worthlessness and despair. No matter how hurtful or demoralizing the circumstances may have been, you are not a victim or undeserving of love. The fact that someone has chosen not to be with you says as much about your ex as it does about you and how well you functioned in the relationship. You may be humbled for the moment, but you have not been vanquished.” – Susan Anderson

34. “The abandonment core belief is a perceived instability or unreliability of those on whom you relied for support and connection. It involves the belief that the significant person or people in your life will not be able to provide emotional support, connection, or protection because they are emotionally unstable and unpredictable, unreliable or erratically present, and/or will die or abandon you for someone else.” – Michelle Skeen

35. “Emotional deprivation is another partner in crime with the abandonment core belief. If you grew up in an environment where you didn’t receive emotional support, attention, affection, guidance, and understanding, then emotional deprivation is probably one of your core beliefs.” – Michelle Skeen

36. “Abandonment is a complex issue, and its wound can be deeply entrenched. It is important to realize that your feelings, no matter how intense, do not signify a lack of will or frailty of character. They are normal and part of a process that leads to renewal and change.” – Susan Anderson

37. “Unresolved abandonment may be the underlying issue responsible for most of the ailments you have been struggling with all along: the insecurity that plagues your relationships, depression and anxiety, obsessive and compulsive behaviors, low energy levels, and the loss of self-esteem that have been holding you back. Yet often people who have been abandoned can’t name what they are going through.” – Susan Anderson

Related: Relationship Red Flags Quiz

38. “The abandonment core belief is easily triggered because it is deeply embedded in our survival instinct.” – Michelle Skeen

39. “The behavioral cycle that seems to make sense in the moment, when you’re experiencing the fear of abandonment, is unhelpful. You react to protect yourself, but you end up feeling worse and potentially damaging your relationships.” – Michelle Skeen

40. “Having lost touch with the source of their wounds, many resort to quick fixes and gratify themselves with food, alcohol, shopping, or other people. Or they become addicted to self-help lectures, books, and tapes. But all of the self-medicating and soothing words in the world will not erase the distress. In order to do that, you must embark upon a journey that addresses the underlying cause—the abandonment wound itself. This is a journey from which all people can benefit.” – Susan Anderson

41. “Because our core beliefs are formed from early childhood and adolescent experiences, they are an enduring part of our individual experience. For example, among people who had early abandonment experiences and learned to expect them, the abandonment core belief will likely be triggered during every relevant interpersonal event. The criticism, disappointment, withdrawal, and anger of others will trigger the core belief and the fear that goes with it.” – Michelle Skeen

Related: Yellow Flags In A Relationship

42. “Abandonment’s devastation can stem from many different circumstances, many different types of relationships. There are a variety of factors affecting the way we react to the loss: the nature and duration of our relationship, the intensity of the feelings, the circumstances of the breakup, and our previous history of losses. Being left by someone we love can open up old wounds, stirring up insecurities and doubts that had been part of our emotional baggage since childhood.” – Susan Anderson

43. “When someone decides to leave us, it is a different story. Bewildered, confused, outraged, we feel as if we’ve been handed a life sentence to which we’ve been unjustly condemned by virtue of some invisible defect. We yearn and ache for someone who has abandoned us.” – Susan Anderson

44. “Abandonment is our first fear. It is a primal fear—a fear universal to the human experience. As infants we lay screaming in our cribs, terrified that when our mothers left the room they were never coming back.” – Susan Anderson

45. “As someone who struggles with an abandonment core belief, when you experience the slightest hint of rejection you will have thoughts predicting loss and abandonment. You can’t stop these thoughts—none of us can stop our thoughts from constantly popping up.” – Michelle Skeen

46. “Abandonment is a fear that we will be left alone forever with no one to protect us, to see to our most urgent needs. For the infant, maintaining attachment to its primary caretaker is necessary for its survival. Any threat or disruption to that relationship arouses this primal fear, a fear that is embedded in the hardware of our brains, a fear we carry into adulthood.” – Susan Anderson

47. “The grieving process is similar to bereavement over a death: Loss is loss. But abandonment grief has a particular life of its own, stemming from the circumstances that led up to it and from the feelings of rejection and inadequacy that often accompany it.” – Susan Anderson

48. “Practicing self-compassion means softening your heart and distancing yourself from your inner critic and the negative statements that reinforce your fear of abandonment and feelings of unworthiness and inadequacy.” – Michelle Skeen

49. “Mental health professionals generally interpret the feelings of abandonment as a symptom of depression or anxiety. But abandonment grief is a syndrome of its own. It is the way in which your fear and anger are turned against yourself that gives abandonment grief its particular character.” – Susan Anderson

50. “Abandonment survivors are those who have experienced the anguish of lost love and have the courage to go on believing in life and in their own capacity for love.” – Susan Anderson

51. “One of the things that may have been missing in your childhood is emotional safety. You may have experienced the emotional isolation that is frequently associated with abandonment.” – Michelle Skeen

52. “There is an abandonment survivor in just about everyone, though some may not acknowledge it. The insecurity, longing, and fear associated with the loss of love are universal.”– Susan Anderson

53. “With an abandonment core belief you know that you are hyperaware of any whiff of withdrawal or rejection. It’s important for you to tolerate some behaviors that are acceptable but uncomfortable for you. You may need to do more watching and waiting than you like because behavior patterns emerge over time.” – Michelle Skeen

54. “People struggling with the abandonment syndrome are plagued by insecurity and self-sabotage, yet many manage to lead productive, even stellar, lives in spite of it. Others find the chronic insecurity too disabling to fully express their talents.”– Susan Anderson

55. “Yes, there is life after abandonment—full, rich intense life—but you will have to work to get there.”– Susan Anderson

56. “Remember, at the moment of your deepest anguish, you are not being abandoned. There are concerned fellow humans ready to meet your own reaching out for life – wish regeneration. Do not isolate yourself from help” – Froma Sand

57. “Many people’s reactions to abandonment share sufficient features with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to be considered a subtype of this diagnostic category.” – Susan Anderson

58. “Some people might leave you,’ he said, for once ignoring a joke in favor of something real. ‘But it doesn’t mean you’re worth leaving. It doesn’t mean that at all.”― Veronica Roth

59. “Sometimes you must embrace the feeling of being abandoned, until your deepest self warms to the thought of you being its closest companion.” – Curtis Tyrone Jones

60. “Many people who suffer from post-trauma of abandonment aren’t able to identify any extreme abandonments in childhood. Instead, they came from relatively intact families with no known history of abuse.” – Susan Anderson

61. “Whether your abandonment grief is the result of a recent breakup or of cumulative wounds and whether your feelings stem from loss of a job, loss of a friend, or loss of a life partner, the experience feels traumatic.” – Susan Anderson

62. “The fear of abandonment forced me to comply as a child, but I’m not forced to comply anymore. The key people in my life did reject me for telling the truth about my abuse, but I’m not alone. Even if the consequence for telling the truth is rejection from everyone I know, that’s not the same death threat that it was when I was a child. I’m a self-sufficient adult and abandonment no longer means the end of my life.” – Christina Enevoldsen

63. “Many people in addiction recovery programs report that they began abusing drugs or alcohol as a way of coping with an abandonment experience.” – Susan Anderson

64. “Children experience all loss, injury, and turmoil as abandonment. Their strongest attachment is to their primary caretakers. But they form other strong attachments to people, places, capabilities, ideals, and dreams. Any breach in those attachments creates fear—a feeling of being helpless, a feeling of being unable to hold on to what they hold most dear—in short, a heightened fear of abandonment.” – Susan Anderson

65. “The struggle of my life created empathy – I could relate to pain, being abandoned, having people not love me.” – Oprah Winfrey

66. “Many abandonment survivors continue to be flooded with fear, anxiety, insecurity, and maladaptive behavior patterns rising out of childhood experiences of which they have no conscious memory. They wonder how they managed to get stuck in the emotional past, why their earlier losses and abandonments still exert such an impact on their lives.” – Susan Anderson

67. “Symptoms of withdrawal are intense. Many abandonment survivors are prepared to bargain, petition, beg, manipulate, do anything to get their loved one to come back.” – Susan Anderson

68. “They say that abandonment is a wound that never heals. I say only that an abandoned child never forgets.” – Mario Balotelli

69. “What you feel during abandonment withdrawal—the craving, yearning, waiting, and wanting of your lost loved one—is psychobiologically akin to withdrawal from heroin or morphine.” – Susan Anderson

70. “Vulnerability awakened by abandonment is not a weakness; it is part of what it is to be human.” – Susan Anderson

71. “When one is abandoned, one is left alone. This can happen through physical absence as well as physical presence. In fact to be abandoned by someone who is physically present is much more crazy-making. ” – John Bradshaw

72. “Abandonment is a form of involuntary separation. The fact that you did not choose to be alone arouses intense feelings of anger, frustration, and resentment. Your partner has upset your emotional balance, and as a result of his or her default, you are alone.” – Susan Anderson

73. “The sense that you will always be alone is one of abandonment’s most potent feelings. But remember, it is a feeling, not a prophecy or a fact. The truth is, very few people going through abandonment are destined to be alone for very long.” – Susan Anderson

74. “When you feel abandoned, don’t let painful feelings fester. Tell someone; you have a right to feel better.” – Steve Tsuchiyama

75. “There’s a biological explanation for why some people go on feeding frenzies while others seem to be on hunger strikes. Your abandonment crisis boosts production of significant stress hormones.” – Susan Anderson

76. “If you leave someone at least tell them why, because what’s more painful than being abandoned; is knowing you’re not worth an explanation.” – Unknown

77. “Abandonment isn’t like an automobile accident from which you immediately begin to recover. It is more like spending weeks or months on a battlefield, constantly under attack. You feel the painful repercussions of your loss again and again each time your ever-wary amygdala triggers the release of stress hormones.” – Susan Anderson

78. “Love often leads to healing, while fear and isolation breed illness. And our biggest fear is abandonment.” – Candace Pert

79. “Abandonment poses an additional complication: reopening of old wounds. For those who lived through some kind of childhood separation, going through the withdrawal stage means dealing with the emotional reverberations of the recent and past wounds simultaneously. They merge together into one prolonged state of emotional emergency, a tumultuous and intense time of great stress.” – Susan Anderson

80. “Anger turned against yourself accounts for the intense depression associated with abandonment. It is one of the hallmarks of this part of the grief cycle.” – Susan Anderson

81. “My healing isn’t a choice to abandon others, it’s a choice to no longer abandon myself.” – Elezabeth Symond

82. “In truth, abandonment grief has not been fully recognized as a legitimate form of grief. Unlike grief over death, which receives serious attention from professionals, abandonment has been psychology’s neglected stepchild.” – Susan Anderson

83. “People don’t abandon people they love. They abandon people they were using.” – Unknown

84. “Unresolved abandonment grief can interfere with future relationships.” – Susan Anderson

85. “One of the most common misconceptions that abandonment survivors face in the throes of their grief is that their feelings are unjustified, that grieving a death is somehow worse. Abandonment and death affect us in different ways, but it’s impossible to say that one is more painful than the other. The intensity and longevity of your grief is related to the nature of your relationship, the circumstances of the loss, and your emotional and constitutional makeup.” – Susan Anderson

References

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Abandonment Issues

Signs of Abandonment Issues

Abandonment Issues Triggers

Abandonment Issues Quotes

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