How can one over come this fear of abandonment.. if they have had family, many friends etc.. and they feel they are the reason even though some of it was as a child... it still hurts.. so when a man leaves or someone it tears harder than most people overly sensitie about it.

Clough

Is there a particular situation about which you are asking concerning the question of fear of abandonment?

Illusion

Hello Butterfly - and what a lovely name you chose for yourself. I am glad that you recognize some important things about yourself. A couple of things I would say - you do see that the original hurt belonged to another situation that happened when you were a child. You are still grieving over that hurt even though it happened so long ago. You may not have time to relive that, to talk about it, to cry about it, to put it into perspective and then to let it go. You may need to do some of that healing work now that you are older. You have some good insight by just what you wrote.

I was reading another post last night about Freud - which reminded me of something called transference - how something happens, we react and are hurt, and we go on and we have new experiences that remind us of the original hurt and we "project" the original feelings onto this new situation. It is a very interesting dynamic.

Along with this pain from the past, your personality may be that of a intense, emotional and passionate person - who has love for other people and feels deeply - and are greatly disappointed when they leave or the situation does not work out. It just breaks your heart to say good-bye. You may need some time alone to re-focus on yourself so that you can center yourself and let it go. You may need to do some writing, reading, or some praying on your own to re-focus and take care of yourself. Knowing that you can do this will help you to know that there will be new people, new connections and new experiences for you - just as rich and intense as before - and sometimes even better.

I know that my heart has been broken - by family and then other people - friends, boyfriends - and what really amazes me is that when I look back - I realize that this friend, this boyfriend, this acquaintance - was not right for me anyway. They would not be able to give and share or be the one that would understand - or vice versa. And those loved ones that were my family - I love them to this day and will always miss them. To this day, I need to be alone to remember and cry. And then I am all right, I go back to life knowing just how much my loved one meant to me, how it all affected me and how much more I am because I had you in my life.

And so we go on - in love and in harmony - recognizing that lost love - whether it was from a mother, a father, a grandparent, a best friend - and appreciating them and remembering them and then letting it go for everything it gave us and for how much more alive we are today because we had this experience with someone - for all we learned and shared. I am all and more because of you in my life. Well, I just would not give that up for anything in this world. Live and know you are alive and well and good that it is so. Take care.

Choux

I lived my life with a horrific fear of abandonment. I never got over it and like so many incidents in life that really hurt and damage us, we are strong enough to go on and add many good and wonderful people to our lives and have many fine things to do with our time.

We learn to live with our memories only having talked about them to lessen their power. Talked about it to see what happened in perspective. When we are children, we have little ability to evaluate what is happening to us. As adults with help, we lessen their power.