Fear of abandonment is irrational, at least in its
magnitude, as it typically presents.
Reassurance by those we fear will abandon us is also
pointless, because it has a limited shelf-life. Every time I ask for further
reassurance, I'm basically saying I retrospectively doubt the last reassurance
I received. It’s quite irrational, as I'm therefore looking for reassurance
from someone I do not ultimately trust, knowing that whatever they say I will
doubt in a just a few days’ or a few hours’ time.
Doesn’t really make sense, does it?
There is no point in 'working on' this (or any other) fear. That
really implies I intend to retain it but mitigate its consequences or transform
it into a more benign form, somehow.
The truth of abandonment: everyone will ultimately abandon me
or I will abandon them, either dead or alive. That’s the way the cookie
crumbles.
If I want relationships on any level of any significance, I'm going to have to deal with the fact that, if I get attached, I'm going to feel pain ~when~ that person leaves my life, unless I have the misfortune to die first. That pain will sometimes be protracted and profound.
The problem is really not fear but resistance to perfectly legitimate
pain.
The problem is really wanting the goodies but not wanting to
pay the price, which is an essentially childish attitude.
As adults with a twelve-step programme and therefore access
to God and endless others who can act as channels for God's love, with an
attitude of usefulness, cheerfulness, and kindness, we will never be more alone
than necessary, and the inevitable (sometimes protracted, sometimes profound)
pain is a perfectly acceptable and normal occurrence we will be able to handle
with courage and good humour.
The other, more sinister aspect of a fear of abandonment is the
conclusion we draw about ourselves from the fact of someone else leaving our
lives. Someone leaves, and we conclude we're bad. We idiotically peg our worth
based not on the understanding of our ultimate infinite worth as children of
God or even a sound assessment of our conduct over our lives as a whole but on the
interpretation of an individual act of another person we have apparently
selected at random from the plethora of individuals who cross our paths.
What we fear then is not abandonment and subsequent solitude
but the loss of the handy external fake barometer for our value as humans. We
use others' so-called approval (which is usually more a statement that we are
useful to them as reciprocating ego-fondlers than an assessment of our actual
worth) as a short-acting painkiller to avoid facing the underlying fallacy of a
person's value being measurable and anything other than infinite.
Not quite so noble, that aspect.
Fear of abandonment is not to be tolerated: it must be replaced
with certain faith that God, working through our spirit and others in our
lives, will see us through the inevitable hardships ahead provided we stay
close to Him and perform His work well, plus an assertion of our infinite value
merely because we exist.
Now, what instead can we do for others?