Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Ready to lose 40 plus pounds without giving up happy hours, weekend brunches, or date nights. Then it's time to uncover the hidden link between binge eating and toxic relationships. And finally, break free from both. Welcome to the Hungry for Love podcast with Jillian Scott. Y' all ready? Let's go.
[00:00:24] Hey. Hey. Welcome back.
[00:00:26] We are going to continue this series of the core four wounds of narcissistic abuse. And today we are diving into the topic of abandonment.
[00:00:34] And this is one that is so common, and it starts typically in childhood and then it lasts a lifetime. So I'm going to talk about it from the perspective of if you had a parent or a caregiver, it could have even been an older sibling that was significantly older. But if they had any type of cluster beach personality type. So this includes strong narcissistic characteristics, borderline personality disorder, bipolar, anything like that. They typically have low empathy and they don't know how to manage their own emotions. So they can't be there to help you manage yours. They can't be there to support you emotionally. So we often will feel emotional abandonment, not just because they can't help support us in navigating our own emotions, but because they often are emotionally manipulative, trying to get their needs met. And so they will use tactics like the silent treatment to withdraw love, praise, or communication as a way of punishment because you did the wrong thing, you did the bad thing. And I believe that these are all very subconscious programmings and they simply want to feel better. They want to feel in control, but their lack of empathy is not helpful for us, especially as kids. As children are learning to manage our own nervous system, to manage our own emotional regulation.
[00:01:55] And we have parents who can't even do that for themselves. So of course they can't do that for us. But we just want to understand how this comes up, because sometimes it's that we have been abandoned physically. Like a parent may have died. They may have chosen not to be in your life. They could be in prison. There's a reason why physically they're not in your life. But it might also be this emotional abandonment where they aren't there for you, and it might seem like they turn their back on you at times, and it doesn't make any sense.
[00:02:25] This can also be if your parent was an addict and it could even be if your parents got divorced, but you made the divorce mean something about you. And this is why I like to remind people it's not just about the circumstances. Trauma is not just what happened to you. It's what you make it mean. And so if we can recognize this and notice, oh, there's this fear of abandonment. This is why you might still be putting up with their bullshit. It's why there's this fear of I can't let them go for the parent. It's also why we have this fear of I can't let this other person in my life go. You might have a toxic boss or sibling or spouse, or maybe it's now an ex spouse, but you had this person in your life where it was like, oh, I can't let them go. Because part of it was if they leave, it triggers this abandonment wound. But it starts as a kid, it starts from a very young age. And so whether it was they were maybe physically present but emotionally unavailable, maybe they were around, they were in your life, but just were always working, maybe they were reclusive, maybe they liked to be alone, they were always in the garage or they were in the den or it was like they, they wanted their alone time, their me time. It was just this escape.
[00:03:40] And so anytime we experience this, especially as kids, our worldview is so small, we make it about us.
[00:03:48] Something is wrong with me is typically what we conclude. I'm not enough, I'm too much, I'm a burden, I make things difficult, I'm an inconvenience. And it's always me. I'm the problem that gets reinforced. And whether it's overtly stated and a parent tells you you are too much or they tell you you're the problem. This is why bad things happen, right? Sometimes we experience that where it is, this abuse. And sometimes it's more covert, it's more subtle. It's, this is what we make it mean, this is the impression that we get.
[00:04:23] For me, growing up without my biological dad, I grew up with a story of he must not want anything to do with me. And that was very painful. And so I was really angry. I was very angry at him. I think that anger turned outward on other people and this contributed to me bullying my sister growing up.
[00:04:43] And what was underneath the anger though was a lot of hurt, a lot of sadness, this deep sorrow, this deep inadequacy, this deep shame.
[00:04:53] And I remember going back so far into my childhood, like just having this long standing pattern and long standing belief of I'm not enough.
[00:05:01] And was this subtle thought of if I was enough, my dad would want to spend time with me, my dad would be in my life.
[00:05:09] But it was this subtle, I must be a problem, I must be too much. And yet not enough. At the same time, I made myself the problem because that was my worldview. But the reality is that even though I felt abandoned and that's what I made it mean, this was the wound I was experiencing on multiple levels. Because I also had a very covert, passive aggressive stepdad who I grew up with as dad, where not everything is bad, but there were also some, like, really bad moments.
[00:05:35] There were some times of deep struggle.
[00:05:38] But instead of realizing this is a them issue, this is a him issue, I made it mean it's a me issue. I'm the problem, something's wrong with me, and then we take that moving forward. So now if somebody breaks up with you, you're the problem. If you stop being friends with certain people, you're the problem. We internalize it and we have this narrative of somehow I'm always the problem.
[00:06:01] And that's a heavy load to carry. That's a heavy burden to carry.
[00:06:05] So often we put up with stuff like this too, because we don't want to be abandoned. And it also makes sense as to why. It's like I didn't have my bio dad in the picture. And then with my stepdad, didn't like him, but I also don't want him to leave. He can't leave me.
[00:06:21] I also need help. I need somebody to provide for me. And so if we look at the core of abandonment too, it is somebody will leave me. Like I will be abandoned, I will be alone, and that would equal death.
[00:06:33] Then I will die. That's what our brain makes it mean. Our brains are so primitive, they are wired for survival. And if we go back even just a hundred years, 150 years, not that many generations back, we were very communal people and we depended and relied on multiple generations of the family living under one roof, in one house or on one property. And that is how we survived. We, we needed a whole community in order to survive.
[00:07:00] Our brains are wired from this place of I can't let somebody else leave because I need them for my survival as well as I can't get kicked out because if I get kicked out of the community, if I get ostracized, that equals death too. And we can go back thousands of years. And that's how it is. That's how it worked. We needed our community, we needed our people.
[00:07:23] So understanding this community aspect of humans and how we need other people to survive even when we got to adulthood, kids definitely need their parents to survive. That's a huge one. As a child, we are so dependent on our parents. For survival. So even though we might really struggle in our relationship with them, we might feel terrible. We also put up with it in a sense because sometimes we have to. It's like this is the survival mechanism we've learned. This is how we needed to show up and to behave and to operate because we needed to stay alive. This is how we got our needs met.
[00:07:56] And a lot of times as a kid, it's like those were physical needs of food, clothing, shelter, water.
[00:08:03] We often will make it about ourselves, right? But then we take it into adulthood and then it becomes, I can't let this person go. I don't want this person to leave. Even when you know they're not the right fit, even when you know what you're going through is not healthy, it's not normal, it's not right.
[00:08:19] In addition to all other kinds of indoctrination that we've received around relationships and marriage and happily ever after and, and just all the things. But I looked up this stat and it was the Fair credit Act of 1974. And until then, until the mid-1970s, most women were not even able to have a credit card in their own name. They could not have a loan, they could not be the main person on the loan, like their husband's name, their father's name had to have the main account and they could maybe have a sub account, but they could not have access. They didn't have access to money in their own name.
[00:08:55] So of course they couldn't leave that person just because of poor behavior. And they didn't want that person to leave them either. They put up with so much because of survival, because that's what they had to do. It's what they needed. And I think this is why divorce rates are so high now. As women have more education, they have better paying jobs, they have the ability to get credit, to work, to buy a home on their own. And they don't have to put up with this shit anymore.
[00:09:23] We don't have to put up with abuse anymore. And that is why divorce rates are so high. But understanding this abandonment aspect and how it is so deeply ingrained in who we are as humans.
[00:09:37] So it's, if somebody leaves me, that equals death.
[00:09:41] There's this, I'm not going to get my needs met, so I don't get my physical needs met, I likely don't get my emotional needs met. And then it often would bring on a lot of shame because it's me, I'm the problem.
[00:09:55] So it's shame. And we don't want to feel that shame.
[00:09:58] We also don't want to feel loneliness. It brings on often other emotions.
[00:10:02] This is what impacts us, that when we grow up like this, it taints our adult relationships.
[00:10:08] So we're terrified of someone leaving us. And it will prove yet again that we're not enough. Right. It reinforces this belief that I'm not enough. And it can also lead to sabotaging behavior where we're seeking control. And so it's, I'm going to push them away, I'm going to leave them, or I'm going to make them leave. I'm going to do something that triggers them to leave before they can leave me. There's a really deep fear of abandonment, but it flips and it turns into, I'm gonna push them away or I'm gonna leave them so that they can't leave me because I can be in control. I'll feel better if I'm the one leaving versus if they leave.
[00:10:44] And both can also feel hard. It can also feel really hard to leave them, especially when they're meeting your emotional needs.
[00:10:51] But I had this similar experience. Dating after the divorce was very fascinating.
[00:10:57] It's gonna be a very interesting chapter of the book. But when I was dating one guy, he had made a comment about, like, when he leaves a relationship, he basically turns them off like a light switch, and then there's no going back. And he said that verbatim. He said, when I leave a relationship, when I decide it's over, I turn them off and there's no going back.
[00:11:20] And that statement alone triggered my fear of abandonment, that if he turned me off, if I let him go and then he turned me off, there was no coming back from that, especially because he was meeting these emotional needs.
[00:11:36] So it's like, oh, I can't let that happen.
[00:11:38] Even though there's all kinds of red flags, even though there's all kinds of reasons as to why this isn't going to work, why we're not the right fit, why I'd wake up in the middle of the night stressing and wrestling with this idea of us being together and deep knowing this isn't going to work, struggling to be able to walk away.
[00:11:56] It was little statements like this that would poke and trigger that fear that kept me holding onto him, clinging onto him.
[00:12:05] And at the same time, I had a fear of abandoning him because I knew the pain of feeling abandoned, and I didn't want him to feel that way, and I certainly didn't want him to feel that way because of me. At my expense.
[00:12:19] So I stayed longer than I should have.
[00:12:23] And so this goes back to feeling responsible for other people's emotions. And I cause pain, which is often why we are pleasing people, because we don't want to cause them discomfort, we don't want to cause them pain, we don't want to make them feel abandoned.
[00:12:38] It has this lingering impact in so much of what we do.
[00:12:44] But how we learn and how we learn to survive in these dynamics is we learn that I have to abandon myself in order to keep other people from leaving me.
[00:12:55] So I'm not gonna enforce healthy boundaries.
[00:12:58] I'm not gonna stand up for myself. I'm not gonna advocate for my needs. I'm gonna prioritize other people above myself because I need them to stay.
[00:13:07] And people pleasing is a very common topic that I talk about with clients. It's a very common pattern. It's something that I've dealt with a lot myself and continue to deal with and continue to find and look at deeper and deeper.
[00:13:21] But people pleasing is often a big way that abandonment shows up in your life. It's like how we see it, how we know that wound is There is often people pleasing because the abandonment wound has you not wanting people to leave. So you'll do whatever it takes to get people to stay, even if it's at your expense.
[00:13:40] You give up what you want, what you desire to please somebody else.
[00:13:45] And this is part of how you feel safe, part of how you feel secure.
[00:13:49] But by doing that, you abandon yourself.
[00:13:52] So it's, I abandoned me, my wants, my desires, my needs to prioritize somebody else, even when it's inconvenient, even when it's uncomfortable, because we're thinking, I need to get this person to stay.
[00:14:06] So if you have a strong people pleasing tendency, there's a strong abandonment wound.
[00:14:12] And we want to understand where this comes from. Because you may have this abandonment wound without necessarily having a narcissistic parent. But we want to understand what's driving that so that we can heal it. There's also a fear of failure to where you abandon your hopes, dreams, desires, and goals because you are afraid of failing. So that's another way that it shows up. I abandon myself because I'm afraid that I'm not going to measure up. I'm afraid of failing. And this fear and avoidance of failing is so strong because you typically throw yourself under the bus and beat yourself up whenever you make a mistake. Whenever you fail, you don't have your own back, you don't talk nicely to yourself. In these moments. And that becomes a turning point. That's how we start to shift that.
[00:14:58] We also see it with deep loneliness.
[00:15:01] So there's like an emptiness and a loneliness when you abandon yourself and when you feel abandoned by others.
[00:15:07] And the loneliness can feel really big, like this giant black hole, like this deep emptiness.
[00:15:14] We then shrink ourselves and try to please others in order to avoid the loneliness. So this is very much tied with the people pleasing.
[00:15:23] I need to please others to get them to stay so that I don't feel abandoned, so that I don't feel lonely.
[00:15:29] We make ourselves smaller, not so needy, not so emotional, not so, not too much, right?
[00:15:37] And you often have to fit into someone else's box of behavior in order to be loved, accepted, valued, and to keep them from not leaving.
[00:15:46] So it's this. Who do you need me to be? I'll be that, so that way you'll stay. Who do I need to be in order to fit in? Let me be that so that I can have friends, so that I can find a boyfriend, so that my spouse doesn't leave.
[00:16:01] And this is why you might eat or binge before you even feel lonely, as a response to fear of loneliness, right? Just the threat of loneliness is scary and very unsafe. It starts to tap on that abandonment wound and the food allows you to momentarily avoid that emotion.
[00:16:21] So this is very much tied into people pleasing.
[00:16:25] But often we will sacrifice our goals, our wants, our desires, even if it's around something like weight loss, in order to prioritize someone else, in order to please someone else, in order to make someone else happy, in order to avoid a hard conversation.
[00:16:40] And this is where we want to bring in healing. Because we have carried this wound for so long, it is not just magically going to go away on its own.
[00:16:51] I wish time healed all wounds, but it doesn't.
[00:16:54] This is where we need to actively be working on healing it so that we can create the healthy partnerships and the healthy love so that we can create a healthy relationship with ourselves.
[00:17:08] Because we have been trained and conditioned to abandon ourselves at the core. We abandon who we are.
[00:17:16] The solution, the antidote, is self love.
[00:17:20] Deep, unwavering, unconditional self love, which is going to feel so hard, right? To love and accept yourself just as you are right now, today, without having to prove, without having to earn, without having to justify.
[00:17:37] That's gonna feel really scary and unsafe. Because we have been trained in different narcissistic dynamics that we have to prove and earn and achieve.
[00:17:45] It goes against everything our survival brain has been wired to believe, to think, to do. That's how we've been trained to think that we need to earn and achieve love.
[00:17:55] This is why it can feel hard to love your body now. And all the way down the scale, right? I can't love my body now.
[00:18:03] How am I going to change if I just love myself now? That's not acceptable, right? We think that we have to beat ourselves into submission, we have to punish ourselves, and then we'll learn, and then we'll do the thing and then we'll get what we want.
[00:18:17] And it's like we imagine we have to be this tyrannical dictator drill instructor, and it never creates the results that we want, yet we keep going back to that punishment.
[00:18:31] And this is why we get stuck in these toxic cycles with food and in weight loss, because a lot of it is around punishment and I'm not good enough and I've made a mistake and now I need to pay, right? It's just this dysfunctional, toxic relationship now with food and our body and really with ourself.
[00:18:51] So learning to love yourself just as you are today, leaning and allowing yourself to want what you want, to accept and love what you like and what you enjoy, and being okay, not loving or not liking everything.
[00:19:08] Often one of the stereotypical things is that a woman will decorate a house, that the man will build the house or buy the house, and then the woman will come in and she will decorate. And that is supposed to be her zone, her skill set. I am not good at that. That is not my zone of genius. I would much rather pay somebody to do it for me. I don't even want you to teach me. Just come do it. Come make my house look amazing.
[00:19:31] That's just not my skill set. And yet I was shamed in past relationships because that wasn't my skill set, and I didn't want it to be either. I was shamed for wanting to have a business.
[00:19:42] Every time a challenge or an obstacle came up, it was often, well, you shouldn't do it. It's really not good enough. You're only breaking even. You're wasting your time.
[00:19:51] Nobody will ever pay for that. What is even coaching? You can learn everything for free on YouTube.
[00:19:57] These were the regular thoughts and opinions that I had flying at me. It was so hard to maintain my own belief and confidence.
[00:20:04] But that becomes the antidote of abandonment, is allowing myself to want what I want, to want to create a business, to want to be a life coach, to want to also be a mom, and to not want to be around my kid, 24 7, to want a break, to want to have time to pursue other goals.
[00:20:23] Giving yourself that permission can feel hard, scary. But it's not about getting other people to stay.
[00:20:30] You decide that you are going to stay. You are going to love and embrace all the parts of you that you're not going anywhere.
[00:20:38] Even when you make a mistake, even when you fail. You're not going to abandon yourself and you're not going to abandon your dreams because somebody else's choice to leave you has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them.
[00:20:53] This self love antidote means you stop abandoning yourself.
[00:20:58] You learn to love and accept yourself now, today, you learn to love and accept and learn from any mistakes or failures.
[00:21:07] And sometimes that means getting help and getting support.
[00:21:10] That means getting professional help to deal with things that are truly problematic.
[00:21:17] And it's learning to set boundaries with others, what you will do based on their behavior. It's not a threat. It's not trying to control and manipulate somebody.
[00:21:28] It is based on what they do, right? It's if you cuss at me, I'm going to hang up the phone. You don't even have to tell them that. You can just decide. The boundary is people don't get to cuss at me, people don't get to insult me, and I carry on a conversation with them.
[00:21:42] So when that happens, the action that I would take is I hang up the phone, I move myself out of the position. They can keep cussing at me if they want to, but I am no longer going to engage. So I can ask them not to do that. But ultimately I can't control what they say and how they talk to me. All I can control is what I do in response.
[00:22:02] That is a boundary. People like to throw this word around and there'll be a future podcast on this. But it's not about trying to control others. It's not fighting it. It's allowing people to show you who they are and accepting that and recognizing how this plays a role in how we operate, how it has impacted you, how this has rewired how you do life, how you do all things, not just relationships, but how you live your life. Now.
[00:22:31] The key lesson, the key takeaway, is you stop abandoning yourself by learning to love yourself, to have your own back. In the good moments and the hard moments.
[00:22:41] And we look at everything eyes wide open. We have radical love and honesty and compassion for ourselves, and it allows us to stay there, to stay present, even through the hard times, even when we're looking at our shadow sides. Even when we don't hit a goal and we choose not to give up on ourselves, we don't abandon our goals just because we don't hit it the first time around.
[00:23:06] But there also comes a point when we need professional help. We need somebody on the outside who can help us navigate. When you keep trying the same thing over and over, if you have a history of trying to do it on your own and you just try harder, try harder, try harder and it's not working because you keep doing that thing over and over again, it's time to get some help.
[00:23:28] If you would like to get help with me and you'd like to work with me to heal this abandonment wound, to heal from this narcissistic wound and all of the narcissistic wounds.
[00:23:38] If you would like some help in support around navigating food and alcohol and relationships and toxic people, this is my zone of genius and I would love to help you. The next best step is to schedule a free consultation. You can visit www.bodyyoucrave.com schedule and find a day and time to get on my calendar so that we can really explore what's going on for you, where you are now, where you've been like what has led up to this and where you want to go. And this is one of the most empowering parts of our conversation is really exploring where you want to be a year from now and finally giving yourself permission to believe in new things and to believe that you can create big, bold, amazing, beautiful things.
[00:24:28] We get one life.
[00:24:30] Let's do it. Well, all right y' all. I hope you have a fabulous day. I will be back tomorrow with the next installment. Here's to creating the life and body you crave.
[00:24:47] If this episode resonated with you, it's time to break free from destructive cycles around food, alcohol and toxic relationships. Your next step Book your free Break the Cycle call where you'll finally see why your binge eating and relationship patterns are so deeply connected and how to break free from both for good.
[00:25:07] You'll walk away with fierce clarity and a game plan to step into a life full of fun, adventure and self love. Grab your spot now at www.bodyyoucrave.com BT See it's time to break the cycle. I'll show you how.
