15 Shocking Signs Of Abandonment Issues In Adults

Author: Renée Shen

You are probably here because you want to assess whether you have abandonment issues. 

Perhaps your partner or friends have mentioned the idea of abandonment issues in passing, or maybe you read something somewhere about fear of abandonment and you felt like you could relate well. 

First things first:

If you fear that you may have abandonment issues, remember that you’re here to learn and heal. You won’t be the first person to have abandonment issues, and you certainly won’t be the last.

In other words: you’re in good company!

In this article, we’ll give you all the proven definitive signs of abandonment issues, and we’ll also help you give meaning to the signs you’re probably experiencing right now. 

Signs of abandonment issues in adults are often overlooked and brushed under the carpet. This is because abandonment issues in adults are not categorized as a mental health problem or a standalone mental condition by medical practitioners. 

But they’re also brushed under the carpet because most adults have become set in their ways, and our coping mechanisms are so ingrained by adulthood that it’s hard for anyone to face the reality that they may have some deep-seated fear of abandonment and trauma to face. 

CLICK HERE to LEARN the One Specific Emotional Trigger Within Every Masculine Man That Inspires Him to Want to Take Care of You, Worship You and Deeply Commit to You.

So What Are Abandonment Issues Then?

Abandonment issues in adults are a group of behavioral patterns that are often associated with fear of loss. 

Most of the time, it stems from a traumatic childhood experience that’s unknowingly brought forth during adulthood. 

To help yourself understand your own abandonment issues, it’s important to identify which of the signs of abandonment issues in adults you are displaying (and how often you do it). 

Below are signs of abandonment issues, and if you discover that you have 3-7 of these signs, then it’s time to rethink and prioritize your emotional and mental health. 

Now is always a good time to become a better person for yourself and others. 

There Are 7 Common Signs That A Woman is Perceived as Low Value to All Men. Do You Know What They Are & How to Avoid Them Like the Plague?

Signs of Abandonment Issues in Adults - Let’s Discuss Them: 

#1: You’re Prone to Toxic Relationships

Have you had plenty of toxic relationships in the past?

Count your relationships with friends and family too, not just romantic ones. If so, put a score on your abandonment issues card because this is a common sign of abandonment issues in adults. 

So what does this look like?

If you tend to form relationships that are unhealthy and negative, or you are a subject of physical, mental, emotional and even verbal abuse most of the time, you may have abandonment issues. 

So why is this?

It’s because people who grew up with responsive, sensitive and loving parents usually don’t fear abandonment - and if they do, the fear is well calibrated. 

In other words, they fear it only when necessary. It’s not an actual chronic problem that stems from constant low level anxiety and stress.

Also, adults who have a secure attachment style - people who rarely (if ever) fear abandonment, are very aware of toxicity. 

They also don’t have a reason to put up with it, because their love bucket and attention bucket were well filled from a young age.

Simply put: 

They don’t need any approval or security from anyone. 

Therefore, they are not only self contained people - they are also very emotionally mature, have plenty of self esteem, and are emotionally calibrated in every relationship they have.

They don’t worry about being abandoned unless it’s obviously necessary, and they are usually able to exert their boundaries.

Those of us who are less fortunate, who were partially or fully neglected in the emotional needs department, are much more needy of reassurance, approval and security.

Because deep down, we were given the message by our caregivers that we are not worthy of their full attention or devotion.

Therefore, we developed the signs of abandonment issues in order to cope and make the best of an unfortunate situation.

If this is you, it’s time to do something about this my friend. Check these 10 Seemingly Harmless Signs Of A Toxic Relationship from The Feminine Woman.

Now, read on and tick off any more signs on your abandonment issues score card.

#2: Manifestation of Chronic Insecurity

To be honest, we are all insecure about something at some point. 

But if you find that your insecurities are almost constantly triggered, that’s a different story. Especially if it’s layered with other signs of abandonment issues. 

Your insecurities are brought about by your childhood trauma where you must have felt alone, scared and left behind. 

These feelings made you think you are not worthy enough to warrant caring attention from your parents first and foremost, and secondarily, from your family and friends. 

What are the signs of chronic insecurity?

  • Always worrying about how people think of you
  • Being oversensitive to any small sign of rejection (even though the other person may just be tired, have their own issues, or simply just overwhelmed)
  • Not being able to go anywhere at all (not even the supermarket or corner store) without making sure you have a perfect car, perfect outfit and perfect makeup
  • Always having to put others down
  • You find yourself thinking “she, he or they must think I’m uncool, ugly, stupid…and they’re definitely right” a lot of the time
  • You cannot be honest about your deepest feelings in an intimate relationship - instead you push them too far away
  • You secretly feel hatred towards yourself a lot (this reflects rejection and emotional abandonment from your parents)
  • You struggle with feelings of jealousy a lot

#3: Getting Too Close to Someone too Quickly and Too Easily

This includes getting close to a new friend or a potential romantic partner. 

You can call this being emotionally un-calibrated, jumping the gun, or just approval seeking. Whatever you call it, it’s just an issue of early attachment.

Recommended: Why Do I Get Attached So Easily? 6 Exact Reasons & How To Stop.

Getting attached early is a normal thing for females, however. We call it the ‘feminine bias for early attachment’.

But some people with abandonment issues take this bias to the extreme, because they don’t only have the feminine bias for early attachment, they also have anxiety, or anxious attachment style.

This can make you try desperately to cling onto people before it’s appropriate and before they feel ready.

As a result, friends and romantic partners may run away from you because you scare them with your desire to take so much value so quickly.

If you would like to manage anxious attachment style, have a read of this article:  How To Overcome Anxious Preoccupied Attachment: 7 Proven Steps.

Also, if you find yourself getting attached in romantic relationships too quickly, I recommend you take our ‘High Value Attachment’ course. The promise of this course is to help you to use your innate feminine bias for early attachment to create deeper attraction with men and inspire a deeper commitment from him without you looking needy and low value.  

#4: Tendency to Become a Loner (Isolate)

As a child you may have experienced being ignored, left behind or abandoned, you’re scared to trust people because you don’t want to feel abandoned again. 

You sometimes reject friendship as well as partners when they get too close or when you feel something special towards them because you have this inner voice telling you that you’ll lose them too. 

This manifests as you developing behaviors that push people away.

These behaviors communicate to others that you don’t value people around you as a subconscious reaction to protect yourself from being abandoned again. 

If this is you, then this is a clear sign of abandonment issues in adults. It’s time to deal with it and move forward. 

#5: You’re A People Pleaser Most of The Time

Being a people pleaser, you almost always say YES to everything and everyone. 

MORE: Pleaser Women Always Lose Out: The Difference Between Pleasing & Giving.

Oftentimes, people pleasers forget to take care of themselves or notice their own feelings, because they care and think too much of others.

But why is this one of the signs of abandonment issues in adults?

Because you are afraid that if you put a foot wrong, or if you have your own boundaries, then you will be abandoned. 

Also because when you have abandonment issues, your nervous system is already chronically under the stress of anxiety. 

This anxiety leads you to act in ways that ensure your own survival and to help you shield yourself from the pain and shame of not being accepted.

attachment style quiz

#6: You Overreact to Stressful Situations

There’s no better revealer of abandonment issues than stress.

When triggered, adults with abandonment issues will react negatively. Meaning, they will tend to get even more stressed, and their behavior creates more separation between themselves and their loved ones, because the added life stressors end up over taxing an already stressed out nervous system. 

This ends up making a person with abandonment issues become even more fearful, making them react in flight or fight mode, which then causes rifts and chaos in the relationship. 

Triggers for overreaction to stress could include:

  • Criticism
  • Being left behind or excluded
  • Feeling of being the talk of the town
  • Break ups 
  • Being corrected or fired at work 

These could initiate heightened fear and anger based reactions from you. 

This heightened response could also be due to all these bottled up emotions from past betrayal and abandonment that suddenly got triggered and went kaboom because of these added new stressful triggers. 

#7: Reluctance to Commit to an Exclusive Relationship

By now you know that people with abandonment issues have a hard time trusting others, so they too are reluctant to commit to an exclusive relationship because they don’t believe in the strength of relationships and connection, and don’t want to get hurt again.

Ironically, the stronger the love toward their partner, the stronger the desire to avoid committing because it will hurt them even more if the partner leaves, right? 

If this is so you, then it’s time to notice your deeper feelings and let them surface so that you can process them.

Not only that, but you may also want to investigate your specific attachment style in relationships. Specifically, it's important to pinpoint whether you have an avoidant attachment style.

Because if you do, you're going to have a hard time processing feelings - if you are aware of your feelings at all!

But regardless, your feelings are going to be crucial to your progress. Because when you are able to process them, it will reveal the deeper issues that need to be grieved.

When you can grieve, you can then be more receptive to real love. 

So, give your potential relationship a chance. It could be the best relationship you’ll ever have and you might be giving up on it. 

QUIZ TIME: What is my core attachment style? CLICK HERE to find out with our specially crafted women-specific 10 Question Quiz!

(Why is this important? It is because your core attachment style largely dictates and influences what happens in your relationship. Thus it’s imperative you understand your core attachment style!) 

#8: Trust Issues

And yet again, trust is an issue that keeps on popping up as one of the sure signs of abandonment issues in adults. 

These trust issues surface in friendships, work relationships, and romantic ones. 

How do these trust issues surface?

Usually they manifest as you pulling away from intimacy and being too cynical of people around you to have meaningful relationships with them.

    #9: You Need Constant Reassurance That You’re Loved and Needed

    If you are one to have this incessant need to be validated by your partner or peers, then it is one of the signs of abandonment issues in adults that you should reflect on. 

    Perhaps you’re always seeking approval whether it be when you’re at work or in your personal life. 

    People with abandonment issues generally rely on approval because it’s the next best thing when you weren’t given real love.

    Parents of children with abandonment issues often don’t give their children love and attuned responsiveness, but rather, they make their children conform to what they want in order to be considered worthy in the house or family.

    Perhaps your parents didn’t really care for you and love you deeply, and instead they wanted you around as a tool to meet their needs.

    When this happens, children learn to chronically seek approval just to stay safe, in their parents good books and even to survive.

    #10: You Self Sabotage Your Important Relationships

    If you have abandonment issues, then when it comes to your relationships, you likely tend to find faults in your partner, nitpick pet peeves, or doubt your partner and make assumptions about your partner’s thoughts and actions. 

    These are behaviors that sabotage your relationship and you unconsciously do it over and over again.

    Why?

    Because you either learned these behaviors from a parent who had abandonment issues themselves, or…

    You unconsciously feel unworthy of intimacy, connection and loyalty, so you preemptively get rid of the person all by yourself.

    Doesn’t sound very smart, does it?

    Well, this is an unfortunate consequence of what your caregivers let you believe:

    That you’re not worthy of attention and love. 

    It’s hard to change this internal script once your parents allow you to adopt it for yourself. 

    Unfortunately, as humans, once we have the underlying belief that we’re not truly worthy of attention and belonging, then we find it harder to manifest love and belonging in our lives, because our behaviors match our unconscious beliefs about ourselves. 

    #11: You Have Low Self Esteem

    In order to understand low self esteem, first it’s important to understand how and why humans come to have high self esteem.

    So, how do humans gain high self esteem?

    Well, starting in childhood, we gain self esteem through our parents reliably responding to our needs for attention, care and love.

    When we don’t get that from our parents - or we get criticized and punished for asking for it, we develop attachment issues, and we also learn very quickly that we should doubt our worth and even feel bad about our own existence. 

    At least that’s the meaning we gain through being ignored or punished for having normal needs like every baby and small child.

    Then when we move to adulthood, low self esteem that we developed during childhood gets cemented into our psychology.

    We can definitely change that - as adults we can do anything we wish if we make the changes necessary to accomplish that goal.

    But a lot of people carry that low self esteem with them for the rest of their lives.

    You may doubt that your early childhood could cause you to carry low self esteem for the reminder of your life, but consider this:

    Human babies cannot survive without attention and love. It is through connection and bonding that we learn that the world is safe and we can reach out to connect - with ourselves and with others.

    But many of us learn that our needs will not be listened to, and so we are left to feel sadness, fear, and abandonment alone.

    If we’re lucky, we don’t just survive through our mom and dad’s love, we thrive through their round the clock attunement, sensitivity and care.

    Anything less than full responsiveness, and we have to develop pathological ways to survive.

    Low self esteem develops as a response to emotional abandonment and neglect. With this low self esteem, we end up having to caress and nurture ourselves internally - or as we grow older, it actually serves to make other people give us more attention and love (if they care, that is).

    attachment style quiz

    #12: You’re Prone to Jealousy

    Intense and frequent jealousy even when it’s not warranted is also one of the signs of anxious attachment - or preoccupied attachment style.

    You’re always thinking about your partner cheating on you. There’s this nagging voice inside of you that tells you that you can’t possibly be enough for your partner, and that eats away at your core, making you act out and lash out at people around you. 

    Feeling too much jealousy is one of the signs of abandonment issues because when you’re always grappling with feelings of jealousy, deep down inside you’re actually worried that you’re going to be abandoned, because that’s all you really know.

    Having been abandoned in your childhood, you don’t trust people nor relationships - in fact, you trust that no matter what, you will never be fully worthy of loyalty, and nor will any relationship you have ever be free of betrayal.

    Let me get one thing straight:

    Apprehension is a normal part of human relationships! Even those people who are self confident and who have a secure attachment style will feel unsure and apprehensive at times.

    However, those of us with abandonment issues live in this emotion of apprehension and fear - because we have no positive models of relationships to go by, and because we always doubt our worth.

    #13: Separation Causes You Enormous Anxiety

    Being away from your partner (regardless of length) causes you to be anxious and it’s making you do and think of crazy things. 

    You can’t bear not being near your partner and not knowing every last detail about what they’re doing, what they’re feeling and who they’re talking to. 

    You’re worried about what’s going to happen and your negative train of thoughts will start upsetting your normal daily routine.

    MORE: 3 Powerful Ways To Self Soothe Anxious Attachment.

    #14: You Disproportionately Blame Yourself For Break Ups Or Relationship Problems

    Why self blame?

    This relates back to low self esteem, but basically you blame yourself because you already doubt your worth so deeply, and because your internal script says:

    “You are not worthy of long lasting love (or love in general).”

    You also blame yourself because:

    • You’re emotionally uncalibrated due to your emotional growth having been stunted in your early years (due to emotional or physical abandonment of course)
    • You live in fear 
    • You are deeply anxious and think everything is about you
    • You are trying to connect with yourself - yes, you can connect with yourself by blaming yourself because it induces a nurturing response from others and also from yourself!

    Having relationship problems or breaking up is never easy on anyone but blaming yourself for everything that happened is not normal at all.  

    This also applies to falling out with friends, and you take all the blame for it. 

    #15: You Always End Up Pushing People Away

    You’ve been hurt in the past and you don’t want to feel the pain again, so you push away everyone that’s getting close to you.

    You sabotage relationships that are becoming of value to you because the more you care for them, the more hurt you’ll feel if something goes wrong. 

    Related: Why Do I Push People Away? & 7 Signs You Push People Away.

    Sadly, this habit often ends in you not wanting people around you - which is the exact opposite of what adults with abandonment issues actually need.

    What To Do If You Have Abandonment Issues?

    If you find yourself having a few of the signs I mentioned above, you might want to take these 4 steps:

    Step #1: Start Some Deep Emotional Processing

    In other words, reach back into your past - be very honest about how you were treated, and grieve that hurt and trauma.

    Most children who have abandonment issues due to parental neglect will block of the reality of what has happened to them.

    This is because to acknowledge that your parents didn’t love you enough to give you the attention and love you deserved is a harsh reality that no human being wants to face.

    But look - perhaps it wasn’t that they didn’t love you enough, perhaps it was because they themselves had unprocessed emotional trauma, or perhaps the didn’t have the right education to give you the full nurturing that you needed as a baby.

    It could also be the fact that your parents were so emotionally, financially or physically strained in their life that they couldn’t prioritize your needs.

    Step #2: Talk About it with a Trusted Friend, Family Member or a Professional.

    To lessen your abandonment issues and free up your emotional resources to have better relationships, you actually have to begin with bonding with another human and talking about it with another human - not just with yourself, although processing it yourself definitely helps.

    Fear of abandonment is never an easy feeling to have, but know that you are not alone.

    There are people in this world with the same fears and trauma. There are people that can help you too. 

    Step #3: Nurture a New Identity with High Value Mindsets.

    What does this mean? It means to change your internal script from “I am not worthy of love and loyalty” to:

    “I am worthy and valuable. By simply existing, I am eternally worthy, loveable and I have plenty of value to give.”

    Make it a daily exercise to tell yourself this.

    If you want to do this right and take your healing to the next level, I recommend you take our course on High Value Mindsets. 

    The promise of this program is to give you the ability to “trade in” your anxiety and insecurities for self esteem, self worth and intrinsic confidence, so that no one will ever take you for granted & high value men will recognise you as an indispensable “keeper”.

    Step #4: Learn To Add Value To Others To Gain Self Esteem.

    Let’s be honest here: self esteem doesn’t grow just through mantras or positive affirmations, although they can help.

    Real self esteem gets cemented within your physiology when you get the feedback from others and from the world that you are worthy!

    And to get this positive feedback, one thing you need to do is get very good at knowing what the people you love perceive value in, and seek to offer them that value.

    Let me be clear:

    This is not about pleasing people or seeking their approval. I don’t want you to do this with people who are toxic or who don’t care about you.

    I want you to do it with the people whom you already have some level of trust in, the people whom you already know care about you.

    To help you learn what value is, here are 6 Traits Of A High Value Woman (& 3 Traits You Must AVOID).


    Renee Shen


    Renée Shen

    Author & Editor For National Council for Research on Women. Founder of the popular women's dating & relationship advice website, The Feminine Woman.


    P.S. I hope you've enjoyed this article. Here are some other articles that I think you'd really like too...

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