Are you insecure in relationships? Do you anticipate rejection and overreact?

Would you say you’re pessimistic about love, but, at the same time, you have a history of intense relationships that left you deeply hurt when they ended?

Would you say that you doubt you’ll ever find someone to love you, but at the same time you keep wishing it would happen? You may keep longing for it, eventhough you don’t forget how much you’ve been hurt in the past.

It’s a paradox.

If you feel a lot of intensity in your love relationships, and overwhelming pain and deep loss when they end, you may have the abandonment schema. If so, you have likely felt this kind of emotional intensity in close relationships all your life. You may have had friends or family remark on how “sensitive” you are, which didn’t feel fair or kind. In fact, there may be some fairly obvious reasons you developed this feeling of high-stakes intensity in close relationships. The trouble, though, is that this intensity can affect your outlook on love in a way that sabotages your good-faith efforts to find it. If you’re in a relationship, your worry and insecurity can drive people away. This unwitting self-sabotage can lead to depression and anxiety, isolation, and avoidance. But there are ways to overcome the trap.

Origins of Abandonment Schema

We are naturally drawn to finding a single, clear explanation for our pain. Characters from the Marvel Comics Universe all have a trauma in their origin stories that explains who they are. But, for real people, it’s not always that simple. The abandonment schema can partially come out of the temperament we’re born with, or it can come from intense periods of childhood neglect and breaks in secure attachment. It’s usually a combination of both. Often, abandonment schema can come out of periods of parental neglect, distraction, or separation during a preverbal period in your childhood, an experience during your first couple of years.

Being alone and feeling abandoned as a child is one of the most painful experiences a human being can go through. You have a deep need for others to care for you, and a biological level of dependence in order to survive. To feel that you’ve lost your caregiver is terrifying and like being dropped in a well of loss. This experience can come from obvious parental neglect, but also from circumstances outside of anyone’s control, such as a period of parental illness, depression, or separation.

6 Signs of Abandonment Schema

1. You don’t believe you’ll find love again, but if an opportunity comes up, you act desperate.

2. You feel you don’t have anyone in your life who cares for you.

3. When people leave, you are crushed and inconsolable.

4. You get preoccupied with the worry that people are going to leave you and look for signs in small behaviors and interactions.

5. You get anxious and overthink when you don’t hear from someone, so things like texting can drive you nuts.

6. When you don’t hear from someone, you react with surprising anger or resentment.

How to Reduce the Pain and Self-Sabotage

Understand your past. I say this about coping with every schema. While there may not be an obvious experience of abandonment in your childhood, reflection may show how the schema has played a role throughout your life. Understanding helps get distance from it and better self-awareness.

Note your triggers. Is it when someone is, in your opinion, a bad texter? When you don’t hear from someone? When it feels like someone isn’t paying attention? When you’re feeling cynical or pessimistic about love?

Look for signs in your behavior. Notice when you feel anger, resentment, worry, or panic, and what you do when you have these feelings.

Work on you. For people coping with abandonment schema, it can be hard to have faith that the world will give you what you need. But starting at an early age, you may have had a hard time developing a self-esteem and self-care outlook and habits. By improving your ability to attend to your own emotional needs, you can overcome the intense insecurity you feel in relationships.

Use these tools daily. Use a journal every day to track your moods and needs and to give yourself a chance to express your feelings. But, you need to do more than vent. The challenge is to try to respond to your own needs in the voice of someone who cares. Engage in self-talk as you journal. Use flashcards: Put together a note you can write to yourself, to remind you of this schema and how you can care for yourself to get through these feelings. It might look like this: “You are going through your schema right now. Focus on being your own best friend right now. It’s not as scary as you think, I’m right here with you.” Then, when you’re triggered, you can read this note to yourself. It takes practice, but works.

Consider therapy. This is a really challenging schema, and it can leave you coping with a lot of pain. It can be transformative to work through these feelings with a therapist to help you bear the burden.

Don’t be hard on yourself. It’s OK to be sensitive and have intense feelings. Anyone who had your life experience would probably have the same reactions. You are just working on overcoming experiences that left you with some special emotional needs. You definitely deserve love and healthy relationships.

Finally, I want you to keep in mind that, with such intense feelings, it makes sense that you may feel defeated and overwhelmed. When we are overcoming challenges, it’s healthy to feel overwhelmed and helpless sometimes. You don’t have to descend into pessimism and bitterness. Let those reactions come and go like waves, and bring yourself back to being the healthy caring adult you can be for the inner child who feels scared. It really is possible.