Managing Feelings of Abandonment – Understanding the echoes of early loss and learning to feel safe again.

July 8, 2025

“The nervous system remembers what it was like to be separated—even if the mind can’t explain it.”

There are few feelings that run as deep—or hit as hard—as abandonment.

It doesn’t always look like you’d expect.
It isn’t always loud or obvious.
It can show up as distance in our relationships, the inability to ask for help, the instinct to pull away when things get too close—or the aching fear that we’ll be left again, no matter how much someone promises they won’t.

For many adoptees, abandonment isn’t just a wound we carry.
It’s the atmosphere we grew up breathing, even if no one ever said the word out loud.

We felt it in the unspoken questions:

Why did they give me up?
Why didn’t they come back?
What was so wrong with me that they couldn’t stay?

And even if we’ve intellectually “understood” our adoption story, the body holds on to things the brain can’t always explain.
The nervous system remembers what it was like to be separated.
To be helpless.
To be left.
And that imprint can follow us—quietly but persistently—into adulthood.

How Abandonment Feels in Real Life

You might notice it in your relationships.
In the way you brace for the moment someone changes their mind about you.
In how quickly you shut down when conflict arises.
Or in the constant loop of trying to prove your worth—just to feel safe enough to stay.

Maybe you’ve found yourself thinking:

If I don’t make them happy, they’ll leave.
If I speak up, I’ll lose them.
If I need too much, I’ll be a burden.
If I get too attached, it will hurt more when it ends.

And sometimes, we don’t even recognize it as abandonment.
We just feel exhausted. On edge. Like we’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
We tell ourselves we’re “too sensitive,” or that we just need to “get over it.”
But what we’re really feeling is the echo of a wound that hasn’t had a safe place to heal.

It’s Not Just in Your Head—It’s in Your Body

One of the most powerful things I’ve learned on this journey is that abandonment isn’t just emotional—it’s physiological.

Your nervous system may be stuck in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn because it learned early on that connection isn’t safe… or that it’s not dependable.
You might intellectually know someone loves you—but your body still tightens when they walk away.
You might be safe now—but your heart still flinches at anything that feels like distance or silence.

The truth is: your body is trying to protect you.
It’s not trying to sabotage your relationships or your peace.
It’s trying to prevent you from being hurt again the way you were hurt the first time.

That doesn’t mean you’re broken.
It means your body did exactly what it was designed to do—and now, with love and support, it can begin to unwind those patterns.

You Don’t Have to Carry This Alone

If you feel like you’re “too much”…
If you’re afraid to need anyone at all…
If you’ve built walls around your heart just to function…
I want you to know: I see you.

You are not weak. You are not failing. You are not alone.

You’re someone who has carried a very real wound in silence for a very long time.
And it makes complete sense that some days it still hurts. That some moments still feel shaky.
That even after all the work you’ve done… there are layers you’re just now discovering.

And that doesn’t mean you’re going backward.
It means you’re healing deeper.

What Healing Can Look Like

Healing from abandonment doesn’t mean you’ll never feel triggered again.
It doesn’t mean you’ll suddenly feel “secure” all the time.
It means you’ll start to recognize the patterns.
You’ll begin to notice when that old fear is trying to take the lead.

And you’ll learn how to stay—with yourself, and with others.

Healing looks like:

Learning to soothe your nervous system when it’s activated
Naming what you need in relationships, even when it feels scary
Giving yourself grace when old wounds flare up
Finding safe spaces where you don’t have to explain your pain

Abandonment may be part of your story—but it doesn’t have to define you.
You are worthy of connection, even when it feels hard.
You are worthy of gentleness, even when you’re struggling.
And you are allowed to take up space, to ask for help, and to be held with love—not because you’ve earned it, but because you are human.

If no one has told you this lately:
You’re not too much.
You’re not too late.
You’re not alone

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Courage, Love & Blessings, Always!

Amanda Medina
Coach | Adoptee | Founder of This Adoptee Life™

Amanda Medina

I was adopted from Medellin, Colombia to Sweden in 1985. I was about a year and a half when I started my life as an adoptee, and it would take 32 years until I was ready to face what that means, what that has always meant, and what that will always mean.