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The Abandonment Recovery Workbook

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Highlights

EXTERNALIZING UNCOMFORTABLE FEELINGS ONTO YOUR JOB — location: 4065 ^ref-43967

I’d falsely attributed my chronic heartache onto the store, and I realized it too late.” — location: 4070 ^ref-35212

my emotional shutdown was about me— — location: 4080 ^ref-18695

a lot of it was coming from my anxiety— — location: 4089 ^ref-60363

I don’t notice the aches and pains as much when I’m visiting my daughter and surrounded by my grandchildren. There I’m brimming with get-up-and-go.” — location: 4090 ^ref-30099

most of us don’t know what to do with our uncomfortable feelings. — location: 4093 ^ref-34000

either internalize them (blame them on ourselves) or externalize them (project them onto someone or something else). — location: 4094 ^ref-2352

how you handle your feelings that should determine whether to give yourself esteem or not. — location: 4096 ^ref-20978

During abandonment, both men and women feel ashamed of not being able to control the intensity of their feelings. — location: 4099 ^ref-47249

Believing that you should be able to control negative emotion is one of the reasons people suffering with clinical depression feel stigmatized. — location: 4102 ^ref-52695

they falsely attribute feelings of weakness and powerlessness onto the self, adding a layer of shame to their depression. — location: 4104 ^ref-42566

Depressed people are demonstrating Herculean strength in coping with the emotional burden of their symptoms. — location: 4105 ^ref-8273

how do they cope though? I don't cope well. If esteem should be based on how I handle my emotions and I don't handle them well, then how am I to feel about myself?

link between grief and depression — location: 4107 ^ref-37024

“Depression is a response to past loss, and anxiety is a response to future loss.” — location: 4108 ^ref-36252

When you make good choices and take actions to change your personal life for the better, your uncomfortable feelings may dissipate and even transform into positive feelings. — location: 4115 ^ref-20434

Take a breath and face your reality. Accept your life as it is in the moment—all in one gulp. Belong to the reality of now.” — location: 4130 ^ref-29841

“It hurts,” — location: 4135 ^ref-58723

“Pain is when the future and the past overlap and squeeze out the present. — location: 4136 ^ref-35310

If achievement marks the end of a goal, then you need to constantly create new goals. — location: 4181 ^ref-46797

Life can feel flat and self-esteem can droop unless you find a new mountain to climb. — location: 4181 ^ref-58044

it’s the process of getting there that keeps good feelings flowing toward self. — location: 4183 ^ref-40743

When you’re actively working on things, you earn the right to give yourself credit, not for the end product of your efforts but for the efforts themselves. — location: 4184 ^ref-54092

insecurity is an aphrodisiac. — location: 4447 ^ref-41754

They seek romantic love because they know how effectively it medicates them from loneliness, depression, and their chronic concerns. — location: 4531 ^ref-59799

New romance lifts the spirits. — location: 4532 ^ref-42841

chronic malaise associated with heartache, loneliness, and feeling not so good about yourself. — location: 4532 ^ref-57125

Marriage can place walls around your love wounds—walls restricting you from gaining access to the outside world of possibilities. — location: 4597 ^ref-30392

rule out all other possible causes for your symptoms. — location: 4602 ^ref-22580

I’m chasing after a romantic ideal? — location: 4608 ^ref-874

Have l lost access (due to depression, perhaps) to the creative process of love? — location: 4613 ^ref-49934

Am I displacing my dissatisfactions with life onto my partner? — location: 4615 ^ref-26986

The greatest boon to sticking to an exercise regimen is self-discipline. — location: 4674 ^ref-2525

self-discipline is also a critical component in the ability to love. — location: 4675 ^ref-64811

one of the biggest stumbling blocks to loving yourself or anyone else is the difficulty in delaying gratification. — location: 4675 ^ref-22751

internalization, when your self-esteem is at an all-time low and your glucocorticoids at an all-time high, — location: 4686 ^ref-60196

you feel depleted and defeated and tend to let your more challenging life projects fall to the wayside. — location: 4687 ^ref-58079

you succumb to the urgencies rising from your love wounds. You forgo your ultimate goals for activities that bring instantaneous feel-good relief. — location: 4688 ^ref-49224

build your self-esteem by engaging in constructive activities. — location: 4690 ^ref-2222

stuck in the Internalizing stage and get mired in feelings of low self-worth, especially if you’ve been through rejections and heartbreaks in the past. — location: 4697 ^ref-30638

internalizing feelings of self-doubt, you come to believe you’re not entitled to what you really want. — location: 4698 ^ref-56774

Emotional hunger from past wounds urges you to seek insubstantial rewards; the equivalent of candy, — location: 4698 ^ref-54931

pleasures your mouth but leaves you malnourished — location: 4699 ^ref-5589

and stimulates greater hunger later on. — location: 4699 ^ref-41666

you don’t feel strong enough about yourself to sustain the ongoing effort it takes to achieve higher-reaching goals. — location: 4700 ^ref-42021

struggling to get out of dead-end careers and other bad habits.” — location: 4705 ^ref-1769

Self-indulgence — location: 4708 ^ref-34042

wallowing in your misery. — location: 4708 ^ref-33450

Procrastination—Abandonment Survivors’ Number One Downfall — location: 4729 ^ref-1175

they’ve internalized negative messages of rejection. — location: 4736 ^ref-10687

sense of entitlement has been breached. — location: 4736 ^ref-18300

they forgo the opportunity to feel good about themselves and their achievements. — location: 4736 ^ref-39023

Nothing erodes self-respect more than feeling you can’t help yourself from doing what you know isn’t good for you. — location: 4748 ^ref-36052

Giving in to your impulses at the expense of achieving your goals brings on overwhelming feelings of fear, shame, embarrassment, and guilt. — location: 4753 ^ref-27277

Depreciating yourself in this manner intensifies your desire to medicate the anxiety with more immediate gratifications, — location: 4754 ^ref-30196

need for quick fixes creates a downward spiral leading to self-contempt. — location: 4755 ^ref-1496

ways of delaying the need for self-destructive gratifications. — location: 4763 ^ref-63375

By doing something good for yourself, you create the basis on which to commend yourself. — location: 4764 ^ref-8880

immediate gratification is the enemy of self-love, its best friend is self-control. — location: 4768 ^ref-44722

self-discipline and love. — location: 4795 ^ref-16475

achieving love involves following through with loving actions on a consistent basis. — location: 4796 ^ref-7472

carry out caring actions toward my partner. — location: 4798 ^ref-46927

not only when I feel the romantic desire for doing so but also just because I know it is the right thing to do. — location: 4815 ^ref-16891

Be patient with yourself; make allowances for the fact that insecurity is no longer serving as your aphrodisiac, — location: 4857 ^ref-11510

Wrapping our arms around ourselves is a way of gathering all that we’ve learned together with who we are and holding it to heart, embracing our self-wisdom. — location: 6054 ^ref-29214

predicates our success on a false solution, — location: 6060 ^ref-42805

attempt to overcompensate for a deficiency we perceive in ourselves. — location: 6063 ^ref-34525

It only drives insecurity in deeper. — location: 6064 ^ref-42402

convinced they can never be perfect enough to stave off the rejection or criticism they believe is their due. — location: 6064 ^ref-43082

difficult to appreciate the true nature of achievement. — location: 6068 ^ref-49355

Take responsibility for your present life, — location: 6072 ^ref-1336

you are ready now — location: 6077 ^ref-20068

Vow to keep doing your best. When you slip, correct yourself and move forward. — location: 6081 ^ref-5319

They don’t belabor their mistakes, they perform corrections. — location: 6089 ^ref-23408

The Correction — location: 6090 ^ref-64414

Correction is a valuable tool for dealing with little slipups as well as major relapses in your behavior. — location: 6095 ^ref-28723

When they catch themselves falling back into old patterns, perform Corrections. — location: 6098 ^ref-4324

directly after being startled, latahs tend to obey commands, even absurd ones. — location: 6134 ^ref-61900

being frightened can make you more susceptible to falling under someone’s domination. — location: 6140 ^ref-38603

You surrender control over your own actions. — location: 6141 ^ref-56071

people who dangle the possibility of love in their faces but convey a discouraging message: “You’re not quite what I’m looking for.” — location: 6145 ^ref-13441

perfect laboratory conditions for traumatic bonding. — location: 6146 ^ref-60214

anxiety of almost being rescued from loneliness serves to reinforce, rather than weaken, your dependence on that person. — location: 6147 ^ref-17404

We are all capable of becoming traumatically bonded under the right conditions, especially if the person you’ve grown attached to begins to arouse your deep-set fears about being left. — location: 6153 ^ref-36075

She wasn’t even apologetic, — location: 6163 ^ref-49876

Until you get a handle on what is driving you to stay connected, fear reinforces your need to hang on emotionally tighter than ever. — location: 6171 ^ref-43948

how did it feel to lose yourself in someone else’s power? — location: 6209 ^ref-41901

What earlier events made you susceptible to losing yourself in a relationship? — location: 6213 ^ref-28850

Performing a Correction is an act of acknowledgment. — location: 6221 ^ref-53374

Every day I figured out something I wanted that was independent of what Jay wanted. — location: 6229 ^ref-57008

Correction for Carrying a Torch — location: 6234 ^ref-21738

Whenever I caught myself thinking about Lisa, I’d get into the moment, center in, take stock of my reality, and remind myself that Lisa was not right for me, that she was not part of my current life. — location: 6238 ^ref-28518

I had to face this simple fact not once, but hundreds of times, especially when I was with Beth, because I kept slipping back. — location: 6240 ^ref-14104

“I’m finally able to focus my energy on the moment and attend to what’s happening now, rather than letting my mind meander to Lisa. She is part of my past. — location: 6241 ^ref-51970

dismiss this twang as an addiction to a bad substance. I remind myself that the feeling will pass. I don’t let it confuse me or interfere with my feelings about Beth.” — location: 6243 ^ref-43751

her,’ and ‘She’s ambivalent about me, too,’ and ‘Maybe she and I aren’t right for each other after all.’ This made it impossible for me to let go and also made me want to prove to him that I could correct the problems between us, — location: 6248 ^ref-40959

“I was making it possible for him to subsist in a new relationship where he felt insecure. — location: 6255 ^ref-7345

I could only end the agony of waiting by facing the fact that he wasn’t in my life now. — location: 6259 ^ref-45223

The only thing that counted was that right now he wasn’t there. Facing this allowed me to start living now.” — location: 6260 ^ref-4072

“I find when I’m really struggling, it means I’m trying to be powerful over something I have no power over. — location: 6262 ^ref-63258

I could abstain from my behavior. So I stopped going by her house, stopped calling her answering machine, and stopped isolating from other people. To take these steps I had to be willing to go back out and connect with people and get help.” — location: 6266 ^ref-54709

When I catch myself in the act of being overbearing, I step back and say, ‘Barbara, I hear myself. I hear what you’ve been trying to tell me.’ — location: 6277 ^ref-32766

resolving unfinished business from a relationship gone sour. — location: 6281 ^ref-55088

especially when it came to making the big decisions. — location: 6292 ^ref-63775

I don’t know where it’s leading but it feels good to be healing some of our old wounds.” — location: 6296 ^ref-40355

a lethal defect, something that would have made it impossible for the baby to survive anyway. — location: 6303 ^ref-11601

not to use Correction as a substitute for change. Otherwise you are becoming an Apologizer, — location: 6323 ^ref-40432

no longer willing to stay in the marriage on these terms. — location: 6332 ^ref-35586

By forgiving a painful fact, you are simply accepting that it occurred. — location: 6366 ^ref-40750

acceptance. Once you accept that a fellow human being caused you great pain—that the act occurred in reality—you get a glimpse of what unconditional love is all about. — location: 6367 ^ref-27854

just accepting the facts allowed me to transform my anger and put my energy into getting my own life together. — location: 6379 ^ref-54732

When you aim toward forgiveness, expect to do so imperfectly in the way of human beings. Have realistic expectations about forgiveness. — location: 6383 ^ref-1681

the very purpose of our problems—their gift to us—is to trick us into outgrowing them. — location: 6480 ^ref-4019

“It is clear that stress drives up rates of depression. The biggest stress is humiliation; the second is loss” — location: 8551 ^ref-52780

despair is a quiet and withdrawn response to grief. — location: 8559 ^ref-47607

When you’re in disconnect mode, your body has a background tone of fight or flight. — location: 8566 ^ref-51958

fear has a tendency to incubate over time rather than what we expect it to do—to dissipate. — location: 8677 ^ref-54778

stress created by helplessness has been extensively researched— — location: 8679 ^ref-38412

found to lead to posttraumatic behaviors caused by physiological changes — location: 8680 ^ref-64678

just believing you have control is sufficient to reduce stress, — location: 8684 ^ref-38123

Your ability to predict events lessens your sense of helplessness and reduces the traumatic impact. — location: 8689 ^ref-24754

witnessing violence constitutes a real trauma — location: 8692 ^ref-13221

Prolonged stress—as experienced by children within dysfunctional families—affects brain structure and function. — location: 8699 ^ref-7532

markers for long-term abnormal stress reaction — location: 8701 ^ref-7879

Hara Estroff Marano (1999) provided an excellent overview of how childhood stressors affect brain development. — location: 8708 ^ref-34206

If placebo can mimic effects of SSRIs, then how can we maximize its potential benefits for health? — location: 8722 ^ref-36345

the earmark of low self-esteem is the need for immediate gratification. — location: 8727 ^ref-26432

owing to the deregulation of stress hormones and other factors, trauma victims have difficulty going through a linear process of rational planning and instead tend to go directly from impulse to action — location: 8729 ^ref-22422

even decades after a traumatic event, victims will continue to have an opioid-mediated response to a stimulus. In other words, a detached emotional state can persist as a result of the neurobiology of trauma. — location: 8732 ^ref-3542

Ritalin (used to treat attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity) has a greater potency in the brain than cocaine. — location: 8736 ^ref-48630

accepting the reality of loss, accepting its pain. — location: 8739 ^ref-56433

fear promotes the release of norepinephrine, which functions to turn attention outward — location: 8741 ^ref-20245

hypervigilance we experience — location: 8743 ^ref-20521

attention we place on the details of the breakup, the tendency to be unable to concentrate on anything else, and the tendency to remain jumpy. — location: 8743 ^ref-55027

asking people to talk about details of the event exposes them to traumatic imagery and can actually impede recovery. — location: 8752 ^ref-346

What makes witnessing family violence so stressful is the helplessness it creates. — location: 8769 ^ref-37467

You can’t fight back or cope with the pain for the other person. You have no lever of control. — location: 8770 ^ref-928

stress created when we have no control. — location: 8773 ^ref-40328

parents allowed you to make some choices — location: 8775 ^ref-46884

honored your decisions, — location: 8775 ^ref-19187

constantly bombarded with unpredictable events, you might have felt that life was happening to you or at you — location: 8776 ^ref-33668

feeling like an active participant in your life. — location: 8777 ^ref-24526

comprehensive exploration into bereavement, — location: 8787 ^ref-45586

grief and clinical depression, — location: 8788 ^ref-64594

Separation creates prolonged anxiety, traumatic stress, and depression. — location: 8791 ^ref-21831

Alice Miller (1997). — location: 8795 ^ref-23842

writing helps people assimilate trauma and can also reduce disease severity. — location: 8831 ^ref-40906

people who experience posttraumatic stress disorder can have an endogenous opioid analgesia in response to a stimulus as long as two decades after the initial trauma. — location: 8839 ^ref-25966

old traumas can create overwhelming emotional memories many years later—a concomitant to abandonment posttrauma stress. — location: 8842 ^ref-58244

masturbatory increase and heightened sexual cravings. — location: 8845 ^ref-60816

by reducing the endogenous narcotic effect, thereby arouse the potential for heightened sexual response. — location: 8848 ^ref-47477

The Four Cornerstones of Self, of which “recognizing the importance of your existence” is one, represent a non-narcissistic approach to building your sense of self. — location: 8868 ^ref-47763

no matter how many ‘esteemable’ things they try to do to build their self-esteem, the invisible wound of abandonment is always working to leech it away.” — location: 8879 ^ref-47972

men struggle with the “boys don’t cry” edict of early tribal socialization. — location: 8898 ^ref-16899

one of his “seven sins of memory” is misattribution. — location: 8909 ^ref-18114

Read Michael Lewis (1992) and Helen Block Lewis (1971) regarding shame. — location: 8911 ^ref-23952

serves as a pawn in their power struggles, — location: 8930 ^ref-13726

expected to keep them distracted from their problems, — location: 8930 ^ref-34051

depression depletes energy, cutting you off from the creative process of love. — location: 8946 ^ref-7259

discussed patterns of attunement between parents and children, involving highly attuned smile responses and heart rate—applicable to adult primary relationships. — location: 8973 ^ref-29308

placing people at risk for developing major depressive disorders. — location: 8977 ^ref-15565

During separation, they induce “crying, irritability, depression, insomnia, and anorexia” — location: 8978 ^ref-18646

In reacting to heedless behaviors in others, we know full well that this person needs support, compassion, and patience. — location: 9008 ^ref-29319

rather than judge people who are enslaved by their impulses—is to understand that there are reasons ranging from biological to psychological for their difficulty exercising restraint. — location: 9009 ^ref-39210

when baboons (our fellow primates) are able to displace their anger on lower-ranking males, they have lower glucocorticoid levels—suggesting the unfortunate conclusion that it’s good for one’s health to “kick the dog.” — location: 9020 ^ref-61812

making the connection between health and full engagement in life activity — location: 9039 ^ref-18824

startle reflex, — location: 9057 ^ref-49366

anyone can be made into a latah if startled persistently and afterward will obey commands. — location: 9058 ^ref-54114

Ronald Simons (2001). — location: 9058 ^ref-32929

unforgiving people have higher levels of stress hormones, which elevate their fight-or-flight responses. — location: 9073 ^ref-25472

Losing a primary bond leads to an increase in glucocorticoid stress hormones, — location: 9090 ^ref-48642

Barohn, Ellen. — location: 9109 ^ref-7689

Colin, Virginia — location: 9135 ^ref-26047

Gordon, Sol. — location: 9161 ^ref-61269

Hofer, Myron. — location: 9174 ^ref-16071

1995b. — location: 9177 ^ref-48233

LeDoux, Joseph, — location: 9202 ^ref-12951

  1. — location: 9205 ^ref-8456

Lewis, — location: 9206 ^ref-45650

Lewis, — location: 9207 ^ref-45650

Shame: — location: 9208 ^ref-37194

Miller, Alice. — location: 9222 ^ref-33026

Morano, Hara Estroff. — location: 9226 ^ref-39106

Real, Terrance. — location: 9241 ^ref-17783

Sapolsky, — location: 9253 ^ref-6053

“Social Subordinance as a Marker of Hypercortisolism.” — location: 9255 ^ref-63206

  1. — location: 9257 ^ref-7430

Seiver, Larry J., and William Frucht. — location: 9261 ^ref-38705

Seligman, Martin. — location: 9262 ^ref-10843

Simons, Ronald. — location: 9267 ^ref-50840

Solomon, Andrew. — location: 9272 ^ref-27656

Van der Kolk, Bessel A., Alexander C. McFarlane, and Lars Weisaeth. — location: 9294 ^ref-16244

Vormbrock, Julia K. — location: 9298 ^ref-61173

Weiss, R. S. — location: 9308 ^ref-7899