depression

Abandonment: Depression and Other Effects

Feelings of abandonment by people we need or love, even people who hurt us sometimes too, can be one of the most difficult experiences in relationships, calling up some of our most primitive survival mechanisms to manage the pain.

But we all experience this abandonment differently. Some of us are filled with anger, some with hurt or rejection, and some of us simply become preoccupied with control mechanisms, like what it would take to get the person back (for example, after a breakup).

For others, rather than becoming full of feelings about the abandoning other, they become emptied of feelings altogether. Some psychoanalysts call this absence the “dead mother” experience; others call it a “black hole”. For some, it is referred to as a void. And what yet other therapists might refer to as an “abandonment depression” can either be thought of as anger directed against the self, or alternatively, as a shut-down into helplessness and despair- a state that is best described by what is missing, rather than by what is there.

In the best case scenario, some of us with good emotion regulation skills and positive developmental experiences to fall back on, can hold onto a sense of the presence of those we love even in their absence (as well as to a positive sense of ourselves even when rejected by others); but many don’t find this so easy. What could be left as an open space turns into a big black hole. And one of the things that is so difficult about the abandonment void, is the need to fill it. It can be so hard to sit with feelings of emptiness and to just let them be, allowing enough time for something good to come along to fill the space. We might fill the space with pain instead.

Some of these experiences go back to earlier times, memories of when we were young, helpless infants or children who simply had to wait too long for our caretakers to arrive. Feelings of frustration lasted too long for us to avoid falling into despair and depression. Or perhaps caregivers were inconsistent in their availability, sometimes there, but other times painfully unavailable. So now, in adult relationships, those feelings of despair or emptiness come back when we are made to wait or are triggered by emotional or physical unavailability from our partners, family, or friends.

When we carry such voids into adulthood, we find that abandonment makes us particularly desperate. A dull emptiness or numbness sets in and we have trouble accessing good memories, hopes for the future, or past times when we felt satisfied- the kind of stuff that could tide us over through the wait. Waiting for the other turns into feeling that there is no other. What remains is just a feeling of deadness, abandonment, and aloneness- as the “dead mother” void draws everything into its emptiness.

We all deal with the “black hole” differently. Some of us become clingy and desperate, trying to avoid ever having to feel the emptiness that comes from not being in the physical presence of our attachment figures. We are simply afraid to be apart from them. Others try to avoid relationships and attachments altogether, for fear of having to confront the hole during a separation. Allowing themselves to care feels too risky. And others simply fill the hole with pain. They turn their anger at being abandoned against the self, and imagine the other as rejecting, critical, or forever unavailable, filling the empty space with attacking images and fantasies. Somehow it seems less painful to have the absence be filled with anger, rejection, or hurt- than to experience the dull sense of nothingness that comes from not being able to access satisfying memories or feelings, and simply tolerating the wait.

Perhaps we can say that we all have black holes of some sort or another, times where we feel that nothing can fill us up or that the satisfactions we are craving will never come. What do you do to manage your “black hole”??