How to release trauma and your fear of abandonment with movement
By Orit Krug | December 22nd, 2020
Let’s talk about how the fear of abandonment is stored in your body and how to release it through movement.
If you’ve tried journaling, meditations, and affirmations but you still struggle with a fear of abandonment in your relationship, then you’re probably feeling like broken, damaged goods right about now.
I personally know how frustrating it is to not feel any change after putting SO much effort into trying to release this fear. I also learned that it’s not an accurate reflection of our ability to heal.
When you have trauma stored in your body that’s driving your fear of abandonment, you need to release that fear from your body. Our bodies don’t understand verbal language and cannot process words, so when you attempt to talk or think yourself out of this fear, it doesn’t work.
Your mind may be thinking “He won’t leave me” but your nervous system protects you and keeps your heart closed because the belief in your body is that you WILL be abandoned and rejected. It’s happened before, so deep down you believe it’s going to happen again.
No amount of words can convince you otherwise when the trauma of abandonment is currently stored in the body. This old trauma drives your impulses, thoughts, and behaviors on autopilot before the mind can even THINK about changing the habit.
Your body will reveal the surprising truth about your fear of abandonment.
Past trauma makes us believe that our current relationship is going to end in abandonment, even though there aren’t “proven” signs that this will happen. Your partner might even be working overtime trying to show you how you mean the world to them.
When new clients start working with me, they already have the cognitive awareness that they’re sabotaging their relationship because of their fear of abandonment. What the body reveals on a much deeper level is that many of these clients are abandoning THEMSELVES first.
Even though their minds obsessively think about all the ways that their partner will leave them, they quickly discover in movement that these thoughts are a projection of their own behaviors. The truth is that they are in the habit of repeatedly abandoning themselves.
When you have intrusive thoughts like, “he’s going to leave me” or “she’s going to find someone better,” you miss out on the realization that you’re the one who’s already left yourself. You’re not listening to your needs, desires, or values. When you don’t speak up for what you want or don’t set boundaries in your relationship, you abandon yourself.
This is often a subconscious realization that our clients have through their early movement experiences in session. A simple mirroring technique reveals that they push their needs aside to accommodate other people. Or they’re so scared of being judged and rejected that they don’t express their true needs. It’s safer to hide who they really are.
How can you expect anyone else to be there for you if you’re not there for yourself first?
Recently, in a group session, my clients were stunned by how deeply they were in the habit of abandoning themselves.
During the session, I asked the women to split up into pairs. I offered 2 choices on how they can move with their partner: 1) Slow and indulgent OR 2) Quick and strong.
I encouraged them to move based on what felt really good to them in the moment. Even if their partner chose to move quick and strong, the other person’s goal was to keep moving slow and indulgent IF that’s what felt best for them.
Here’s what happened: Most of the women left their bodies, dropped their needs and just did whatever their partner did. When we verbally processed this experience, some of the women described losing themselves and followed their partner without even realizing they weren’t making their own choices.
They had the freedom to express themselves in this partnership and most of them revealed that they did not know how. They abandoned themselves in this movement interaction, which was a direct representation of how they continuously abandoned and lost themselves in the intimacy or conflict of their romantic relationships.
Get comfortable with being 100% unapologetically you.
If you can achieve this goal, I guarantee that you won’t constantly be in fear that your partner will leave you. When you are loved for being 100% unapologetically you, you begin to trust that there’s no reason to leave you.
This is so different from an experience of past trauma where you had to change who you were or hide your needs just so you wouldn’t get hurt or abandoned. You molded yourself in order to be “loved.”
Here’s the other big revelation that came out from the movement exercise that I talked about above: some of the women were able to stay present in the interaction, but they felt very uncomfortable to do what they truly wanted.
They noticed that their preferred movements looked different than their partner’s preferences. This brought up anxiety about being rejected or not pleasing the other person. They either stuck with this discomfort or also ended up abandoning themselves as they accommodated their partner instead.
If you have a deep fear of being yourself, then you are already in the habit of abandoning who you really are and expressing your true needs. This can cause so much dissonance within you and your relationship if you are constantly changing who you are to feel “accepted” by your partner.
Relationships thrive on a solid foundation of trust. If you are not honest with who you are or what you need in your relationship, it can jeopardize the foundation and ultimately cause your partnership to fall apart.
If that happens, you could blame your partner for abandoning you and assume you’re stuck in a helpless cycle of abandonment, but in this case you have played an equal part.
Show your body that you will no longer tolerate abandonment from anyone.
One of the most important reasons to release the fear of abandonment from your BODY is because our bodies are the vehicle for which we act, behave, and connect in our relationships and the world.
Many people try to convince themselves in their minds that their partner won’t leave them, or they try to quiet the thoughts that say they’re not good enough for their partner to stick around. You might’ve even read this entire blog post thinking, “Not me! I don’t abandon myself.” But deep down your body knows that you do – that’s why you got this far down this page.
If you really want to release your trauma and fear of abandonment, you have to first tune into your body, understand what you TRULY need and start expressing that authentically. Without abandoning yourself.
This is the KEY to stop projecting this fear onto your partner because you trust yourself to be there for you.
Having complete trust in yourself helps you solidly believe that someone else is going to be there for you and love you unconditionally. You can’t expect anyone else to do that until you do that for yourself first.
You deserve to find peace in your body & let love in without fear.
The latest trauma research shows that cognitive-based therapies cannot fully access trauma stored in the non-verbal brain and body. Even alternative approaches, such as EMDR and Brain-Mapping, are often not enough to fully heal trauma from the physical body or nervous system.
This makes trauma healing a very frustrating journey for many people. They end up feeling stuck, even after spending decades of therapy and gaining so much self-awareness.
If you relate, you might’ve considered giving up on your healing. You might wonder if a fully integrated healing is not possible for you.
Every human being is 100% neurophysiologically capable of healing deeply & wholly, because we all have neural pathways that can be rewired from fear and overprotection to love, joy, and openness.
But even with an effective neuroscience-backed Somatic approach, going to weekly sessions could still require many more months or years until you feel that “click” in your body that finally makes you feel WHOLE.
That’s why I run Somatic Trauma Healing Retreats where many people experience accelerated, integrated, and lasting healing in just a few days.
(Disclaimer: each attendee must go through an application process that ensures this accelerated healing is possible for them).
If this sounds like something you might be interested in, I’d love to invite you to check out my retreats! There are several options from women’s healing, plant-assisted, 1:1, and more.
