How to release trauma and your fear of abandonment with movement
By Orit Krug | December 22nd, 2020
Let’s talk about how your fear of abandonment is stored in your body and how to release it through movement.
If you’ve tried the journaling, meditations, and affirmations but still struggling with a fear of abandonment in your relationship, 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, but 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 are NO real signs that this will happen. Your partner might be even working in overtime trying to show you how you mean the world to them.
When my team and I start working with new clients, 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 these clients 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 my Let Love In group program, my clients were stunned by how deeply they were in the habit of abandoning themselves.
In one of our sessions, I asked the women to split up into pairs and gave them 2 choices on how they can move with their partner: 1) Slow and indulgent OR 2) Quick and strong.
I strongly 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 said they 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 relationship.
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. So that you would be “loved” instead.
Here’s the other big revelation that came out from the movement exercise that I talked about above: some of the other 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, and that 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 why you need 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 are saying 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 and being totally 100% unapologetically you.
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.
Get on the right path to healing trauma from your body and nervous system.
Many people spend decades and thousands of dollars in traditional therapies trying to heal their trauma. Unfortunately, even the most popular therapies are scientifically shown to be limited in accessing 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 from the physical body or the nervous system.
This makes trauma healing a very frustrating journey for so many people. They often blame themselves for being “un-healable” and decide that they’re broken.
This is NOT true!
Every human being is 100% neurophysiologically capable of healing from the past, because we all have wiring and neural pathways that can be rewired from fear and overprotection, to love and openness.
My unique, scientific-backed process via Dance Therapy has helped hundreds of clients finally heal from past trauma and transform their relationship (even after decades of trying in other therapies).
You can heal too, but you need the right methodology.
Sign up for my online course (ranges from free to $20 USD) to begin a unique, body-based learning experience that will teach you:
- Science-backed education about how trauma is stored in your body and nervous system. You’ll gain an understanding why it has NOT been your fault you haven’t healed yet from past trauma.
- Gentle, guided body-based movement that is necessary for integrated healing. This is crucial if you want your mind’s intentions to match your body’s behaviors in relationships.
- An embodied approach to healing that has helped hundreds of clients break unhealthy relationship patterns and let in healthy, lasting love.
