Dear miyoid,

It’s weird that everybody that I’ve cared for or tried to felt safe with has this one common thing. They all triggered my fear of abandonment sooner or later with their behavior.

It’s actually not weird – you’re attracted to people who trigger the fear of abandonment in you, because they remind you of your mother, who was the first person who triggered that fear in you. We’re always attracted to people who remind us of our parents, so we can finally get from them what we didn’t get from our parents. You’re hoping to get a sense of security and commitment – something you didn’t get with your mother.

If your mother wasn’t “committed” to you, if you felt she’d leave you while you’re asleep, it could be the reason that triggers the fear of abandonment. Your boyfriend isn’t committed to you either, he might leave you at any moment, in fact it seems he would like to leave you but worries about your reaction, and that’s why he checks upon you from time to time. Do you perhaps feel that your mother would have liked to leave you, but couldn’t because you were her daughter and she had an obligation towards you? Is such notion somewhere in the back of your mind?

If so, it would explain why you also get depressed and feel unlovable. The child reasons that if our parents don’t really love us and only take care of us because it’s their duty, then we must be unlovable and worthless. It must be our fault. And we live our lives with the notion that we’re unlovable… and it makes us want to disappear.

And from what my mom has told me, I’ve got up, realized that I’ve wet myself and then I’ve got angry with myself and ranted to myself asking over and over “What you’ve done!?”. I don’t remember how my mom treated me during the toilet training. I don’t remember any harsh treatment

Has your mother scolded you for other things (not necessarily related to toilet training) with words like “What have you done?!” Because it sounds like something you would hear from an adult and then repeat it to yourself when you feel you did something wrong.

And I was left alone with my unwanted hair.

It seems you felt abandoned in that matter too by your mother, even though your mother did it because she had a bad experience with your sister and didn’t want to force you to go through the same torture. You were envious of the girls who had their mother’s help during their teen years. In this instance, your mother doesn’t seem to have treated you badly, since she didn’t want to put you through unnecessary stress (waxing the armpits and the bikini zone is much more painful than shaving!). However, you still felt abandoned by her, and that’s probably because the abandonment happened much earlier, when you were a baby.

One of the reasons could be that she didn’t spend enough quality, bonding time with you as a baby. Perhaps she was always in a rush when feeding you, she didn’t play peek-a-boo with you, she didn’t have time for a bedtime story, or was in rush to read you one… all in all, that the emotional bonding didn’t really take place as it should have, and you felt rejected and abandoned by her. Do you think this might be the case?

• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by Tee.