Abandonment

Being left in an unsafe situation by someone responsible for your care

Being left somewhere dangerous, with someone unsafe, or in circumstances no child or vulnerable person should have been left in. A caregiver who walked away from a situation they should have stayed in or protected you from.

Being left somewhere dangerous by the person who was supposed to protect you delivers two wounds at once. Whatever happened in the danger, and the fact of being left in it. The second wound often outlasts the first. A child's safety is never the child's job, and whatever went wrong in that gap was not your doing.

What can follow an experience like this

No two people carry the same experience the same way. These are some of the effects that people with this experience often describe. Having some of them, all of them, or none of them says nothing about how real what happened to you was.

PTSD After certain experiences, the brain can get stuck, replaying what happened through flashbacks, nightmares, or sudden intense reactions to things that remind you of it. Hypervigilance The nervous system that learned to scan for danger all the time. Anxious attachment Holding on hard. Insomnia Difficulty falling asleep. Trust issues Trust that was broken, repeatedly, by people who were supposed to be safe. Shame Not guilt about something you did. Anxiety The background hum of dread that is always there. Fear of being abandoned Not just not wanting people to leave.

Nothing on this page is a diagnosis, and nothing here decides what is wrong with you, because nothing is wrong with you. Something happened to you. This page exists so that when you are ready, you can find people who understand it from the inside.

You do not have to carry this alone.

Bridge of Hope Recovery is a free, anonymous, peer-led fellowship for trauma survivors. Meetings run throughout the week by phone, by video, and in person. No cost, no waitlist, no one asking for your real name.

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