We know that in the face of threat, the nervous system responds in ways designed to help keep us safe.
For example, if your client was under physical attack, their nervous system may have gone into fight, flight, or freeze.
But of course, that’s only one type of threat. And the responses that might be helpful in that situation would likely be counterproductive for a child who was abandoned.
You see, top researchers like Karlen Lyons-Ruth, PhD have encountered a different nervous system response in clients with an abandonment history – and it helps explain why the scars of abandonment often affect a client’s relationships long into adulthood.
We put it all together in an infographic that you can share with your clients.
Have a look.
Click the image to enlarge
As you know, when faced with the threat of attack, the nervous system’s first lines of defense are to:
1. Fight
2. Flight
3. Freeze
But what happens when the threat to your survival is abandonment?
In abandonment trauma, the nervous system has a different defensive response. That’s because fighting, fleeing, or freezing won’t protect you or help you connect with a caregiver.
Instead, the nervous system’s first response is to call out or seek contact.
Sometimes, this doesn’t work either. But in early childhood, connection and closeness with a caregiver is a survival need.
When an infant or child does not get the connection they need, they may engage in caretaking behaviors toward their parents in a last-resort effort to secure the relationship.
This can affect their relationships throughout life.
But abandonment trauma doesn’t have to be a life sentence. Working with a skilled therapist can help begin the healing process.
(If you’re sharing this infographic, please be sure to include the copyright information. We put a lot of work into creating these resources for you. Thanks!)
If you’d like to print a copy, just use one of these links:
If you’re looking for expert strategies to help work with the enduring impact of abandonment, check out Mastering the Treatment of Trauma.
You’ll hear from Bessel van der Kolk, MD; Janina Fisher, PhD; Karlen Lyons-Ruth, PhD; Ruth Lanius, MD, PhD; Martin Teicher, MD, PhD; and other top experts.
Just sign up here.
Now we’d like to hear your takeaways from this infographic. You can leave a comment below to let us know.
Thank you for sharing your program with a wide audience. As an amateur, as opposed to a professional, I do not self-diagnose for the same reason that one doesn’t attempt eye surgery onto oneself.
Still, I’d like to share one example of how your program is so valuable to me. One such insight was when one of the experts on the panel mentioned how abandonment may impact the development of executive functions in affected infants.
I had tried to get help from a psychiatrist years ago for an incapacity to make a budget. The help I received was along the lines of Behavioral Therapy, but it was abandoned by the practitioner as non-productive. That episode left me wondering what executive functions I might be missing.
Your course had me reflect on abandonment, something I knew nearly from birth but never stopped to think through. It turns out that I have a strong will for not doing things I ought not, but a very weak will to start things I ought to. That insight is actionable, and I value it very much. It doesn’t matter if I suffered from abandonment or not; it does matter that I now have a concrete next step for a practical problem that I do have.
Of course, I’d love to hear from you how executive functions can be trained, but a good question is almost always better than a good answer.
I see this as over simplified.
Pure cases of either neglect or abandonment are uncommon.
Intermittent abandonment, and mixed versions of attack and normal care are both common.
Hence ‘threat’ rather than ‘response’
I fear abandonment, but also rejection, betrayal, neglect.
My response to neglect as a kid was to become independent, almost feral. I see this as a ‘fight’ response.
But I’m also often Pre-occupied/anxious interms of attachment. A ‘people pleaser’
Net result: I’ve never really had a romantic relationship. Bonds with others are shallow. I move from people pleaser to dismissive at the drop of a hat.
The fear of rejection and neglect comes from a place of unworthiness.
The key is to develop a stronger “self” through psychoanalysis. Being either anxious or dismissive in romantic relationships is a coping mechanism: you avoid suffering and the idea of being abandoned again. You are very aware of your personality and this is great. I am sure there’s a romantic future ahead for you.
And is it possible that another response would be to just shut down if the calling out and seeking contact don’t work?
I would say definitely. I wanted to not exist as a child so that these people I was always around wouldn’t be angry because I was obviously not wanted.
But what was most damaging was my mom not responding to my cries as a baby/toddler. AT ALL. I don’t have any cognitive memory of this, as she has flat out told me on multiple occasions how she would just stare at me while I cried. The only time I got a response was if someone else was with her and I, “he just does that to piss me off,” once in a car with two other women; one consoled me by having me suck on her b*****.
Remember that when it comes to humans, diversity is the norm.
This seem like a useful tool for those who may benefit from understanding their reactions. I will use it to help patients I work with, who struggle with trauma and addiction, to promote self compassion and understanding.
I feel so bad for the little girl trying to connect with mom, mom is not avaible though….
I see me in this little one, searching for ways to help, be with her mom.
Such a huge responsibility for a little kid. And what the impact will be as the child becomes an adult…
Agreed. Or as the child grows into an adult. It may be that the child/adult will constantly and desperately be trying to ‘connect’ with others, and maybe awkwardly so, possibly creating reactions from others that further the sense of abandonment.
Yeah, I’m a prime example of that.
I’ve tried to connect with and be a part of the HIV community here in Spokane everbsince I moved here in 2014, however the way I aquired the virus and my positive outlook on life (that I can live until I succumb to old age if I want), as well as racism/privilege in the community has made me feel so effing raw. And just like that little girl, I would try to connect with individuals 1-on-1, to which the worst has been complete shutdown of my experience/life and at worst being told “get used to being alone because everyone will leave you.”
Case in point, there is a presentation tomorrow on “Aging With HIV,’ that I was ready to rush off to… but not for the food, or the info… but just to see if I’m ignored in a room full of people, or stared at like I’ve committed warcrimes almost on par with Nazi Germany… and I have to remind myself that and little by little feel the full affect of this traumatic invalidation that I’ve subjected myself to all these years. Otherwise, I won’t move on.
And the sadder thing is that now the community is starting to realize “I’m not gonna die anytime soon because of HIV. I’M NOT GONNA DIE!” And that I can’t ever celebrate that with anyone here, which was all I wanted in the first place…
For context, I “chased” the virus, since according to Wikipedia back in 2010, you get the virus and are dead within two months. I was all for that, and fell into hard drug use since Wikipedia said it would mess with my immune system.
This leaves me wondering where/how the fawning response fits in, and whether it’s a more typical response to the threat of attack or the threat of abandonment?
I was thinking the same.
I think fawning can be a response to both depending on the circumstances and what the threat is.
Fawning (which some of us see as a subset of Appease) uses the “tend and befriend” circuitry in the nervous system which is much more likely to get activated when the threat is abandonment. The infographic goes almost as far as naming it (I’m not sure why it doesn’t), when it describes the care-taking behavior.
If the threat of attack is intermittent, and/or for whatever reason slower in coming, then some sort of Appease Mode reaction (fawning could be one but unlikely for an attacker, maybe compromising, or placating instead) could still show up for sure.
Well it sounds as though fawn is only seen as adoration, or ego stroking that builds up the other… however, fawning can also take the form of self-character-assassination (i.e. tearing oneself down until there is nothing left) as an automatic response through emotional coercion. “I’m just a stupid kid. That was dumb of me, I’m sorry, I didn’t want that. My opinion is worthless.” and so on until it’s obvious from the shaking that nobody is left in there.
This is very interesting. I’ve been reading on another forum lately about bullying in schools. Very different perceptions of what constitutes bullying and how the children and adults should handle it.
This idea you introduce here of abandonment fear or anxiety as a detachment attachment paradigm moment combined with some of Jac Panksepp’s work on the Play drive, as he calls it “Rat play” the rough and tumble physical play among rat juveniles (applied to children’s rst play ?!) might produce some helpful interesting clinical results.
I don’t know about that. Things like Rat Park and other clinical experiments are too sterile to have real world implications, especially since (as far as I know) rats don’t have the cerebral cortex. The celebrated evidence that “proves” we are not animals, but “higher beings… logical, intelligent, and disciplined when at our best!”
Don’t get me wrong, we are an amazing species, capable of truly wonderous or horrendous things. Things are either finite or infinite just by our say so or actions. Things either are or are not thanks to our brain.
A rat however, in a cage, in a lab, or anywhere for that matter, is looking to fulfil it’s basic organism needs: food, water, shelter, some company, sleep. Repeat. We have those same basic needs, which is about all we share with rats. Rats (and animals in general) do physical play, for fun and just because; there isn’t ambiguity to two animals interacting with each other. Its either friendly or violent; nothing like human interaction, where literally nothing is obvious or clear most of the time. That you’re in the company of other humans and anyone of us is in danger from someone else that is also human.
Until animals start behaving as though they are living in a social construct that they’ve come up with to “other” their own kind, or some sort of sorting/ranking/caste system, their not comparable to humans at all. The Rat Park experiment really irks me because even with clear, OBSERVABLE behavior that given the choice of cocaine water or social connection, connection always wins. Yet… not adopted by humans at all. Not even an atom towards that direction, which to me pretty much invalidates the experiment itself. Or the experiment is validation that feeling a connection with others is a base instinct, animalistic, BENEATH mankind; driving self-sufficiency “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” “discipline!” “mind over matter,” etc. fallacy, denial. Patriarchy…
Also, this reminds me of Betty White’s answer to “do you like animals more than people?”
To which she said yes, explaining that animals don’t lie or have ulterior motives.
Fight, flight, freeze or fawn..?
Such critical work, and so few to do, and so little time to get it done. Too much fear.
I’m always stare at the fact that while some people fall into ptsd and its fan of calamities, disgraces, additions, risk behaviours seeking for intensity, no matter if positive or drowning, their siblings must of the time stare you other place, seeking saving themselves. This is not well researched IMO.
Thanks for the poster.
We come into this world ancestral trauma in hand, don’t forget. And shatter the illusion of choice: choice is not a thing.
Fear… Old Trickster makes us walk when we should run; lesson there. I meant to write that we come into this world baring ancestral trauma.
Amen. Americans, esp those who have an easy life, like to say that we’re all born outta the same loins with the same opportunities and that is SO far from the truth. A little more compassion is what this nation needs. STOP…with all the division and alienation. STOP…with the sadness and pity. START with effective policies and actions.
Nikki, I completely agree with you. However, it would be in my opinion best to start teaching children how to process their emotions as they are experiencing them. As children the majority of boys are taught that they are “sissies ” if they cry. However, crying is a healthy way to help process sadness and pain. One learns to be a patent based on how one was patented. It seems easier for one to blame childhood or one’s parents for the problems they have in adulthood. Many take the easier escape of blaming anything and everything but themselves. In my opinion, we all have choices to make. I was raised in a very abusive environment. Emotionally, sexually, physically abusive environment, told I was all kinds of degrading things,molested by every male in my family, my brothers also were abused. I grew up in an alcohol and drug environment and was told I was too ugly.to look at. I was locked in places so they didn’t have to look at me. I ran away at age 14. I have broken the cycle of abuse and because I re