Abandonment wounds are less about a single departure and more about what your nervous system concluded from it: that people leave, that closeness is where danger lives, that you must be the reason.
The strategies built on top of that conclusion are intelligent, and they cost enormously. Some people become impossible to disappoint — endlessly accommodating, never inconvenient. Others leave first, on principle. Many do both, in alternating order, with the same person.
Because the wound is relational, so is much of the repair. A consistent, non-abandoning therapeutic relationship is not a side effect of the work here; it is part of the treatment.
How the work tends to go
Trauma work on the original experiences using EMDR or Brainspotting, attachment-focused exploration of the patterns built since, and — often — Parts Work with the protective strategies themselves.
