Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce

245. When Your Fear of Abandonment is Stronger Than Your Commitment to Yourself - How to Build Your Confidence After Divorce

• My Coach Dawn • Season 4 • Episode 245

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Have you ever caught yourself chasing after someone who keeps pulling away, or saying “yes” when every fiber of your being wants to say “no,” just to keep the peace?

If you’re tired of putting everyone else first because deep down you’re scared of being left behind—especially during or after a divorce—you’re not alone. 

That habit of self-abandonment isn’t a personal flaw. It’s a survival strategy wired deep into your nervous system, often from early family dynamics, and it can keep you trapped in cycles of unhappiness and disconnection long after the breakup is final.

In this episode, you’ll discover why your nervous system clings to unhealthy patterns even when it hurts, how to finally unburden those old abandonment wounds using Internal Family Systems, EMDR, and homeopathy, and practical steps for dating again without losing yourself or repeating the same mistakes.

Listen now to learn how to break the cycle and finally choose yourself—because you deserve a deep, lasting connection that starts from within.

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A podcast exploring the journey of life after divorce, delving into topics like divorce grief, loneliness, anxiety, manifesting, the impact of different attachment styles and codependency, setting healthy boundaries, energy healing with homeopathy, managing the nervous system during divorce depression, understanding the stages of divorce grief, and using the Law of Attraction and EMDR therapy in the process of building your confidence, forgiveness and letting go.

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Speaker 1:

If you've ever said yes when you really meant no, if you've kept showing up for someone who disappears on you consistently or found yourself wondering why you can't stop reaching out. This episode is for you, because your fear of abandonment isn't just a bad habit. It's a survival instinct that's rooted in your nervous system. But what happens when that fear starts costing you the relationship you have with yourself? Today, we're talking about how this fear shows up during and after divorce and how to start choosing yourself instead. Hi love, welcome to Dear Divorce Diary, the podcast helping divorcees go beyond talk therapy to process your grief, find the healing you crave and build back your confidence. I'm your host, dawn Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer and divorcee. Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce your confidence after divorce. In today's episode, we're going to talk about the perceived cost of staying in survival, or what your nervous system perceives as surviving right, because you're not weak. You're wired to survive from your brain's perspective, and that's the thing we have to heal. We're also going to talk about how to unburden and reclaim your exile. So this is an internal family systems concept. We're also going to pull in some EMDR and homeopathy concepts, but this is all rooted in your nervous system and the part or parts of you that still fear being left or lost, and those parts really are desperate to be rescued, and if not by you, then someone else like him. And then we're also going to talk about how to date without self-abandonment, because if you don't unburden those exiles, they are going to show up on every single date and it's going to start early in dating, not to mention right, whatever your down the road relationships are. This work is crucial to have a healthy dating experience.

Speaker 1:

Okay, we want to take a moment to shout out one of our premium subscribers, maggie. This shout out is for you. Thank you so much for being the best part of our community. Without you, this podcast does not exist. I would love, maggie, for you to send me a DM. Producer Joy and I just sat here and we pondered what are we going to ask Maggie to DM us, and we landed on chocolate or vanilla. We must know. Maggie, send me a DM at Dawn Wiggins on Instagram. If you don't have Instagram, send me an email. I would love to just say hi to you and send you a hug.

Speaker 1:

Okay, let's talk about the deep instinct to stay connected. And here's the hook, even when it hurts. That's the crazy thing, right About self-abandonment being the habit is that we stay connected and, dare I say, chase after people, even when remaining connected to them hurts us. And this is a very, very curious behavior, and to illustrate it, I'm going to tell you a very current story. So the Hubs and I have been kicking around the idea of letting our daughter, who is now 10, almost 11, spend a few nights this summer with one set of her grandparents, and historically, when she spends a night or two over there, we have been in town so that if something went awry, we could step in and resolve the issue, because the grandparents are the people who raised us and all of the attachment wounds and all those things. So, god bless, they were doing the best they could at the time with what they had.

Speaker 1:

But here we are, and so, as we've been talking about just letting her stay four or five nights without us being in town, it's opened some really big loops, and what ended up unfolding just over the last couple of days is them acknowledging they have concerns about her coming because their schedule is their schedule and their plans are their plans and the meals they plan to serve are the meals they plan to serve and their bedtime is their bedtime, and that there's not a whole lot of flexibility around any of that for our daughter should she come visit. And as we sort of started to unpack that as a couple and checked in with our daughter and how she was feeling about it, it became very, very clear that this was going to be an approximation of what it was like to grow up with these folks right, as much as they love their granddaughter so very deeply, there is not a lot of flexibility in their nervous systems around these issues, systems around these issues. The way that they maintain their own sense of safety is by maintaining their particular schedules and plans and their parenting views. And that rigidity, unfortunately, the cost of it becomes that our daughter would be the one that would have to adapt in most circumstances in order to be able to maintain connection during her visit there. And that is not how we have raised her. We have raised her that we all have to flex, to work as a team, and that is what works best for everyone's nervous systems is that there's give and take and that we're all able to soothe our own feelings and do the things that we need to in order to not suppress or bypass or abandon self in real time.

Speaker 1:

Now, that doesn't mean our daughter always gets her way, that doesn't mean we make her her own meals or that she doesn't have to manage her own emotions On the contrary, she does. But it's a conversation and there's nuance and there's context, and those things didn't seem like they were going to be available and that, right there is the groundwork for where we learn self-abandonment. When the relationship says it's this way or no way, then what choice do we have as young people? But to abandon our connection with ourselves and how we felt and what we perceived we needed in those moments. Now, none of this is to say that my daughter or I or anyone else in this moment is a victim. It's to acknowledge the sort of generational trends that led to the habit of self-abandonment.

Speaker 1:

We know that healing is completely possible, that reclamation of self is completely possible and that nothing good came in life without some growth and some expansion. And that also means some discomfort. Now I'm not advocating for trauma, but I am a silver linings girl. Right, and all of us are going to go through painful things in life and how we approach them and how we perceive them is going to dictate how happy and healthy and whole and regulated and safe we feel in the world. So we made the choice not to send our daughter to the four to five night sleepover because we understood that that would be setting up a precedence for self abandonment and that we wouldn't be there to step in and address the issue in real time.

Speaker 1:

So how that looked in my childhood, how that looked in my first marriage, how that has looked for you and for me in dating relationships and whatnot, is a lot of not knowing what I want or need, not knowing how to meet my own needs, not knowing how to be satisfied or feel safe or feel happy if I'm alone, not knowing how to feel all those things unless I'm being externally validated, not being able to trust my own decision making, not knowing. That's a really good list, right there, right. And so what ends up happening is we prioritize a sense of connection with other people rather than connection with ourself, because of that original experience that happened over and over and over again, where you had to divorce yourself of your own thoughts, feelings, beliefs and expectations in order to maintain connection with your caregivers or your attachment figures, right. So it really is about attachment wounding right there, that when we chronically or repetitively had to reject our own thoughts, feelings or beliefs in order to maintain connection with a caregiver, it just became a habit, it just became a rutted out neurological pathway, right? And so how that looks is like you continue to take on board the toxic communication. Looks is like you continue to take on board the toxic communication. You continue staying in contact for breadcrumbs. You continue avoiding boundaries to avoid loss, because loss or separation to you feels like death, right. Or getting voted off the island. But when you think about being a very, very young child, disconnection does feel like danger, it feels like a threat. And so when attachment is about survival and we lose connection, that threat feels so profoundly real that you will abandon yourself every time, because when we're young our feet were not long enough to reach the pedals. We need connection in order to thrive and survive emotionally and physiologically. Right? Have you heard about babies, you know, a hundred years ago, in certain orphanages in other countries, right, who had failure to thrive, and I know it happens in our own country also. But even if they had all of their physical needs met, you know they would still end up being failure to thrive, because we are wired for connection, for love, for attunement, for bonding right. And so if that connection, attunement and bonding requires us to abandon self, then that's what we did. You may think you're choosing him when you're abandoning yourself, but what's actually happening is your nervous system is simply choosing what it perceives as safety. Even if it's false, even if it's not actually safe, it perceives it as safety. The good news is is how your nervous system perceives safety can be rewired. So let's talk about that.

Speaker 1:

You have exiled parts right, parts of self that are still carrying wounds. This is from IFS theory internal family systems right Parts of self that are still holding the pain of certain wounds abandonment or feeling unseen, or feeling unloved or unheard right. And so, in this concept of internal family system where we all have exiled parts, the ones that hold the pain for us manager, parts whose jobs are to keep a very copacetic system right Peace at all costs. Don't let the exile's pain leak out, don't let it touch me, don't let it get me. I don't want to feel that right. That's the goal of dissociation, and to dissociate parts is so I don't have to feel that pain and then firefighter parts that sound the alarm when the pain leaked and it's too much pain for the system and it's time to shut it down. Right, those firefighter parts come on scene.

Speaker 1:

So, for the purposes of this episode, we're talking about exiled parts who are carrying the pain and the wounds from feeling like you had to abandon yourself over and over and over again from a very young age. Those parts the ones that are wounded, the ones that are protecting and the ones that are still hustling for love right, they carry the original heartbreak that has just been parlayed into this current heartbreak, and so the abandonment fear that you struggle with is this young, scared and stuck in time part of you where she learned that love was tied with loss and those two things got blended together. Now, the tools that we love around here are IFS, emdr, homeopathy, these types of things. Right, because it helps connect first with those parts that are holding that exiled pain. It helps discharge that trauma or unburden the part so that you can reconnect with and release those wounds, rather than rejecting, suppressing, bypassing, right, all of those ways that we're used to coping in the meantime and this is why we're so gaga over these tools that we use, and we over here don't advocate for using IFS or EMDR without homeopathy, because we have seen way too many clients at this point use those tools and still have toxic relationship patterns, toxic amounts of self-loathing or self-criticism and a lack of true sense of a secure attachment style. And so how many people have we heard say like I did EMDR, but then I relapsed into these old patterns? When you add homeopathy to IFS or to EMDR, it is such a profoundly deep healing experience that those patterns are really such a profoundly deep healing experience that those patterns are really truly fundamentally shifted. And so I have three favorite remedies specifically for parts that have been abandoned or neglected.

Speaker 1:

Now, there are many, many, many thousands of remedies in homeopathy, and these three is by no means the one that would for sure facilitate your secure attachment style or your release of abandonment, but these are three that are commonly used and can be very, very, very effective. So carcinocinam is for the woman who overperforms, suppresses her needs, fears, conflict more than self-betrayal and really, really relies heavily on control in order to feel a sense of safety. This remedy was one of the most profound game changers in my own healing journey, and it is the remedy that I recommend most often for my clients. The second one is one you probably have heard of more often if you've used Pulsatilla at home with kids or ear infection or you name it, which is Pulsatilla. And Pulsatilla is for the woman who feels she's only lovable when she's agreeable, accommodating or emotionally dependent, and so if you notice that when you're alone you tend to be weepy and really feel longing and even maybe this dirty, dirty, dirty word clingy pulsatilla is a beautiful, beautiful remedy to help create a greater sense of security or independence.

Speaker 1:

The third remedy we use a whole lot over here are it's actually a blend of remedies made from what are called matridonals, which are things like placenta and umbilical cord and even oxytocin, and these are a blend of remedies we use because it gets at those very early. So many people have wounds from when their mother was carrying them in utero and don't even realize it, or for what happened in the birth process or the year to postpartum, and these remedies are so profound at helping reinstate that sense of security that maybe many of us have never actually even felt in the world. So this is where we love to use these particular tools in order to help women get to this grounded sense of worth and security inside of their capital S self in order to stop abandoning yourself. Now stay tuned for our Thursday episode, because it's going to be a guided meditation to help you unburden any exiled parts that are still feeling abandoned or alone or unseen, right? So this is going to be a beautiful guided meditation to help you get into self-energy, help you identify that exile and help you release some of that burden. So that's Thursday's episode.

Speaker 1:

Little spoiler alert there, but this is the thing I want you to remember is that healing does not mean silencing your fear and just suppressing it. It means you have to actually sit with her. Sit with those parts of you, because the part of you afraid to be left is really calling for you to stay, because anytime you're relying on all the other people to stay, there's not control there. You don't have control right. But who will stay always is your capital S self and your higher power, and those are the things we have to reconnect with and nurture until those feel safe and the other things feel appropriately threatening right Right now. Notice that that's all mixed up, that the threatening people feel safe and you feel not safe or as a less than complete sense of security for your own self. So that's what we have to rewire.

Speaker 1:

All right, let's dig in to what happens in the dating scene. If you don't do this work, so if we don't unburden the exiles, right, they're the ones that end up showing up at the dates and falling for people that you wouldn't normally fall for, right? So dating alone in and of itself reactivates the abandonment wound. So I cannot tell you how many times women have done pretty good work in talk therapy or maybe even a bit of EMDR or, you know, yoga or whatever meditation or things that they've done to sort of get a sense of clarity and to really develop a greater sense of security as a single woman. But then inevitably, as soon as they start dating, the house is on fire again.

Speaker 1:

Right, and it's because it puts you back in the position to have those exiled parts with those abandonment wounds back on the scene trying to make sure that they're managing this, everything in that you're staying safe, right, and it's got, and it's you dropping right back into those old patterns of getting attached too early, chasing for love rather than trusting that it's going to come to you. You know, putting up with crap that you don't actually want to put up with, but all for this sense of connection or to avoid a feeling of loss or rejection, right. And so then you end up doing things like over-functioning, ignoring red flags, moving too fast, tolerating breadcrumbs, or this one, this is one of my favorites Spiraling after being ghosted right, it's like if you got ghosted, like, thank God, now you know that person disqualified themselves. Great, right. But how many of us women spiral after getting ghosted and go into this refrain of why wasn't I good enough? Why wasn't I good enough, right?

Speaker 1:

And that is such a flag for early trauma and exiled, wounded parts that must, must, must be unburdened and integrated in order for you to have a healthy dating relationship. So these behaviors that you do, that I did, they're not flaws, love, they are not at all flaws, they are protector parts trying to secure love at all costs. Because, remember, love and loss, love and rejection, love and abandonment, those things got all blended together at a very early age. So healing means dating from a self capital S self-led system, from an integrated whole. Right, like I feel grounded, I know who I am, I know what I want, I know what I'm looking for.

Speaker 1:

And going back to Lori, if you listen to Lori Gerber's episode on dating the 3H method, right, it is very hard to stick to that 3-H method if you are not in a grounded sense of self, and so this is the work that you have to do in order to get there, and I promise you, this is the work that Lori does with her clients in order to get them there. Right, and there's just sort of no way around that. So I want you to really add into your when you're scrolling dating apps or you're considering going on a date or you're actually walking into a date I want you to get in the habit, like I would calendar this with your dates or put it in like bright yellow in your system, like who is agreeing to this date? My wise self or my scared part? Who is going on this date? Who is agreeing to this date? My wise self or my scared part? Who is going on this date? Who is agreeing to this date? Who is chatting up this guy? Who is swiping on this dating profile my wise self or my scared part?

Speaker 1:

And just adding that question right, there is going to be a game changer in your level of awareness and execution around dating after divorce when you've reconnected with the parts of you that were abandoned, you stop choosing people who mirror that pattern, and then dating will become an act of truth instead of performance. All of a sudden, dating will involve your authenticity rather than people pleasing. This divorce happened for a reason, and we've talked about many of those reasons here today, and this is your moment to really be committed, not just to, oh, recommit to yourself, but like to be committed to those parts of you that still have not unburdened or healed, and to say to those parts of you I'm going to be here for you, I'm going to see you, I'm going to hear you out, I'm going to help you put those burdens down and, hot damn, we are going to find a hottie to live happily ever after with, without all of these toxic patterns and self-abandonment. I love you so much. Peace.

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Divorce Recovery Maven Dawn Wiggins

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