Hi guys.  Today I want to talk a little bit about the topic of letting go of our fears of abandonment.  I think it’s a really important subject when delving into love addiction and co-dependency, and fear of abandonment is one of the main things that prevents people from getting out of unhealthy relationships.

The idea of being abandoned is scary.  Nobody wants to be left alone to fend for themselves.  As humans, we are social creatures, and having other people and even animals in our lives is comforting and part of being human.  The issue then, is when our fear of being alone – a reasonable fear – becomes so deep that it prevents us from being independent.  We can be independent people without having to give up healthy relationships.  What we have to strive for there is balance.

Those of us that do have major fears of abandonment have a reason to be afraid – we were left alone as children, or left alone at many other times in our lives.  We have felt the pain of people leaving, and the pain of wondering what we did to make them leave.  It is only natural for us to want to hold on tight when we find something or someone we love.

We have also found at times that we have felt abandoned by our higher power.  Things were not working in our favor, and the pain was so great, that we did not honestly believe our higher power was there.  We were so caught up in chaos, that we blamed our higher power for not taking care of us.

There is good news in all of this: we don’t have to feel this way.  We can be independent people that stick up for ourselves, and strive to have a good relationship with ourselves and our higher power.  We can work hard to make sure that we can take care of ourselves, and know that we don’t have to rely on anyone else to take care of us.  We can remember that our higher power was always there, we just had too much chaos in our lives to hear their guidance.  We can understand that moving forward, and letting go with love of others and of circumstances are a part of life, and we will have feelings about it, but our world will not end.  If we become our own best friend, and let our higher power become our best friend, we can always have a best friend there for us when we feel alone.  Allow yourself to let loving people be a part of your life, because the more you push past the fear and step out of your comfort zone, the more you will grow, and the more you will see that there is another way to live life – one not filled with fear.

Sherry Gaba, LCSW, Radio Host, Certified Transformation Coach and author of  the award winning book, The Law of Sobriety:Attracting Positive Energy for a Powerful Recovery and Ecourse www.wakeuprecovery.com. www.sherrygaba.com sherry@sgabatherapy.com