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There are certain types of trauma that do not leave any marks on the outside. Yet, their impact is very much alive internally and shapes what you identify with as “love,” how you see yourself, and even the type of partner you end up choosing in your adult life. Caregivers have one critical job: to support and protect their children. When the people who were meant to safeguard us from harm are the ones causing the harm, the impact can last a lifetime. Of these wounds, emotional neglect and physical abandonment teach a child that the people who should be protecting them, guiding them, and loving them cannot be relied upon.
If you grew up with narcissistic caregivers who were shaming, physically abusive, hyper-critical, and emotionally neglectful or physically absent, you can wrongly learn that your worth is conditional based on your parents’ moods, needs, approval, or presence. You grow up hyper-aware and constantly waiting for criticism, while living in fear of more inevitable abuse. You become a target for their rage, a scapegoat for their inability to accept their role in the family dysfunction, and the proverbial punching bag for their unresolved trauma.2
When a primary caregiver abandons a child, the child often internalizes their leaving as something being “wrong” with them and that they are unworthy of love and protection. You may internalize a sense of being invisible or worthless, where you are wrongly conditioned to feel that your most basic needs for safety and belonging will never be met. Over time, abusive and negligent early environments can distort how you see yourself and what you feel you deserve.
These dynamics can intensify and become severely dangerous for a child, especially if you were left with a malignant narcissist caregiver while your other caregiver abandoned you. When a stabilizing parent is not present—as a result of emotional disconnection, emotional abandonment, or physical abandonment—you are held captive, with no escape. This leaves you fending for yourself against a violent parent. The message a child hears is: “No one is coming to rescue me; I am alone.”
Romantic Relationships as Trauma Reenactment
Early experiences of parental abandonment can distort your internal compass regarding security and relational trust. Rather than entering a romantic relationship with the expectation of care, love, reciprocity, and safety, you may enter the relationship out of desperation to feel seen, wanted, loved, or protected, which undermines the foundation of healthy and secure love. This can create a dynamic that often reinforces early experiences of abandonment. It is not uncommon for patterns of early abuse, neglect, or abandonment to replay in your romantic relationship, even when consciously accounting for partner selection. For example, you may find yourself attracted to (or attracting) narcissistic partners who ultimately repeat patterns of control, neglect, or abandonment that are familiar from your childhood.1
Experiences of early betrayal or abandonment can predispose you to feelings of hyper-vigilance and anxiousness in your romantic relationship, where you feel a constant need for reassurance from your partner that you are not going to be abandoned. Similarly, you may engage in patterns of self-abandonment (i.e., neglecting your needs and feelings, going against your values or comfort level to avoid rejection, suppressing your feelings to avoid conflict, or remaining in the relationship to prevent being alone). On the flipside, you may find yourself pushing away and shutting down any attempt at intimacy or closeness from your partner, or you may live “distracted” or emotionally disconnected, or take on the role of your abandoning parent.
Healing and recovering from a childhood of abuse and abandonment cannot be fast-tracked. It is something that will require your time, dedication, and willingness to examine and untangle your narrative. First, it is important to learn what safety feels like for you. If safety was inconsistent in your childhood, contingent on certain conditions, or altogether missing, learning what identifies safety in your adult life is necessary. This includes learning how to recognize and navigate experiences of emotional safety and physical safety, and how concepts like predictability, reliability, and consistency tie into an overall sense of safety.
Next, it is also important to begin redefining intimacy and connection in your life. When abuse or abandonment were taught as “normal” early in your life, these can overshadow anything, including your ability to remain emotionally present in your relationship, your partner selection, how you approach or avoid emotional and physical closeness, and fears of abandonment. Part of exploring and redefining what intimacy and connection mean in your life includes learning about attachment dynamics, exploring your relational blind spots and how control or manipulation may influence these, and learning conflict resolution versus conflict avoidance.
