Fear of abandonment
Years of therapy really helped, as I started to get in touch with my feelings more and had more insights about myself. It feels like doing a puzzle and I am trying to put the pieces together. I enjoy getting those Eureka moments when I understand more about myself—those moments of being seen by myself gave me comfort, feelings of closeness and authenticity.
A recent encounter of L and the moment of fear I had when L said she needed to leave brought me a lot of anxiety. I was shocked about the familiarity of the fear I had, but towards L. This fear of losing her is just like how I felt before towards my advisor. Soon L will be my new advisor and I worry that what happened between me and my advisor will be repeated towards L. I think L was fine and it was me who had the problem of fear that caused the problem—I was the problem. And I worry that I will be forever trapped in not getting good relationship with others.
In the therapy session this week, I talked about everything happened in the past week. My anger towards my advisor, and then depression due to the memory of being lonely during my PhD period, followed by the sadness of seeing that the relationship with my advisor is gone. At the end I mentioned the fear I had with L. The process of talking all these out led to the words by myself “The fear comes from the feeling of being abandoned.”
Things start to make sense. I think I am touching something deep and close to the root.
I knew that I had suppressed my anger towards my advisor for years, which later led to a lot of resentment. I thought not being able to express anger was THE issue, but now I realized that the fear of abandonment was side by side with the repressed anger.
To go over the whole journey about what happened with my advisor: I admired him at the beginning, but I didn't have secure attachment. When my needs were not med, I dared not to express because I feared that he would reject and then leave me. In fact, that worry was really real after I failed the qualifying exam—I worked hard but kept feeling unworthy and not good enough, worrying that I was failing him and he would kick me out of his group by saying “I don't think you are a good fit”. For that long period of time, I had no room for anger.
I was not satisfied with this kind of relationship so I tried to change that over time. And as time goes, I gradually opened up a little by a little to let him know what happened to me, what and where my unmet needs were. We were making progress—I was expressing and he was listening. I felt that we were getting closer.
But before the relationship deepened, the authorship issue took its hit. If all I had before was just a “fear” of abandonment, that authorship issue was the “real abandonment”. Betrayal, abandonment, lost trust. I was hit emotionally so hard by his abandonment. His communication of trying to push things through and force me to accept the results completely teared me apart. I asked for more emotional level conversation but he refused. I was left hanging there alone with an authorship result I didn't want to accept and the disappointment of him that he would not protect me.
I didn't get recovered by that. I built up walls and grew to know the importance of protecting myself. My anger spread out easily because that was really my only weapon. I felt the power of it, and sweared that I would never be the weak person I was before. I have been noticing every tiny bit of unhappiness and speaking up whenever I felt I needed to. Every time when I spoke up, I got no support but criticism from him.
The sadness came from the realization of the changing form of my relationship between my advisor. I used to be really happy after a 3 hour meeting with him. But the similar situation just left me a comment of unsatisfying inefficiency. I changed. Seeing this change of relationship is sad and painful. N said in the therapy group that this process is painful, but I was just getting touch more with my true feelings, and living authentically was one of my goals for therapy. So it is just a process. It was great that I shared all these in the therapy group, and overtime I will get healed.
If you would like to leave a comment, feel free to contact me at Mastodon @bios@moresci.sale