Anxiety, Depression and Self-Abandonment

By Dr. Margaret Paul

Do you believe that your anxiety or depression is being caused by the past, by other people, or by events? These are often not the cause of most current anxiety and depression.

Most current feelings of anxiety and depression – other than anxiety and depression that has physical or chemical causes – are caused by some form of self-abandonment. The anxiety and depression is a way your inner child is letting you know that you are abandoning yourself.

There are three levels of self-abandonment: 

1. Self-judgment and other lies 

The first level of self-abandonment is the self-judgments and other lies we tell ourselves. Do you ever tell yourself any of these lies and judgments?

• I am not lovable.
• I am unworthy and undeserving of love.
• It is my fault that he/she doesn’t like me.
• I am inadequate.
• I am a failure. I will never amount to anything.
• I am ugly. I am too tall, too short, too fat, too thin, too dark, too light, and so on.
• I am selfish when I take care of myself.
• I am alone and I will always be alone.
• No one will ever love me.

Telling yourself these lies and judgments is like telling them to a small child. The child would feel very anxious and depressed at hearing these statements from you. Likewise, your inner child – which is your feeling self – feels anxious and depressed when you judge yourself and lie to yourself.

2. Ignoring the anxiety/depression you are creating with the self judgments 

The second level of self-abandonment is staying focused in your mind rather than being present in your body – ignoring the pain you are causing through your self-judgment. You might further lie to yourself by telling yourself that your anxiety and/or depression is being caused by others, the past, or circumstances, rather than by your own self-judgments and lies.

When you stay focused in your mind and ignore the feelings you are causing, the message to your inner child is that he or she is not important to you. Your feelings don’t matter. Now you not only feel the anxiety or depression coming from your lies and self-judgments, but you exacerbate your painful feelings by ignoring the feelings that you are creating.

3. Turning to addictions – approval,substances, processes 

Now you feel intense anxiety, depression, anger, hurt and so on, and you further abandon yourself by turning to various addictions to numb out the pain and avoid responsibility for it.

The self-abandonment leads to feeling inwardly empty and alone, so now you turn to old learned addictive ways of avoiding this pain. You might pull on someone to give you attention or approval. You might try to get someone to make love with you, or masturbate to Internet porn. You might turn to substances: food, sugar, nicotine, caffeine, drugs or alcohol. Or to processes such as TV, work, or gambling.

Turning to any of these addictions pacifies the pain for the moment – which is how they become addictions – but because they are all ways of abandoning yourself, they only lead to more pain in the long run.

Now you are not only in pain from the self-judgments and from ignoring your feelings, but now you are in deeper pain from making others responsible for your feelings, or from numbing them out with substances and processes.

You are stuck in the vicious cycle of self-abandonment that feeds upon itself. You will not permanently get out of this cycle until you stop abandoning yourself and instead move into learning about loving yourself.

Anxiety and depression often get resolved when you learn to love yourself rather than abandon yourself. You can begin to learn how to love yourself with our free Inner Bonding course at http://www.innerbonding.com/welcome.

About The Author :

 Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a best-selling author, relationship expert & Inner Bonding® facilitator. She has counseled individuals & couples since 1968. She is the author/co-author of eight books, including the internationally best-selling Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You?, Healing Your Aloneness, Inner Bonding, and Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By God? She is the co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® healing process, recommended by actress Lindsay Wagner and singer Alanis Morissette, and featured on Oprah, as well as on the unique and popular website Inner Bonding & of the transformational self-healing/conflict resolution software program, SelfQuest®. Click here for a FREE Inner Bonding course.