Abandonment Grief After the Death of a Loved One

Dealing with the death of a loved one can be enough to send you into an emotional and mental spiral, but if you also have a history of abandonment issues, a death can be especially off-putting. Grief is a complex concept, comprising multiple layers of emotions.

When you add in the past trauma of abandonment, you are suddenly dealing with two traumas instead of one. If you have dealt with abandonment issues in the past, from childhood trauma, divorce, or even a friendship that has ended abruptly, the feelings of abandonment might resurface during your grieving process.

The Experience of Abandonment Grief

Grief, by definition, always involves pain, but abandonment grief adds the element of emotional confusion to an already tragic situation. In traditional mourning, you’re grieving the person who died, but in abandonment grief, you’re not just missing them, but you are feeling the additional ache of being left behind or even rejected.

You may know in your logical mind that your loved one didn’t choose to die, but somewhere beneath the veils of logic is the persistent emotional response telling you that you have been abandoned or simply not important enough to stick around.

Unfortunately, emotions don’t take orders from logic, and those rogue emotions can morph into thoughts and feelings that don’t make sense on a realistic level but that can still wreak havoc on your overall well-being. Is it logical? No. Is it selfish? Perhaps, but it is also an involuntary response for many who have experienced past trauma.

People often say, “Time heals all wounds,” but what they don’t mention is that some particularly large wounds never fully go away unless God removes them. And when death stirs up abandonment trauma, it’s like peeling the scar of a past trauma wide open again.

It would be difficult enough if you were just mourning the beloved person you’ve lost, but now you’re reliving every other moment in your life when someone let you go, walked away, or disappeared from your life.

In other words, abandonment grief doesn’t stay hidden in the past. It resurfaces when you’re in your most vulnerable state, reminding you of all the other times you have felt rejected. It flashes moments in your brain like an insidious slideshow of the time a parent walked out the door in a divorce or when someone you thought was a friend ghosted you with no explanation.

Triggers After Loss

Unfortunately, those mental images and emotional reminders can come without notice. One of the hardest parts of dealing with abandonment grief is the unpredictability of triggers. You might think that you’re doing okay, then suddenly a whiff of perfume, a song, or even a change in your daily routine can take you right back to a place of loss.

That place of loss might not be grieving the person who recently died, but the culmination of all your losses. They may come unexpectedly and may even seem unrelated to your current loss, yet they connect you tightly to past pain.

Fear of Future Loss

While abandonment issues are rooted in the past, they also shape your view of the future. When you’ve been left, either through death, trauma, or repeated emotional exits, your heart begins to anticipate the next loss even before it arrives.

It’s a defense mechanism that you develop due to your trauma, not based on reality. But try telling your brain that. Your brain and emotions were so traumatized by the past abandonment that they are trying vigilantly to protect you from any future danger.

This response may play out differently in you than it does in other people. You might find yourself becoming emotionally distant, not just from people but from everything that you once loved in your life. Or it might show up in an opposite way, like over-attaching yourself to someone or trying to control situations.

You may become hypervigilant, constantly checking on the status of your relationships or trying to micromanage outcomes so you’re never caught off guard.

This anticipatory grief is something that you carry into every new connection. It steals the sweetness out of relationships and replaces it with anxiety about permanence, and creates an invisible wall that separates you from everyone, even those who want to connect with you. While most people associate grief with the past, abandonment grief can ruin your future, too. It convinces you that loss is just waiting around the corner.

This fear may cause you to hesitate in fully opening your heart again and to create barriers that keep others at arm’s length. You might second-guess intentions or avoid vulnerability to protect yourself. These responses, while understandable, prevent you from potentially missing out on future connections.

Healing From Abandonment Grief

Healing from abandonment grief isn’t necessarily a quick process or straight line, but it is entirely possible. The process begins by acknowledging that the unique pain of past abandonment adds to your grief and that the feelings you’re dealing with aren’t just tied to your current loss, but also tied to past trauma.

It’s also important to go to the source of all things beautiful and lovely. Psalm 34:18 says, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (NIV). What good news! Amid your grief and your feelings of abandonment, God is with you. He doesn’t distance Himself from your pain but draws near to you when you hurt the most. And unlike humans who pass away or even choose to walk away, God will not leave you.

Jesus Himself experienced feelings of abandonment at the cross. In Matthew 27:46, we see Jesus asking God why He had been forsaken. This moment in Christian history shows us that feeling abandoned, even by God, is not outside of the human experience.

Yet, the resurrection reminds us that God did not forsake His Son, but that He took His trauma and gave us all eternal victory and connection with Him. While God did not erase the pain, He overcame it. He invites you to come to Him and do the same.

A skilled therapist can also help you deal with your traumas. They offer a safe space where you are not judged or rushed and where you can start to understand your past traumas’ role in your current grief. Many therapeutic approaches such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Emotional Focused Therapy (EFT) and trauma informed care can offer tools that help you recognize harmful thought patterns and help you develop healthier thought patterns and better responses to triggers because understanding and recognizing your triggers can help you gain control, help you prepare to deal with them and lessen their hold on you.

Hope for Recovery From Abandonment Grief

If you’re stuck between mourning a loved one and feeling left behind, know that you’re not unusual or selfish. Abandonment grief is complicated and overwhelming, but it is not a life sentence. While it’s okay to sit in the shadows of your grief while you gather your strength, you can’t sit there forever.

Turn your grief over to the Lord Almighty and let others who love Him love you, too. Find comfort in therapy and friendship, stop punishing yourself and others for past trauma, and learn to reconnect to your life story in a more positive, new way.

Know that your loved one in Heaven would want you to live your best life and to move on, not only from their death but from any past experiences that may be weighing you down. From this more positive place, you can start to see yourself from a new perspective and realize that your identity isn’t defined by your abandonment or trauma but by your identity in Christ.

To learn more and to meet with a Christian counselor or therapist, contact our office today.