Every abandonment generates trauma and debt. The abandoned will deal with that pain which, if untreated, may accompany them for the whole journey of life. The one who abandons acquires a debt that, even if denied, will be there, piling up in stacks and stacks of denied affection, denied care, denied safety, denied stimulus, denied validation. These are different dimensions of emotional default.

I want to talk about parental abandonment, but any abandonment has the potential to generate pain and debt. That is, at any age it will be very hard to deal with abandonment, but nothing compares to the damage caused to a child abandoned by their parents or caregivers.

In childhood, the person builds the base of their behaviors, thoughts and beliefs. At this stage, they make their first experiments with emotions and relationships. These are fundamental experiences for full development and essential for the other stages of life.

This stage, in a way, generates patterns that will be repeated as the child grows, and defines the repertoire available for living fully. Patterns and repertoires are formed with the loving, careful mediation of an adult. Therefore, the damage caused by abandonment is vast and wide-ranging: it starts from aspects of practical survival and reaches horizons in the future, and may generate inadequacy, low self-esteem, lack of trust and hopelessness.

A complicating factor of this painful phenomenon is that the child takes responsibility for the “disappearance” of the parent. They attribute to themselves incompetence and the absence of reasons or motives for that human being to remain in the role of care, stimulus and structure.

Often, in adulthood, the person deals with issues of belonging, self-esteem and trust in people, with an incessant search for an idealized perfection and with emotional isolation.

Many of these symptoms may have been generated by abandonment. Identifying this cause-and-effect relationship is complicated by the defensive blocking of memory and by dissociation from the painful event. It is very common, in these people’s accounts, to find an actual difficulty connecting past and present, that is, perceiving events from the past generating consequences in the present.

Curiously, once again, the person attributes to themselves the responsibility for present difficulties, believing they have personality defects that need “correcting,” because they force them into inadequate actions, relationships and behaviors. Often this ever-present guilt comes with hopelessness and distrust in relationships, even the closest, about which there is a solid negative belief.

Abandonment can be emotional, material or intellectual, or all three at once. In emotional abandonment, care and responsibility are denied. The child is treated as a nuisance or with indifference. The expression of this abandonment takes place through acts (absence of basic care), through offensive and abrasive words or through absence of contact. The child tries to be noticed, along a spectrum that runs from total inertia and submission to violent and delinquent behaviors, passing through overadaptation to people and circumstances.

When those responsible for the child stop fulfilling their responsibilities as providers, diverting to narcissistic goals the resources meant for the child’s survival, there is material abandonment.

The child, often at an age when they do not yet understand cause and effect, sees themself as almost transparent and totally unimportant in that family community. Once again, survival behaviors set in, among them the continued fear of scarcity, which reverberates throughout the person’s journey.

Intellectual abandonment is characterized by a lack of interest in guiding the child, stimulating their capacity to think and learn, disregarding the bond with school or any other source of learning. A kind of far-reaching curse, this abandonment gradually prunes the child’s development opportunities and reaches the adult through sophisticated strategies to endure the continued feeling of inferiority.

All abandonments, each in its way, mark deep emotional wounds in the child and affect their future connections with other people, through the difficulty of establishing healthy relationships. The sadness of this consequence is summed up in one sentence: having not received love and care, the person had no opportunity to learn to care and to love.

What can mitigate the force of this trauma is care received from an adult available for care and unconditional love, patience to understand the child’s behaviors and difficulties expressing emotions, qualifying their cries for help, respectful dialogue and continued building of trust.

For adults who shelter wounded children, caring for that child is the way out. Finding generous listening that allows understanding and making new decisions can be a healing path.

Trying to offer love, care and presence can lead to forming repertoires of love, care and presence, restoring hope and trust.

Pragmatic, deliberate love is healing. At any moment of the journey!