Healing the Abandonment Wound - Step 1: Identifying the Feelings

6 days ago

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The Trigger That Opened the Door

Hearing a parent snap, “That’s not how it happened!” when I tried sharing a childhood experience sent me straight into a trauma flight response.

My body reacted before my mind could catch up — a punch to the gut, tears rushing upward, my throat tightening around the truth that wanted to come out. I excused myself from the table, trying not to lose my absolute shit in public.

Months later, after processing and integrating what actually occurred in that moment, I realized this was the beginning of the emotional healing process I now teach myself. This was Step 1.

What I felt was pain. Pain from the familiar abandonment wound: never feeling seen, heard, or validated by a parent.

This wasn’t new. I’ve had a parent tell me I was dead to them because my choices didn’t match their expectations. They declared that I no longer existed to them — even though I was standing right there, alive, breathing, human.

At some point, I had to decide it was up to me to heal this wound. To stop abandoning myself. To stand in my sovereignty and self-worth so deeply that the next time it happens — because yes, it will — it won’t break me open in the same way.

No one can show up for me the way I can show up for myself.

Step 1 — Identify Every Feeling in the Triggered Moment

It sounds simple, but for those of us with C-PTSD, identifying what we feel is often the hardest part.

C-PTSD is “complex” because emotional trauma has been layered and repeated throughout our lives. We learned to survive, not to feel. So when a trigger hits, the nervous system reacts as if we’re reliving the original wound.

Here’s what I had to learn:

A trigger is a trauma response.
A trauma response is the body reacting to abuse in the present moment.
When we’re triggered, we often project unhealed trauma onto the people we love.
My parent’s reaction wasn’t about me — it was their own unresolved shame.
And I’ve projected my own wounds onto my loved ones too.

Complexity begets more complexity.

I was never taught emotional resilience or emotional intelligence. Children learn what they live. If emotional trauma begins early, we allow it to repeat unconsciously for decades — until we choose to consciously heal.

When I’m triggered, my primary response is flight. Alarm bells. Red flashing lights. Sirens in my nervous system screaming:

“Danger. You’re not safe. Get out now.”

Sometimes the trigger is subtle. Sometimes it hits like a Mack truck. This particular time it fell somewhere in between.

I walked away, gathered myself, returned just long enough to say goodbye. It wasn’t perfect, but it was present.

In that moment, I felt: unseen, unheard, invalidated, angry, sad, and abandoned. Again.

Why This Wound Hurts So Much

The pain of a parent who cannot be emotionally present lives inside us as the abandonment wound, and it often expresses itself as shame.

This is why so many adult children go no-contact. Their parents are stuck in their own trauma cycles, unable to acknowledge their children’s lived truth.

That pain follows us everywhere:

our partners
employers
friendships
family
and most painfully, inward — ourselves

For many survivors of complex trauma, the rage we feel toward our parents is the rage of a wounded child who was emotionally abandoned over and over again.

I decided I didn’t want to keep living from that wound. And yes — it still gets activated. Healing doesn’t erase the trigger; it transforms our relationship to it.

The more I practice this process, the more sovereignty, seniority, and self-worth I reclaim.

When I witness someone else’s wounds now, I can recognize:

“That’s not mine.”

I’m rubber, you’re glue is the energy I try to embody.

And then came the hardest realization: Even though I never said “that’s not how it happened” to my own kids, I still emotionally abandoned them in other ways. Because I had never learned how to show up for myself emotionally.

We pass down what we don’t heal.

Breaking the Cycle

We cannot force a parent to become self-aware or emotionally available. Trying to earn the love of someone incapable of giving it only keeps us trapped in the pain cycle.

My ex-husband has cut contact with our oldest daughter. He cannot see her or validate her existence because of his own deeply rooted shame and belief systems.

But she’s alive. She exists. And now she, too, is on her healing path.

Healing means learning:

Love isn’t something we earn, it is something we give.
If someone, even a parent, can’t give it, they may not be capable.
We stop chasing the people who harm us.
We show up for ourselves and our children with love, curiosity, validation, accountability, and presence.

Healing is a long-term practice. We are reprogramming decades of nervous-system wiring.

It requires: courage, emotional awareness, self-inquiry, and consistent nurturing.

We must learn to feel, process, release, and recondition.

Stop putting the onus on parents who have never done their own work.