There are times when we truly need far more than others can give. People help with the tools they have and the strategies they know, not with the omnipotence and unlimited resources of a deity. This scenario starts simply, as nothing more than this disparity between depth of need and capacity to give, but it can quickly expand into a cycle of pain, confusion, and disharmony.
The Illusion of Abandonment
When the need for comfort and companionship is particularly intense, which happens during times of great loss or overwhelming stress, and others aren’t capable of fulfilling those needs without losing their own well being and autonomy, though they stand present, continuing to give what they have, in your pain you infer that they’ve withheld love, or perhaps it simply feels that way, and so you feel abandoned even though no one has left you.
All the while, those from whom we feel abandoned are themselves feeling abandoned by us.
Feeling abandoned, excluded, neglected or unwanted is deceptively complex and insidiously muddling. Feeling abandoned can arise in one of two situations:
- When someone whose love you seek withdraws their love and walks away, for whatever reason
- When the comfort you need exceeds the supply
The problem is that we think the second situation is the same as the first. This is akin to a gambler who begins to crave a win every hour rather than ever other day, as was his trend, perhaps because he lost his job. Then, receiving only lemons throughout the day, he feels terribly unlucky.
We tend to infer abuse and neglect based on the intensity of our pain response to the actions others. When we stub our toe, it’s generally because some object was in the way, then we feel like the object acted against us. Well, it did act against us in a literal sense, but not out of any internal motivation. Evolution, caring less about internal motivations and more about actions and their consequences, equipped us to infer others’ ill will or aversion when in pain. Mere physical pain triggers anger in such a simple fashion that when a child experiences a sudden sharp pain in her body, she is likely to wallop whoever sits nearby.
Our task is to recognize that the intensity of our pain is not a reflection of the intentions of those who triggered it.
Respecting Limitations
Helplessness that develops as a result of being unable to meet someone’s heightened needs may ultimately lead them to actually walk away, but it’s not for lack of love. We have limitations, but this is no one’s ill will.
A friend describes it this way:
Imagine that we both fell out of a boat and we’re in the ocean. Imagine that I’m a really good swimmer, which is totally false but imagine it anyway for this analogy. So I want to help you, so I go up to you and throw my arms and legs around you… and we both sink, because no matter how good a swimmer I am I can’t do anything without my arms and legs. On the other hand, equally the same happens if you grab on to me. So here we are, and we’re both swimming and if I’m a better swimmer, even so all I can do is continuously offer encouragement and the occasional hand. And if things get really exhausting, I might be out of breath and then I can’t even offer that, but I can still offer the awareness that I’m in it with you. And if things get even beyond that point, then maybe the current will pull us apart; and then all I can offer is the hope that you can have faith that I did my best.
We can never ask people for more than that they love us. We must have faith that we are loved and see and appreciate what we do receive. Such gratitude is an act of love, an offering.
Reclaiming Power
The belief that we’ve been abandoned casts us in the role of a weak and frail figure. Who would need our help, and who could we help? No one, of course. We cannot be both helper and helpee from this perspective. Those roles are mutually exclusive.
We are always searching for someone to save us, to make all the pain go away, and the greatest curse is to think we’ve found that person. To believe that the ones we love are capable of easily meeting all of our needs and simply choose not to is a seed of selfishness and suffering.
To see that the ones we love are only human and not all powerful is a seed of love.
When we begin to see, really see and feel, that the people from whom we seek constant comfort are limited and human, fallible and understandably focused on their own needs much of the time, then we shed the role of being weak and in need and feel our power return.
