Post by Susan Peabody on Mar 27, 2015 11:48:00 GMT -8
Hi everyone,my biggest issue is separation anxiety.
Separation anxiety in the DSM IV, which therapists use to diagnose people, is listed as a child's disease. When you have SA as an adult, to a degree that is beyond normal, we have come up with the term love addict.
When we are infants we experience separation anxiety every time our mother leaves the room. As we grow older it is supposed to lessen and we grow into our own individuality. When something goes wrong (trauma) we get fixated at this stage of our developent. Now, as adults, we are anxious when our PoA is out of sight. (All PoA's are a stand-in for one of both of our parents or the people who raised us. See Imago Relational Theory by Hendix, Susan Forward in Obsessive Love, Howard Halpern, or Susan Peabody)
Long-term recovery is the solution to separation anxiety. First you must re-start the maturation process and outgrow this phase. Most of all you must find another relationship to take the place of mom and the PoA. Two relationships actually. A profound, intimate love affair with your self and a profound, intimate, personal relationship with God [or a benevolent force of love in the universe that you have personified in your imagination].
There is a complete forum on this board of how to build self-esteem but it is not enough if you are what Bradshaw calls "shame based." So you must process the shame through some kind of psychodynamic therapy or with a mentor of some kind ["enlightened witness": see Alice Miller, Susan Peabody, Art of Changing]. When the shame is lifted, then follow the steps to building self-esteem on this forum and in my books.
Simple approach: The best way to build a relationship with God is the eleventh step (prayer and meditation). To put it simply, personify your higher power, idealize your higher power, fall in love with your higher power, and then look at yourself through his or her eyes.
When this long process takes hold you will be so full of self-love, and the love God has for you as his child or lover or whatever, then you no longer will be lonely or experience separation anxiety.
This explanation is just a drop in the bucket. I didn't want to give you the goal without telling you how to get there. But I promise you that this process works. Keep coming back as they say in AA.
Step 11
Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out