What is the theory behind this Abandonment Therapy Worksheet?
People seeking therapy for abandonment issues have a strong fear and anxiety of losing their loved ones or facing rejection in interpersonal relations. This fear may be based on traumatic childhood relationships or an anxious attachment style. They may have lost important and close relations to divorce, death or physical and emotional abandonment and neglect.
How will the worksheet help?
The worksheet will help provide a checklist of signs that indicate abandonment issues. Individuals can use it as a self analysis to determine whether they have abandonment issues or fear of abandonment that needs professional attention.
How to use the worksheet?
Take some time out to truly reflect on your current and past relationships. Go through the entire checklist and mark the statements that are true for you. If more statements are true for you than not it may indicate that you have abandonment issues that need to be addressed.
Abandonment Therapy Worksheet
Following are some common signs of abandonment issues. Use the checklist to determine if these issues are common to you so that you may seek the right help.
| Excessive worry that family or friends will leave you | |
| Excessive worry about not being liked by others | |
| You want others to reassure you that they love you | |
| You go to great lengths to please others no matter the cost | |
| You are always the one ‘giving’ in a relationship | |
| You don’t have boundaries when it comes to relationships | |
| You have stayed in dysfunctional or unhealthy relationships in the past just out of fear of being alone if you left | |
| You find it difficult to get intimate in romantic relationships | |
| You are overly dependent on your partner for all your needs | |
| You sometimes have difficulty trusting other people’s intentions | |
| You feel like you don’t deserve to be loved | |
| You try to avoid forming new relationships | |
| You experience unreasonable jealousy in your relationships. | |
| You find yourself over analysing words and actions of your loved ones | |
| You feel insecure about yourself when you are with your partner or friends | |
| You either move too quickly in a relationship or you are hesitant to move at all | |
| You deliberately try to test your relations to see if they would leave |
References
You can download this worksheet here.