I was codependent with abandonment issues — and I got myself out of it.

I was 2.5 years old when my mother took me in the middle of the day, while my father was at work, and ran. She packed a light bag, put it in the trunk of our car, actually went to go see my father so as to pretend like nothing was wrong, and we disappeared. My mother could no longer handle the abuse and threats from my father, and when he put his hands on me, that was the last straw. It would be over 15 years before I would see him again, and only briefly. He’s been out of my life, by my own choice, ever since.

Fast forward to me at 31, I’ve just celebrated a 2-year anniversary with the man I think I’m going to spend the rest of my life with. We live together, almost never fight, and had, what I considered at the time, a wonderful relationship. And he breaks up with me out of the blue.

What do these two scenarios have to do with one another? For a long time I would have said nothing. And the old me would have found herself in a new relationship shortly after her breakup. But this one hurt so bad I knew I couldn’t let that happen again. I didn’t know exactly what I was doing wrong but, between my laundry list of exes and my broken heart, I figured I should try something new for myself. It started with me refusing to be in another committed relationship. Sitting in the discomfort of not having a boyfriend to run to taught me a lot about how bad I was at coping with my own emotions. Cue boatloads of binge eating. I knew I wasn’t healthy but couldn’t stop myself. And every time I went out on a date with a guy I was painfully aware of how much validation I needed from him, even if I didn’t like him that much!

I couldn’t understand where in the world all this was coming from. I’d vacillate between thinking something was inherently wrong with me and thinking I just hadn’t found the right one yet. But I was in pain and didn’t know how to deal with it and it was obvious I had no coping skills with the complex emotions that follow a breakup (emotional eating, obsessive casual dating, trouble being alone).

So I started going to therapy, talk therapy to be exact. And to be completely honest, it was only mildly helpful for me. We talked about the breakup, my food issues, and my past. But after almost a year, what I got out of it most was the safety to talk about things in a way I hadn’t felt comfortable to in the past. But I didn’t understand the underlying link of it all.

Then I started EMDR and hypnotic therapy. It taught me about what was happening below the surface of my thinking mind. Why I was attracted, triggered, or avoidant of things. I could finally, deeply, understand why my relationship to men was the way it was.

So here’s what I discovered:

· I didn’t realize how big of deal it was that my mother left my father when I was a baby. In fact, I really didn’t think it was a big deal at all. Why? My mother, in an effort to soothe me, told me I was fine and it was okay. She put on a happy face and taught me how to do the same. She didn’t have any coping skills so she couldn’t teach them to me, and we both went about our lives like nothing had happened. The consequence of this was I was never able to tell anyone what was really going on with me, because I didn’t know myself. I felt distance from my friends and loved ones and often found isolation as the only safe haven for me. The first step was acknowledging not everything in my life was fine and perfect and some things really needed some work.

· I didn’t understand that, as a child, I needed the love of my mother so badly that I became exactly what I thought she wanted. I never learned how to be my own person. She was very critical and emotionally guarded when I was growing up, and I had to tip toe around a lot of things and be a certain kind of perfect to make her happy. This was the origin of my codependency.

· When we aren’t fully loved, supported, and nurtured as children, pain and shame arise. As a safety mechanism, our brains create a storyline that says, “Never do that again! It leads to pain!” And we invariably end up avoiding that thing over and over to our own detriment, for years to come. I had debilitating perfectionist tendencies for years until I decided finishing something good was better than never finishing something that would be great.

· I didn’t think I had “father abandonment issues” because, to my logical mind, my father didn’t leave US, we left HIM. But abandonment is much more complicated than that, it’s more the felt absence of the father than the act of the father leaving. I’ve been trying to fill the void of unconditional love from a man ever since. And my unconscious desperation for this love has both attracted me to and made me want to push them away my whole life. Thus serial monogamy with relationships never lasting longer than 2 years. Ending in heart-wrenching-how-will-I-go-on pain. I’m not saying breakups shouldn’t be painful, but I should still know who I am when a breakup ends.

So I was getting into relationships pretending like I was a healthy, well adjusted human. Then I’d eventually become so afraid of getting abandoned again I’d become whatever I thought the other person wanted. Thus losing my own identity, making myself undesirable to my partner and creating the thing I was most afraid of, being left. I had put myself in a real catch-22.

Once I realized what I was doing, and started to work through it and heal, these things no longer became problems. It’s kind of like cleaning an old bullet wound. You have to get the bullet out, and it may look even worse for a while, but after it can actually heal. I went into this hoping to be able to attract a healthier partnership, and I ended getting a deep dive into how my childhood affected all areas of my life. I can happily say now I’ve never felt more unapologetically myself. I know there is nothing “wrong” with me, that these issues were very valid responses to trauma I went through. And after 2.5 years of being alone (this work doesn’t happen overnight) and working through my sh*t, I can also say I’m in a healthy, autonomous, supporting relationship with someone who feels like a true partner. If you are looking at your life and feel like there’s something off, you’re in a rut, or things aren’t going the way you want them to, I encourage you to take a deep dive into your own subconscious mind. Get help, start somewhere. The only mistake you can make is to do nothing at all.