Fear of Abandonment vs. Pushing People Away: Breaking the Cycle of Chaos in Relationships

How can a fear of abandonment lead to pushing people away? In this episode, I explore the complexities of anxious attachment, traits of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), and how self-awareness can pave the way for healthier relationships.

I delve into the inner conflict often experienced by individuals with BPD—a push-pull dynamic where fear of abandonment clashes with fear of engulfment. This tension frequently results in self-sabotaging behaviors that disrupt connection and trust in relationships.

Drawing from my own journey of healing anxious attachment through exposure therapy, coaching, and resources like Attached, I reflect on a past relationship where my partner’s hypersensitivity, constant need for reassurance, and deeply rooted fears created an exhausting cycle of chaos.

You can follow me on Substack here: https://jessicaknightcoaching.substack.com/

Transcript

Welcome to the You're not crazy podcast. Hosted by Jessica Knight, a certified life coach who specializes in healing from narcissistic and emotional abuse. This podcast is intended to help you identify manipulative and abusive behavior, set boundaries with yourself and others. And heal the relationship with yourself, so you can learn to love in a healthy way. You can connect with Jessica and find additional resources, content and coaching at emotional abuse coach dot com.

Hello. Thank you again for being here. If you are new here, then you can find me at emotional of abuse coach on Instagram where I share all the things that I do, but a lot of people might not be aware or don't know that I also been posting a lots of sub, and I've been posting personal things. I've been posting reflections. I've really enjoyed having the platform and being able to share a bit more.

And if you want to know how to find me there, you can just search Jessica night coaching on subs stock, and you'll find the link. It's also in the show notes on my websites everywhere. But today I wanna share 1 of the things that I posted there, and it's titled fearing abandonment but pushing people away, watching a relationship be sabotage by a person with Bp. And now I typically get... If I say if this was about a narcissist, I would get no hate, other than like, the 1 narcissist that claims I'm a narcissist, But because this is Bp I tend to get Well, I don't really get that much feedback.

I get questioning, especially on threads. Nowhere else really. I think a lot of people actually find this content quite validating, but the reason I wanted to share this is because this was 1 of the posts that I did on subs that got the most personal messages from so far. I probably got about 15, which is a lot. You know, usually, people just like to read and then move on with there.

Life, but it's... I'll get likes I'll get comments, but it's... It's often I get personal messages where people share how much this affected them. So I wanted to create this into a podcast as well. And this pattern, that I was noticing is, like, when I was looking back on my relationships, the fear of a abandonment in my own life was always the loudest voice in the room.

And I talk on here a lot about what I did to heal and how I heal and how sometimes it feels like I'll always be healing, but when I was working on my anxious attachment and how to heal that, which it never will be fully healed. It will always have flare ups, but I had to really get real with myself and face it. I had to go through a ton of unintentional exposure therapy of putting myself in situations that I could be abandoned which literally could just be a first date and have to really feel the pain of it, and I remember it feeling like it who was hitting so hard and especially when I didn't know what it was. When I didn't have words to describe what I was going through. There was always a time.

I mean, there's was a time I went out on dates and didn't know that I had an anxious attachment at all, And so I didn't know how to quiet it. And so I just kept showing up over and over, and I'd often face it in sol, and it wasn't until a friend said, I want you to pick up this book, and I feel like it's gonna be really validating. And I remember reading the first page and sending her a text that said, wow. I feel so seen. I feel like they just described how my brain worked, and that book was the book attached.

In that book kind of gave me some of the courage along with coaching and therapy to just begin to lean in and understand and face mask anxious attachment because it literally feels like you are dying sometimes. And this is all really a story for another day, but I wanted to start by framing this before I go to the next part. 1 day, I'm sure I will talk about how I healed my anxious attachment. But a few years later, and definitely a few relationships after my anxious attachment deep end. I was definitely feeling more secure.

More in my own bones understanding the patterns, and I found myself in relationship with somebody who was acting just like former me. That's the only way that I could think about it. He was cue into my facial expressions all the time. So if I, like, had a resting bitch face, he would like, think I was being bitch to him. You would question my word choice all the time.

So if I said a certain word He'd be like, why you say that word not this part, but that word implies this. So why would you say... And I would just be like, I don't know. But it was almost as if he was always searching for a way that I was going to abandon him. If I...

If there was a lag in texting because I was driving or working or showering or breathing, there would be more questions. There would be anxiety over my text tone, which I did... I even if I explained, like, I didn't have this, they would still think I did. And the he would count down from the second return from a trip, even if it was a day. And if I returned, and I was just, like, tired because, for example, I drove to New York and then drove back, it would be that how could you...

Not wanna spend time with me, and I'd be like, I was gone for a day, and I'm exhausted because I just drove back and forth with my child. And like, these kinds of things would happen, and I would just always be, like, I feel like this is his anxious attachment flaring up because that was the lens that I was looking through. And I really got to understand that he needed so much validation. He needed so much. Affirmation that I felt like I couldn't do it.

I was able to do it in the beginning. Because I thought that over time, this was lessen, I figured we could talk about it at 1 point, he was open to hearing about anxious attachment. And I thought over time he feels secure. But over time, he actually needed more from me, not less. And I often felt like there was nothing I could do or say to get him to hear and really hear.

I care about you. I love you. I'm here. I'm literally right here. And then I realized something that over time, he didn't know how to handle his anxious anxiety for abandonment.

And he was actively consistently pushing me away to draw me back in. And at this point in the relationship, I thought he was addicted reconciliation. And I've talked about that pattern before, especially if he listened to any episodes on the psych of abuse. I believe that a lot of us get addicted to reconciliation because after that is when the calm comes and that's like what we're where we're trying to get. But, like, if we know we're gonna reconcile, we know the calm is on the other side.

And I thought that he was addicted to the active reconciling because that's when he felt loved and cared for until it was happening all the time, and I was, like, I don't understand why we need to have, like, a conversation about this thing, like, we both can just move on or, like, nothing happened. What do we reconciling? It took me a really long time to see that It wasn't just a abandonment. It wasn't just anxiety. It wasn't just anxious attachment, but I was struggling to understand what was going on and I was wrapped up in it all the time and beneath the surface.

There were other deeper fears that ran his life, and it made him the victim of every story. And there was actually nothing I could do to show him that I loved him because it never was enough. Like, every time that I, like, hit the quota, it was raised, and I didn't even realize that. And now he... I believe has Bp now that I know more about Bp now that I've studied more of the Cluster b disorders.

I think it is quite clear that he at least has a lot of these traits, but People with Bp, they don't just fear abandonment, there's a fear of en engulfed annihilation, and ultimately the death of their ego, so the way that they see themselves. And these aren't just abstract concepts. They are visceral constant. Feelings, and it ended up shaping almost every interaction that we had. If you've listened to any of my content about Bp, you know that controls a major issue for people with Bp.

And when I reflect back on the stories of his past relationships. He had to be the 1 in control because if he wasn't, the fear of involvement would creep in. If he didn't maintain power it felt like he would lose himself completely. In this, like 1 up, 1 down mentality as I frame it where someone has to be the king and someone else has to be the servant. You always always lose.

And this dynamic seemed to get him security, which was scary to me. A friend of mine describes it as old school values, like, that he was operating on, like, values from the fifties, but that's... That wasn't it. This was a pattern that cost us real intimacy. I wasn't allowed to ever show him how much I care and have him believe me because he was too afraid of it, and any compromise in perspective made him feel like I had power over him in some way.

It was a losing battle and I didn't even know I was in it. Because there was always always chaos. There was always some level of distance, fighting chaos, lying. I kept feeling like he was setting me up to show him how much I cared in situations where I absolutely did not care. Based on the circumstance that we're going on.

Like, over time when somebody consistently creates a chaotic environment, you no longer care. Like, you no longer wanna continue to go down that, especially if you're like, healthy, if you're secure, He was creating situations where I literally couldn't care even if I wanted to because it was getting so ridiculous. And on some level, I felt like it was deliberate, and I see that now, It kept him safe from being engulfed because he would never be vulnerable enough to let me see what was really going on inside of him. He also would not be vulnerable enough to show that side in therapy. He said all the right words all the time.

They sounded like he was super self aware, but it was self aware to a limit. Self aware until his ego was challenged. Self aware until he really had to look at himself and his behaviors and make a change. I've read that people with Bp believe that if they don't see me, they can't hurt me. And that and my perspective is really the tragedy.

They don't just avoid abandonment. They actually are orchestrating it. He was acting in a way that there was no other choice for me than to leave. There was no way I could ever give him the love he desired because that love was a bottomless pit. And this is where the whole anxious attachment thing kind of comes in.

And know, if you've gotten this far and you're like, a she comparing ink... Tap attachment to borderline personality to sweater. I am not. I am not. I am I promise you I am much more...

I am way more intelligent than that than to do that. However, just When you don't know if your partner has a personality disorder or the signs of a personality disorder, and you certainly can't talk them about it without causing world war 3. You question their behaviors from the lens in which you understand it. And for most of us, it's from what we've gone through before or someone close to us for me. It was this.

It was anxious attachment. Those are the words I had when I went through this. I didn't have all of the knowledge of personality disorders. That was the closest thing I can lean on in my own personal experience to explain what was happening and to try and help and reassure until I ran out of all the tools in the book and the next book and the next book and my therapist book. And I would have these moments of getting through to them that were followed by huge meltdown, it was like nothing could ever actually integrate inside.

And now that I know more about Bp, there's a part of the disorder that says if someone truly love me, they'd annihilate me. By There is this fall self that they've built to protect themselves. It stems from belief that they are un unbelievable and over time, they constructed defenses to protect themselves from feeling that deeply embedded worthless. And in my relationship, this manifested in chaos addiction, not to alcohol and drugs, but to spending to validation, and he kept sa the relationship through these self sa behaviors, and I didn't know it at the time because who does? Who knows any of this?

But I didn't know it. But if he stopped all those behaviors? He wouldn't even know who he was anymore. His entire identity was prop up by his defenses. And let go of them would feel like an ego death, like a total collapse of everything that he was.

But again, who knows Any of this when we're in relationship with somebody, all we see is the anger the chaos and the bottomless pit of worthless that we can't love them out of because nobody can. Because here is the thing. Crow means facing ourselves. I sought to understand him and even committed the cardinal sin, asking him asking him if he could have Bp. I kept creating boundaries that got tram.

It tried to talk to him endlessly. He cannot accept that he built walls. He cannot accept that he was always needing some sort of control. And I needed to accept that this entire fucking pattern was killing me. And I probably would have stayed and work with him if he accepted the way he saw all the world, and relationships was disordered.

So just to be clear, what I'm saying here is I probably would have stayed longer, if he had accepted the way that he saw the world and relationships was disordered, meaning he wasn't seeing it clearly, and it's not that I'm right your... He's wrong. It's the patterns in which he believed people should engage with each other or based on power and control, and that is not part of a healthy relationship. If he agree and saw it and jane and, like, was able to work on it, I may have stayed longer, but it would have been such an upward battle. And this blog is that I wrote about this topic on sub because is like, really only scratching on the surface of the entire dynamic because the truth is is that he could not and would not even accept that he even had anxious attachment, let alone anything else.

So even approaching that it could be something deeper, was a losing battle, but many of us don't go through a course Recognizing personality disorders before we get to a relationship. Most of us feel we are just meeting people. But if you feel crazy in this is validating to you and want you to know that you are not crazy, and there are so so so much more on this topic that... I will continue to share on sub stock, and I probably most likely will also continue to do podcasts on. But if you are feeling like I can't understand where this is going and why this is going this way and what this looks like.

Please please know that it's most likely, not you. This is most likely something else going on, especially if you've done a lot of inner work on yourself. If this resonates with you, I invite you to check out my subs stack. Just type in jessica connect coaching or use the links on my show notes, my website or on my Instagram. If you want to check out my website, emotional abuse coach dot com.

My Instagram is at emotional abuse coach, and you can always email me at jessica desk coaching dot com.