Quick Tips #6: Overcoming feelings of abandonment

Question: My ex has moved on and we share children. I can’t help but feel abandoned and I don’t want to accept his new partner into my life. What should I do?

What a great question and this is certainly a question that a lot of people who have gone through separation or divorce involving children ask, because it can be very hard to navigate through this particular issue.

First and foremost, in terms of empowering yourself as your type, what I would suggest is that you do your grieving work. You need to make sure you have given yourself an opportunity, a chance to grieve the loss of this person, or the loss of the relationship, or the loss of the marriage. It is not weird to grieve the loss of a relationship. It is not weird to grieve the fact that you can’t be with the mother or father of your children. It’s very normal to grieve all those valid things, especially for INF types. Often times when we break up, we feel that we have somehow failed, so it’s very important that you allow yourself to grieve what you need to grieve.

The second thing is much more of a practical approach. As you are sharing children, what needs to happen next is you need to make sure that the children are not being put in the middle of your emotional commotion. Now we always do get triggered. We can feel abandoned or we can feel that our ex-partner has moved on, and we can feel jealous about it. We can hate the guts of their new partner, because we don’t want them to be happy, or we feel that they are somehow better than we are. But what it comes down to is that those are your private emotions and they should not be exposed or imposed on to the children.

In those moments when you feel triggered, I’m going to ask you to practice your chameleon effect. It’s the very first lesson of the INFx unveiled course, and if you have done the course, you are very familiar with the concept. So I’m asking you to tap into that and start actually just being civil to the person or to the people involved in those situations. I am not asking you to not be authentic, I’m just asking you to be civil for the sake of your children.

The emotions that come up during the interactions, the jealousy or the feelings of abandonment, of course need to be attended to. However, the healing of those feelings is done in the privacy of your own mind. These feelings of abandonment, jealousy, hatred and feeling bitter are actually emotions of your inner children that have gone unrecognized and unhealed. Now again, if you have done the INFx unveiled course, it’s full of exercises, tips and keys on how to actually work through all those feelings of insecurities that are coming up.

In summary, grieve what you need to grieve. Attend to your inner children, when it comes to the hurts that you feel like your partner is still causing you. Practice being civil and being practical with people you have to deal with. Observe yourself. Try and catch yourself if you are going towards passive aggressive behaviour, you are using it as a coping mechanism, so forgive yourself and learn new ways of dealing with your feelings. Make sure you attend to your inner children’s feelings, they are the keys to overcoming the grief and the abandonment and the pain of loss. So start inner parenting, really get in there and start going with that.

If you are having a very difficult time in dealing with your emotions or you are struggling with these exercises, I really recommend the INFx unveiled course. You can check it out at HERE and see if it feels right for you.

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