SusanAnderson

INSECURE? TAKE BACK CONTROL!

Some people have written in this week about being in relationships where they feel painfully insecure. This kind of pain is different from that expressed by those who are lonely – folks who are emotionally alone because they can't make a connection with anyone. More…

Intimacy? He Keeps Holding Back!

One of my clients is in a relationship with a guy who is attentive, sensual, and seemingly committed (exclusive with her), but she wants to move forward into a total relationship with him – i.e. live together and eventually, possibly marry.  He, however, wants to keep it like it is.  At present they go back and forth between their two apartments, getting together mostly on weekends.  During the week, he claims to need “down time” with his hobbies and friends. More…

Nevermind Your Inner Child; Tame Your Outer Child

Getting ready to greet the holidays, I am doing daily dialogues with my outer child.  I’m wondering if using this self awareness tool (outer child) might help some of you also.  What is outer child, you ask?  More…

BEING TRIGGERED TO ACT LIKE A NEEDY MANIAC

I got a letter from a woman who says that one day her boyfriend of 10 years was telling her that he loved her, needed her, and found her exciting, comforting, and vibrant, and the next day he suddenly told her, “You’re squeezing the life out of me. I feel smothered. I want out.”  Then he broke up with her, wants no further contact. More…

EMOTIONAL HUNGER LEADS TO OVERSTUFFING

Having just experienced Thanksgiving and now looking forward to the rest of the holidays, I’m thinking about how much weight I’d gain if I didn’t get an immediate handle.  I’m writing this so that all of you can bear witness to my resolve to not let food defeat my goals.  Directly after turkey day, I kept popping the delicious leftovers into my mouth.  Why?  I knew that overeating like that would cause me to gain weight.  I also knew it had something to do with emotional hunger.  More…

Thanksgiving Is the Beginning of the Abandonment Season -- Oops, I Mean Holiday Season

What is it about the holidays that bring on abandonment feelings?  I think it’s all of the familiar tastes, smells, sounds, and sights of that tug at our heartstrings and hearken back to earlier times when we were connected to our families.  Back then we were young, hopeful, tucked into a family nest.  By contrast, now some of us are forced to face Thanksgiving alone. Some of us are physically alone, others are emotionally alone.  More…

SHAME IS THE CORNERSTONE OF ABANDONMENT

A woman wrote to me who admits to stealing money from a friend so that her new boyfriend wouldn’t find out that she was in debt, for fear of being abandoned.  Of course, when she was caught, she confessed to everything and has tried to make everything right again.  She claims this behavior was completely uncharacteristic for her.  “I had never done anything like this before in my life.” The situation she described might strike some people as extreme. The part that we can all identify with is the shame, that is, if we have had any background of abandonment.  More…

No Magic Want to Take Away Abandonment Pain, Just Some Advice

I just came back from giving an abandonment recovery workshop at Esalen Institute in Big Sur California – a 6-day, 30-hour workshop. This Sunday, I also just finished giving a 6-1/2- hour workshop at the N. Y. Open Center.  I am so moved by the pain people bring to the workshops – they are still all in my mind. Going through heartbreak, loss, abandonment creates a real emotional crisis.  The pain is shocking in its intensity – it’s almost unendurable.  Most people survive it, but only because the body itself contains the will to survive.  People in this pain often don’t know what keeps them going.  More…

Behind the Cool Customer

I read Joan Didion’s piece on grief in September 25, 2005’s magazine section of the New York Times.  Having also experienced death of a partner, I devoured her article and identified with almost every feeling she expressed.  More…

The Push/Pull in Relationships

I’ve had several people write to me this week about the push/pull dynamics in their love relationships.  I’ve experienced this dynamic myself.  I can remember in an early relationship, I wanted more from my boyfriend.  We were in college and other women were interested in him, and he had not made me feel as if “he only had eyes for me.”  I wasn’t sure that he was the committed type who could ignore other possibilities.  So the stronger I felt about him, the less I trusted him.  It wasn’t him, it was me.  I knew that if I acted too needy, that would be the kiss of death – so I acted the opposite.  The more madly in love with him I felt, the more I tried to play “hard-to-get.”  To this day, I think he read right through it.  But we certainly never could get the relationship to the “safety zone.” I was too busy playing games and feeling needy and desperate for a love-fix from him.  More…