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. 

This pain makes me wish I had a magic wand.  I know that people half expect me to.  Even though they know better, they wish I had a magic pill.  They are hoping that taking the workshop will release them from the pain.  

I have been in this pain myself and understand fully how desperate people are for relief.  I myself hoped that one more book, one more therapist, one more workshop might do the trick and get me to snap out of it. 

There are also a lot of people attending my workshops who are not in acute abandonment pain, but have the chronic kind of “unresolved abandonment” that interferes in the quality of their relationships, causes them to feel insecure or unsure of themselves throughout their lives. 

Many people who attend are caught up in patterns of abandonment, where they can’t get a relationship to last.  Or they can’t find one to begin with.  Or they avoid relationships altogether out of fear of abandonment. 

Oh if only I had a magic wand, but alas, all I have are tools – exercises that serve as shortcuts to getting out of these patterns and coming out of the acute or chronic pain. 

Although I know these tools can turn people’s lives around, I am so aware of how disappointed people feel when they learn that in order to really get relief, they need to actually WORK these tools on a daily basis. 

I wish I had 5 easy points to cure these things – or that there was some magic insight that once people have an epiphany they will suddenly be “all better.”  This only happens in the movies.  During my workshop people have very significant epiphanies that make all of the difference in the world to them, but these are only first steps toward their recovery. The rest is work.

I wish for the magic because it’s an uncomfortable feeling to know that I am giving people the cold hard facts about recovery when they are coming to me for instant relief.  But it’s the career I’ve signed on for, and who better than me?