Fear of (medical) abandonment

September 7, 2020 1:52 PM

In the past few months, my primary care doctor, psychiatrist, gynecologist, and cat's vet have left, and now my therapist is heading out as well. I have abandonment issues that come up from time to time, but right now they're very present, especially with physicians. Are there resources that might work well with this particular kind of abandonment?

Some of these happened more abruptly/painfully than others; I feel like my psychiatrist broke my trust, for instance. Overall I didn't realize what a toll this had taken until I went to get some gauze changed at the ER today and felt very clingy towards that physician based on seeing him twice. (Gauze unrelated to self-harm.)

I know time, etc, will help, and my therapist is going above and beyond to do a warm handoff to her colleague, but this is all very difficult now, especially since I have some chronic health problems. Mostly I would love resources on getting through this time.

Books, podcasts, etc are cool; I don't want any support groups, and nothing religious. It's okay if the books are more general if they're neither stupid nor written for people who are.

I am a big fan of ACT but not so much CBT. DBT is okay. Other non-acronym modalities (NAM?) are welcome.

posted by mermaidcafe to Health & Fitness (4 answers total)

Maybe in the spirit of Act you could focus on thinking through what stories you are telling yourself about why these people are no longer in your life. From the question posed it seems like you are constructing a story with a punchline of, "These people I came to trust with my health (or the health of my pet) have left me and this is part of a wider story of abandonment in my life and is something that will continue." Maybe it's perfectly natural to feel this way based on your past experience, but it's not necessarily the truth of the matter. Could it help to sit down and write down the reasons that each of these people are leaving your sphere? Maybe imagine the decision to leave from their perspective - try constructing their stories of what happened including factors that don't relate to you (because I think you know no matter what your brain is telling you that it didn't have anything to do with something you did).

I suggest this partly because sometimes when I think for example of being unhappy that past romantic relationships didn't work out and get in a rut of feeling like I'm never going to find someone and I must be doing something wrong, I try to think back to each of the specific relationships that I had that didn't work and why they didn't work. After thinking of each specific experience I realize that each situation really had its own specific dynamics: person A wasn't ready for a relationship; person B was great along some lines but we couldn't communicate well and just had different perspectives on life that were prohibitive of us making a good couple; person C wasn't over their previous relationship and I wasn't emotionally very mature or confident at the time in my life that I knew them. And somehow after thinking of all the different reasons for things not working, I can see that I'm not fatally flawed, but maybe just feeling discouraged that the last thing didn't work and need to take some time to let myself feel sad.

Another suggestion would be to try to be kind of forward thinking - come up with a list of attributes you want in your new health professionals (this is kind of the "value" part - searching for professionals that have the characteristics you value), maybe based on what you liked about the old ones, and invest some time in the search for new people. That way you can also build skills and experience with the process of finding new people if you need to do it again at some point, which would be a perfectly normal thing to have happen.

That's what I've got on this (unfortunately no specific books or anything to recommend), hope it helps.
posted by knownfossils at 9:41 PM on September 7, 2020

Response by poster: Thanks. I’m not taking their departures personally. I understand that networks change and babies are born, etc. It still affects me personally. I am liking new providers so far. It has more to do with obsessing over the ways physicians could leave or otherwise let me down. These relationships are very different from romantic ones. As they should be.
posted by mermaidcafe at 9:52 PM on September 7, 2020

Ok, thanks for the clarification. I was really just bringing the romantic relationships aspect up because it was kind of behind what I was thinking in terms of thinking through the different stories of why people left and using that to break through whatever was behind the broader obsessing/thoughts about abandonment - not to imply that you were thinking of these as similar to romantic relationships or anything. Not sure I have much more for you! It sounds like it is something where maybe some distraction is merited? I know that can be hard in present times. Interested to see if anyone else has more specific suggestions. Good luck!
posted by knownfossils at 10:05 PM on September 7, 2020 [2 favorites]

I'm assuming that this is less about the specifics of the doctors and more about your own stuff and how it's been triggered by all of this. I've just started reading Your Resonant Self. The focus is on learning to build resilience and self-regulation by learning to give yourself the compassion and support that so many missed out on as a child. Lots of references to the current brain research. Attachment focused. Parts of it I skim, parts don't fit me but I'm finding a lot of helpful material in each chapter.

You can read the first two chapters here and see what you think.
posted by metahawk at 8:06 AM on September 8, 2020 [2 favorites]