8 Signs of Abandonment Issues in Young Adulthood

While signs of abandonment issues may be clear in childhood or as a young teen, it can be tricky to recognize signs of abandonment in young adulthood. If you’re part of Generation Z, you may have some struggles that don’t necessarily mean you experienced abandonment. The COVID-19 pandemic was unique to your upbringing, and it may have some long-term effects that look similar to signs of abandonment.

Or you may have effects of other brain-based diagnoses that aren’t related to abandonment.

Why It May Be Difficult To Recognize Signs of Abandonment in Young Adulthood

First, Generation Z’s young adults are among the first to experience a 100% digitally dependent lifestyle. They’ve not only grown up with smartphones, which has contributed to social challenges but they are also expected to adapt quickly to technological developments such as AI and other tech-based solutions that can disrupt their natural wiring or ability to synthesize these developments into healthy, realistic expectations.

Second, young adults in these generations are among those who have increasing demands placed on their work-life balance. Due to the nature of work-from-anywhere lifestyles, the idea that forming friendships through a young person’s career isn’t as stable as it was for previous generations. The lack of friendships can make a person feel alienated or disliked, even if they have a stable home life without abandonment.

Finally, adults born roughly between 2000 and 2007 may not have the executive functioning skills of previous generations because they had parents who hovered rather than letting them form independence and attended widely variable school systems that may or may not have taught these skills in school.

How to Discern If Your Signs of Abandonment Are Due to Abandonment in Childhood

If you experienced inconsistent affection from a caregiver, had trauma in your childhood (such as neglect, indifference, or abuse), or your parent relied on you for the emotional or practical support he or she should have received from a spouse – sometimes called parentification – your struggles may be related to abandonment.

The good news is that you can experience healing, and your brain can create new neural pathways so you’re able to develop healthy bonds with others in adulthood.

Here are eight signs of abandonment to look for in your relational patterns:

Your trust issues in relationships tend to start with you, not your significant other or friend. Sometimes when we’ve experienced abandonment or an insecure attachment to a caregiver who didn’t provide what we needed in childhood, we grow up believing there are trust issues that aren’t truly there.

You may struggle to believe your friend or your significant other when they’ve not shown that they cannot be trusted.

You find yourself repeating poor relational choices, such as friends or significant others who don’t treat you well. This may mean you’re consistently choosing friends or significant others who walk away when things get serious or difficult. You may have a series of relationships where the other person has a pattern of not listening, not engaging emotionally, or not being vulnerable even after you’ve known each other for quite some time.

Your desire to keep a person close means you tend to be impulsive in your relational decisions or bend over backwards to hang onto a toxic friendship. Impulsivity may mean you overspend to buy something your significant other wants – not as a gift but as a way to keep their interest in you. Or you try to please your friend who often cancels plans with you when something she perceives as “better” comes along.

These are examples of unhealthy attachment that may be due to your childhood caregiver not giving you the attention you needed. It’s easy to unwittingly cling to a friend’s or a significant other’s attention, even if that attention isn’t healthy or is fleeting.

In general, you struggle with people-pleasing and basing your worth on whether or not others around you are happy. While people-pleasing alone doesn’t mean you were abandoned, it can be a signal to help you look at your early upbringing to examine if some of your tendencies are rooted in trauma.

If your worth or value is tied up in whether those around you are happy, there may be something deeper and worth exploring with a professional counselor.

You feel lonely most of the time, even though you have friends and family in your life. When a caregiver does not provide the emotional support that a child needs, it can cause the child – and young adult – to perceive that they’re incapable of making close connections with others. This may be why you struggle to feel connected to friends and family, even though they’re supportive and vulnerable with you.

If it is difficult for you to share with them what you’re dealing with or if you keep friends at a superficial level, you struggle when a relationship gets too deep, or you feel lonely most of the time, it could be that you weren’t given the connection you needed emotionally as a child.

Signs of abandonment don’t always reveal themselves in obvious ways, so one way to discover this is to ask yourself a question: Do I tend to give up when I’m asked to “be real” more than I am comfortable with sharing, even if the friend or significant other is someone I’d deem “close” or long-term?

If you answered yes, behavioral or narrative therapy may be the best way to explore healing. Find a clinically trained counselor who can help you find the connections you’ve been missing.

You cling tightly to others rather than taking risks. Often, students who are in unhealthy friendships where they cling too much in high school lack the emotional awareness and confidence they need in young adulthood to take what we call “safe risks.”

These risks may include trying a new church by yourself, switching careers or jobs, or moving outside your neighborhood. As a young adult, these are considered normative changes – things you should be doing in young adulthood as you’re offered the opportunity.

But if you’re afraid of trying anything new or showing up alone, it might be that you’re more comfortable clinging to safe relationships, careers and places where you can predict how things will unfold because they are familiar to you. This may be rooted in a fear that new surroundings, people, or co-workers will disappoint (or “abandon”) you.

Anxiety has been a constant in your life. If anxiety is something you’ve struggled with throughout your growing-up years and it has continued in young adulthood, you may want to talk to a counselor.

Even if you and your counselor recognize that your anxiety isn’t rooted in emotional or physical abandonment, it’s important to seek help so that anxiety doesn’t hold you back from your goals or healthy relationships.

While a struggle with anxiety doesn’t automatically mean you experienced childhood trauma or abandonment, it can. The best way to find out is to contact us about finding a counselor who can ask you a few questions to help determine where the anxiety is coming from.

Our offices are equipped with licensed, trained counselors who are patient, understanding, and go at your pace. Reach out today to find an office near you for an initial consultation.

Your faith, though once strong, seems meaningless. Even if you were raised in a faith-filled household or you experienced fruitful faith in your teen years, it is more common for young adults who experienced abandonment to struggle with their faith and purpose in life.

We want to encourage you that you’re not a lesser person because you have started to question or doubt what you once believed. If some signs of abandonment throughout this article feel familiar, it may be that your doubt has a root that isn’t about the faith itself. It may be about insecure attachments that you couldn’t control as an infant or young child.

Understanding that your ability to develop rooted beliefs in relationships and faith is about more than just “believing enough” is a good start. The strength of what you believe about faith, yourself, and relationships hinges on the early relationships you may or may not have had the chance to develop.

Our team of counselors is equipped to help you take the first step toward healing and freedom from abandonment issues. Contact our office today.