A trick I taught myself to overcome fear of rejection & abandonment

I was diagnosed with avoidant personality disorder last year and one of my major problems that really affected my relationship and caused feelings of guilt and depression was my clingy behavior and fears of rejection and abandonment. I read somewhere once that people with AvPD have a hard time remembering that people are consistent. Like if someone does something that really shows that they can be trusted, we can sometimes forget that pretty quickly.

I came up with a trick to help myself overcome this a bit. I expressed my fears once with my ex and she told me that she would never abandon me. I made a mental note of this and whenever I fear that she'll abandon me, I'll remember this mental note and I worry a lot less.I also try to remember as many occasions as I can, where my fears have been proven wrong. For example, I try to remember times where my ex wasn't answering my texts and I thought she was gone, only to find out later that she was busy or working.

If I remember these things, it makes it easier to remind myself that people are consistent and if someone has shown many times that they won't reject you or hurt you, then you don't have to fear this anymore. Obviously this is much easier said than done. It was very difficult and I still have problems with it some days, but I hope this trick might be able to help some of you like it helped me.

thanks for sharing that. it can be very useful. i hope more people read that. i will make sure to pass it on while answering posts.

I came accross this article about object constancy and thought of your post. Sheds light that this is, indeed a familiar struggle.
http://blogs.psychcentral.com/equine...ect-constancy/

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I have both bases covered as I know everyone will abandon me and if they don't i tend to vanish.

thank you for sharing

I do similar things - still have the nasty habit of going "They haven't abandoned me......yet..." and being pretty positive that it WILL happen at some point - as that's what the past shows me.

However. I do frequently remind myself that person X is NOT person Y and even though I may have the same fears, I need to really not treat person X as if they're going to be a copy of person Y. I have to find ways to make myself give X a chance - which is where doing the same things you do comes in handy.