Abandonment trauma can make you chase people who abandon you
Obviously you donβt βlikeβ being abandoned. But itβs your nervous system trying to solve something unfinished because when we have abandonment wounds, our system becomes highly sensitive to inconsistency and withdrawal. So when a person pulls away, it can trigger a deep fear response and instead of stepping back, you might feel pulled to move closer. So it makes you want reassurance from people who are emotionally unavailable and get more attached to someone after they distance themselves. Doing more when they give you less or a popular one, confusing intensity or anxiety with connection
Thereβs a reason for this. Psychologically, itβs tied to patterns like attachment theory, especially whatβs called anxious attachment. Your brain is trying to recreate a familiar dynamic in hopes of finally getting a different outcome (being chosen, stayed for, not left this time)
Thereβs also trauma bonding which is where inconsistency (warm -> cold -> warm) actually strengthens attachment. It can make you feel more hooked the less stable someone is
So really, what youβre chasing is relief from anxiety, validation, closure, safety etc. I think, a lot of the ways we define emotions arenβt entirely accurate. And a lot of people have built their life around false beliefs. I digress
The people who trigger that chase feeling are often the least capable of giving you what youβre actually looking for. Healing this doesnβt mean βstop caring.β It means learning to recognize things like, calm doesnβt equal boring and inconsistency doesnβt mean chemistry. Or that being chosen doesnβt require you to earn it
Now another layer to this. Abandonment wounds can still happen even when someone canβt point to a clear experience like a parent leaving or a major romantic abandonment. Abandonment wounds often come from subtler patterns like emotional inconsistency, conditional love, being physically cared for but emotionally unseen, or growing up in environments where your inner world wasnβt consistently reflected or held for you. Even friendships or school dynamics, like feeling replaceable or occasionally excluded can shape your nervous system
The brain doesnβt store these experiences as single events, but as patterns that can later show up as anxiety in relationships. So abandonment sensitivity isnβt always about what clearly happened, it can also be shaped by what was missing consistently enough to be felt, even if it was never named
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