The Abandonment Wound
Updated: Aug 8, 2022

Note: A helpful first step in the process of working on yourself is to identify your emotional trauma wounds and ego mask. If you haven't yet identified your emotional trauma a.ka. soul wounds, you can use this quiz to help you.
In this article we will cover the abandonment wound and:
Find out what mask your ego puts on to avoid the pain associated with this wound and how it manifests through your behavior (withdrawn, dependent, masochist, controlling or harsh).
Learn to identify what activates your wound.
Learn how to begin healing.
Where do emotional wounds come from?
On a soul level we come into this lifetime to evolve through the experiences that transform us and teach us the meaning of love itself. When we refuse to accept our experiences for what they are (opportunities to discover who we really are) and instead insist on assessing them endless, we experience guilt, fear, regret and we perpetuate self-defeating behaviors that doe not serve the best version of who we are. It is our soul's mission to learn to fully accept our experiences as they are. In essence, we allow ourselves to experience our emotions without getting stuck in them. We learn to stay centered in knowing we are always learning from our own experiences. Everything we experience without acceptance accumulates in our body, our energy and our emotions. Until we start addressing these stuck emotions, many of us will continue to get stuck in self-defeating behavior patterns that do not align with our vision of success and abundance.
According to soul wound expert Lise Bourbeau, and past-life regression guru Dr. Michael Newton, before we are born into this lifetime, we choose what karma or “spiritual luggage” we want to work on or settle in this incarnation. The vast majority of us are not consciously aware of this from birth, it is only with time that you slowly begin to realize what your life plan is and what you should regulate in it (with the help of your intuition to guide you on your path).
We all come into the world and experience emotional wounds that we must learn to work through, and learn from.
There are 5 core soul wounds and each of us has at least one, usually two, and sometimes we have ALL of them.
Our emotional wounds HURT!
So what does our thinking mind tell us to do to alleviate the pain caused by our wounds being triggered or activated?
It tells us to put on a protective "mask" (set of behaviors) every time it perceives a potential threat to our well-being. These threats can be real, or simply perceived - either way, our mask goes on.
This is because the ego (our thinking, intellectual mind) tries to avoid unpleasant situations at all costs. The ego tries to convince us that we have no wound. It tells us that denial will make our pain disappear and that we won’t feel it. Unfortunately, every time we put on our ego mask, we hide something from ourselves. Deep down inside we feel a sense of betrayal because at our core, we know we are not being faithful to the needs of our soul. Our soul knows it does not serve us to play it safe, instead it urges us to experience emotions, to grow and learn from those emotions, and to embrace our love for humanity.
To help ourselves, we aim to listen to our intuition, as the voice of our soul.
It always tries to direct us towards the people and situations that we need to grow and develop in accordance with our soul's plan for this lifetime.
When we're born, we have no resistance to accepting all the pros, cons, weaknesses, personalities, and desires that cross our path. Our soul understands we are here to be in the NOW and to come back to love over and over again. More often than not, we find ourselves looking to meet the expectations of our parents/caregivers, friends, and society in general and our soul's mission remains forgotten or ignored as we pursue success and acceptance from the external world. We inevitably face challenges that act as a catalyst for our perspectives to expand and our soul to evolve. Life's challenges can be very painful.