Love Me, Don't Leave Me

Name: Love Me, Don't Leave Me
Rating: 4 (1 reviews)
ISBN: 9781608829545

Overcoming Fear of Abandonment and Building Lasting, Loving Relationships

By Michelle Skeen

Michelle Skeen traces the fear of abandonment to early maladaptive schemas—core beliefs about being unloved, defective, or certain to be left—and shows how those beliefs quietly drive jealousy, clinging, and self-sabotage in adult relationships. Integrating acceptance and commitment therapy, schema therapy, and dialectical behavior therapy, the book moves through understanding one's core beliefs, identifying mind traps and relationship patterns, and building the mindfulness, emotional regulation, and communication skills needed to form genuinely stable bonds.

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Concepts

Early Maladaptive Schemas
Deep core beliefs (abandonment, defectiveness, emotional deprivation, mistrust) formed in childhood that quietly drive adult fears of being left, rejected, or unloved.
Mind Traps
Cognitive distortions like confirmation bias, mind reading, and parataxic distortion that filter experience through the lens of abandonment fear, making it almost impossible to see a partner's behavior clearly.
Values-Based Behavior
The ACT principle that guides actions from deeply held personal values rather than from fear, anxiety, or old schema-driven reactions, even when the emotions are intensely uncomfortable.
Psychological Flexibility
The capacity to hold difficult thoughts and feelings without being controlled by them, allowing a person to respond to a partner from presence rather than from schema-driven reactivity.
Primary vs. Secondary Pain
The distinction between unavoidable suffering (the primary pain of genuine loss or disappointment) and the additional suffering created by rumination, avoidance, and interpretive distortion.

Chapters

Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1. Don't Leave Me - Understanding Your Fear of Abandonment
Chapter 2. What Do I Believe - Assessing Your Core Beliefs
Chapter 3. What's Getting In My Way - Mind and Relationship Traps
Chapter 4. How Do I Move Forward - Staying Present With Mindfulness
Chapter 5. What Do I Value - Motivation for Change
Chapter 6. What Was I Thinking - Understanding Your Thoughts
Chapter 7. Why Do I Feel This Way - Managing Your Emotions
Chapter 8. What Am I Doing - Changing Your Behavior
Chapter 9. What Do I Say - New Communication Skills
Chapter 10. I'm Dating, Now What - Quick Tips and Strategies for New Relationships
Appendix. Attachment Styles
References

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Rating

Topics

Attachment Theory, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, ACT, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, DBT, Polyvagal Theory, Abandonment, Cognitive Distortions, Mindfulness, Inner Critic, Self-Compassion, Acceptance, Rumination, Avoidance, Communication, Active Listening, Expressing Needs, Empathy, Self-Blame, Coping Styles, Emotional Deprivation, Abandonment, Manipulation, Fear of Abandonment, Nature vs Nurture, Attachment Styles, Temperament, Childhood Imprint, Early Maladaptive Schemas, Mistrust, Emotional Deprivation, Defectiveness, Core Beliefs, Mistrust Core Belief, Abandonment Core Belief, Emotional Deprivation Belief, Defectiveness Core Belief, Failure Core Belief, Self-Assessment, Amygdala, Emotional Intelligence, Fight-Flight-Freeze, Behavioral Reactions, Adaptive Behavior, Maladaptive Behavior, Mind Traps, Cognitive Distortions, Confirmatory Bias, Old Tapes, Parataxic Distortion, The Abandoner, The Abuser, The Depriver, The Devastator, The Critic, Mindfulness, Daily Awareness, Primary Pain, Secondary Pain, Transitory, Values-Based Behavior, Negative Thoughts, Diffusion, Labeling Thoughts, Letting Go, Self-Compassion, Inner Critic, Coping Strategies, Emotional Fog, Distracting Activity, Do the Oppostite, Psychological Flexibility, Self-Disclosure, Pseudo Listening, Active Listening, Need Expression, Unmet Needs, Validation, Empathy

Published

September 1, 2014

Publisher

New Harbinger Publications

Links

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