When "Everyone I Love Eventually Leaves Me": How IFS Heals the Abandonment Wound

It started with a text. "I think I need a few days to clear my head."

He meant a few days. You know that, somewhere. But your body didn't hear "a few days." It heard the end. Your chest tightened, your mind started racing, and within an hour you'd reread your last twenty messages, drafted three replies, and felt a very old sentence rise up from somewhere deep inside you:

Everyone I love eventually leaves me.

If that sentence feels familiar, this is for you.

What the wound looks like

An abandonment wound rarely announces itself. It hides inside reactions that feel far too big for the moment.

It's the panic when he falls asleep mid-conversation and the loneliness in that dark room feels ancient. It's the quiet grief at your best friend's leaving drinks, when part of you whispers, "See? They always go." It's seeing your ex engaged eight months after he "wasn't ready," and hearing not "he didn't want me" but "no one stays for me."

You're not overreacting, and you're not "too much." You're responding to two timelines at once: what's happening now, and what happened then.

Where it begins

For most women I work with, the wound wasn't formed by one dramatic event. More often it grew from repeated moments where connection wasn't reliable.

Maybe a parent left, physically or emotionally. Maybe your mum was there, but lost in her own depression, stress, or marriage, so you learned that love could vanish even when someone was in the room. Maybe affection came and went unpredictably, and you never knew which version of a parent you'd get. Maybe you were sent away, moved around, or were the child who had to be "no trouble" because the adults were already overwhelmed.

A child can't make sense of that from the outside. So she makes sense of it from the inside: "People leave. It must be something about me."

How the exile forms

In IFS, we'd call the part holding that pain an exile. She's the young one who felt the terror of being left and the shame that came with it. Her pain was too much for your system to carry at the time, so she was locked away to keep you functioning.

But exiles don't disappear. They wait. And they carry burdens: the beliefs and feelings absorbed back then, like "I'm not worth staying for" and "Love always ends."

When something in the present resembles the past, whether a slow reply, a cancelled plan, or a partner needing space, she floods forward. That's why it feels so old. It is old.

The protectors who step in

Because her pain is so overwhelming, your system builds a team of protectors whose job is to make sure you never feel it again.

Some are managers, working proactively to stop abandonment before it happens:

•     The Hypervigilant Scanner watches for signs they're leaving: shorter texts, a change in tone, the last-seen time.

•     The Controller tries to fix whatever might make them go, replaying conversations to find your mistake.

•     The People Pleaser makes you easy to love by agreeing, accommodating, and never needing too much.

Others are firefighters, rushing in once the exile's pain is already breaking through:

•     The Clinger pulls them closer when you sense distance. "Are we okay?"

•     The Tester checks whether their love is real. "It's fine, I'll make other plans then."

•     The Detacher has the last word when nothing else works: go cold, stop caring, leave first.

Here's the part I want you to really hear: none of these parts are the problem. They're exhausting, yes, and sometimes they create exactly the distance they fear. But every one of them is trying to protect a little girl who learned that love leaves.

How IFS helps: befriending before healing

Most approaches try to get rid of these behaviours. IFS does something different. It gets curious.

The work begins with your protectors, not your wound. You might sit with the Scanner and ask, "What are you afraid would happen if you stopped watching?" Often the answer surprises you: "If I stop, she'll be blindsided again. Like last time."

As you listen, something shifts. These parts start to notice that you, your Self, are here: calm, curious, compassionate, and not a child anymore. Many protectors have been working since you were five or six. They don't know you've grown up. They don't know there's someone in here who can handle the pain they've been guarding.

Trust builds slowly. And when your protectors feel genuinely respected, they give permission to approach the one they've been protecting.

Unburdening the wound

When you finally meet your exile, you don't analyse her. You witness her.

You let her show you what happened: the empty house, the parent who didn't come back, the moment she decided she wasn't worth staying for. You stay with her, as the adult who finally does stay.

Sometimes she needs you to go back into that memory and give her what she didn't get: comfort, protection, someone saying "This isn't your fault." Then, when she's ready, she can release the burden she's been carrying, letting go of "everyone leaves me" in whatever way feels right to her, and taking in something new: safety, worth, belonging.

When the exile is unburdened, something beautiful happens to your protectors. They no longer need to work so hard. The Scanner can rest. The Tester can stop testing. The Detacher doesn't need to run. They can take on new roles, often ones they've wanted all along.

What changes

You'll still feel it when someone pulls away. You're human, and love will always carry some risk. But the next time he says, "I need a few days," you might notice a flicker of fear and then something steadier underneath it: "That's the old wound. She's safe with me now."

That's the real healing. Not that people never leave, but that you no longer leave yourself.

Ioana Rotaru is a London-based IFS, EMDR and Schema Informed CBT Therapist specialising in healing relational trauma to stop the cycle of self-abandonment and help you have more connected and fulfilling relationships. If you would like to explore addressing any of the issues in this article, please get in touch with Ioana at info@ioanarotaru.com for a free 15-minute consultation about how therapy might help