Love Me, Don't Leave Me: Overcoming Fear of Abandonment and Building Lasting, Loving Relationships

· New Harbinger Publications
4.3
29 reviews
Ebook
176
Pages
Eligible
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About this ebook

Everyone thrives on love, comfort, and the safety of family, friends, and community. But if you are denied these basic comforts early in life, whether through a lack of physical affection or emotional bonding, you may develop intense fears of abandonment that can last well into adulthood—fears so powerful that they can actually cause you to push people away. If you suffer from fears of abandonment, you may have underlying feelings of anger, shame, fear, anxiety, depression, and grief. These emotions are intense and painful, and when they surface they can lead to a number of negative behaviors, such as jealousy, clinging, and emotional blackmail. In Love Me, Don’t Leave Me, therapist Michelle Skeen combines acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), schema therapy, and dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) to help you identify the root of your fears. In this book you’ll learn how schema coping behaviors—deeply entrenched and automatic behaviors rooted in childhood experiences and fears—can take over and cause you to inadvertently sabotage your relationships. By recognizing these coping behaviors and understanding their cause, you will not only gain powerful insights into your own mind, but also into the minds of those around you. If you are ready to break the self-fulfilling cycle of mistrust, clinginess, and heartbreak and start building lasting, trusting relationships, this book will be your guide.

Ratings and reviews

4.3
29 reviews
Mississippi
November 30, 2019
I was wrongly expecting strategies to change the way I am. This book may teach you how not to get on someone else's nerves with your issues. Or how to avoid driving others insane because of the way you are (warts and all). But nothing in this book about overcoming the fear. More like "live with it, don't burden others with it".
5 people found this review helpful
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Tracy Russell
May 23, 2023
so far what I've read, I like how it explains abandonment and there's questions asking you what core belief you are to then use tools to apply to your specific needs.
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Elka Smith
February 28, 2015
This book has changed to way I look at relationships and has helped me to understand who I am and why I react the way I do. I highly recommend it.
5 people found this review helpful
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About the author

Michelle Skeen, PsyD, is a therapist who lives and works in San Francisco, CA. She has provided brief and long-term therapy for individuals and couples utilizing schema, cognitive, and behavioral therapies to address interpersonal issues, weight management, anger, depression, anxiety, disabilities, and trauma. She is author of The Critical Partner and coauthor of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Interpersonal Problems. Skeen hosts a weekly radio show called Relationships 2.0 with Dr. Michelle Skeen on KCAA 1050 AM. To find out more about Skeen, visit her website at www.michelleskeen.com.

Foreword writer Wendy T. Behary, LCSW, is founder and clinical director of the Cognitive Therapy Center of New Jersey and a faculty member at the Cognitive Therapy Center and Schema Therapy Institute of New York. She is also a distinguished founding fellow of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy. She maintains a private practice, specializing in narcissism and high-conflict couples therapy.

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