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First Posted on October 12, 2010 by alisonball

Lately- perhaps because I had been on holiday myself- I have been thinking quite a lot about absence and separation and their relationship to grief and loss. As psychotherapists we are constantly helping people deal with such issues. Actual separations, both physical and emotional, in infancy or young childhood- from the primary caregiver- frequently lie at the base of relationship and coping issues that many people have and for which they come to therapy.

Of course outcomes of loss are multi determined and everyone who loses a parent in whatever way it is, does not have the same problems in later life. Much depends on the relationship prior to the loss, the type of loss or separation, the age of the infant and the help that the child gets with the loss at the time, the other care takers who are available and of course the length and severity of the loss.

In extreme situations, it is particularly painful for some adults when a relationship breaks up. For some it is totally unbearable that the loved one- a partner or a person with whom they have fallen in love- decides that they want to finish the relationship. Not to be able to see, to talk with or in other ways feel close to the loved one is so horrendous that some do not even want to live any more.

They become completely obsessed and preoccupied with thinking about the loved one and with trying to tease out precisely what went wrong and what must they do to make the loved one want them again. Such a state often goes along with them having idealised the loved one and now they are totally devastated. They are driven to distraction and to suicidal thoughts with the prospect of the loss- better to die they think than to live without their loved one. And some do or at least make the attempt.

It is my belief that these and other extreme feelings as well as lighter versions of them that many of us experience, come out of early loss of the loved parent. Sometimes the losses that make future stability so difficult are those that could be termed emotional absence- a parent who just could not “be there” at all for the child and/or could not see the child as a separate little being with its own needs and life to live. Or the loss may be as extreme as the death of the parent, but prolonged absences due to hospitalisation can also bring problems later on.

I have come to understand that the obsessive thinking and preoccupation with the loved one is the way in which the infant, child and now the adult attempts to keep the loved one alive in their own mind. Better even to have angry thoughts about the loved one than to have a void.

Of course there are many versions of the above and many ways in which people respond to absences. Some can let themselves know about the pain of absence others just shut down or shut off any feelings about an absence- that way they can get on with life and at least survive. Some even avoid allowing themselves ever to get close enough to anyone for absences to seem any problem at all and a sub-group of these people turn to drugs, alcohol or other addictions because dependence on those substances seem safer than people.