Count to 5

The Five Stages of Abandonment are: 1. Shattering: Severing of love-connection, devastation, shattering of hopes and dreams. The emotions are shock, panic, despair, feeling you can't live without your love. 2. Withdrawal: You're in painful withdrawal of love-loss, as intense as heroin withdrawal. The emotions are yearning, craving, obsessing, longing for your ex's return. 3. Internalizing: As you try to making sense of the rejection, you doubt and blame yourself. Idealizing the abandoner at your own expense, narcissistic injury sets in and fear incubates. 4. Rage: Reversing the rejection and having retaliatory feelings. Displacing anger on friends who don't understand or are critical of the abandoner leads to more unhealthy action. 5. Lifting: Rising out despair, life begins to distract you. You begin to open to love again and all its possibilities. You “SWIRL” through all the stages over and over until you emerge out the end of the tunnel a changed person capable of greater life and love than before.