Sometimes there are situations in our relationship (professional or personal) where the person we trust the most, like a close friend, a family member or a teacher or professional we may be working with such as a Coach or a therapist, may just seem to have disappeared suddenly.
The person may have gone silent, stopped taking our calls or may have moved away to an unknown location, with no prior intimation or communication to us.
In such a situation, we may experience one or more emotions, ranging from fear, anxiety, lows, sadness to anger and frustration. We may even feel ‘rejected’ and our thoughts may start racing to put ‘pieces’ together, searching and throwing up cues and clues from meetings/discussions/ incidents, which may even result in some shame or guilt surfacing for us ( why did we not see it coming, when it was so obvious ??)
While it may sound bad to the person going through these emotions , it may still be reasonable to say that there could be some strong personal circumstances for that close person to have suddenly disappeared.
People often just don’t leave relationships if they are attached or invested in them. There can be situations, circumstances that they may not be in a position to share.
The situations could be varied and may have elements of ‘shame ‘ attached to them. For example failing in some work they were doing, being thrown out of a job, being publicly humiliated for a mistake or something else.
Sometimes these trusted people may have themselves suffered a deep loss like an accident ( death or injury), or a broken relationship which may have shocked them to the core.
In some other situations, sometimes it becomes very tricky for people to even say that they do not want to continue a relationship with us, for fear of repercussions and cascading effects ( which may be true, or may just be their imagined/fears alone).
The underlying point is that they too are humans, and have their own set of life challenges. They may not be ready and prepared to face such challenges in their own life, while also continuing to maintain the deep relationships with those they have been helping or supporting in the recovery journey.
Becoming silent and disappearing from the spotlight is often easier for them than facing all of it together.
If someone here has incidentally faced a situation where a deep personal relationship seems to have been suddenly lost, because the other person ( friend, family, teacher, coach therapist etc.) suddenly seemed to have walked out or disappeared, I would suggest one of the two options
1. Attempt to reconnect with them and share with them how your felt, with full acknowledgement that they too may be facing deeply challenging situations, and be willing to wait and let things normalise again
2. Draw a line in sand , forgive, forget and move on. This would possibly be more helpful in building new relationships.
It helps to get a better picture from a perspective other than ours, and it also helps to focus our thoughts on what can be done to help improve our situation and make our life better.
