Learning how to deal with abandonment issues is not as simple as telling yourself to trust people more.
Fear of being left can affect how a woman interprets relationships, responds to distance, asks for reassurance, handles conflict, and protects herself when she feels vulnerable.
One woman may become intensely anxious when someone pulls away.
Another may leave relationships first so she cannot be abandoned.
Another may tolerate treatment she knows is unhealthy because losing the relationship feels even more frightening.
These patterns can develop for many reasons. Early relationships, emotional neglect, significant losses, inconsistent caregiving, traumatic experiences, later relationships, and individual temperament may all be relevant.
But abandonment issues are not a diagnosis, and they do not automatically mean someone has experienced trauma, has an attachment disorder, or has another psychiatric condition.
At Kinder in the Keys, our women’s trauma treatment program looks beyond the behavior itself to understand what the woman fears, where her relationship patterns developed, what keeps them active, and what she needs to begin responding differently.
What Are Abandonment Issues?
“Abandonment issues” is an informal term commonly used to describe persistent fears of being left, rejected, replaced, or emotionally disconnected from someone important.
The fear can occur in:
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Romantic relationships
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Friendships
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Family relationships
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Therapeutic relationships
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Work relationships
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Other important interpersonal connections
For some women, the fear follows an identifiable loss or painful relationship.
For others, it appears to have developed gradually.
And some women cannot point to one specific event at all.
The important clinical question is not simply:
“Do I have abandonment issues?”
It is:
“What am I afraid will happen, how do I respond when that fear is activated, and what effect is that pattern having on my life?”
Common Signs of Abandonment Issues in Adults
Fear of abandonment does not look the same in every person.
Some women move toward relationships when frightened.
They seek reassurance, increase contact, or become highly focused on whether the other person is still available.
Others move away.
They withdraw, shut down, avoid vulnerability, or end relationships before someone else has the opportunity to leave.
Both patterns can serve a similar purpose:
reducing the risk of being hurt.
Common patterns can include:
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Repeatedly seeking reassurance
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Becoming highly distressed when someone is unavailable
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Difficulty trusting other people’s intentions
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Reading rejection into relatively small changes in behavior
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People-pleasing to keep someone close
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Difficulty setting boundaries
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Tolerating unhealthy treatment because being alone feels worse
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Jealousy or fear of being replaced
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Testing relationships
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Withdrawing when closeness feels frightening
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Ending relationships before the other person can
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Difficulty tolerating uncertainty in relationships
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Becoming preoccupied with changes in communication
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Feeling disproportionately distressed by separations
Experiencing one of these behaviors occasionally does not mean someone has a psychological problem.
Patterns become more concerning when they are persistent, intense, repetitive, and damaging to relationships or emotional well-being.
What Abandonment Fear Can Feel Like
The outward behavior is only part of the experience.
Internally, a woman may feel:
“Something is wrong.”
“She’s pulling away from me.”
“He’s going to leave.”
“I did something wrong.”
“I’m being replaced.”
“If I don’t fix this right now, I’m going to lose the relationship.”
Sometimes there is an identifiable reason for concern.
Other times, the intensity of the fear is much greater than the available evidence.
That distinction can be difficult to recognize while emotionally activated.
When Reassurance Never Feels Like Enough
Reassurance can temporarily reduce abandonment fear.
A partner says everything is okay.
A friend confirms she is not upset.
A therapist explains that a vacation does not mean the therapeutic relationship is ending.
For a little while, anxiety decreases.
Then doubt returns.
The woman may ask again.
This can create a reassurance cycle:
Fear → reassurance seeking → temporary relief → uncertainty returns → more reassurance seeking
The problem is not that asking for reassurance is inherently unhealthy.
Everyone needs reassurance sometimes.
The problem develops when a person becomes increasingly dependent on reassurance but increasingly unable to believe it.
Part of healing can involve learning to tolerate uncertainty without requiring another person to repeatedly eliminate it.
Why Do Abandonment Issues Develop?
There is no single cause.
Fear of abandonment may develop through a combination of relationships, experiences, temperament, learning, and psychological vulnerabilities.
Possible contributors can include:
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Inconsistent caregiving
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Emotional neglect
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Loss of a parent or important caregiver
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Parental separation or divorce
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Significant childhood instability
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Repeated rejection
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Childhood abuse
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Intimate partner violence
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Betrayal
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Sudden relationship loss
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Death of someone important
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Previous relationships involving repeated abandonment or threats of abandonment
None of these experiences guarantees that someone will develop abandonment fears.
And someone can struggle with abandonment without having experienced every—or any—item on this list.
Childhood Experiences and Abandonment Fear
Early relationships can influence what children learn to expect from other people.
A child whose caregivers are generally available and responsive may gradually develop confidence that important relationships can survive ordinary separations, frustration, and conflict.
Other children grow up with considerably less predictability.
A caregiver may sometimes be emotionally available and sometimes absent.
A parent may leave the household.
Addiction, illness, conflict, divorce, death, abuse, or instability may disrupt relationships.
Another child may have caregivers who provide food, housing, education, and physical safety but rarely respond to emotional needs.
These experiences can influence expectations about closeness and reliability.
But childhood does not mechanically program an adult woman’s relationships.
Later relationships and experiences matter too.
People can learn, change, and develop healthier ways of relating throughout adulthood.
Emotional Neglect Can Be Difficult to Recognize
Emotional neglect is particularly difficult to identify because it often involves what didn’t happen.
There may not be one dramatic event.
Instead, a child may repeatedly experience:
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Little curiosity about her feelings
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Limited comfort when distressed
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Emotions being dismissed or minimized
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Pressure to handle problems alone
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Little repair after conflict
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Affection that feels conditional
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Emotional needs being treated as excessive or inconvenient
An adult woman may look back and say:
“Nothing terrible happened. I had everything I needed.”
Material needs may indeed have been met.
But emotional responsiveness is a different dimension of caregiving.
Research on childhood adversity and adult mental health supports examining early experiences as one potential influence on later psychological functioning while recognizing that outcomes vary substantially between individuals.
Exploring that history can sometimes help explain why asking for support, trusting closeness, or believing another person will remain emotionally available feels difficult.
Abandonment Issues and Attachment
Attachment theory can provide one framework for understanding relationship patterns.
In adult attachment literature, people commonly discuss patterns described as secure, anxious, avoidant, and fearful/disorganized, although attachment is more complex than a personality label or online quiz result.
A woman with more anxious attachment tendencies may become highly sensitive to signs that another person is becoming unavailable.
Someone with more avoidant tendencies may protect herself by limiting dependence or emotional closeness.
Other women show mixed patterns.
But attachment styles should not become identities.
A woman is not simply:
“an anxious attachment person.”
Attachment-related patterns can vary between relationships and can change through later experiences and intentional work.
Research on adult attachment supports the idea that attachment patterns are not necessarily fixed across adulthood and can be influenced by later relationship experiences.
The goal is to use attachment concepts to understand patterns—not place someone permanently inside another psychological box.
Fear of Abandonment Is Not a Diagnosis
This distinction matters.
“Abandonment issues” and “abandonment trauma” are commonly used phrases, but neither is a standalone psychiatric diagnosis.
Fear of abandonment can occur in many different clinical and nonclinical contexts.
It may occur alongside:
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Anxiety
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Depression
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Trauma-related conditions
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Relationship difficulties
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Grief
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Low self-worth
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Certain personality disorders
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No psychiatric diagnosis at all
A fear of being abandoned does not by itself establish any particular diagnosis.
Treatment should therefore begin with assessment rather than assuming that everyone with abandonment fears has the same underlying condition.
Abandonment Fear Is Not Automatically Trauma
Another important distinction is between painful relational experiences and traumatic exposure.
A breakup can be devastating.
Divorce can be deeply painful.
A parent leaving can affect a child profoundly.
Emotional neglect can have lasting psychological consequences.
But the word trauma has specific meanings in clinical diagnosis, particularly when evaluating PTSD.
Not every abandonment experience meets criteria for traumatic exposure required for a PTSD diagnosis.
That does not make the experience insignificant.
We do not need to call every painful experience trauma in order to take its psychological impact seriously.
How Fear of Abandonment Affects Relationships
Abandonment fears can create the very relationship instability a woman is trying to prevent.
Imagine that a partner takes longer than usual to answer a message.
The woman notices the delay.
She thinks:
“Something has changed.”
That thought becomes:
“He’s losing interest.”
Then:
“He’s going to leave.”
Anxiety increases.
She sends another message.
Then another.
When the partner eventually responds, she may be angry, frightened, accusatory, or desperate for reassurance.
The partner becomes confused or frustrated.
Conflict follows.
The conflict then appears to confirm the original fear:
“See? Something is wrong between us.”
The cycle does not mean the woman’s feelings are fake.
The fear is real.
But the interpretation and protective response can sometimes create additional relationship problems.
Leaving Before You Can Be Left
Not everyone with abandonment fears becomes clingy.
Some women protect themselves through distance.
They may:
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Avoid serious relationships
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Keep partners emotionally at arm’s length
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Lose interest when relationships become intimate
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Withdraw during conflict
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Refuse to depend on anyone
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End relationships abruptly
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Convince themselves they never needed the relationship
Leaving first can provide a temporary sense of control.
“You cannot abandon me if I abandon you.”
But over time, the strategy can prevent the closeness the woman actually wants.
People-Pleasing and Self-Abandonment
Fear of losing relationships can also lead women to repeatedly ignore their own needs.
A woman may agree when she wants to say no.
She may tolerate disrespect.
She may avoid expressing anger.
She may change her preferences to match another person’s.
She may constantly monitor whether other people are happy with her.
The relationship is preserved—but at an increasing personal cost.
The term self-abandonment is sometimes used to describe this pattern of repeatedly ignoring one’s own needs, values, boundaries, or feelings to maintain connection with someone else.
It is not a diagnosis.
But it can be a useful way of recognizing when fear of losing another person has led a woman to gradually lose contact with herself.
How to Deal With Abandonment Issues in the Moment
Long-term change takes time, but there are things a woman can practice when abandonment fear is activated.
1. Identify the Trigger
Ask:
What actually happened?
Try to describe the event without interpreting it.
For example:
Fact: “She hasn’t answered my message for three hours.”
rather than:
Interpretation: “She’s ignoring me because she’s tired of me.”
Separating facts from interpretations can create room to think.
2. Name the Fear
Ask:
What am I afraid this means?
The answer may be:
“I’m afraid she’s leaving.”
“I’m afraid I’m not important.”
“I’m afraid I did something wrong.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to be alone.”
Naming the actual fear is often more useful than reacting to the surface situation.
3. Notice the Urge
What do you immediately want to do?
Send five messages?
Apologize?
Demand reassurance?
Withdraw?
Start an argument?
End the relationship?
Knowing the urge does not mean you have to act on it.
4. Delay the Automatic Response
When possible, create a little space between feeling and action.
That might mean waiting before sending another message, taking a walk, writing down what you’re thinking, or doing something else until emotional intensity decreases.
The goal is not to suppress feelings.
It is to prevent a temporary emotional state from automatically making relationship decisions for you.
5. Check the Evidence
Ask:
What evidence supports my interpretation?
Then:
What evidence doesn’t support it?
If a partner has been consistently caring for two years and takes longer than usual to answer one message, that history matters.
If there are genuine signs of withdrawal, dishonesty, mistreatment, or instability, those facts matter too.
Emotional regulation should never mean teaching yourself to ignore legitimate relationship problems.
Learn to Tolerate Some Relationship Uncertainty
No relationship provides absolute certainty.
Even healthy relationships involve:
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Time apart
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Delayed messages
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Disagreements
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Changes in mood
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Competing responsibilities
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Misunderstandings
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Independent friendships
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Different needs for space
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Occasional disappointment
Trying to eliminate every moment of uncertainty can make relationships increasingly restrictive.
Healing abandonment fears often involves developing the ability to experience some uncertainty without immediately interpreting it as rejection.
That is very different from tolerating abuse, manipulation, repeated betrayal, or chronic emotional unavailability.
Build a Life That Is Larger Than One Relationship
Emotional independence does not mean becoming detached or refusing to need other people.
Humans need relationships.
But one relationship should not have to carry a woman’s entire identity, emotional regulation, social life, purpose, and sense of worth.
Building emotional independence can include:
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Maintaining friendships
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Developing interests
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Pursuing meaningful work or education
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Spending time alone intentionally
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Maintaining personal routines
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Having goals independent of a partner
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Practicing boundaries
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Developing multiple sources of support
The goal is not:
“I don’t need anyone.”
It is:
“I can love and depend on people without disappearing inside the relationship.”
Practice Boundaries
Women with abandonment fears sometimes experience boundaries as dangerous.
Saying no can feel like risking rejection.
Expressing disagreement can feel like risking conflict.
Asking for something can feel like being too demanding.
But relationships without boundaries often create resentment, anxiety, and instability.
Healthy boundaries allow both people to remain individuals while remaining connected.
Practicing boundaries can therefore become part of learning that disagreement and individuality do not automatically mean abandonment.
Learn the Difference Between Fear and Information
This is one of the most important skills.
Sometimes abandonment fear is reacting to old expectations.
Sometimes something genuinely is wrong.
A partner may actually be withdrawing.
A friend may repeatedly disregard boundaries.
A relationship may be unhealthy.
The goal of emotional regulation is not to teach a woman that all of her concerns are irrational.
It is to help her evaluate what is happening more accurately.
Ask:
Is this an old fear?
Is there current evidence?
Is this a pattern or one event?
What would I think if I weren’t terrified of losing the relationship?
That last question can be particularly revealing.
How Therapy Can Help With Abandonment Issues
Therapy can help when abandonment fears are persistent, distressing, or repeatedly damaging relationships.
Treatment does not necessarily require uncovering one childhood event that supposedly explains everything.
Instead, therapy may examine:
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Relationship patterns
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Automatic interpretations
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Core beliefs
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Reassurance seeking
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Avoidance
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Emotional regulation
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Boundaries
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Self-worth
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Earlier relational experiences when relevant
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Current relationship dynamics
Different therapeutic approaches may be appropriate depending on the woman’s actual clinical needs.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
CBT can be particularly useful when abandonment fears involve predictable thought patterns such as catastrophizing, mind reading, personalization, or assuming that uncertainty means rejection.
The American Psychological Association identifies cognitive behavioral therapy as an evidence-based psychotherapy that helps people recognize problematic patterns of thinking and develop more effective ways of responding.
For example:
Trigger: Partner is quiet.
Automatic thought: “He’s losing interest.”
Emotion: Fear.
Behavior: Repeated reassurance seeking.
CBT can help a woman examine the interpretation, consider other explanations, and experiment with different behavioral responses.
Our separate guide to cognitive behavioral therapy for abandonment issues explores those techniques in greater detail.
DBT Skills
Skills drawn from Dialectical Behavior Therapy can sometimes help women who struggle with intense emotional reactions, distress tolerance, impulsive relationship behaviors, or interpersonal effectiveness.
That does not mean abandonment issues require DBT or that someone who benefits from DBT skills has borderline personality disorder.
Skills should be used when they match the woman’s clinical needs.
Trauma-Focused Treatment
Some women with abandonment fears also have clinically significant trauma histories.
When actual traumatic experiences are contributing to current symptoms, trauma-focused treatment may be appropriate.
That decision should be based on assessment.
Fear of abandonment alone is not an indication for trauma treatment.
Attachment-Informed Therapy
A therapist may also consider how earlier and current relationships influence expectations of closeness, trust, dependence, and rejection.
This does not require assuming that every problem originated with a parent.
Attachment concepts can simply provide another framework for understanding how a woman learned to approach relationships and how she might practice different patterns now.
Our guide to therapy for abandonment-related concerns explains professional treatment approaches in more detail.
Healthy Relationships Can Provide New Experiences
Healing abandonment fears does not happen entirely alone.
Healthy relationships can provide opportunities to experience:
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Reliability
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Honest communication
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Boundaries
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Conflict without abandonment
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Repair after disagreement
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Appropriate independence
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Mutual support
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Emotional availability
These experiences can challenge expectations developed in previous relationships.
But another person cannot permanently reassure abandonment fear away.
A partner can be supportive.
A therapist can be consistent.
Friends can be dependable.
The woman still needs to develop her own ability to tolerate uncertainty, evaluate relationships accurately, express needs, maintain boundaries, and remain connected to herself.
When Self-Help Is Not Enough
Some abandonment fears improve as a woman becomes more aware of her patterns and develops healthier relationships.
Others remain deeply disruptive.
Professional help may be appropriate when:
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Relationships repeatedly end in similar ways
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Fear of rejection dominates everyday thinking
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Reassurance seeking feels impossible to control
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A woman repeatedly tolerates unhealthy relationships
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She avoids intimacy despite wanting connection
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Emotional reactions feel overwhelming
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Anxiety or depression is worsening
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Trauma-related symptoms are present
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Self-harm or other dangerous coping behaviors occur
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The same patterns continue despite repeated attempts to change them
Treatment can help determine what is actually driving the pattern rather than assuming every abandonment fear has the same cause.
When Residential Treatment May Be Appropriate
Most people with abandonment concerns do not require residential treatment.
Outpatient psychotherapy may be entirely appropriate.
Residential mental health treatment may be considered when abandonment-related patterns occur within a broader clinical picture involving significant trauma symptoms, depression, anxiety, severe functional impairment, repeated treatment difficulties, or other concerns requiring greater therapeutic structure.
The appropriate level of care should be based on the woman’s overall clinical needs—not simply the presence of abandonment fears.
How Kinder in the Keys Approaches Abandonment-Related Patterns
At Kinder in the Keys, we do not treat “abandonment issues” as a diagnosis.
We treat the woman.
That means understanding what is actually happening beneath the relationship pattern.
For one woman, abandonment fear may be closely connected to childhood emotional neglect.
For another, repeated betrayal or abusive relationships may have significantly affected trust.
Another may struggle primarily with anxiety and catastrophic thinking.
Another may have a trauma-related disorder.
Another may have difficulty with boundaries or self-worth without having a trauma diagnosis at all.
Those distinctions matter because treatment should address the actual clinical problem, not simply attach a popular psychological label to the woman.
Within our residential mental health program, women participate in individual therapy and daily group programming. Treatment approaches are selected according to each woman’s symptoms, history, functioning, and clinical needs.
When trauma is genuinely part of the clinical picture, trauma-focused treatment may be incorporated when appropriate.
When distorted interpretations and behavioral patterns are maintaining abandonment fears, cognitive and behavioral work may be useful.
When emotional intensity makes it difficult to pause before reacting, emotion-regulation and distress-tolerance skills may become important.
And when relationship patterns are central, therapy can examine boundaries, communication, trust, autonomy, and the expectations a woman brings into relationships.
The objective is not to make a woman stop needing people.
Healthy attachment is not emotional independence from everyone.
The goal is to help her build relationships in which closeness does not require losing herself and distance does not automatically mean abandonment.
How to Deal With Abandonment Issues: Frequently Asked Questions
Can abandonment issues go away?
Abandonment-related patterns can change.
How much work is required depends on what is driving them, how long the patterns have been present, the woman’s current relationships, other mental health conditions, and many individual factors.
Some women make significant progress through outpatient therapy and healthier relationship experiences.
Others need more intensive treatment because abandonment fears exist within a broader pattern of trauma, anxiety, depression, or significant relationship dysfunction.
There is no universal timeline.
How long does therapy for abandonment issues take?
There is no reliable amount of time that applies to everyone.
The old idea that “surface patterns take several months while deeper attachment wounds take a year or more” sounds precise but isn’t clinically useful enough to promise.
Treatment duration depends on the woman’s symptoms, history, goals, diagnosis when one is present, frequency of treatment, therapeutic approach, current environment, and response to care.
Progress also does not necessarily occur at a constant rate.
Is fear of abandonment the same as separation anxiety disorder?
No.
Fear of abandonment is a broad description of concerns about being left, rejected, or losing an important relationship.
Separation anxiety disorder is a recognized psychiatric diagnosis involving developmentally inappropriate and excessive fear or anxiety concerning separation from people to whom the individual is attached.
Separation anxiety disorder can occur in adults as well as children.
A woman who dislikes separation or fears rejection does not automatically have separation anxiety disorder.
Is fear of abandonment a sign of borderline personality disorder?
Fear of abandonment can occur in borderline personality disorder, but fear of abandonment by itself does not mean someone has BPD.
Similar fears can occur with anxiety, trauma histories, previous relationship experiences, insecure attachment patterns, grief, low self-worth, or without another psychiatric diagnosis.
Diagnosis requires evaluation of the complete clinical picture.
Women should not diagnose themselves with borderline personality disorder because they recognize one relationship pattern in themselves.
Are abandonment issues always caused by childhood?
No.
Childhood relationships can influence later expectations about closeness and reliability, but abandonment fears can also develop or intensify after experiences in adulthood, including betrayal, abuse, significant relationship loss, divorce, death, or repeated rejection.
Later healthy relationships can also help change expectations developed earlier in life.
Can emotional neglect cause abandonment issues?
Emotional neglect may contribute to abandonment-related fears or difficulty trusting emotional availability for some people.
But there is no simple formula in which emotional neglect automatically produces a particular adult attachment or relationship pattern.
The individual’s complete history matters.
Can abandonment issues affect friendships too?
Yes.
Abandonment fears are not limited to romantic relationships.
A woman may become highly distressed when a friend spends time with someone else, takes longer to respond, moves away, establishes a boundary, or becomes less available.
The same patterns of reassurance seeking, people-pleasing, withdrawal, jealousy, or fear of replacement can occur in friendships and family relationships.
Why do I push people away when I’m afraid they’ll leave?
For some people, creating distance first provides a temporary sense of control.
Ending a relationship or withdrawing emotionally can feel safer than remaining vulnerable to the possibility of rejection.
Unfortunately, that protective strategy can also prevent the closeness the person actually wants.
Therapy can help identify what happens between the initial fear and the decision to withdraw.
Why doesn’t reassurance make my abandonment fear go away?
Reassurance may provide temporary relief without changing the underlying interpretation or belief.
If uncertainty repeatedly triggers the thought “I’m going to be left,” reassurance may calm the immediate episode while leaving the broader pattern intact.
Learning to evaluate evidence, tolerate appropriate uncertainty, regulate emotions, and develop a stronger sense of self can reduce dependence on repeated reassurance.
Can I heal abandonment issues without being in a relationship?
Important work can certainly occur outside a romantic relationship.
A woman can develop self-awareness, challenge beliefs, practice emotional regulation, strengthen boundaries, build friendships, increase independence, and work with a therapist.
At the same time, relationships provide opportunities to practice trust, communication, conflict, boundaries, closeness, and repair.
Healing does not require finding the “perfect partner.”
Does healing abandonment issues mean becoming completely independent?
No.
The goal is not to stop needing other people.
Human beings depend on relationships throughout life.
Healthy relationships involve connection, vulnerability, mutual support, and appropriate dependence.
The healthier goal is interdependence—being able to connect deeply with other people while maintaining your identity, boundaries, judgment, relationships, interests, and ability to function as an individual.
Moving Forward Without Letting Fear Make Every Decision
Fear of abandonment can become powerful because it affects something deeply important: connection.
Wanting people to stay is not pathological.
Wanting reassurance is not inherently unhealthy.
Being hurt when someone leaves does not mean something is wrong with you.
The difficulty begins when the fear of losing relationships repeatedly determines how you behave inside them.
A delayed message becomes an emergency.
A disagreement becomes evidence that the relationship is ending.
A boundary feels like rejection.
Being alone feels intolerable.
Or closeness becomes so frightening that leaving first seems safer.
Learning how to deal with abandonment issues means becoming able to recognize those patterns before they automatically determine what happens next.
It means separating facts from feared interpretations.
It means tolerating some uncertainty.
It means learning that boundaries do not necessarily destroy relationships.
It means recognizing when another person’s behavior genuinely is unhealthy rather than dismissing every concern as your own abandonment fear.
And it means building a life in which maintaining connection with another person does not require abandoning yourself.
For some women, that work can happen successfully in outpatient therapy.
For others, abandonment-related patterns exist within a larger clinical picture involving trauma, depression, anxiety, or significant impairment that requires more support.
The goal is not to erase every fear of loss.
Loss is part of human relationships.
The goal is to develop enough emotional stability, self-awareness, boundaries, and trust in your own judgment that fear no longer gets to make every relationship decision for you.
Medically Reviewed By
Dr. Laura Tanzini, DrPH, LMFT
Doctor of Public Health | Specialty in Lifestyle Medicine
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (Florida & California)
Founder & CEO, Kinder in the Keys
This article has been clinically reviewed for accuracy and consistency with current behavioral health, trauma-informed, attachment-informed, and evidence-based psychotherapy principles. It is intended to provide educational information about abandonment fears and relationship patterns and does not replace individualized assessment, diagnosis, or treatment by a qualified healthcare or mental health professional.
Medical Disclaimer
This article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent a mental health condition.
Fear of abandonment is not itself a psychiatric diagnosis. Persistent relationship distress, severe anxiety or depression, trauma-related symptoms, self-harm, or other significant mental health concerns should be evaluated by a qualified mental health professional.
If there is an immediate risk of self-harm or suicide, call or text 988 in the United States or seek emergency care.