This week on Relationships 2.0 I will be interviewed by my colleague and friend Shawn T. Smith, PsyD about my new book, Love Me Don’t Leave Me: Overcoming Fear of Abandonment and Building Lasting, Loving Relationships.

About the book: 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. About the Author: Michelle Skeen, PsyD, is a therapist who lives and works in San Francisco. She has provided brief and long-term therapy for individuals and couples utilizing schema, cognitive, behavioral and mindfulness-based therapies to address interpersonal issues, weight management, anger, depression, anxiety, disabilities, and trauma. Skeen has studied schema therapy under Jeffrey Young PhD and Wendy Behary and completed her postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Francisco. She is the author of Love Me Don’t Leave Me: Overcoming Fear of Abandonment and Building Lasting, Loving Relationships and The Critical Partner: How to End the Cycle of Criticism and Get the Love You Want. Michelle is coauthor of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Interpersonal Problems: Using Mindfulness, Acceptance and Schema Awareness to Change Interpersonal Behaviors and The Interpersonal Problems Workbook: ACT to End Painful Relationship Patterns. She is currently working on her fifth book for New Harbinger Publications. Michelle is part-time faculty at Notre Dame de Namur University. She hosts a weekly radio show called Relationships 2.0 with Dr. Michelle Skeen on KCAA-1050AM. To find out more about Michelle Skeen, PsyD visit her website at:michelleskeen.com, “like” her on Facebook MichelleSkeenPsyD, and follow her on twitter @michelle_skeen.