For me that fear was really strong for two reasons; my father actually did abandon me. I didn't see him from the age of 11 until I went to his deathbed when I was 40 years old.
But the other reason, and I believe the much stronger one, was that my father told me over and over that I was responsible for the abuse, that I was evil and if I told anyone about it, they would have nothing to do with me. OK, now its obvious that it was a ploy to get me to keep my mouth shut, but it was a huge amount of hard work to dig out my belief that I was genuinely in my essence evil and repulsive, so that if I let anyone REALLY know me, of course they would leave, because who wouldn't have been repelled by me? So there I was opening up to my T and letting him know more about me and at a deeper level than I had ever let anyone know. And the whole time my limbic system SCREAMED at me that what I was doing was really dangerous and of course, in the end, I would be left. There is a reason that I am so grateful to my T for his patience with my fear and his constant superhuman stream of reassurance. He kept saying it until I could hear it.
And I just had the most amazing realization. I started this post by saying "the fear was strong," instead of is strong. I mean, how cool is that.
AG