emotional neglect: 10 hidden signs

if you're just joining me and you're new welcome this channel really is about everything from cptsd and attachment to understanding things hopefully more and more this year around the impact of our brains our trauma how we're born and what shapes us so all forms of neurod Divergence from complex trauma to anxiety to autism ADHD those are going to be my goals this year in addition to my usually regularly scheduled content which will almost always go back to core issues around childhood and and frankly adult trauma too so there's a lot of videos here about those topics I'll always be making more and right now I was thinking a lot about emotional neglect and how it's so Insidious so many of these things that are upsetting we don't really understand why we're like this we just know that we've always been this way I believe that when we get to the nuances of emotional neglect it really is about not providing something and even on the extreme ends of raging emotional parents they're not providing safety they're not providing a safe nurturing environment in which to grow and develop so all of it to me is neglect in different ways but I think that when we talk about the term especially childhood emot neglect we're talking about the invisible pain of what parents don't do what they don't provide right they don't provide validation and nurturing and security and safety especially around emotions now they might have all the boxes checked you were fed and maybe you went to private school even but the core of emotional availability and security did not exist so I think that as I said I think I said earlier is that we often don't know why we're like like this it's just how we've always been but the truth is from the time we are infants we've been learning to read facial expressions and emotions I'm going to talk a lot about that in my course and over the next few you know several videos on these topics but how when we're wired to really scan for negativity really any emotion including depression it shows in many of the research articles that we become more sensitive to those cues right so if you had a parent who is angry all the time you're going to be more sensitive to anger the problem is you become so sensitive that even in sometimes more neutral situations you might be anticipating anger and overinterpreting anger for example like why is everyone mad at me it's like no one's mad at you right or they were a little annoyed but that's not the same thing as they hate you which can be sort of how we feel about those things so so I know this was a long intro let's get into it what is emotional neglect the unknown parts of who you are look like and maybe you don't realize realiz this right so we're talking about the invisibility of not realizing like I was saying earlier this is how it always was but these are the ways you respond to the world number one feeling ashamed of your needy emotions so whenever you feel a sense of vulnerability or helplessness or really any emotion that feels strong even anger it can feel very shaming and you can feel embarrassed and it's like you're out there on this island alone in the feelings because when you felt those feelings you had to go deal with them on your own again and again and again no one looked at you and said oh babe what's going on you know you seem like you're sad today or wow you're you're really angry right now you know what what's happening for you or that was a big response I'm not so sure it was about that is there anything else bothering you right no one asked you those questions you were just dealing with it I've talked about bearing myself in music and records and you know all these feelings just being alone so all of those feelings there's like a sense of like it's like that shame posture like oh God I don't want to feel this and maybe I don't want anyone else to see me feeling this number two now brace yourselves for this one because it's going to sound harsh at first but hang on and here's why number two is often although I believe many of us are so deeply feeling it it can look like a lack of empathy towards others and it really is this it's like this posture inside where it's not that you don't have it but you have a defense against empathy so that it's like you feel like well no one was there for me so get over it what's wrong with you it's like those parents I was saying beneath the surface they often have many of their own wounds but no one saw them so it comes across as harshness on others and you may never say these things out loud but you compare and contrast your traumas you feel like you know what I didn't have that those kind of parents or that add that Advantage so get over it as if like people that have certain things don't necessarily always have as much pain as you right everyone suffers in different ways and of course things like money make a huge difference and stability I'm not saying they don't but you can never really know the pain in someone's heart but if you don't know your own pain and it's been repeatedly even mocked or minimized or invalidated by your parents even as a kid why are you crying stop crying grow up stop being a baby your initial response might be to sort of in your own way put that on others but it really is about not having access to your own empathy to having empathy for yourself and to not receiving it in childhood so at the core it's not that you don't have it it's that your response initially can be a defense against it if that makes sense number three feeling like you have to do everything on your own and not asking for help but secretly longing for it and almost like just like wanting it so bad in the last video that I deleted I I told the story is that when I got my thiry Burns this last October that went on for months my neighbors didn't know and I live in a little tiny community and my neighbors on one side and across I know pretty well and once word got out about a month later they were they both stopped me and were kind of like so sweet but sort of like annoyed with me I could tell like Kim why didn't you tell us we would have been so happy to help you it doesn't occur to me it would never occur to me and in fact it would feel like a burden to do that now I say that I've gotten way better at asking for help but receiving help when I spent a childhood and really adult life doing most things on my own it feels very uncomfortable and so the act of even considering asking for help feels foreign and in fact unsafe so we have to work on that right but that's the core of it is that we're so used to managing things on our own that the idea of someone else feels untenable number four a lot of dissociation a lot of spacing out disregulation forgetfulness a lot of what happens is we're regulating our loneliness I found in my generation through TV I think now it's through social media and and YouTube and things like that but you know I could tell you the time of day by the shows that were're on every day I came home from school alone from like 5: on and watched all the shows made my little frozen meals and knew exactly what was going on and I think that I as much as I love storytelling I think many of us also use books and reading and shows but especially a lot of things that we can just kind of check out and we dissociate you know how you be watching a show and you'll think I don't know what just happened I have to back that up it can be like that it can be like driving home and forgetting how you drove home especially on typical rides that that's pretty common that highway hypnosis but when you grow up managing your lonely Feelings by putting them into or onto something else there's a lot that can be happening for you that's a coping mechanism it's relieving your pain and then you become an adult and you don't necessarily have the tools to manage that number five you can be a fierce protector of your alone time especially if you had a lot of emotional neglect around managing feelings and you were physically alone I also was thinking that I used to say you know oh um okay I've had emotional this and emotional that and then it really occurred to me even though it was generationally normal at the time that it was physical neglect to be left home alone at 5 years old until 7 8:00 at night to be crying in the driveway of my apartment complex thinking my mom was never coming home to take care of my breakfast at 3:00 or 4 right and I I'm not judging why there was also a big part of my mom that needed to work and there's no I I get that more than I ever did as a single parent but but the point is it was also a physical neglect so it's a combination of emotional isolation and physical isolation and that can feel most comfortable for our nervous systems and so we fiercely we don't you know maybe know how to connect with others we might have social anxiety in some ways we might just our nervous systems might feel triggered by people and of course there can be lots of reasons for that from neuro Divergence Dynamics and otherwise but the point is that we almost feel only safe when we're alone and that's how we process when we feel a lot of things we want to go be alone stuff like that number six we only know how to self soothe in other words we don't know how to be co-regulated co-regulation implies that there's another person there right helping me ground and and um and and soothe and all of that but if there was really no one there one way or the other even if the parent was in the house like in the kitchen but you were really emotionally neglected you've learned all kinds of ways from stemming to substances to binge watching to G video game playing whatever it is and that's how you self soothe number seven you don't feel special but you long to so one of the things that I think Dan seagull maybe it's Stanten talks about maybe it's Stanten in attachment is this concept of your parents eyes lighting up when they see you that not every single time but that you feel the sense of like oh you're special you're mine I love you right when you walk into a room good morning how are you I mean not every day I'm not saying that but I'm saying generally you feel like there's something special and in a Land of emotional neglect in terms of a parenting Dynamic where again and again and again you feel or you are ignored unseen invalidated you don't feel special and I think this is a big part of why people long to be famous or be seen I I think it's a big part of you know we all want to feel special and I think the irony is that most really famous people will tell you that that doesn't solve that wound for them and in fact it can be more isolating the more famous you become right which is a great irony of this world at least we live in now but the point is you long for that and so you're always looking for ways to feel special or you completely avoid anything that could even put you in the way of feeling special but deep inside you long for it number number eight intimacy feels like a performance now this can be around affection around Pillow Talk kind of situations sometimes in the ACT where you're losing yourself that's not so much a performance because your body and and responsiveness kind of can take over but that you feel like otherworldly or outside yourself like you're putting on a show especially when it comes to doing and saying really vulnerable intimate things I think when you get really close to somebody and you build Safety and Security then this becomes less of an issue but for many people they're sort of checking the box number nine is that part of this is that we don't want to change part of our survival skills are built in this rigidity of this is how I got here like I was saying about asking for help and so why would I want to change that right so there can be this Push Pull we don't want to live in Worlds of neglect but we also only know that experience and we've adjusted our literal brains and our relationships and our desires and demands and expectations and tolerances to that Dynamic and so we have to face the fact that we can be a little rigid and and not really want to change maybe you know show your therapist and it's a really good relationship but when things get really scary you don't you know you're suddenly sick you're suddenly working too much I see this with a lot of my avoidant attachment patients once they start to work on things you know doing the work for a while they meet somebody and then they know we're going to talk about it and and if they're overwhelmed by it or scared they suddenly have a last minute cancellation which is fine and I don't you know I don't necessarily bring that up at first but it's almost always the case I can almost predict it and that's okay we just want to explore that there's a lot of fear often underneath that and lastly at the core a lot of me it's all me chronic self-blame toxic shame and self-abandonment so it really is that thing where we talk so much about out when parents are not available consistently or and or are unsafe consistently especially we start to believe that deep inside there's something wrong with us but we have no language for it it really is once again that shame you look at even animals you know when you yell at your dog and they kind of do that that's what's happening it none of us feel good and when you get that one way or another from abuse neglect invalidation mocking rage you deep inside often feel that there is something wrong with you and I think that for many of us this is the core of the work is unpacking that we've blamed ourselves and set up our lives in a way that reinforces that belief system so that was it that's it I hope you found this helpful I moved my mic again today I didn't feel like making the back look cuty because I didn't want to mess with Coco but um I really appreciate you so much I hope you find this helpful I hope you will know that you are literally nowhere near alone in these experiences and that just because all these things happen to you I don't think there's a promise of like you can get over everything and just like live your greatest life I think people that say that are trying to sell you things but I also believe that we can do work and make shifts little by little day by day year by year that can truly impact the quality of our lives our health our relationships all of those things that truly matter you know so anyway um I'll stay bye now for me and Coco have a beautiful day take good care and I'll see you soon [Music] bye [Music] I

Channel: Dr. Kim Sage, Licensed Psychologist

Views: 95,927

Keywords: emotional, emotional neglect, neglect, childhood emotional neglect, cen, isloate, cptsd, childhood trauma, ptsd, trauma, emotionally immature parents, avoidant, avoidant attachment, attachment issues, dr kim sage, low self esteem, secure attachment, emotional neglect and childhood, workaholism and childhood trauma, unknown signs emotional neglect, hypervigilance, toxic shame, self blame, self abandonment, fatally flawed, worthiness issues, feeling unworthy, broken inside

Id: sYx82kYkDkQ

Length: 15min 40sec (940 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 03 2024