Were you neglected as a child, emotionally?

[ChildhoodNeglect]

Hello,

I’ve name changed for this.

My mother was emotionally and physically neglected as a child and abandoned by her mother. Eventually she spent some time with her mum in her late teens before getting married.

I was emotionally neglected as a child. My mum said to me she was never shown love so did not know how to show us love, I was lucky to have a loving Grandmother who died when I was 14.

My father was an alcoholic but would say he loves us.

Dad died in his 40s they had me as teens so I was in my 20s when he died.

I was pretty much expected to be a ‘grown-up’ from the age of 10. I was left at home for hours on end. I re-call just trying to to talk to anyone who came to the door. Mum and Dad would be at work.

We had food, clothing, trips to theme parks. Visits to families. However my life and existence was more functional than fun, although 10000% better than my mum’s upbringing.

Today I have a lot of anxiety, depression, phobias, eating disorder, auto immune diseases etc the list goes on.

I guess I’m speaking to those who were also emotionally neglected as a child, what therapy or tools have you used?

I did a psychology degree and began to understand some of it. Some therapy also helped. Mainly I still worry about the harm I pass on.

This is what I worry about the most @Wildthingsrevenge the harm I will and have passed on. I have to ensure I don’t let me kids childhood’s pass by. For me I felt my childhood was a chore, not something to be enjoyed.

I can’t explain how different my kids lives are to mine but what I have to really push at is being emotionallly there for my kids. Spending time with them every evening, talking to them about their school day. Asking if they need anything. I mean no one spent time with me doing these things.

I sorry you may have had similar experiences @Wildthingsrevenge

anyone else?

sorry for your experience. I only realised recently that i experienced emotional neglect (am mid 50s). My mum's mum was basically an iceberg so i guess my mum was a bit warmer and I am hopefully a bit warmer with my kids - at least i try to be aware of their feelings and be empathic with them. i don't remember one conversation with my mum about feelings, and she was very absorbed in her career, hobbies (and I suspect affairs). She did cook meals and i remember her sewing some cushions for me which felt special and taking me to buy a special dress.

I also did a psychology degree, and counselling qualifications. The thing that helped me most was 'inner child' work that I undertook about 6 years ago. The book "Recovery of your Inner Child" by Lucia Capacchione really helped me.

Thank you; I will look into this. Definitely a lot of inner child work to be done.

Hi OP, yes, I was. I started a thread about it here which you might find interesting/useful, although I’m coming at all this from a pre-children perspective https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/parenting/4893586-parenting-when-your-own-childhood-was-challenging-in-some-ways?page=1

💐 to you, it’s really hard doing this work.

Sometimes I feel angry that this is the hand I’ve been dealt, but equally I know I’m still very lucky compared to many others, because we had everything we could have wanted materially, but emotionally I have felt like the shell of a person just starting to heal, despite years of therapy.

The inner child book looks great. I’ve also been reading Good Inside by Becky Kennedy, and Philippa Perry’s book ‘The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read and Your Children Will be Glad that You Did’ is brilliant on this subject.

All the best to you 💐

Like PPs, I’m also looking into a psychology qualification, and I’ve just found a course on non-violent communication (NVC), which is so interesting. It doesn’t mean violence in the sense of physical abuse, but the course is designed to help you recover from any reactivity in your communication and to communicate authentically. I think it’s with the NVC Academy? And it’s free as well. The self assessment tool is very enlightening!

I wonder if I experienced emotional neglect, especially from my Mum. She kind of never cared how we felt about anything or hugged or listened. From 12 we basically had to get on with being an adult.
I have extremely low self esteem and no confidence despite a good job.

I always say to my DH who had an absolutely shocking childhood in comparison, that everyday I try to be the Mum I wished my Mum was… not sure if that makes sense.

Going to look at the suggested books. Thank you.

Yes a similar story that my mum was left by her mother and father and lived with her grandad. My mum always did her best for me but emotionally she wasn’t there. When I had my first DC I had very severe PND due to feeling that I wasn’t a good enough mum. I had psychotherapy and this helped a lot to see some of this, as I couldn’t quite grasp why I felt this way. Me and my mum do speak regularly and she is a good person but we will never be as close as I would like but I’m fine with that now. I accept everything and why she was like she was. I also try not to give myself a hard time if I’m not there completely for DCs. I think with going through what you did, you know what makes a good mum and what doesn’t so don’t give yourself a hard time.

Me too. All of this. I have been working hard so I do not pass it on.

I want my children to have a happy childhood and so I embrace every opportunity to do things with them, to have fun with them, to hang out with them. I think that becoming the mother I wish I had has been helpful to recovery.

I'm pretty sure auto immune diseases aren't psychological OP

A bit

I tried therapy when I was younger. Didn’t find it helped. The end result is I have a life that’s pretty successful in some ways and really not successful in others. I am terrible at looking after myself (though am being assessed for ADHD so perhaps partly that.)

I have tried getting help now I am in mid life and it’s working better. Partly probably I’m wiser but also I’m better at figuring out the kind of help I need.

I am fairly hopeful about the future. I wish I’d been able to sort it out earlier, but there you go.

Hi there, just to say I did a psychology degree in the hope that it might help me understand myself better as I have similar issues to the posters on here, what I would say is that it is a highly scientific degree - I was a bit surprised to find myself studying the anatomy of an eyeball and spending more time than I care to remember trying to understand statistics, when really what I should have been doing was a counselling course. So do make sure you look into the curriculum carefully if you are doing it to help yourself rather than as something to do as a career

THere's a growing body of research that suggests depression and inflammation are linked and a lot of autom immune diseases are inflamation related.

Really interesting to hear everyones responses to this. I came from a very safe household and I know I was loved because I was cared for but the emotional side of thing was lacking. I was never told "I love you" my mum was very very unhappy and not maternal and I'm only understanding this better now im older.

One of the strange things that happened to me is that growing up I had very little empathy for others and saw crying or emotion as a weakness. I really wasn't a very loving person and I think I hurt a few people too, I didn't understand being caring or kind, that's something I learned later in life. I do think a lot of that came from my upbringing.

Look up Gabor Mate wisdom of trauma thewisdomoftrauma.com/

I’m not so sure about that, there’s increasing evidence that’s emotional stress overload can contribute to certain autoimmune diseases. It’s an interesting google

this resonates with me. I was the oldest of 3 kids. My sister who's 2 years younger than me fell into an electric fire when I was 4 and she was 2. Nobody talks about this. So, as a child I thought I'd pushed her into the fire. She went through many ops/ skin grafts etc and I was always left on the sidelines believing I was this bad person who'd caused this. Not kidding nobody ever spoke to me about what happened my mum was drunk, she left 2 kids alone in a tiny room with an electric fire and my wee sister and I were dancing. I've never really talked to anyone about this because for years I thought I'd pushed my wee sister into that electric fire. My mum went on to have 2 more kids both boys and they were spoiled rotten. My dad buggered off when I was a kid probably when I was about 6

And yes I was totally ignored emotionally. Nobody ever gave me a cuddle or told me they loved me.

@SquirrelFeeder loads of info out there on the causes of auto immune disorders

Childhood traumatic stress increased the likelihood of hospitalization with a diagnosed autoimmune disease decades into adulthood. These findings are consistent with recent biological studies on the impact of early life stress on subsequent inflammatory responses.

A 2009 article https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3318917/

Lovely it's a safe place and yet again I'm ignored

Wow I'm so ignored. This really hits me

2024815pm a lot of times on these threads people don't respond to each other necessarily, just relay their experience.

I was emotionally neglected, given no guidance and laughed at. I've never recovered despite working on it actively for 16 years. I am purpose-driven rather than happiness-driven because the latter I'll never achieve.

I'm a workaholic.

I make a point to spend 20 minutes talking to my child each day and giving her a very good bedtime routine with chats, stories etc. That's honestly about the most I can do.

Definitely. My mother was emotionally unavailable. From an early age I looked after myself. My mother did whatever she pleased. Gym, shopping , buying clothes for herself. I got hand me downs. She even made snide comments about me expecting her to come to me high school graduation. DF didn't even acknowledge it. Never a hug, an I love you. Ever.

It hurt more because my brother got the attention - my father did scouts with him, even became a leader. Even this week he showed me photos of my brother visiting but didn't ask how my holiday was. He asked my husband, though.

I'm not great at parenting. I try very hard but am struggling as both kids are ND. I've no support or idea of how to handle things.

The absolute worst part is that my parents smother my kids in hugs, gifts and I love yous. I even put my arms out (half jokingly) coming through their door after my mother had smothered the kids and got laughed at.

It really affects your self worth.