Childhood - neglect *TW*

[SneakyZzzz]

This is historic, but something I would like to share as I feel it deeply damaged me and I feel really quite sad about it.
I am in therapy and lots of stuff is coming up.

I grew up believing I had a 'lovely childhood' . My parents are together, married, I have memories of playing with my siblings and some family moments (seaside days out etc)

BUT and here's the but... I do not remember ANY words of affirmation or any physical touch. Like literally never - neither of my parents EVER gave me a hug or said they loved me.
I find it deeply disturbing now that I am a parent myself... And also really sad that they weren't more emotionally available or able to show warmth and compassion.

I'm sure I'm not the only adult in this situation, but I guess I just feel a bit sad that they were so Victorian and cold..!! ☹️

I've put this in Mental Health as I feel it's had a profound impact on mine and has taken me a long long time to come to terms with the sadness I carried

Have you posted this almost word for word before?

DH and I were the same. 1970’s. It doesn’t bother me at all but DH feels like the whole of his family interactions were and continue to be ‘functional’. Even now he says to DM ‘I love you’ on leaving after a visit. She never ever responds. My parents are dead.

Do you have anything to do with them now @SneakyZzzz ?

OMG people, it’s not a race to the bottom.

Where’s the line beyond which someone’s allowed to feel adversely affected by their family dynamic?

Do parents have to be doing something culturally unusual as well as hurtful in order for their child to be allowed to feel hurt by it?

My father was stripped naked in front of his peers and beaten with a cane for being left-handed when he was at school. But that was totally normal back then - so should he not have been affected by it? Was he just being a great big fucking snowflake to still talk about it in adulthood?

No, of course it’s not great fucking parenting never to cuddle your child, or say you’re proud of them, or that you love them. Not to mention hitting them with hairbrushes, etc. Of course it’s going to have an effect on your self esteem.

But hey ho, it could be worse, at least they didn’t douse you in petrol and set you on fire! Some people have that to contend with, you know, so count your blessings and don’t be such a big girl’s blouse.

Jesus. And this is the Mental Health board, as well.

OP, I’m glad you are in therapy and getting support there. 💐

I was cuddled and my mum told me she loved me when I was little in the 70's. She read to me, played loads of games, made delicious cakes. She wasn't perfect and didn't have a clue when I got to the teen years but feeling loved when I was little led to me always believing I was valuable and loveable. I think it has a huge impact on self esteem all through your life.

I'm sorry you didn't have that OP, my mum had a terrible upbringing herself and wanted better for me. It's amazing when people are able to break those cycles and you should be very proud of that.

@VoltaireMittyDreamWhat the op describes was the norm in millions of families though! Love was not demonstrated by cuddles. Or talked about. It just wasn’t. We surely cannot have millions wanting therapy because times change and they now look back and want something millions never got?

We all have to accept we were brought up in a different era where dc were not the centre of many families. They were a by product of relationships. People worked hard and were worn out. Parents might have been scarred by WW2 and rationing.

Parenting styles have changed but if we all let no cuddles affect us (or not hearing we were loved, but had needs met at the time) we will all be so unhappy. We have to accept people for who they were and when they were living . We cannot rewrite the past - just learn from it.

My working class grandfather was born in 1909 and he always gave us cuddles and told us he loved us. Affection isn’t some woke new invention for the posh.

People who had good enough family dynamics and generally felt cared about don’t tend to go looking for reasons to be unhappy and people to blame it on.

When people have a bad relationship with their family, they try to understand what was going on. The intention isn’t to ‘dwell’ on it, but to process it and move past it. Most people do.

It’s never helpful to basically say, pull yourself together, back in my day kids swept chimneys and died of rickets and we were bloody grateful for the privilege! Get over yourself!

It’s not healthy to dwell on supposed “trauma” resulting from common childhood experiences decades ago and it’s actually quite insulting to people who suffered severe abuse as children and are subsequently dealing with cPTSD as a result.
Everyone is so keen to announce their MH issues these days.

parental hugs aren’t some modern day invention that we have learned about recently- they’re instinctive and the biological norm! we know this because of baby behaviour and how desperate babies are to be held. it’s survival, and it’s how human beings have interacted with their young for 100,000 years.

i read an extract once from a ghastly parenting book published in the 1920s. The idiot male psychologist who wrote the book criticised mothers for showing their babies love.
The west went through a blip last century when loving behaviour was criticised but in the context of evolution hugs are our birthright. being denied physical touch is absolutely neglect.

here’s the depressing book quote if anyone is interested:
“Let your behavior always be objective and kindly firm. Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit on your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say good night. Shake hands with them in the morning. Give them a pat on the head if they have made an extraordinarily good job of a difficult task.”

But someone else’s experience isn’t a comment or judgement on your experience.

Someone else’s having a different kind of hard time doesn’t take away from your experience, or diminish the impact of what you went through.

Trying to process and make peace with the past is not necessarily ‘dwelling’. And not everyone is in a place to choose the healthiest approach to everything all the time.

It would be fantastic if we could all just bounce back from things and let go and move on. That’s what we all want! But sometimes a person’s going to ruminate.

If it upsets you to hear about people struggling even in the absence of severe trauma, maybe the mental health board is not the place for you right now.

Because there will be people here with health anxiety and pigeon phobias and all sorts of things that aren’t trauma related - but people come here for support rather than gatekeeping.

Did we have needs met? no loving supportive words shown or hugs, physical punishment normal, kicked out of the house first thing from a young age and expected to entertain yourself until tea time, young girls taken advantage of by sexual predators. I've gone NC with my parents because they were abusive and that's not okay.

Sounds like you are gate keeping not me.

My childhood was the same in that respect but my parents were of a generation where nobody hugged children, nobody said I love you, common to hit kids me included but somehow, I felt loved and I was loved by my parents. So sorry it feels different for you.

Maybe I am. 🤷‍♀️ This is meant to be a support board. If you don’t feel like offering support, you could at least not disparage the OP.

It’s not necessary to agree with everything said on the MH board, my opinion is just as valid as yours so leave me alone.

What the op describes was the norm in millions of families though! Love was not demonstrated by cuddles. Or talked about. It just wasn’t. We surely cannot have millions wanting therapy because times change and they now look back and want something millions never got?
@OhDear111

wtf are you on about? We are talking about the eighties here. Not the 1780s

i was born 1981 and my childhood full of love, pet names, cuddles, kisses. My three oldest and closest friends, same age, and very very similar childhood…. Brimming with kisses and cuddles

Ps think of all the eighties family sitcoms - loving families conveyed in a similar fashion to families in today’s sitcoms

the fact your childhood appears to have been devoid of this @OhDear111 is something you might want to take up with your folks

I’m personally not convinced it helps fo dwell endlessly on it or to hold your own parents accountable to a golden standard of parenting that no one can realistically achieve. I know that sounds harsh but our own memories of our childhood are at best unreliable.

I think if you grew up thinking you had a lovely childhood, perhaps you did. I don’t doubt your parents got things wrong.

The point of my post was more that I DIDN'T have a lovely childhood. I had a childhood. And as children we assume that everyone is having like minded experiences.. I couldn't wait to leave home and left at 18.

In recent years I've got to know a lot more people and realising my childhood was quite damaging to the teenager and adult I became has been quite sad. I had a LOT of damage to undo and it's took me until my 30s to actually understand myself and undo the conditioning and harshness that my parents had placed on me. I'm allowed to be reflective about that.

And what it did teach me was to do different with my own children, because I would never want them to grow up feeling unloved and like their brilliance was an inconvenience.

Do you have any contact with your parents @SneakyZzzz ?

Therapy often brings out the slightest of things. Most people in the 70s parents were like this weren’t they? Move on

Also why the TW
but apologies if I’m being insensitive, just maybe not helpful to dwell on this

You can do whatever you want - but you do seem determined to be a victim and that’s not a good mindset

Yes, I think they were. I remember my best friends mum taking off her slipper to smack her when she said something cheeky. It wasn’t something that was frowned upon or was just done behind closed doors.

I do. Even to this day they can both be incredibly harsh and difficult to be around, so it's very 'small doses' of time.

Not at all. Quite the opposite.