Emotional neglect.

In my experience and opinion, emotional neglect is a big undermentioned problem in our society. Emotional neglect is often subtle in nature, which makes it so the recipient almost doesn't think that it is as harmful as it really is, and maybe don't even notice it. It could be the times you felt not seen or when your emotions wasn't mirrored, heard or you did not feel important to you parents or others around you. Emotional pain leaves no scars. Your teachers can't see your bruises and figure it out. That being said, as a special educator I know there are many ways to observe a child and see signs of emotional neglect, but in my experience, this is sadly not as high up in the teacher's agenda as it should be! And another important issue is that if you don't recognize that the way someone is treating you is wrong, how can you ask for help?

What makes emotional neglect so hard to heal is that we talk about the things that never happened to you! When we talk about physical neglect we often think about a parent hitting their child, or even sexual abuse. witch I in no shape or form is taking lightly or is saying isn't bad! The fact is thou, by enduring emotional neglect you may not even know that it happened to you and there is no hard evidence, because your parents may have been so nice! They may have given you everything you needed and wanted, and you think of them as really good parents. Later on in life you maybe struggle with anxiety or depression, but you feel like there is no reason why, or no reason good enough for you to struggle like you do! You had this perfect childhood and you feel like you have no reason to feel upset or anxious, maybe you're just ungrateful and a bad person?

My point is not that your parents was evil or had bad intentions that you never knew about, but that your parents also had parents that didn't care for their emotions, and their parents before them. Your parents may have meant well when they yelled at you for being angrily or when you told them that your didn't like something. But what it really did was do so you question yourself and your emotions, and when your emotions gets you into trouble, you shut them down to survive in your environment. It's a perfect strategy, at least for a very short while until we shut down and suddenly can't function and can't trust yourself anymore. It is so much easier to heal problems you know about or have evidence of, and most of the time emotional neglect don't fall into that category.

Let's take one example. Let's say you hated school and asked not to go one day, maybe someone was mean to you or something made you feel not safe, and your parents said “we have to do things we don't like to do”, so you went anyway. And you wonder why you today is in a shitty situation and you can't do anything because you have to “hold on”? Or your parents told you to stop crying and being upset one or many times because you had, in their opinion, nothing to cry about. In fact, they may even say that you destroyed the day for them with your attitude.Thay shamed you for feeling that way. And now as an adult you can't seem to figure out what's your purpose in life is . Witch in my opinion is not weird at all, because what you really learned from them, is that your emotions are wrong, and you shouldn't be feeling that way. How can you know if any emotion you have is correct? So you suck it up and continue living the life that makes you go down a spiral of anxiety and self-destructive

If this is you, you have to look in the seem of your childhood on the things that never happened, but should have happened. You should have had parents who mirrored and validated your emotions, and saw you for being you and not an extension of himself. When you didn't want to go to school they should have asked you way and let you know that they understood how you felt and in that way you could figure out something together. Every time something made you upset, angry or happy they should be there validating you, and make you feel safe in your emotions. It is perfectly normal to feel like you do if this was your childhood!