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flamingswordI was talking with we_are_spc a couple weeks ago about neglect, and it got me thinking (like you do) about how academics need to publish in nonacademic newspapers and magazines synopses of recent work in their field written in plain language so that there is not a huge divide between public and privately held knowledge. Especially knowledge that affect everyone.
The popular understanding of neglect is that it happens when parents leave their kids alone for long periods of time, or don't feed them, or don't get them medical attention, or don't let them play or go to school. It's big, obvious stuff. You can tell when a kid is neglected.
Well, sort of.
Neglect is also when parents fail to respond appropriately to their child's emotional needs. A child is "crying it out" while the parent leaves the room and "doesn't reward their being manipulated for attention"? That's neglect. That child does not have words for how they need to be supported, so instead of letting them ask for support nonverbally, by crying, parents often just expect children to "be a grownup about it". I have seen this done with children who were ridiculously young. I have heard of this being done with babies and not had other people in the forum say a word against the parents.
You know that thing that parents do where they watch their kid fall down and then they try to distract the kid to keep them from realizing that they are hurt because then the kid will then cry to seek reassurance? That is neglect. It's a subtle form of gaslighting to treat people like their pain doesn't matter if they can be distracted from it. Children are tiny people, and this is a foundational experience of their pain not mattering to the most important person in their lives. And it will happen in a hundred ways throughout childhood. Most of us are raised this way. Most of us are set up to assume our pain is not important to others, or to assume that other people aren't going to care about our feelings even if they tell us that they love us. Because when we were little, the people that we trusted the most didn't want to hear it.
And now we have grown up, numb, hiding from our feelings because we can't put into words "I think something vague and insidious happened to me when I was a kid, but I can't put my finger on what because our culture treats it like that's normal." So we assume that our parents were correct, and we treat other people the way we were taught to: casual about their pain if we can distract them from it. Refusing to respond to nonverbal requests for reassurance. Thinking that being distracted and emotionally unavailable for long periods of time still counts as an appropriate relationship. Gaslighting people about their feelings in subtle ways because we don't see what the big deal is, because we are so out of touch with our own feelings.
we_are_spc a couple weeks ago about neglect, and it got me thinking (like you do) about how academics need to publish in nonacademic newspapers and magazines synopses of recent work in their field written in plain language so that there is not a huge divide between public and privately held knowledge. Especially knowledge that affect everyone. The popular understanding of neglect is that it happens when parents leave their kids alone for long periods of time, or don't feed them, or don't get them medical attention, or don't let them play or go to school. It's big, obvious stuff. You can tell when a kid is neglected.
Well, sort of.
Neglect is also when parents fail to respond appropriately to their child's emotional needs. A child is "crying it out" while the parent leaves the room and "doesn't reward their being manipulated for attention"? That's neglect. That child does not have words for how they need to be supported, so instead of letting them ask for support nonverbally, by crying, parents often just expect children to "be a grownup about it". I have seen this done with children who were ridiculously young. I have heard of this being done with babies and not had other people in the forum say a word against the parents.
"Trauma early in childhood can result from a range of things such as living in domestically violent situations, or being raised in situations where the parent’s needs – such as drug use or alcohol abuse – influence their ability to provide for their child’s needs.
Complex trauma may come in the form of neglect. Not responding to a baby or not having the skills to do so, for instance, means the baby’s developmental needs may not be met."
You know that thing that parents do where they watch their kid fall down and then they try to distract the kid to keep them from realizing that they are hurt because then the kid will then cry to seek reassurance? That is neglect. It's a subtle form of gaslighting to treat people like their pain doesn't matter if they can be distracted from it. Children are tiny people, and this is a foundational experience of their pain not mattering to the most important person in their lives. And it will happen in a hundred ways throughout childhood. Most of us are raised this way. Most of us are set up to assume our pain is not important to others, or to assume that other people aren't going to care about our feelings even if they tell us that they love us. Because when we were little, the people that we trusted the most didn't want to hear it.
And now we have grown up, numb, hiding from our feelings because we can't put into words "I think something vague and insidious happened to me when I was a kid, but I can't put my finger on what because our culture treats it like that's normal." So we assume that our parents were correct, and we treat other people the way we were taught to: casual about their pain if we can distract them from it. Refusing to respond to nonverbal requests for reassurance. Thinking that being distracted and emotionally unavailable for long periods of time still counts as an appropriate relationship. Gaslighting people about their feelings in subtle ways because we don't see what the big deal is, because we are so out of touch with our own feelings.
no subject
Date: 2019-12-06 02:07 pm (UTC)And now ours is manifesting in 'only existing when others do it first' ... and wanting to be included in *everything* and plowing people over for it. 'I want the attention, because I didn't get any as a young adult...' (And child, etc)...and it's causing major issues.
TL;DR: agreed. 100%
-T~
no subject
Date: 2019-12-07 07:34 pm (UTC)I taught myself to be internally validating before I knew the words for that, because I was in a bad bad place and it was either fix myself for myself or die. And it was super shitty. We should be teaching kids internal validation skills when we are teaching them how to brush their teeth and read.
no subject
Date: 2019-12-07 10:11 pm (UTC)Yeah, that's me. I also don't want to be forgotten about. It now doesn't matter who I'm with for a long period of time. If I don't make them authority figures, I have no idea what to do with myself-and then when I feel they don't notice me I'm always there to trip over because if I'm not then I'm not important enough to them-or so my brain says.
...
I think I know what internal validation is, I'm just afraid it'll break me because I was conditioned for so long to have peopl offer *first* that I don't know what else to do. ... I can't recieve from me, I project either way I turn. Pull myself in? *energy pushes out* *try to push away* *energy out more*...:(
...
Am I making any sense? Any sense at all?
I'm processing a lot of shit right now, and it's almost physuically painful, and it's kind of a bad brain day forme.
-T~
no subject
Date: 2019-12-08 08:28 pm (UTC)To be internally validating takes a couple months of getting used to, and you can't give up on it just because you are bad at it. But that thing where you feel internally pressured to "help" or "make yourself useful" or "make people feel better" is a thing that you developed, not to actually treat people like you like them, but to get them to not reject you and deprive you of attention. (The way your parents deprived you of attention)
Now that I have good internal validation skills, being rejected is kind of sad, but no longer devastating. YMMV.
no subject
Date: 2019-12-09 02:48 pm (UTC)...
For a long time, I wasn't sure that would be possible because I associated 'seeing' with sight alone. "How can someone who's blind 'see' themselves?" It made no sense to me.
...
It took me a long time to figure out that I could adapt the language to me. "I want to feel heard, be noticed." ...It makes a bit of sense that way, but the explanation below makes even more.
...
I wasn't allowed to enternally validate; Every time I tried, I was told I was a bitch, or I was 'not respecting' authority. It wasn't until I was an adult that Mom said I didn't have to justify everything to her.
What if I lose support because of it? I can't handle that. (Yes, that's twisted up in my external validation, and I can't get around it.)
(We can take this to PM if you like so we don't hog your journal; it's up to you.)
-T~
no subject
Date: 2019-12-10 12:45 am (UTC)When I started not being such an accommodating doormat, I did lose access to a lot of people I considered friends, because I was no longer supporting them. But they had not really been supporting or validating me. They had been supporting the idea of the person they wanted me to be, which is not the same thing and is very invalidating. They decided to put me in a box labelled "the crazy friend" so that they never had to deal with their own mental health woes, because I was always worse. Realizing that you sank a lot of time effort and money into a friendship to let the other person not even know the real you? That was so heartbreaking. But on the bones of that heartbreak is built the healthy self esteem and mutual respect of my current friendships.
The few things I am going to recommend for when you hear the siren call of having boundaries and deciding that you are valid for yourself are these:
• Make a schedule of your responsibilities to other people. Keep the ones that serve you physically and emotionally (keeping your spaces unfucked, weekly check-ins, eating meals with friends) and complete them with an easier heart. Slowly rearrange the obligations that people got you to agree to that you should have said no to in the first place. If it does not serve you or make you feel connected, then eventually it will become more than you can handle.
• Get a calendar that your screen reader can use, and put ten day warnings on it for things that are going to set off your anxiety during the transitional months. Then use those ten days to take extra good care of yourself. Don't drink too much coffee, get good sleep, etc.. Because you are going to be sorely tempted to go chasing after peoples attention when you are at your lowest points, because of how anxiety interacts psychologically with internal validation. It's a lot easier to not fall for that trap if you know it's there.
• There will be a mourning period when you lose bad friends. There will be bad friends that you sometimes have to be more solicitous towards than you really feel comfortable with because of financial/work/support network reasons. But once you are past feeling sad, you will start to feel angry that someone cast you in the radio drama version of their life and then dropped you when you went off of the script that they decided on without you. And in the cleansing fire of that anger, you will learn a lot of things about yourself. Are you a vengeful person? Can you keep your temper? Are you going to warn other friends of this person about their misbehavior and ill treatment? I recommend waiting three months after you are comfortable with your new internal validation skills to decide on any course of action that alienates or spites anyone. You will not be your most clear-headed during the transitional state, and it will throw off your risk-benefit assessment.