Big “T” VS. LITTLE “t” TRAUMA
Many people think of trauma as big, one-time events. A car crash, natural disaster, sexual assault. They don’t think they’ve experienced trauma at all. But in reality trauma is much more common, albeit as little “t” trauma. This kind of trauma is experienced as a series of distressing but non-life threatening interactions that ultimately eat away at your sense of self long into adulthood.
One of the most insidious forms of small “t” trauma is childhood emotional neglect or CEN. Unlike abuse, neglect is more about what didn’t happen to you than what did. Childhood emotional neglect is a caregiver’s failure to sufficiently notice, attend to, or respond appropriately to a child’s emotional needs over an extended period of time. Because it is an act of omission, it’s often not visible, noticeable, or memorable. Additionally, children in emotionally neglectful homes often have other physical needs met like shelter, food, and education, which can mask the neglect even more.
Emotional connection is essential for healthy relationships, especially for developing children, and can take the form of:
- attachment (feeling safely connected to your caregiver)
- attunement (feeling like your caregiver is invested in you)
- mirroring (seeing your feelings mirrored in your caregiver)
- validation (feeling understood by your caregiver) attention (feeling important to your caregiver).
It’s important to note that emotionally neglectful caregivers aren’t intentionally malevolent, rather they lack the emotional capacity to fully understand, accept, and process their own internal feelings, leaving them unable to co-regulate with their children. Caregivers who are emotionally neglectful have almost always experienced their own attachment and generational trauma.
“A painful event turns into a traumatic one when the recipient was told it was their fault.”
@nate_postlethwait
15 EXAMPLES OF EMOTIONAL NEGLECT AND THE LESSONS YOU LEARN FROM IT
Because children depend on caregivers to model the necessary skills to be a successful human, the lack of emotional training leads children to turn to “survival” based functioning that shapes their identity and core beliefs about themselves. During CEN children struggle to see emotional neglect as a failure of the caregiver and instead internalize these interactions as there being something wrong with them. Children who have experienced emotional neglect often feel unworthy of love, experience chronic shame, and struggle to manage their own emotions.
1. Your parents fail to notice when you are sad, anxious, hurt, or angry. This sends the message that your emotions are irrelevant.
2. Your parents fail to listen when you talk. This tells you that your voice, your thoughts, and your words do not matter.
3. Your parents fail to ask you questions about your preferences or needs. This emphasizes that you shouldn’t have any wants or needs.
4. Your parents don’t pay enough attention to you. The message from this is that you’re not worthy of attention and that you are alone.
5. Your parents send you to your room for moping, crying, or being upset. This teaches you that having feelings is offensive and unacceptable to others.
6. Your parents call you overly sensitive or dramatic for having and expressing feelings. This gives you the message that your feelings are unreasonable and excessive. There is something wrong with you.
7. Your parents trump your emotions with stronger ones of their own. This tells you that your emotions are insignificant and useless, and also cause trouble.
8. Your parents demean or punish you for showing feelings they don’t like, such as anger, frustration, or need. This makes you ashamed of the deepest, most personal expression of who you are – your emotions.
9. Your parents ignore your achievements and do not offer praise. You pick up that nothing you do matters.
10. Your parents make critical and judgmental comments about you. You learn that you aren’t good enough.
11. Parents compare you with other people’s children or show favoritism among siblings. You sense that you don’t measure up.
12. Parents hand down their own unachieved dreams to you expecting you to fulfill them. You believe there is only one correct way of thinking, being, existing and that your goals don’t matter.
13. Parents say they love you but their actions don’t seem to align. This leads to confusion and you struggle to comprehend two competing messages. Alternatively you may learn that abuse equals love.
14. Parents fail to give emotional validation and listen to your problems. As a result you don’t learn how to regulate your own emotions.
15. Parents ignore you when you ask for help. As a result you become hyperindependent or you just give up. You learn you can’t rely on anyone but yourself.
COMMON EXAMPLES OF EMOTIONALLY NEGLECTFUL STATEMENTS
- You make a big deal out of everything. You’re overreacting/too sensitive/dramatic.
- Just let it go. It could be worse. You’ll get over it
- I don’t have time to deal with this.
- If you don’t like it, you can move out.
- You don’t have a reason to be sad.
- Go to your room until you calm down.
- But I sacrificed all this for you.
- That’s not what happened.
AS AN ADULT WHO EXPERIENCED CHILDHOOD EMOTIONAL NEGLECT YOU’LL LIKELY EXPERIENCE
Persistent Feelings of Emptiness
Feelings of emptiness can look different from person to person. For some, it’s a physical feeling in their belly or chest. For others, it feels like emotional numbness, apathy, feeling as if you are drifting through life on autopilot, or feeling unfulfilled. Feelings of emptiness can occur because people feel like something important is deeply missing inside them. What’s often missing is access to the emotions that were invalidated during childhood.
hyperindependence
Rejecting help from others is a common behavior for survivors of childhood emotional neglect. When children learn that they can’t rely on their parents to meet their emotional needs, depending on others can become a source of anxiety. While western society values independence, doing everything yourself ends up taking up so much of your time and energy you end up burning out. Constantly rejecting help also perpetuates the feeling that others don’t care about you as they assume you’ve got everything covered.
people pleasing & perfectionism
For many, acting in the ways that caregivers wanted reduced active conflict. As a result you’ve learned how to read people without asking them how they feel or what they want and then just automatically altered yourself to fit in. This offered protection with caregivers, but as an adult the lack of authenticity keeps you distant from peers and partners. Being “perfect” provides a defense, so that there is less ammunition for caregivers to use against you. This leads to the ongoing belief that you have to hide any and all flaws to be accepted.
Negative self-talk
Survivors of childhood emotional neglect often view themselves negatively and harshly criticize themselves. When children do not receive consistent attunement and validation from their caregivers, it can impact how they view themselves. The result in adulthood can look like crippling self-doubt, low self-esteem and self-worth, and imposter syndrome.
Lack of Self-Compassion
If you have plenty of compassion for others but struggle to find that same grace for yourself, it could be due to a history of emotional neglect. This lack of compassion can look like focusing on the needs of others more than your own and struggling to set healthy boundaries. Typically this is because as children you were asked to push past your own physical and emotional boundaries to please caregivers.
Self-blame, shame, and guilt
Most people experience guilt and shame on occasion; however, childhood emotional neglect survivors often feel these emotions consistently. The lingering trauma of emotional neglect can manifest as not feeling smart, strong, or capable enough. Recipients of childhood emotional neglect were often told or picked up on beliefs from others that it was their fault.
Difficulty Identifying and Expressing Emotions
Struggling to communicate feelings and emotions is a common symptom of childhood emotional neglect. If you felt as if your feelings and emotions were invalid in childhood, you likely learned to bury them. Not only is it often hard to express emotions, but it can be equally challenging for survivors even to identify what their exact feelings are. This can have an impact on friendships and romantic relationships. If you struggle with opening up and being vulnerable, for others it can feel like the relationship is one-sided, shallow, and emotionally exhausting.
While some shut down their emotions, others struggle greatly to regulate them and they are emotionally triggered by the slightest feelings (traumatic reactions). Something that others view as small is a big deal to you. Specific triggers lead to extreme responses and you have difficulty with self-soothing and calming down once your nervous system is activated.
People who struggle to engage with their own emotions often end up as workaholics, or focus their energy on caregiving for others. Both serve as a way to avoid thinking about your own thoughts and feelings.
Sensitivity to Rejection
Rejection sensitivity can be a common symptom that adults of childhood emotional neglect experience. Rejection is difficult for anyone to experience, but it can feel especially triggering for an emotional neglect survivor as it mimics the original emotional abandonment by caregivers.
Believing you are intrinsically flawed
Many emotional neglect survivors will experience a feeling as if something is “off” about them but struggle to identify what that means exactly and why it’s occurring. Maybe you’ve thought something is “wrong” with you or feel “different” from others. This symptom is common as emotional neglect can hinder one’s sense of self and negatively impact relationships.
Difficulty being assertive
Assertiveness has its benefits as it allows people to advocate for themselves and their needs. Reduced assertiveness can show up as a lack of boundaries in relationships, at work, and with self-care. For example, you might struggle to ask for a raise or promotion at work or may freeze up when you need to set a boundary with a friend. It can be challenging for survivors of emotional neglect to feel deserving of what they need so they end up not asking for anything.
other trauma and mental health conditions
It’s not uncommon for survivors to experience other trauma and mental health issues. Studies have shown that emotional neglect survivors are more susceptible to intimate partner violence as well as developing an eating or substance use disorder. Experiences of emotional neglect also link to chronic depression and anxiety.
Chronic pain and illness
Trauma and chronic health issues are deeply interconnected. Chronic stress from emotional neglect leads to increased body-wide inflammation and sets off physical responses that keep nervous systems stuck in hyper-aroused states. This perpetuates trauma responses and leads to the development of autoimmune disorders, chronic pain, and a wide variety of other chronic health conditions.
HOW ART THERAPY CAN HELP
Since trauma is felt in the body and mind, a purely intellectual approach, like talk therapy, is inefficient at helping you fully process through trauma and learn to reconnect with your emotions. Art Therapy is a somatic practice that integrates key areas of the many brain regions influenced by long-term complex trauma, like we see in childhood emotional neglect. Attachment trauma often starts before full verbal capacity is developed and these experiences are thought to be coded into non-verbal areas of the brain. Using art materials, especially those used by children like crayons and finger paint, can help us connect to deeply buried emotions.
Art therapy for trauma often starts with art directives to enhance resilience and feelings of safety. This will serve as a grounding space to return to again and again as we begin to dip into the emotions and experiences you’ve long been avoiding. Good trauma therapists will never ask you to jump right into your trauma without assessing your ability to cope with highly activating memories.
At Spotted Rabbit we use trauma-informed approaches that don’t require you to relieve your traumatic experiences. Instead we focus on the ways that thoughts, beliefs, and emotions impact you in the here and now. Using a wide range of somatic practices like polyvagal theory, Somatic Experiencing, and sensorimotor psychotherapy we help your sympathetic nervous system to settle so you aren’t in constant fight or flight. With a philosophy based in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) we use a values focused approach to help you strengthen your sense of self and drop the mask you had to wear to protect yourself growing up. Mindfulness based strategies will assist you with naming and sitting with your emotions rather than doing anything you can to disconnect from and avoid them.
Art making itself can also serve as a method for countering many of the messages you picked up as a result of childhood emotional neglect. For example, trying out new materials and ideas tests our frustration tolerance and capacity to sit with distress. Repetitive practice leads to improvements in self-esteem and self-worth. Consistent creative expression offers a mindfulness practice and serves as a coping skill to both express and regulate emotions.
If you’ve been in therapy before and haven’t found full healing yet, art therapy may help you find the pieces that are missing. Spotted Rabbit therapists have open availability for new clients at our Pittsford and Brighton locations and online throughout New York State. With no wait-list we can get you started in days, not weeks. Contact us today through our webform or by calling 585-430-9877×1.
Sarah Beren, LCAT is licensed in New York State as a creative arts therapist. She has a MS from Nazareth College in creative arts therapy and has been practicing art-based psychotherapy since 2012.
As the director of Spotted Rabbit Creative Arts Therapy, Sarah is dedicated to training the next generation of clinicians in trauma-focused best practices particularly around childhood emotional neglect, complex trauma, and trauma related to being neurodivergent and/or queer.