Emotional neglect to a child in a middle class family is like wolf in sheep's clothing - the material things are provided and in exchange for making the child feel "comfortable" enough to sustain neglect from parents as a day to day conditioning and thus making them believe that that would be enough to support the child and it would not probably incur any complaints from the child.
The child grows to believe that it deserves the neglect for the way he/she is being if the child does not satisfy the parents expectations whether it is through health, academic grades, extracurricular skills, survival skills, smart personality and so on.
It's like the parents simply don't acknowledge their lack of awareness and just want to manifest their expectations through the child or children. The child is expected to grow by itself, emotionally and mentally, and no support whatsoever is given meanwhile to understand the child's adapting to neglect, and the survival skills if any of the child is to brave it through all the emotional neglect and live in some sort of inner frozenness and lack of trusting and opening up and expressing of what he/she truly needs from the parent(s).
This is why the priority for self care for the grown up person who has gone through severe emotional neglect feels almost alien and overwhelming.
To uncover such thick layers of parental indifference as in my case was quite painful. I am raised by a single parent and was also part of a joint family consisting of my mother and her elder brothers and their families. It seemed like the elders at our house were so full of themselves and their silly egos and wife controlling habits and simply disrespectful of one's boundaries, whether it is of a child or a grownup, their all pervasive control (specially the uncles) was worthy of numbing myself and shutting myself down to avoid any sense of interaction with them unless it was absolutely necessary.
Joint family broke the image of "my family and my people" for me over the years as it was simply a bunch of broken and temperamental people who needed help and who were of no help, no guidance to us youngsters back then. A lot of projection though from the elders as they liked to believe that they were unique since they all chose to be (mindlessly) together and simply liked the appreciation from friends and their families for still being in a joint family and this was almost 4 decades ago when joint family concept started to crumble more and more.
Emotional neglect is a real pain; it's not imaginary and it's totally true to one's difficulties in coping up with lack of attention and acceptance for who one is from the environment where the child is raised. It's not just parents who raise the child to an extent, but it's neglect that ironically the child learns to grow up to fall back on and gets used to being neglected.
Self care is not just putting back the care and attention in the self all over again but learning to do so with kindness and patience as a soul/sole purpose of living. It's as much about discovering your inner wounds that were born out of your parents neglect of you and also learning step by step to reparent yourself each and every day as much as it's possible.
Your inner wounds when truly empathized with makes you feel seen, makes you feel whole, and no better person than you to look within yourself. Just choose to be there for yourself over and over as if your entire life depends on it. It truly does matter no matter how late this inner journey might start for you.
Remember that you are alive to feel your life, so don't hide under the "comfort" or shell of self neglect.
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