10 Strategies for Overcoming Childhood Neglect

Hey there everybody, and welcome to this video on 10 strategies to begin overcoming childhood neglect. I'm your host, Dr. Donnellice Snipes. Over the next 30 minutes or so, we're going to explore what neglect is, the consequences of neglect, and 10 strategies that people may be able to use to begin overcoming a legacy of childhood neglect. Now, overcoming neglect isn't something you're going to do in a week or even a month, most likely. And I cannot possibly provide all of the tools that might be helpful to overcome childhood neglect in this 30 minute video, partly because each person's path is going to be a little bit different. The goal of this presentation is really to help you just kind of get an understanding of, of what's going on in people who've experienced childhood neglect and different directions that they may pursue in order to overcome it. Neglect can be voluntary or involuntary failure to meet a child's physical, emotional or safety needs. Voluntary neglect is when the caregiver actually intentionally thinks, I am not going to meet this child's needs. I don't care about the child, I'm not going to do it. Involuntary neglect is when a caregiver is incapable of meeting a child's needs. And this is generally due to mental health issues or substance abuse issues. Sometimes it can be due to physical pain and chronic illness issues. However, involuntary means the parent either doesn't even realize they're not meeting the child's needs or they're just not capable of doing it as adults. If we're in a relationship that doesn't meet our needs, we can address it, or if needed, we can end it. That's not true for children. Children are often stuck, stuck with the caregivers that they have. They can't say, well, you're not meeting my needs, so I'm going to go somewhere else. Neglect can be in the form of being emotionally or physically unavailable for the child. If a caregiver is clinically depressed, if a caregiver is abusing substances and drunk or high all the time, if a caregiver is regularly just leaving and being physically unavailable so the child cannot access them, that can be considered neglect, especially if they're not being cared by somebody else. Obviously the parent who has to work two jobs is not neglecting the child when they've got someone else looking after the child. Neglect is when the child is basically left to fend for themselves when they're five, six years old or younger. Lack of adequate safe housing and clothing is another example of neglect. Now this is not. This is different than the Parent who is poor, or even the parent who is homeless, who is trying to do their very best by the child, and they are providing adequate shelter. It's not a house, it maybe even be a car. But there are people, families that are homeless where the children are not experiencing neglect. The caregivers make sure that they are getting sufficient food, sufficient medical care, they are safe and able to actually go to sleep. Is it an ideal situation? Sometimes not. What we're talking about with neglect is caregivers who do not work to make sure that the child has those needs met. Consequences of neglect health issues. And these health issues are often stress related or addiction related. Start out with health related. For a child, experiencing neglect is terrifying and it can contribute to a lot of stress. They rarely feel safe, which means they're not getting adequate quality sleep, they may not be getting adequate quality nutrition. And this can all contribute to developmental delays both physically and cognitively. Can contribute to problems in school, reduced immunity. There's a lot of stuff that happens physically with us as a result of chronic stress. Some people who experience childhood neglect go on to develop addictions later in life. And this can be, you know, legal addictions, if you will, like smoking, or it can be more problematic or illegal addictions like cocaine or methamphetamine or something else. Addiction is often a solution to a problem. The person wants to survive, but they can't tolerate the emotional or physical pain they're in. So they turn to the addiction for a break. And the addiction is often a means of escaping from unrelenting physical or emotional pain, or at least it starts out that way. Therefore, we need to recognize the function of addiction and not pathologize people who've developed addiction. What was the purpose? Why was this more rewarding than not using? People who've experienced neglect often have difficulty with emotion regulation. And we're going to talk about in a minute how neglect impairs the initial secure attachment that a child is desperately need in order to develop cognitive and emotional and life skills and tools. When a parent is attentive, not neglectful, they are there. They can respond to a child. When the child is feeling overwhelmed, they can help help the child learn how to tolerate distress, how to sit with unpleasant emotions, how to process those emotions, how to process problem, solve all that stuff. Children aren't born knowing how to do that. So in a healthy, responsive relationship, the caregiver helps with that. When the caregiver is not there to help with that, when the caregiver is neglectful, then the child doesn't have anybody to teach them those skills. So they grow up not developing those skills. Therefore, when they start to get upset, they go from 0 to 250 in no time flat. They become more easily triggered and emotionally dysregulated. People can also experience self invalidation, detachment or numbing. They receive the message from their caregiver that your thoughts, wants and needs are not important or, or are stupid or are not even real. You're exaggerating. So they start telling themselves this and invalidating how they feel, invalidating their thoughts, wants and needs. Sometimes they even detach and they go, it's too painful to live in my body, so I am going to just detach from everything. I'm going to quit feeling for a while. There's a negative perception or attitude that people who've experienced neglect may have. Well, think about it. They grew up in an environment that didn't meet their needs. When they were vulnerable, nobody cared for them. They were neglected and as a result, they started seeing the world as a very dangerous place with nobody to protect them. So yeah, you know, you can see how that negative perception and attitude about people and the world could develop. And as they get older, there's nothing to challenge that they start seeing the world through that lens of nobody is there to help me and I'm all on my own. People who've experienced neglect often have difficulty with problem solving. Well, when we run into a problem, we often get frustrated. That frustration in people who've experienced neglect can quickly spiral into anger and anxiety and fear of rejection. So their threat response system or their HPA axis starts kind of running wild. When that's happening, when we've got a lot of adrenaline coursing through our brain, we are not able to effectively problem solve. In dialectical behavior therapy, Linehan talks about getting into the wise mind. Because when we're on, when we are in our emotional mind, it is really hard to think clearly. We're in fight or flight mode. We're not in let's think about it and solve the problem mode. So people who have difficulty with emotion regulation naturally have often have difficulty with problem solving because they have difficulty getting getting into their wise mind. And another consequence of neglect is low self esteem with a hypercritical inner voice and a belief that you don't deserve to be loved or have your needs met because that's what you were quote, taught when you were growing up. Your caregivers who were supposed to respond to your needs never did. And even if they didn't articulate and say you don't deserve this. As a child, you internalized that message that you were not worthy. And finally, of the many symptoms or consequences of neglect that we're going to talk about today is insecure attachment. Now, insecure attachment can either be anxious, where the person is constantly fearful of abandonment or rejection, and can be somewhat clingy or anxious about any separation. They get terrified when there's any sort of threat of abandonment or rejection. There can be avoidant when people are insecure in their attachment. Sometimes children develop this way of responding that, fine, I'm not going to care and I don't even want to be around you because you're just going to let me down, so I'm going to avoid even trying to attach to you. And you can have somebody who has both. They may be anxiously attached to certain types of people or certain people and avoidantly attached to others. So, for example, if there is a caregiver figure in their future, they may avoid attachment with that person because caregivers in their past have always let them down. But with their significant others, they may be anxiously attached because they're hoping that this new type of person might be able to help them feel safe and empowered. So this insecure attachment can develop for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is inconsistency in care. A lot of times, neglect is not 24 7. The parent or caregiver may be Johnny on the spot for a little while and then they relapse into their addiction or to their depression, or they get overwhelmed and over anxious and cannot focus on the child. And then they may come out of that and be there, be present for a little while. But the child never knows. Is this person, can I count on them to be there for me? What am I going to wake up to tomorrow morning unresponsive to a child's needs. And this is a little bit different than consistency. Consistency is the child knowing or not knowing what they can expect from their caregiver. Responsiveness is, you know, once the caregiver is there and knows what the child needs, are they going to respond to it or are they going to ignore it? Inattentive, avoidant, or detached. One of the characteristics that's important in creating secure attachment is attention. Not just negative attention, not just attention whenever you do something wrong, but a caregiver saying, hey, I'm interested in what you have to say or what your thoughts or feelings or dreams are. And in a neglectful situation, a lot of times children don't get this. So the message they receive is nobody cares. Nobody cares what you think, want, feel, nobody wants to spend time with you. And invalidating in neglectful environments, a lot of times the caregiver may invalidate how the child feels or what the child's needs are. And to say things like, you're overreacting, just get over it. And we see this a lot in people who go on to develop borderline personality disorder because they are highly sensitive and they dysregulate a lot easier than other people. Unfortunately, that is seen as being overly dramatic by parents sometimes, which can be neglectful. When the child doesn't know how to deal with this flood of emotions they're feeling, when they're told that they're overreacting and to just get over it, they're told that what they think they're feeling is not the correct feeling, then they don't know how to deal with it. They're like, but I. But I have this and I don't know what to do with it. So in contrast to a secure relationship that is characterized by consistency, responsiveness, attention, validation, encouragement and safety, a neglectful relationship is inconsistent, unresponsive, inattentive, and invalidating. All right, so we have an idea about what it is, we have an idea about some of the consequences. Now what can a person do about it? The first thing that people can do, or one thing that people can do is identify a good parental model that they can mimic. A lot of times when I work with people who had a neglectful childhood and we start talking about re parenting themselves, they don't know what to do. They're like, I never had a good parent. I don't know how to re parent myself. Well, that's true. So let's look, let's look around and find models that you want to emulate. And that can be in parenting books, that can be, you know, models in the media that can be wherever. But starting to create a vision or a description of what a good caregiver or an attentive caregiver looks like to them, that's the first one of the first things that people can start doing because they grew up internalizing messages from a neglectful caregiver. And it's going to be important to replace those messages with a caring self caregiver. As adults, we got to caregiver for ourselves. Develop a secure self relationship is sort of the next part. Once you identify what a good parent would do, how would you, how would a good parent respond? Then you can start responding to that wounded inner child with the secure self Relationship. Being consistent, which means being mindful, aware of what your needs are every day, not just Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, every day. Being consistent in your compassion for yourself, in your awareness of what your needs are and in your efforts to get those needs met. Being responsive, which kind of goes with efforts to get those needs met. Once you are mindful and you're consistently aware of what your thoughts, needs and wants are, then responding to those. So you know, think about it from a parent child dynamic. If a child had these thoughts, needs and wants, how would a good caregiver respond? And responding in a caring, compassionate way to the to your thoughts, needs and wants. Attentive. And this is one that we overlook. Even if you didn't grow up in a neglectful environment, a lot of times people overlook self attention. They overlooked doing things for themselves and spending time with themselves just to get to know themselves. When I used to work in residential substance abuse treatment, I can't tell you how many times I would talk with somebody and say, you know, what are your hobbies? What are your interests? What do you like to do? What's good about you? And they would look at me with this blank look on their face because they had no idea. And it was awe inspiring to see them start to get in touch with themselves as treatment progressed. Attention, self attention, self awareness is really important. Validating, and this means shutting down that inner critic, that invalidating voice that says you're overreacting or you're stupid or you, you don't need this. Validating your thoughts, wants and needs as what they are. This is the thought feeling I'm having right now. It's not good, it's not bad, it just is. I'm angry, I'm excited, I'm curious, I'm scared, whatever it is, validating how you feel, acknowledging what it is, once you do that, then you can respond, then you can figure out, okay, how do I keep a good thing going or improve the next moment. Encouraging, being, encouraging of yourself. When you start hearing that inner critic again, shushing it and encouraging the inner part of you that is trying to develop some self esteem and some courage and finally safe. It's really important to create safety. A lot of times children who are neglected don't feel like they even deserve to be happy, to be healthy, to have their basic needs met. So it's really important to start figuring out what do I need to do to keep myself safe. If I am struggling with an addiction right now, what do I need to do to start addressing that so I can keep Myself safe. If I'm in a dysfunctional relationship, what do I need to do right now to keep myself safe? How do I need to respond in order to ensure that I am safe? It's important as you start developing the secure self relationship and reparenting yourself that you respond to that wounded, terrified, rejected inner child in a way that helps you feel safe and empowered. A lot of times when things happen that remind you of your childhood, things that happened in your childhood, you will react like that child, because there's a memory or an artifact or whatever you want to call it that's in your head, and it triggers that, what I often call the inner child to come out and go, oh, no, we're not going here again. So that inner child may come out and start trying to protect itself in the only way it knows how. And usually that is either by withdrawing, becoming aggressive. Ask yourself when you start feeling terrified, anxious, angry, what would a good care giver do? What would a good caregiver do if their child experienced rejection? And I know my children experienced rejection as they were growing up, occasionally here and there, and they. It hurt, it hurts when we experience rejection. It's part of life, but it still hurts. And helping them process that, you know, how much of it was about you, how much of it was about the other person, how much of it was about the situation, et cetera. So it's important to think, if I'm feeling this way, how would a caregiver respond if I keep telling myself, if I believe that I'm not good enough and I'm not lovable because I experienced rejection from my primary caregivers, how would a new parent help me overcome that? How would a new parent help me process that? How would a good caregiver help a child process trauma? And sometimes, you know, traumas can be huge, and they can also be less huge. But sometimes children need to go to counseling to process a trauma. And a lot of times, if a child grew up in a neglectful environment, then it will be important for them to seek out guidance for how to handle that. You know, not all parents know all the tools to help a child through every experience. Hear all those extreme words in there. You know, parents, we know what our capabilities are, we know what's in our toolbox, and we know when something's out of the scope of our ability. But we can help the child find resources, and that's what we need to do as adults who, who've experienced neglect is to look inside ourselves and go, okay, do I have the resources to help myself here, or do I need to seek those out from a professional? Define your rich and meaningful life and begin acting purposefully. Now, that's a huge one right there, and there's a lot that goes into that. But as an adult, what do you want your life to be like and your energy needs. You need to decide how you're going to use your energy, whether you're going to use it to move towards those things, or you're going to use it to continue to hold on to anger and grief and those other things. And it can take time. The grieving process is not something that you just flip a switch with. Don't get me wrong. However, it's important to decide, am I going to just nurture this grief, or am I going to process it and move through the grieving process towards acceptance? People who've experienced childhood neglect often say things like, that shouldn't have happened. My, my caregiver should have this, should have that. And a lot of times when we talk about grief, people think grieving something that you had, that you lost, in this case, it's grieving something that you should have had, that you never got. And it's qualitatively different, but it's still a loss. It's still something people have to grieve because it's something they wanted that they never were able to have. There's also a lot of losses that they may need to grieve as a result of the childhood neglect. They may have sabotaged relationships. They may have made decisions in their life as a result of just trying to cope with the pain and devastation from that neglect. And they look back now and they regret some of the choices they made and some of the losses they've experienced as a result of being wounded. And those things also need to be grieved. People who've experienced neglect need to process the abandonment trauma and the messages they received about themselves, other people, and the world. And when processing abandonment, trauma and grief, cognitive behavioral therapy and EMDR can be very, very helpful at addressing those core beliefs that may be keeping you stuck. Forgiveness is another tool in the toolbox. And I don't mean saying, oh, it was okay. She couldn't have done any better. Forgiveness means saying, you know what? I am going to let this go. I can't change the past. I can change how the past impacts me in the future. And if I continue to hold on to this rage and this grief, it's going to create a dark future for me. Whereas if I decide that, you know what I Am not giving this issue any more energy. I may not give that person any more energy either, but I am not giving this issue any more energy. And I am going to start using my energy to work towards what's important to me, what I value. Another technique that can be helpful is what's called find the pony. And there's a long story that goes along with it, but the gist of it is if you come across a pasture that has all kinds of horse manure in it, guess what? There's probably a horse somewhere nobody likes. Well, very few people like horse manure. Makes great compost. But I digress. Very few people like horse manure. But most people love ponies. Good with the bad ponies produce manure. And finding the pony is another way of saying, embracing the dialectics. You may have had a crappy childhood, you may have had a crappy life in many ways as a result of your crappy childhood. And that's the crap that we're talking about. Where's the pony? You survived, you know, that's. That's part of the pony. And in what ways has this influenced you in a. To make you stronger. It's not something that you probably would have ever chosen to go through, but can you find the pony? Can you embrace the dialectics, learn how to assertively communicate your needs and not expect mind reading as children. Well, let's start as infants. Of course, infants can't talk, so they expect their caregivers to read their mind. Toddlers often have difficulty communicating their thoughts, wants and needs. So caregivers, again, are doing a little bit of mind reading there. But caregivers, when children get old enough to be able to at least sign, if not talk, we start encouraging children to articulate, to tell us, what is it that you need? What is it that you're feeling right now? When children aren't taught to articulate that, then it is a skill. It's. It's not something that they know how to do. So they still are expecting they may grow up and to be adults that expect others to read their mind and anticipate their needs. And when that doesn't happen, they feel abandoned and neglected by the people in their life. It's really important to recognize that other people cannot anticipate your needs. So learning how to assertively communicate your needs is the first step. And assertiveness means my thoughts, wants and needs are just as important as yours. Not less important, not more important, just as important as yours. It takes self esteem and confidence. However, even once you know how to communicate assertively. You can do it in practice until the cows come home, but doing it in real life can be terrifying because it puts makes you open to rejection or criticism from another person when you assertively communicate. So it's a skill that needs to be developed at the same time that self esteem and that relationship with self are being developed. Become mindfully aware of your triggers and your responses, and this refers back to that inner child again, when you sense in the present, when you sense someone's being neglectful or might reject or abandon you, how do you react? Do you shut down? Do you become angry? Do you become passive aggressive? Do you become really, really anxious? And you start fawning and trying to do whatever you can to make them happy, what's your reaction? Okay, that is how your inner child, that is how the young you, the child you probably survived up until now doesn't necessarily mean it's the best way to respond, but it was a survival tool. Recognize that. How was that protective for you to react that way in the past? Even if you don't like the way your caregivers are behaving, when you're a child, it's in your best interest, because you are a child, to appease them in whatever way you need to in order to at least try to get your needs met. What is a better option in the present? If you start fawning or you detach or you get angry? Again, that was protective in the past. Now that you have a stronger sense of self, now that you have assertiveness skills, what is a better option to handle this? Because a lot of times when we sense someone is being neglectful, it may just be a feeling that's been triggered from the past because you went through something similar to this with your caregiver and now you're seeing it in your relationship, so you assume it's the same thing or it's going down the same path. It's really important to beta test. First, breathe. When we breathe, inhale slowly for four, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four and repeat. Or blow bubbles if you need to do that, because that also forces you to slow your breathing. But when we do that, it triggers the rest and digest, which is the opposite of the threat response. Once that's triggered, then we start being able to get into our wise mind, Think a little bit more clearly. So breathing. First, evaluate the facts in the facts in the current situation, in the current context. This is not your caregiver. This is your friend, your spouse, your kid, whomever evaluate the situation with the facts that you know to be true in the current context. Think about or talk to others about what the best reaction, what's the best way to handle this situation? And then act tentatively once you've decided, okay, well, maybe I need to have a discussion with this person, or maybe I need to be more clear about, more assertive about what my needs are, then try it out. If it fixes the situation, great. If not, then you might have to go back to the drawing board. But beta testing can really help you stop acting on autopilot and start acting more mindfully. Children understand the world based on their experiences and how others respond to them. They are unable to understand that neglect was due to caregiver inadequacies, not them. Whether it was, you know, caregiver was angry because they got pregnant, whether it was because caregiver was clinically depressed or struggling with addiction or whatever the reason, this was about caregiver. The neglect was not about the worth of the child. The caregiver was about the neglect was about the abilities of the caregiver. Overcoming the legacy of neglect means examining the messages received and altering any that are incorrect. I can't tell you which ones are correct or incorrect. It's important for you as a person to go through them and evaluate them in the present with an adult mind, because children think very differently than adults grieve what never was. It is so important to go through this grieving process and to help that inner child grieve so you can let go of the voice inside your head that says, that wasn't fair. I should have had a better childhood. My caregiver should have done this. It's important to grieve the fact that, yeah, you're right, they probably should have, but they didn't. And the loss of that idealized childhood is going to be important to grief process the abandonment trauma. When children are neglected, that is a form of abandonment. When a caregiver is not meeting the child's needs, they are essentially rejecting the child. They're saying, you don't matter. And that triggers abandonment trauma and insecure attachment that causes the child to feel unsafe and disempowered. Define a rich and meaningful life and purposefully how you're going to use your energy to achieve it. Figure out, you know, what am I going to use my energy on? Am I going to use my energy on continuing to stick in these patterns, Continuing to be bullied by my inner critic? Or am I going to do something different? Develop a secure, nurturing self relationship to help heal that inner child. Learn how to get your needs met as an adult. Now, as I said earlier, this is a very, very simplified peek at steps and tools that can be used in order to overcome a legacy of childhood abandonment and neglect. One of my main goals of this presentation was to help you understand that childhood neglect isn't a minor thing. A lot of people minimize it and say, well, it wasn't abuse. Well, no, but neglect can be every bit as devastating, if not more so in many ways. So it's important not to minimize childhood neglect and to recognize all of the different ways it impacts the person in their adult life in order to figure out, okay, do I want to keep feeling this way? And if not, what are the steps I need to start changing and what do I need to address? Thank you for watching Counselor Toolbox. For more information about the impact of childhood trauma, watch Healing the inner Child on YouTube.com docsnipes the executive producer for Counselor Toolbox is Hype Media Global Technical producer Charles Snipes, presenter Dr. Donnelly Snipes and this was recorded on January 5, 2022.