Tag: Video Counselling

Childhood emotional neglect and scapegoating – part 1

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On family estrangements

I know over the last week there’s been a lot of speculation and commentary over one particular celebrity family breakdown but as someone who has worked in this field for many years I wanted to give my perspective in general on what these are about. I won’t comment on the celebrities themselves.

  • Never assume it’s easy for anyone being impacted.
  • Never assume you know what someone’s reality has been like from watching it from outside the core family. 
  • Never assume people haven’t tried to fix things before they make a break. 
  • Never assume that people living in the same house have the same experience of people.

The reality is we don’t live other peoples lives and it’s incredibly difficult to fully understand what people are going through because we bring our own prejudice, biases, innocence and naivety into our perspectives.

Sometimes abusive behaviour is overt. I mean that the abuser knows they are being abusive and there is an element where they want to hurt someone in what they do. These people are usually very skilful at hiding that behaviour from everyone else because they have developed a very good mask to show to other people.

The person that they abuse is often disbelieved if they tell their version of event because of the way a skilful abuser has created and crafted a story. This can often include setting up the abused family member as a scapegoat. 

  • They are the problem.
  • They are the one who makes it difficult. 
  • They are the one who we try to help and doesn’t appreciate things, et cetera. 
  • They are ungrateful.
  • They don’t understand I did what I did for their own good.
  • They are the one who then isn’t believed when they try to speak out if they ever do speak out. 

Part of that abuse can be that they actually end up believing the story that’s been crafted about them and it can take a lifetime to realise that it was false. 

In other instances the abuser is not aware that their behaviour is abusive. That their behaviour is causing harm to another person.

This can be for many reasons but often it’s a lack of emotional maturity, the ability to emotionally regulate and maybe they have been raised themselves in a emotionally abusive household so they do not understand what is appropriate.

I think back to the tales of stage mothers as shown in films from the 1930’s, 40’s and 50s. These are mothers usually raised in poverty who want more for their children and push them to work from a really young age and dedicate everything to making their child stars and make money but at what cost?

There’s a lot of films and literature about that system in Hollywood and now it’s acknowledged how abusive it was and how harmful. Those mothers I think in many ways were motivated by their own trauma. They wanted more for their children and then through them more for themselves.

Parents who overshare with their children from a young age and treat them as a confidant can also cause a lot of harm. There children become the support system for the parent and their own needs and support gets neglected.

Absent parents through economic poverty and necessity can also leave a legacy of harm to children. Parents who are never there for their child because they’re working all the time to provide some stability think they’re doing the right thing. However we do know that children need connection with their primary carers to feel emotionally safe and secure and to learn from them. 

They learn how to regulate emotions, learn trust, confidence and to know they are loved. When work takes so much time and energy, even when it’s coming from trying to provide for them, that child may feel unloved, unsafe, unconnected, and ultimately that can also become a form of emotional neglect.

Emotional neglect is one of the most unseen forms of child abuse. Its legacy can be lifelong and hidden, even in the one who experienced it. It can shape and influence all their life choices.

Sadly, if they ever do come to understand what was happening and work on healing themselves it also often gets dismissed and even mocked by those who they share their story with later in life. 

These types of examples can lead to different insecure attachment styles which I will cover separately.

Long term impacts of trauma, post Covid

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I’ve recently revisited a post I wrote many years ago on privilege, adverse childhood experiences to update the links in it.

It made me sad to think about it as it as I realised all the research and statistics were from before we had ever heard of Covid. Surely now in the future living through a pandemic will count as an adverse childhood experience on its own, which means the rate of those with the higher numbers that lead to more difficult longer term outcomes will increase substantially. That doesn’t count those children who have experience loss of loved ones or significant separations due to hospitalisations.

All those who have been children over the last 5 years have a much higher risk of mental and physical health conditions in adulthood and shorter life expectancy. I was aware of how hard it has been but revisiting the older research has really brought it home to me.

There are things that can done to help mitigate the risk, both within families and communities but the most significant health is going to be systematic which is driven by governments. The CDC page has some details of the types of things that can help . I’ve been looking for and updates on information from the UK since Covid and haven’t been able to find it. I think we all are aware that support for early years and funding has been drastically reduced since 2008/2009. Without investment back into these areas there is only so much individuals can do.

Better Brains

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I really like this video on how children’s brains develop and the impact of toxic stress.

I mentioned in my last post how intergenerational trauma can be passed on through environmental factors. This video show how important the environment we are raised in is to help us and our brains develop. However, if the parents were also raised in environments that weren’t supportive then you can see how they wouldn’t have the skills to change the patterns. 

Many of my clients both young people and adults have come from childhoods where things weren’t as good as they could have been. Its never to late to work on the damage caused, it might be harder the longer things have gone on for but change can still happen.

Christmas and Intergenerational Trauma

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Why do so many people struggle with seeing their family en masse? It’s most noticeable during holiday events or special occasions one of which is Christmas which isn’t far away.

Gathering together members of the family gives a space for all the old patterns of behaviour to be played out again. All the unresolved issues are brought back to the surface and we witness the intergenerational trauma. 

Siblings may revert to their childhood roles that their parents allocated for them, even if that was decades ago. Their parents fail to see the adults they have become and treat them as they perceived them in the past. 

Grandchildren see their own parents behaving or being treated very differently and this influences how they relate to their parents. Not just during the time frame they are all together but moving onward.

There are two strands for us to consider when thinking about Intergenerational trauma. One generation that has not been able to process their trauma in a healthy way can pass it on to the next generation through their behaviour and causing more trauma to them and they repeating the cycle to the next. It can flow on for many generations causing more and more damage and dysfunction.

However, there is also research being done on how this affects our genes. This is called Epigenetic’s and is the study of how environments and events can affect how our bodies read and responds to our DNA without changing the DNA sequence itself. The research is exploring if traumatic events in one generation get passed down through the generations that come other in how we respond to certain triggers and stimuli.

This article gives more details of what this means and the types of research that is being undertaken.

Whether its just behaviour or epigenetic’s also plays a part, there is no doubt that breaking the cycle of intergeneration trauma is hard but necessary work. 

Healing is a process that starts with acknowledging that there is something not right. What it ends up as is going to be different for everyone and its not always helpful to have an idea or compare to others as this can lead to a sense of failure rather than achievement and self-compassion.

Before this holiday season starts, are you already dreading what may happens and being with your family for an extended period of time? Is this the time to acknowledge that something isn’t right?