This conversation about relational trauma, emotional neglect, etc. really has me thinking tonight. I need to learn more about relational trauma especially, I'm not familiar with the term at all. (How this can be after 10 years of therapy I won't ask. That ship has sailed.) But I am wondering about it re: my childhood. Even though I don't recall hearing or seeing the phrase before it still has an aha kind of feel to it for me. Hmm.

It's been studied in recent years I think. Past 5ish years? About the effects of emotional neglect with or without abuse, with regards to developing depression and other mental health issues.

Don't quote me though. I search and read in bursts and never remember the dates of publications or study titles.

It's definitely part of the Adverse Childhood Events study: Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

I also previously participated in a local group for child abuse survivors (using the World Health Org's International Questionnaire for ACEs), where sometimes people said the emotional neglect compounded their emotional pain from chronic bullying in schools (folks have been beaten up at school etc) violence at home etc.

Not taking Annie Wright as a guru

(I feel some of her opinions about people with personality disorders are biased, given as there are 10 in the DAM but she focuses on particular cluster B ones and over-generalises them hard.)

So here's basically what I've been trying to understand in my own therapy but couldn't think of words.

I've 3 siblings, and we all turned out differently, due to differing ages, birth order, gender, interests, and how we as people affected how our parents treated us, school environment with teachers and peers, which relatives cared or didn't care (huge extended family), etc etc.

It wasn't about wanting my siblings or myself to "have it worst", (other than the fact that my abusive brother compared and then decided to abuse me, and he outright said it) but because for a long time, I would argue with my therapist "I must be the problem because 2 of my siblings turned out alright." and my sister and I excused my abusive brother with "he had it worse than Quietmind from our parents which is why he SAed Quietmind."

Yeah, so I got stuck in a loop lasting quite a few years with "but other people have it worse."

"But what makes these relational experiences traumatic?

The bottom line is this: when children experience traumas and stress, it is not necessarily the trauma itself that becomes the problem.

If a child has securely attached, attuned, loving, consistent caregivers who can support them in metabolizing the stress, organizing and making sense of it, the child can more or less move through a trauma or stressor functionally.

However, if the trauma or stressor is happening within the attachment relationship with the parent or guardian, the child, therefore, cannot usually rely on the adult to help them integrate and process the stress.

Or if the trauma or stress happens outside of the attachment relationship but the caregiving adult still fails to support the child in managing, healing, or recovering from it, a child will likely develop maladaptive and compensatory responses to organize their experience simply because, as children, they do not have the resources and coping skills to do much else.

Maladaptive responses are numerous and varied but essentially, if left unaddressed and untreated, they can lead the child to become an adult who has ineffective beliefs and behaviors about themselves, about others, and about the world.

The impacts of complex relational trauma will be wide, varied, and unique to the individual who experiences it.

There is no one-size-fits-all description.

It’s absolutely possible that two children, growing up in the same household where the relational trauma took place, will have wildly different responses due to many factors including but not limited to the child’s temperament and resources, length and intensity of exposure to the trauma, the type of trauma, and any if at all support in managing it, etc..

All the little fragments: Understanding complex relational trauma.

I am stressed out because my parents are away this weekend which means I will be home alone. They left this morning and will be back at 2 or 3 ish on Sunday. Sigh. That's a long time to be by myself.

Artie, I read your Dear T post and IFS says that embracing your "parts" and all of their conflicting desires and motivations is, paradoxically, the path to wholeness. If you can use your core self to make sense of and communicate among all the little fragments that have their own motivations, you will feel more emotionally stable and whole within yourself. (I am astonished at how often a part I don't like has a motivation that boils down to "it's trying to protect me/us.)