“Just ignore them and they’ll go away.”
This was the stellar advice I received at 6 years old coming home in tears because of the big bad bullies at school. My parents’ generation were champions of suppression, having inherited war-time stoicism from their parents. Don’t talk, don’t question, don’t fuss. Resilience had no nuance, no empathy. No consideration for what might be sacrificed to maintain that stiff upper lip. It wasn’t just the Brits (although we love our national brand of ‘Keep Calm’) - my Irish nan once dismissed my complaint that my brother was getting on my nerves with, ‘Jayyysus, sure, children don’t have nerves!’.
My nan may not have understood psychology (or even basic biology, it seems) but she was part of a cultural norm in which feelings were not and should not be discussed. ..Of course, this was also the generation where it was acceptable to have a morning scotch at your desk and send small children out to make their own fun, so it’s safe to say they didn’t have things entirely figured out.
However, when something is so widely culturally accepted, it passes on a legacy that seeps into the bloodstream of the next generation. Our parents educate us in a way that seems ‘normal’ to them, therefore becoming the norm for us unless we break the pattern. (i.e. spending fortunes hashing it out with a therapist - Dad, you’ll be getting my bill!).
If children are raised in a household that ignores feelings and avoids emotion, the impact on the child is in fact one of emotional neglect. That may sound heavy-handed but the damage caused leaves deep invisible scars that, due to afore-mentioned cultural ignorance, go undetected and unnamed. Although it will likely be evident in a person’s attachment style.
When a parent or caregiver fails to acknowledge important emotions, such as sadness, confusion, anxiety or loss, the child receives unconscious but powerfully informative messages:
Your feelings don’t exist.
Your feelings don’t matter.
If you feel something, hide it. Don’t burden others with your emotions.
We are essentially being raised to undervalue, under-attend to, and under-respond to the most deeply personal and natural feelings which we then feel shameful of when they bubble to the surface. We spend our lives stuffing them down, covering them up, and distracting ourselves with anything that helps keep them under wraps.
Shutting down from feeling may likely evolve as a natural defence in a household that encourages such, but as an adult, we need to have full awareness of, and access to our emotions in order to fully connect with ourselves and others.
Such suppression can become ingrained at a surprisingly early age. Psychoanalyst and former paediatrician, Donald W. Winnicott wrote extensively about the importance of mirroring and attuning to infants in order for them to make sense of the world. In early development, babies cannot yet differentiate objects and therefore see themselves through their caregiver. What gets mirrored back is what forms their earliest sense of self. Furthermore, the baby has a primal understanding of its dependancy on the caregiver for survival. If the caregiver does not respond to its natural expressions of emotion, it will quickly adapt to what gets the desired response - the earliest manifestation of the ‘False Self’. It’s amazing really - although sadly, these clever little babies make for damaged little adults!
I’m not saying blame the parents (Dad, you’re still getting my bill). They weren’t taught this stuff and were educated themselves in the school of ‘just get on with it’. But emotional neglect in childhood leads most often to emotional neglect of ourselves, which may show up in a number of ways:
Inability to identify, express, or manage your feelings.
Difficulty making sense of relationships or understanding the behaviour of others.
Routinely putting other people’s needs, wants, and feelings before your own.
Difficulty in saying “no.”
Resistance to depending on others or asking for help.
Lack of self-compassion.
Highly attuned to other’s needs yet unable to identify your own.
Continual sense of disconnection, confusion, and aloneness.
An underlying sense that you are deeply, secretly flawed.
Feeling empty yet blaming yourself for not being happier.
Directing anger inwards rather than expressing it to others.
If any of those sound familiar, then it might be something worth exploring. Awareness of our internal scripts can be the first step in tearing them up and (eventually) incinerating them for good!
We can acknowledge where we’ve come from but change where we’re going, simply by attending to our own feelings. Noticing and respecting what’s really there rather than what we think we should feel. Naming but not shaming.
It can feel strange having to unlearn what we picked up as little infants - but emotional neglect is not something we should accept as ‘normal’. Avoidance of feeling isn’t stoic, it isn’t strong, and it isn’t cool.
These are wounds that need to heal.
Time we ditch the neglect, and show our emotions their due respect.
▶️ Now hit it!… 🎵🕺🏽
The Spin
Pay attention to your emotions and feelings. Name them. Take note of the different emotions you experience throughout the day and just notice which ones feel stuck and which ones pass through more easily.
Understand that those old and false scripts from childhood were not about you, but simply a pattern of avoidance passed down through generations.
If emotional neglect occurred in your childhood, it’s perfectly natural that you would develop coping strategies and avoidance of feeling. There’s no shame in it, but there’s no joy in it either - time to ditch that sh*t!
Adding More Weight
10 Surprising Signs of Childhood Emotional Neglect
Why You Should Befriend Your Emotions
Why Bottling It Up Can Be Harmful to Your Health
Toxic Positivity Is Taking A Toll on Our Children
I’m recommending this again - 👏 because 👏 it’s 👏 great 👏 - The Dance of Anger by Harriet Lerner
Option to Go Deeper
How are you feeling?
No, really. It’s a question often thrown away through generic response. Check in with yourself and see if you can list all the emotions passing through you at present. Just notice and observe without judgement. Maybe investigate where they came from, when you may have felt them before, and if they are deep feelings or ones covering something more raw.
I have a special request…
I started this newsletter in the hope of sharing something useful and I’ve been so grateful for the response so far and to those of you who have been in touch directly. I’d love to keep making it better and more relevant, so it would be an enormous help if you could give me some direct feedback via this nifty little form I made..
(It’s anonymous, so you can be super honest! ..Thank you🙏)