Neglectful Family?

[In the belly of the beast]

Does anyone have any experience dealing with psychological and social neglect from families of origin?  There is a lot of discussion about overt abuse on these forums, but negligence seems more difficult to pin down and achieve any kind of certainty.  

 

I've been trying to discuss my longstanding childhood social isolation and drugging (Ritalin, antidepressants, and the occasional sedative) with my parents and younger sibling, and they've mainly been saying "We did the best we could with the information we had", "We don't understand why you're so upset", and "It's your biology" lines with me.  I feel enraged and contempt towards my parents, and disappointed in my sibling.  They have never asked me any unprompted questions or done any research on the topics that I brought up.  My father compared the show to a cult and me to an actual mass shooter in the news last year (I have never shown any inclinations towards violence).

 

The drugs seemed to have made me dissociated and caused problems with my short term memory, the latter of which affected me into my late twenties.  I also had the social skills of a child when I went away to college at the age of 18, and it took me many years to learn how to make friends and get a date.  I have also struggled with finding my footing career wise.

 

Despite bringing these topics up with my therapist and girlfriend, I still feel a bit of doubt as to what's going on. I'm mostly leaning towards saying "fuck them all" with regards to my immediate family, but would that be a failure to take responsibility for my life in some way?  I'm now in my early 30's, so I've obviously been responsible for my decisions for a number of years now.  I am making great progress in my social and romantic life, and am training in a new career that shows promise.  It's just my family that is really bothering me at present, and some outside perspective might help in finally putting this to rest.

 

I know this might be a bit general, but I'll elaborate as necessary if anyone wants any specifics.

[drkmdn]

What your family did to you and the way they are responding to you now is COMPLETELY unacceptable, evil, cruel and messed up! Neglect is a really hard thing to pin down when you suffer the effects in adulthood because its not like you have specific memories to draw upon. It's more like a haze, a fog of confusion.

 

Treating children like houseplants ("well! here's your food and water!") is still pretty acceptable these days. Children need emotional and social food the same way they need bread and butter and if they are starved of it, they suffer. It's just in ways that are less obvious at first.

 

Really sorry for what you went through. I have been there as well. I hope you have sought therapy.

[freemickey]

Hi Beast,

 

I think doubt is probably the most persistent obstacle you will encounter de-fooing from a family as you've described, and It will be tough to convince yourself. The decision to defoo was / can still be emotionally painstaking for me. I have a very similar story of neglect from my mother and  a workaholic father. I have the same problems with my short term memory from that time as well as re-occurring habits of disassociation. My medications were self perscribed. I used alcohol and weed at 13 all the way up to heroin in my mid 20s.  I am going to speculate that the memory lapses and the dissociation can be attributed to a lack of stimuli, like a compassionate or caring person present could provide,  persistent fantasies like daydreams, and prolonged stress. These things would induce memory loss and disassociation in addition to prolonged drug use.

 

I hope by reading some of my experiences going a similar event, you can use some of it to make your ride a little smoother...

 

That rage you spoke of, in my case, was a blessing. A signal from my body screaming "I'm still here damnit, and I matter!"

I would become angry when my mother would text me, "get over it" or "your incharge of your own happiness" and "then I will luv you always".  These texts were sent to me after I explicitly asked her not to text me, because I felt she used them to avoid speaking to me. I was ashamed that text messages could make me so mad, and that she had that power over me.

 

But if you read into things (which she got angry at me for doing) she was right even though it meant something very different to her; my forgetting and moving on instead of remembering and making a chose.  

So you can test your parents now for evidence of past neglect and abuse. I'd suggest creating a few of your own tests to satisfy your doubt for the time being, for instance my therapist asked me what would make it forgiveable for my mother to have done or not done these things in my childhood. Find out if that was the case. . 

 

I did this sort of haphazardly and didn't realize I was asking such questions at the time when I conversed with my folks, but  since I had been reading up on healthy child rearing and with FDR, I could recognize the manipulation passive aggression and dismissive behaviour when it reared it's ugly head! I think Stef did an episode where he talks about being honest and vulnerable with your parents in an attempt to re-connect and you can find out pretty quickly how happy    they are you to you want to love them. 

 

 

Sometimes I would doubt myself and ask, am I just de-fooing because I have been listening to these podcasts?

Ask yourself why these podcasts resonate with you in the first place.

 

I would ask my mom to explain why I hadn't any memories of intimate or playful moments with her, and she would describe how she was always home, and that she drove me to school everyday, and that she was always there for me if I needed her. Do you see the proof she provided that she did not provide intimacy?

 

I would suggest re-framing the above question without accusing her neglectful parenting, like it's your fault you can't remember... and you need her help remembering. I think I was much more accusatory when I had asked and later I doubted myself because I thought, well maybe I didn't ask it right... maybe she didn't realize she was in self defence mode, maybe this, maybe that. It will always be maybe. 

 

I would argue that a child who was loved and nurtured by both their parents would not have any doubt their parents were  integral to their success and happiness.  Also lookout for contradictions! My mother said that I and my brother were "her world" and in the very next sentence said she "did her best to put up with me.... "

 

 

The greatest reward to my self-esteem was the realization that I chose to cease contact with my mother after testing the relationship. That I was capable of making such an important decision that would literally change my life for the better has given me an impetus I haven't felt for a decade.

 

 

Your situation could be better, worse, but I think you know that doesn't matter. What matters is what you decide and for what reason. I think you do have to make a choice though, or in my non-scientific, un-educated personal opinion, the memory loss and dissociation could get worse. 

 

Please feel free to share more, or ask me about dissasociation and isolation. I've studied it plenty)

[Drew.]

I've tried to connect with the pains from my own parents neglectful behavior towards me. I've also found it to be a struggle. As a general rule, I try to side with my inner child, and the child that I was. If I needed something--like to be played with, to be listened to, for someone to be curious about my interests--then I deserved it from my parents. As a general rule, it seems that most people are more unjustly forgiving to their parents than the opposite. The doubt could be a defense mechanism to prevent you from exploring too deep and causing a great destabilization--because that is what it seems to be doing here. That's an area that I would explore. Neglect is so hard to categorize and connect with, because it's a chronic absence of a positive, not the infliction of an explicit negative. Regardless, you deserved what your parents failed to give you.

 

The great thing--and painful and sad thing--is that if there is something that you haven't connected to from your childhood, then there are chances that it's being recreated somehow. The way that your father is bashing your interest and comparing you to a highly deranged figure is likely an echo of things that happened when you were a child, which I'm really sorry to hear.

 

I'm wracking my brain trying to think of a resource to offer you for further reading, but I'm coming up empty. I'll let you know if I do.

[Hubot]

Good question, I totally agree that this kind of discussion has not happened enough in this forum – for obvious reasons, it's easier to see violence than lack of nurturing. And I'm very sorry for what you had to go through in your childhood, hopefully me rambling about my own experiences will offer some help and/or perspective.

  If you can, you could get some kind of data of how much you spent time with your parents and how much with someone else who was close to you. Then compare how many positive memories you have about your parents and how many about that someone else – or maybe compare your parents, if one of them was significantly more emotionally available than the other you'll probably remember him/her better (and more importantly in more positive manner) even though he/she might have spent much less time with you. For example, I remember my authoritarian father much more positively and better than my mother, even though I spent 5-10 times more time with my mom. In fact I have more early childhood memories of the day-care workers than of my parents. If you were neglected in your early childhood you'll surely remember something about it, no matter how small it might seem at first. For me it was for ex. showing my “treasures” which I had found in the forest to my mother - who remained utterly non-responsive or at times just unwelcoming and irritated. I'm sure you have explored this kind of stuff through therapy/journaling/dream analysis.

  Another way to test it is of course to see how your parents react to you now and what kind of feelings you experience around them. Chances are they are still uninterested about you and in denial about it. But this is something you'll have to test to know for sure. Try talking to them openly about these things and see how they react (or maybe you already have enough data points), you'll know soon enough what kind of persons they are. Ask yourself, would you allow your friends behaving the same way towards you as your parents do/did? If you then decide to deFOO and it turns out your parents were really neglectful, you won't have to worry about them trying to contact you too often (unless they have fundamentally changed, it's rare but it can happen too).

  You've probably already read about the manifestations of early childhood negligence in adult life, but I'll post one wiki-link anyway. It's about attachment styles in adults, I mostly recognize myself in the third and fourth group (=dismissive-avoidant and fearful-avoidant... and obv. I'm in the process of changing this). The third group would roughly correlate with having experienced negligence in early childhood.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_in_adults

[kathryn]

I'm very sorry to hear about the difficulties you faced growing up, but thank you for sharing because neglect is a form of abuse that isn't talked about enough.

 

In Part 2 of the Bomb in the Brain series, Dr. Felitti talks about the ways having a withdrawn parent is as emotionally damaging on a child as a broken home. My therapist pointed out that it could be even worse, as with divorced parents there is often a legal visitation, whereas a withdrawn parent who technically still lives in the same home faces no such obligation. 

 

When your parents use statements like, "We did the best we could," they are minimizing and disregarding your experience. My mom likes to use that statement a lot, which frustrates me beyond belief because she is such an overachiever in her work and hobbies, and I know that her parenting was not the best she could do. 

 

Can you talk more about the isolation you felt growing up? What did that look like?

[TheRobin]

A question I asked myself when I was trying to figure out whether or not I want to continue seeing my family was: Assuming I just met them in a bar and talked with them for a while, would I want to see them again at some future point?

Like, ignore all the negative past experience for a moment and just see if they actually provide any value right now. Do you enjoy their company? Do you like spending time with them?
And if not, then why would you continue seeing them despite them not providing much or any value to you?

I don't see how any of that would mean you don't take responsibility for you life either. Like, if you know or meet someone and you don't like them and you decide to not see them anymore, how would that mean you'd avoid responsibility?

[Dragomira]

Hey beast,

 

thank you for posting this. This thread has been usefull for me as well, since I have been thinking about the same things myself.

I am currently working on my master's degree, first year, and I still live with my parents due to practical/financial reasons. I started listening to FDR since januari and have started from the beginning, while keeping up with the new stuff.

I cannot say I was openly abused in any way, but I honestly don't remember much about my childhood. Since I started actually paying attention to how my parents treated me, I found they had no real interest in me (or my siblings, I have to younger brothers) aside from all the practical stuff (how is school? what are your marks? how is (insert shared interest)?). We only really come together during dinner and talk of nothing of significance. When I bring up some philosophical subject, they are either not answering or changing the subject. I started reading RTR and told my parents I did not know whether they really loved me or not, since I could not tell from their behaviour. My mother seemed upset in the moment and we had a conversation about it, but she had seemingly forgotten about it the next day and had never acted anything I had said that night.

From this it is clear to me that my parents have no interest in me, my interests (which they openly dismissed, with the excuse that they cannot understand them (philosophy or biomedical sciences)) or my feelings (since I have expressed them without them acting on it). I will continue to gather more 'evidence', but I fear my conclusion will remain the same.

Now I am in the process of talking to my other family members (aunts, uncles etc.), since I realize I never really knew them. Just last Friday I discovered my uncle is a liberal and agrees with most of my views (as an anarcho-capitalist) when provided with the right arguments. We talked for four hours about our views without interuption and I can honestly say I have never had such a conversation with my parents. I recommended the FDR website and youtube to him in the hopes that he will persue it. I am certain we will have many more conversations on philosophy.

I hope you can find something of use to apply in your own situation. If there is anything I have learned so far, it is that I can only get to know someone (truly) by asking them questions about their interest and to keep asking to see if they can accept any irrationanilities on their part (which will likely be present in all of us).

[In the belly of the beast]

Thank you to everyone for your thoughtful responses.  It has given me a thing or two to consider.

 

That rage you spoke of, in my case, was a blessing. A signal from my body screaming "I'm still here damnit, and I matter!"

I would become angry when my mother would text me, "get over it" or "your incharge of your own happiness" and "then I will luv you always".  These texts were sent to me after I explicitly asked her not to text me, because I felt she used them to avoid speaking to me. I was ashamed that text messages could make me so mad, and that she had that power over me.

The rage emerged as a longstanding depression lifted.  I've heard Stef use a quote: "Anger is sadness' bodyguard."  That seems true, but it could also work the other way around as well.  When legitimate anger, a feeling designed to protect us from wrongs, is suppressed for so long because it would be dangerous to express it, numbness and a kind of gloom emerges to take its place.

Ending up on heroin must have been awful.  I could only imagine how angry you'd feel as you were piecing together the events (and non-events) of your life that led you down that path.  To be met with denial and shaming on top of all that would be pouring salt in the wound.

 

So you can test your parents now for evidence of past neglect and abuse. I'd suggest creating a few of your own tests to satisfy your doubt for the time being, for instance my therapist asked me what would make it forgiveable for my mother to have done or not done these things in my childhood. Find out if that was the case. . 

 

I did this sort of haphazardly and didn't realize I was asking such questions at the time when I conversed with my folks, but  since I had been reading up on healthy child rearing and with FDR, I could recognize the manipulation passive aggression and dismissive behaviour when it reared it's ugly head! I think Stef did an episode where he talks about being honest and vulnerable with your parents in an attempt to re-connect and you can find out pretty quickly how happy    they are you to you want to love them. 

 

What would make what they did more forgivable would be for them to take responsibility for their choices and respond honestly to questions.  "Why didn't you teach me how to make friends when you saw I didn't have any?", "Why didn't you talk to me about what is involved in establishing a career?", "Why didn't you talk to me about the nature of romantic relationships, marriage, and childrearing?", "Why didn't you talk to me about your efforts to understand the world?".  

I could respect a "We're clueless.  We've mostly coasted through life and are pretty superficial people who happened to come of age at a good economic time.  We did what felt good in the moment and what was most convenient for us at the time in how we approached rearing you," a lot more than the evasiveness and passive-aggressive emotional manipulation that I've encountered in response to airing my grievances.

 

The great thing--and painful and sad thing--is that if there is something that you haven't connected to from your childhood, then there are chances that it's being recreated somehow. The way that your father is bashing your interest and comparing you to a highly deranged figure is likely an echo of things that happened when you were a child, which I'm really sorry to hear.

I've concluded that my father does not and will likely never respect me, if he's comparing me to a mass shooter.  Perhaps he never respected me as a child, and so didn't even think to try to prepare me for adulthood.

 

  Another way to test it is of course to see how your parents react to you now and what kind of feelings you experience around them. Chances are they are still uninterested about you and in denial about it. But this is something you'll have to test to know for sure. Try talking to them openly about these things and see how they react (or maybe you already have enough data points), you'll know soon enough what kind of persons they are. Ask yourself, would you allow your friends behaving the same way towards you as your parents do/did?

 

I mostly experience contempt when interacting with them.  I feel like the adult in conversation, and there is a temptation to manage my parents emotions for them, because if I fail to do so, then they will break down in tears (my mother) or start angrily calling me crazy and ungrateful (my father).  Given that I'm still not established in my new career, I'm hesitant to burn this bridge just yet, and am keeping them at a distance for now.  Once I establish myself, I can push forward with them in a no-holds barred way, but I suspect that they won't have the integrity or the emotional maturity to be honest with me as I try to get them to see what they failed to do over many years.

 

When your parents use statements like, "We did the best we could," they are minimizing and disregarding your experience. My mom likes to use that statement a lot, which frustrates me beyond belief because she is such an overachiever in her work and hobbies, and I know that her parenting was not the best she could do. 

 

Can you talk more about the isolation you felt growing up? What did that look like?

 

Sure, I can describe the isolation a bit more.  I was basically indifferent to my peers for as long as I could remember (I would pace the playground in elementary school during recess), and mostly escaped into video games and science-fiction books when not doing schoolwork.  My self-worth was tied into getting good marks in school, and not much else.  Although I was in several different levels of Boy Scouts for many years (ages 7-18), I never formed any friendships from this activity.  A typical weeknight would be me diligently completing my homework and wrapping up the evening by watching the 10 o'clock news, then maybe a bit of reading before bed.  Weekends would be mostly spend in the basement playing with a rented video game for many hours.  That was more or less my life until I went away to college, which seems quite sad and mentally impoverished on several levels when I look back on it today.  Not as dramatic as being beaten in the woodshed every night, but still not good.

This indifference to my peers carried over into my late teens and twenties, and only really began to abate after some fairly extensive listenings to Stef's early podcasts, and reading books by a few other key authors such as Nathaniel Branden and John Taylor Gatto.

I hopes that clarifies the picture a bit for you.

 

A question I asked myself when I was trying to figure out whether or not I want to continue seeing my family was: Assuming I just met them in a bar and talked with them for a while, would I want to see them again at some future point?

Like, ignore all the negative past experience for a moment and just see if they actually provide any value right now. Do you enjoy their company? Do you like spending time with them?
And if not, then why would you continue seeing them despite them not providing much or any value to you?

I don't see how any of that would mean you don't take responsibility for you life either. Like, if you know or meet someone and you don't like them and you decide to not see them anymore, how would that mean you'd avoid responsibility?

Good questions.  I don't respect them, and they seem like pretty empty and superficial people (qualities which I at least partially projected onto the world in my longstanding indifference to my peers).  At this point, I'm still in fairly minimal contact with them because I don't yet have a full time job in my new career field (I'm living fairly frugally on inherited assets for the time being as I retrain), which makes getting something like an apartment considerably more difficult without some potential support to reference.  I sometimes wonder whether I should be doing this, but I feel no real guilt in doing so.

 

I cannot say I was openly abused in any way, but I honestly don't remember much about my childhood. Since I started actually paying attention to how my parents treated me, I found they had no real interest in me (or my siblings, I have to younger brothers) aside from all the practical stuff (how is school? what are your marks? how is (insert shared interest)?). We only really come together during dinner and talk of nothing of significance. When I bring up some philosophical subject, they are either not answering or changing the subject. I started reading RTR and told my parents I did not know whether they really loved me or not, since I could not tell from their behaviour. My mother seemed upset in the moment and we had a conversation about it, but she had seemingly forgotten about it the next day and had never acted anything I had said that night.

From this it is clear to me that my parents have no interest in me, my interests (which they openly dismissed, with the excuse that they cannot understand them (philosophy or biomedical sciences)) or my feelings (since I have expressed them without them acting on it). I will continue to gather more 'evidence', but I fear my conclusion will remain the same.

I've had similar follow-up conversations, where it as if the previous upsetting conversation never happened at all!  It's an avoidant pattern of interaction for my family that is becoming increasingly obvious with time.  This avoidance is maddening and could even be a subtle form of gaslighting (though I'm speculating here).  I'm sorry that you've also had to deal with this avoidant style of communication, but I'm glad that you've found this thread to be helpful.