Once, in a significant relationship of long duration, I very reluctantly initiated a breakup. I initiated it for many reasons. One “senseless” reason was to avoid having to re-experience the feelings of loss, abandonment and neglect so familiar from childhood. What I ended up feeling, of course, were crippling, pulsating pangs of loss, abandonment and neglect.
To the logical brain, initiating a breakup to avoid feelings of loss, abandonment and neglect makes no sense. To the feeling brain and a heart desperately trying to heal, it makes perfect sense. The Pain Body (an Eckhart Tolle term that I particularly resonate with) in concert with trauma long buried in unconscious Implicit Memory looks out and pinpoints the precise people to help us reenact the trauma – in the hopes of healing it at last. But with abandonment and neglect, by their very nature, that rarely happens. Partly because every way you try to reenact it you lose, and partly because when you’re in the middle of a reenactment, a greater awareness of the larger picture is seldom available: it doesn’t feel like healing trying to happen in the least. More often than not ALL people involved end up in triggered states of emerging traumatic memory re-creation. And being in an actively triggered emotional state seriously compromises coherent brain function and possibilities for healing in everyone. It feels much more like a return to the wild, than trying to collaboratively and sanely navigate treacherous terrain.
Lacunae R Us
Children who experience abandonment and neglect, whether physical, emotional or neuro-cardiological have large gaps in their developmental unfolding. Those gaps are called lacunae in the psychiatric literature. Spiritual teacher, A. H. Almaas simply calls them “holes.” These are missing structures that form normally from experiences of people/parents being there for us come hell or high water. As a result, we have few inner neural reserves to call upon to help us navigate safely and securely together through the hard stuff. Our physical Pain Body simply becomes overwhelmed with emotion, greatly impairing coherent thinking or action. Often, the only way out, it seems, is to flee. Or to isolate.
Choiceless Unawareness
Some people, like Eckhart Tolle, assert that we all have choice in how we experience such re-surfacing memories. From my perspective they have little understanding of how transient disorganization happens when the stress of traumatic memories becomes activated in the brain. They also fail to understand how much activity of the brain is completely unconscious and easily manipulated (all we need do is look at Stanley Milgram’s at Yale or Phil Zimbardo’s obedience experiments at Stanford for confirmation). Furthermore, few of those who assert such notions concerning choice, while they may be victims of other forms of abuse, they have rarely suffered abandonment and neglect themselves. Choice may be available to some of us later, in the wake of traumatic memory activation, after the poo has been cleaned out of the loo. But Tolle and his advocates would be better served, I think, to hold the matter of choice and free will as an open question rather than to offer it as rigid dogma. I suspect neuroscientists David Eagleman and Bruce Hood live in my camp on this matter of choice, since each recognizes that every brain is enormously complex and operates the best it can in any moment.
Children at Risk
Those of us who hail from a history of abandonment and neglect are also at greater risk for abandoning and neglecting relationships and our own children than those who don’t. I came very close to unconsciously organizing the family stressors in my own life such that I nearly abandoned my daughter Amanda at age 4, the same age that my father abandoned my own sisters and me … the compulsion to repeat the trauma. The compassionate heart of one of the very few good therapists I’ve worked with over the years, helped me hang in … until Amanda was 13. Then, my understanding of the real limits of the psychotherapy profession at the time, and too many traumatic memories mounting an emergent assault on too many fronts, proved to be beyond my ability to manage. They shut down coherent functioning in my brain and severely limited my choices. Separation and divorce ensued. But I did manage to hang in a little better than my own father did: I continued to provide what financial support I could and spent as much time as Amanda and I could manage together. An Authoritative Community might possibly have helped me hang in better. Possibly.
So, what will help to heal abandonment and neglect? I can only speak from my own experience, but what I most greatly yearned for during those periods of regression and painful traumatic reenactment was for someone who deeply understood how healing attempts often show up chaotically. They would be someone who could stay fully present in the midst of my regressed stony silences, plaintive wails or angry outbursts, and to each of them simply calmly say over and over again, “That’s fine. I understand. But I’m not leaving. That’s fine. I understand. But I’m not leaving.” That’s what it would mean, at least for me personally, to meet The Big Brain Question with The Big Heart Answer.
P.S. For a FREE copy of an easy-to-read, brain-based book that will provide hope and inspiration to help heal the wounds of abandonment and neglect, click HERE.
If you lived on a planet of healthy people and had a problem, then perhaps it wouldn’t be so hard to fix.
That is not however the situation on this planet.
The biggest taboo is saying what you really feel or think, and if this is what you need in order to fix something … you are going to find it difficult.
We live on a planet of people habitually lying about what they feel or think, … and not noticing.
In other words the planet is unconscious.
Reblogged this on Ms. Ladybug and her Layers and commented:
This is an especially poignant piece that speaks to my heart and mind on so many levels. It is not anything of my usual postings so some may find it “off”. But I can relate so much to this and it is worth sharing in my opinion
Someone who finally understands. I have not read anyone elses responses so maybe my feeling like someone else finally gets what I live with is not unique. But you last bit about just wanting someone to be there NO MATTER WHAT THE HELL HAPPENS IN LIFE…that has been me. I can put up with so much stuff. I will stay no matter what. So I don’t get it when the other person won’t. I’m not a horrible person. I have people that do love me…but those are from a distance. I want MY PERSON. My own person that I know will stay…will be there til my dying day. Yet today, I don’t know who but maybe one friend that would come to hold my hand were I dying. At least that is how it feels when you’ve been so neglected and so abandoned so many times. Thank you so much for writing so well what I have felt for so long. I write too…but I have not shared my writings to others saying these types of thoughts and feelings. Yet…they are they basis of much of my personal writings of late. THank you for understanding and for saying it so well.
I have always felt i wanted to be close to someone and they would also feel the same. I have friends that adore me. I have been loved by 2 different husbands. It never played out long term because i would leave in fear of them leaving me, even though they loved me. I knew that i could not handle being abandoned and having all those silent pains multiplied. I have been living on my own for the past 4 years. On a quest to heal from childhood neglect, abandonment, and physical beatings. Which was something i could never say and even believe it myself. My parents were expert in brainwashing me to believe they were such great parents. I had it pounded into my head that i was to never say anything about their ill treatment of me. That i was to always be there for them always. i was told that i was just an ungrateful child. I see who they are and it seems surreal . My focus is not who they are or what they did. My focus is my life and learning to move beyond the pain that wakes me in the middle of the night, or early morning. With a pain in my soul so deep and stirring that i can hardly stand it. Which is a mystery to me at times. The pain may leave for a day an hour, i just never know. I am grateful that i have people, like all of you to share with.
I appreciate your sharing this article and feel it is brave of you to be so truthful. However, the problem with what you suggest for healing could mean ‘other people tolerating abuse in their relationship with me until I heal’. If you are a woman wanting a man to do that you may not see it that way, but if you are a woman complaining to another woman about being treated that way she would probably advise you to leave him and call that abusive. The bottom line: no easy answers.
Mark – to quote: “So, what will help to heal abandonment and neglect? I can only speak from my own experience, but what I most greatly yearned for during those periods of regression and painful traumatic reenactment was for someone who could stay fully present in the midst of my stony silences, plaintive wails or angry outbursts, and to each of them simply calmly say over and over again, “That’s fine. I understand. But I’m not leaving. That’s fine. I understand. But I’m not leaving.” ”
You’re the first person I’ve seen online who’s said this. It’s so true. People like Eckhart Tolle don’t have the life-experience to say “you can choose how you feel”. It’s insulting. That advice is fine for people who don’t have wounds.
There are various kinds of wounds, and one of the most common is those caused by our relationships with other people. I have found that this kind of wound consists of a negative belief about the self, and what was caused by people can be PROVED WRONG by someone else. In my own case, 25 years of crippling depression was cured in the space of 5 seconds. Of course, it wasn’t plain sailing for a while after that but now I’m one of life’s happy resilient people. Yes, and now I have a choice over how I feel.
I’ve always made a point of being loyal and constant towards those of my friends who’ve been abandoned or neglected. It was one of these friends who rewarded me by bringing me joy and peace.
Unfortunately, we can’t plan this type of occurrence but if we behave with love and integrity it is more likely to happen.
Thank you for this post. I found it when I was googling healing neglect. There is still far too few resources for that issue. Thankfully, for younger children, there are some therapists and therapies that address issues of abandonment and neglect, as well as the emotional problems they engender. But for an older person like myself, I feel just as lost and hopeless as ever about healing at the roots of this trauma. Your article says it like it is and I appreciate the wisdom and simplicity that you shared. So many of us wait to do the “work” but the fact is there are too few who will sit with us and tell us, I’m not leaving.”
This is a great post; and a source of such empathy. My father was the kind of person who needs the unconditional love and adoration only babies and young children can give; once I hit the age where I had my own opinions and questions, he either tried to cane me into shape or neglected me altogether, and eventually just couldn’t be bothered. And when it suited him, “look how independent she is!”. When I was still a tiny tot, he’d leave me on the beach to be “kept an eye on” by other adults, and leave my milk in its Thermos bag nearby and went off to do his own thing. When I got hungry, I’d find the milk and find a place to lie down, and feed myself. My mother hated the beach and sun so she never went, and she caned me for any transgressions too. Like not wanting to finish dinner. Or not doing well in school. She, the cane and I would sit there for hours. I’ve had a lifetime of everything falling apart just as I’d get to what I’d strived for, never realising I’d been building on desperation for attention and love, on shaky ground, and that’s why it kept happening. So this post is a real comfort as I finally acknowledge that no, I didn’t have a perfect childhood, no, I’m not a failure and a screw up for no reason, and yes, I need to reparent myself to break the pattern. What I want to know is, can this really be healed to a point where I won’t feel this chronic emptiness and where I won’t need so very much attention and won’t be a sitting duck for anyone who’ll throw a bone my way? I’m ready to do the work, anything necessary.
Your post breaks my heart. I feel as though I feel you being so responsible at such a very young age and want to just sob. We were never able to be toddlers, children, teens, etc. we were always busy facilitating some semblance of normalcy in the adult world around us – trying like mad to make our group seem outwardly normal.
I can relate. My mom would leave me in bars; nasty, dirty, smokey, bars. A toddler actually wound up getting hung in one of those fabric towel machines in the restroom because the person that brought him there didn’t give a shit to monitor his actions – too busy being self absorbed and getting fucked up like my mom and step dad.
I always knew how I was cared for was not the “norm” but still loved my mom so very much. My mother gave me to my step father at a very young age in every way possible. I see these life experiences on a regular basis and wonder how…I am a mother now… how could you not only allow but facilitate abuse to your own baby, child, kin?
As of late, I have been sad and feeling as though my mother is no longer living. I have not spoken to or tried to communicate with her for 24 years. She loved me so much that she never made any attempt to contact me. For whatever stupid reason, I feel moved to fly to her location and tell her I forgive her and understand that she is weak and vulnerable because of what happened to her in her childhood. My kids do not want me to make this journey as they are sure she will just hurt me again and more than likely express that she has always hated me and considered me a burden. I am willing to take this chance.
God has blessed me sooooo much. I have 3 kids that are my best friends, we text and talk daily. We have officially broken the bullshit cycle that abused, neglected, manipulated, and throw away adult children of abuse have succumbed to.
We as adult children of abuse, neglect, and abandonment, need to become more active in our communities specifically kids in our youth systems
I loved this article ..I have felt the pain of abandonment.
Yes, a candidate for my favorite blog, whose message shall live in my sessions with traumatized K-5 children whom I will begin to see at school this week.
Namaste – Graham
Mark, I am so touched you personalized this post and talked about your own vulnerable experiences. Bravo! You spoke directly to my heart and I could expand a little further in my own awareness of ways I repeat with my sons and even my clients. It was a true right brain transmission of concepts that can get mired in left brained wording. Thank You!
Hi Mark, I lead with gratitude and compassion for your journey. I am struck by how, in the spontaneously organizing worlds of brain and blogosphere we become increasingly empowered to hold multiple perspectives.
In other words, in the context of safe, connected and loving relationships/communities we may be able to stay present for each other without becoming dogmatic or controlling (the Shadow constellating as “charismatic leaders”). We strive to hold, and integrate, the seeming opposites of our Shadow/Lizard brains and our transcendent Buddha brains, anchored by the balanced twins of logic on the left and love on the right.
Thus understanding our repetition compulsions while allowing for the strange twists of synchronicity that our minds make narrative and causal, when they may be quantum and not at all what the universe “meant to say,” may free us from the prisons of our angst and alienation. (I think of how my mom’s dad died when she was fourteen, and my best friend died when I was fourteen, and how her post-partum depression shaped my neurology to always dread and expect disaster, and even secretly believe that I caused bad things to happen as a defense against the deeper dread of helpless abandonment).
I suspect we all fear being abandoned and alone—it’s whether we can let that go and live with it, and/or trust that it does not mean it will happen (again), and/or appreciate that angst of alienation partly drives us to attach, and/or trust that this basic dread plagues so many more of us than we might suspect, albeit at different levels of intensity with different levels of suffering and varying behavioral responses… that might allow us to heal together, individually and collectively.
Yes, this is very very hard (when we feel, or particularly when we ARE, alone and abandoned)—but so worth doing to whatever extent we can manage. To me the big reveal is that it’s all relational. We tend to want to go off into the forest and emerge later, complete and secure; however we must love and face our fear of abandonment in order to transform it from neurotic wishes for certainty to more robust abilities to manage uncertainty—and love no matter what.
Sorry for saying this in more words than necessary, but my heart resonates to yours, and to the increasing hope that our collective heart cannot be in the wrong place—we just have to trust that love truly is the beginning, middle and end of our ultimate situation.
Namaste
Wonderful post, I deeply resonated with it.
On your last point:
“I can only speak from my own experience, but what I most greatly yearned for during those periods of regression and painful traumatic reenactment was for someone who could stay fully present in the midst of my stony silences, plaintive wails or angry outbursts, and to each of them simply calmly say over and over again, “That’s fine. I understand. But I’m not leaving.”
If you have not already read This Is Not The Story You Think It Is: A Season of Unlikely Happiness by Laura Munson check it out. It is the story of a woman who’s husband had a meltdown of sorts and she stayed fully present throughout and basically did what you describe.
This Is Not The Story You Think It Is: A Season of Unlikely Happiness
Nathan S.
Mark, Once again you have share a valuable post. I am certain it will be very beneficial to many directly experiencing all you have described. It also will be great to provide insight for those that are helping others to heal the feelings of abandonment and neglect.
I just shared your, Big Brain Question again yesterday when presenting to a wonderful group who was very eager to learn about the brain!
Thanks as always for all you share.
Deborah
Thanks for highlighting the current dogma regarding choice in behaviors and attitudes, Mark. This is so important, as telling people to just “choose to feel good” or whatever, can be sort of damning if for whatever reason such a “choice” remains unavailable to the person. From the work I’ve done with others (I am a psychotherapist in Seattle), and most importantly with my own trauma, I’ve come to see that the best we can do it work to create a life in which we come to feel we do have choices. When we aren’t feeling particularly triggered we can get to the building, we can do good works for ourselves and others, we can do what we can in the moment, while the moment allows it, and then hopefully when we get our buttons pushed will will have some walls upon which to lean to catch our breath.
The communities of which you speak, the “authoritative” ones, are all about his, creating the structure necessary for choice. Being in chronic survival mode, as many who have deep wounds are, really means we haven’t a lot of choice. Thanks so much for writing about this important topic, Mark.
Best,
Patrice
Mark, thank you for provoking some thought and feelings from your post this week. Am i being naive to believe that those of us who experienced early neglect and abandonment, do have the choice to recognize that this experience influences our functioning and relationships, and that we are not doomed to repeat it?
Beautifully written- perhaps my favorite of all your wonderful posts, ever! Thank you so much!
That last paragraph is what I feel my friends do for me, and what I hope I do for them. So I’m going to share it with them and hope we can all do it for our kids. Thank you.
Amen. I was trying to explain to someone the other day about how one can’t have a choice “to just choose positivity!” when one is so badly triggered, and you’ve done a beautiful job here. I posted the link to this one on facebook.
Thanks for all that you do, Mark
X
Marla