Complex PTSD: From Surviving To Thriving by Pete Walker focuses on the understanding that wounds from active abuse make up the outer layers of a psychological structure, the core of which is an experience of abandonment caused by passive neglect. He writes about self-image, food issues, codependency, fear of intimacy and generally about the long but freeing process of recovering.
As with physical abuse, effective work on the wounds of verbal and emotional abuse can sometimes open the door to de-minimizing the awful impact of emotional neglect. I sometimes feel the most for my clients who were “only” neglected, because without the hard core evidence – the remembering and de-minimizing of the impact of abuse – they find it extremely difficult to connect their non-existent self-esteem, their frequent flashbacks, and their recurring reenactments of impoverished relationships, to their childhood emotional abandonment. I repeatedly regret that I did not know what I know now about this kind of neglect when I wrote my book and over-focused on the role of abuse in childhood trauma.
The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller focuses more on the excuses and cultural ideology behind poor parenting. She grew up in an abusive household in 1920s-’30s Germany.
Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one’s own despised and unwanted feelings. And the fountainhead of all contempt, all discrimination, is the more or less conscious, uncontrolled, and secret exercise of power over the child by the adult, which is tolerated by society (except in the case of murder or serious bodily harm). What adults do to their child’s spirit is entirely their own affair. For a child is regarded as the parents’ property, in the same way that the citizens of a totalitarian state are the property of its government. Until we become sensitized to the child’s suffering, this wielding of power by adults will continue to be a normal aspect of the human condition, for no one takes seriously what is regarded as trivial, since the victims are “only children.” But in twenty years’ time these children will be adults who will pay it all back to their own children. They may then fight vigorously against cruelty “in the world”—and yet they will carry within themselves an experience of cruelty to which they have no access and which remains hidden behind their idealized picture of a happy childhood.
Healing The Shame That Binds You by John Bradshaw is about toxic shame and the variety of ways it takes root in our minds. Feedback loops between addictive behavior and self-hatred, subtle indoctrination about sexuality being “dirty”, religious messages about sin, and even being compelled to eat when you’re not hungry:
Generally speaking, most of our vital spontaneous instinctual life gets shamed. Children are shamed for being too rambunctious, for wanting things and for laughing too loud. Much dysfunctional shame occurs at the dinner table. Children are forced to eat when they are not hungry. Sometimes children are forced to eat what they do not find appetizing. Being exiled at the dinner table until the plate is cleaned is not unusual in modern family life. The public humiliation of sitting at the dinner table all alone, often with siblings jeering, is a painful kind of exposure.
Now that is quite some text to read. Thank you very much. My request was aimed at more general books though this is still useful.
You seem very knowledgeable on this specific topic. Am I right in assuming you are knowledgeable about emotional issues more generally? Would you be willing to write a post about these topics?
It’s only been about 6 months since I started consciously focusing my attention on the subtle effects of abandonment trauma. Although I’ve done a fair amount of reading and reflecting on the topic I’m not at the point yet where I can confidently give guidance to others. Maybe in the next 3-4 months I’ll write up a post for the discussion section here on LW.
What’s frustrating is that signs of compulsive, codependent and narcissistic behavior are everywhere, with clear connections to methods of coping developed in childhood, but the number of people who pay attention to these connections is still small enough that discussion is sparse and the sort of research findings you’d like to look up remain unavailable. The most convincing research result I’ve been able to find is this paper on parental verbal abuse and white matter, where it was found that parental verbal abuse significantly reduces fractional anisotropy in the brain’s white matter.
Complex PTSD: From Surviving To Thriving by Pete Walker focuses on the understanding that wounds from active abuse make up the outer layers of a psychological structure, the core of which is an experience of abandonment caused by passive neglect. He writes about self-image, food issues, codependency, fear of intimacy and generally about the long but freeing process of recovering.
The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller focuses more on the excuses and cultural ideology behind poor parenting. She grew up in an abusive household in 1920s-’30s Germany.
Healing The Shame That Binds You by John Bradshaw is about toxic shame and the variety of ways it takes root in our minds. Feedback loops between addictive behavior and self-hatred, subtle indoctrination about sexuality being “dirty”, religious messages about sin, and even being compelled to eat when you’re not hungry:
Now that is quite some text to read. Thank you very much. My request was aimed at more general books though this is still useful.
You seem very knowledgeable on this specific topic. Am I right in assuming you are knowledgeable about emotional issues more generally? Would you be willing to write a post about these topics?
It’s only been about 6 months since I started consciously focusing my attention on the subtle effects of abandonment trauma. Although I’ve done a fair amount of reading and reflecting on the topic I’m not at the point yet where I can confidently give guidance to others. Maybe in the next 3-4 months I’ll write up a post for the discussion section here on LW.
What’s frustrating is that signs of compulsive, codependent and narcissistic behavior are everywhere, with clear connections to methods of coping developed in childhood, but the number of people who pay attention to these connections is still small enough that discussion is sparse and the sort of research findings you’d like to look up remain unavailable. The most convincing research result I’ve been able to find is this paper on parental verbal abuse and white matter, where it was found that parental verbal abuse significantly reduces fractional anisotropy in the brain’s white matter.
Please do. This seems like an important part of “winning” to some people, and it is related to thinking, therefore it absolutely belongs here.