Dear S, I’m so sorry you feel this way. I recommend that, if you haven’t already tried this, you try sitting with your feelings each and every day, preferably with your therapist. Try to feel your feelings and identify them using the Emotions Words List on this website or in the back of Running On Empty book. Keep working on this, it’s very important because your happiness and well-being matter.

Regards

I often assert that culture is what is passed on during developmental periods, especially as these are powerful periods when attention is naturally occurring in the young. Just as other animals (you might see it mostly in domestic companion dogs. they are highly attentive and communicative, but when exposed to a familiar human, signal for only a short period, perhaps just once, and seeing no response, shut down attempts to communicate.

Babies are profoundly absorbent of behavioral cues, storing what is repeated or emotionally arousing/salient to form assessments of both what is of value to their intimates, and thus, what is of social value to themselves to imitate, remember, know.

There are too many factors occurring in siblings – my own sister, once emotinally attentive, predictive, compassionate, as she attempted to instruct and expand her children’s love, care, prosociality, formed resentments unrelated to reality, due top having experienced both extreme neglect and some significant verbal and behavioral abuse (our father scored pretty much Zero on parenting scales, while our mother shunted emotional interaction and attention to delusional religion, dissociating love from real individuals, misattributing it to judgmental illusions of autocratic deity, whose rules must be strictly adhered to).

Her emotional abilities deteriorated so much that she is unreachable. The fact that she is a Registered Nurse, exposed to so many individual in her work, in emergency rooms, seems to have made her exhausted, more callous.

One would think that we learn that babies, friends, intimates, can do no actual wrong, but instead communicate what they have learned and not learned, seeking more healthy intimacy.

Neglect implies lack of full attention, in the present moment. The problems appearing in marriage and like relationships, in my experience are due to reduced willingness to attend, to value the partner.

Coming into relationships perhaps too late – my first occurred at age 24 – I have found no one seemingly unscarred, no one not avoidant. I am slow to realize, having the combination neglected childhood – and experiencing abusive rejection from grandparent as well as parents.

Children are resilient; we learn to function in spite of neglect and abuse. But as we mature- age 25 or so is cognitive maturity, we reflect behaviors that appeared to work for others. I happen to resist the most egregious – for example, I do not separate the sexual act from the aroused emotions of love, attachment that arises, feelings like gratitude and attention.
While excuses ar made for urban hectic life, that is just stress, stress similar to that of danger war,.
There are limits to our ability, and constant “dating” and other immersion in unrelieved novelty, makes us want to skip the necessary time or steps to intimacy.

We blame – a rejective heuristic having no function other than ending relationship. I do not blame parents, etc. who were neglectful, as it became clear that they, too, had NO ability to comprehend the neglect they persist[ed] in, for their lifetimes.

Yet, I expect anyone else to act as a peer, not resisting simple attention, not blitzing their senses in the effort to avoid emotion. I think of therapists and clients as entering a contract of Openness. This presumptive contract is what we expect from anyone intimate. Yet it is vanishingly rare that any commit to just plain openness.

I keep looking at my own actions; otherwise, I would blame and resent those who reject. Our very family long disintegrated.

I see that the practitioners of therapeutic psychology have embraced the recognition of stultifying neglect, even though the US culture (indigenous aside) exists in a state of normalizing neglect.

No, Doreen, that is not enough. Only you can take the steps to heal. You’ll find many resources to help you with that throughout this site.

Dear Debra, how do you treat yourself now? You deserve to be treated well and it’s very important to do take care of yourself.

I will continue, Ed! New article every week right here on this website. All my best!

Dear Tanya, it’s never too late to change your relationship with your daughter. Find out exactly how to do it, regardless of her age, in the book Running On Empty No More: Transform Your Relationships. It’s very important!