Neglect

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I no longer look for those who continue to hurt me to apologize. I’m continuing to heal from the grief for what will never be!

It is so easy to be caught off guard. Last Thursday should have been just another nice summer day. July 29th just another regular day. Although the week before I started feeling a sense of unnamed dread. Then I was reminded of an upcoming anniversary date.

Last Thursday was the 4th memorial of my father’s passing. I thought I had come to terms with it. Unfortunately there was still so much anger and resentment that came to the surface. This was in addition to the regular sadness of loss. Oddly enough the anger and resentment is not directed at my father. It is directed at my mother and 3 older siblings.

I have come to accept that my father is in a better place. Where he no longer has to fight the symptoms of diabetes and all the complications that came with it.

While my father had a grandiose narcissistic personality style. I have come to forgive that while he was alive he did not have the capacity to know how to show and express unconditional nurturing love. He was an emotionally broken man who managed to accomplish quite a bit in the 81 years he was on this earth. I’m still working on forgiving that he did not figure out how to heal enough to at least try learn healthier ways to love his wife of 59 years, 4 children and 2 grandchildren. I’m starting to focus on the more positive memories than the negative ones.

What I’m still so angry and resentful about is how the rest of my family of origin behaves, especially towards me. I did not receive even one direct message from my mother or 3 siblings to check in last Thursday or in the last 3 years. You see my family does not know how to communicate or show emotions in healthy ways. I had to see WhatsApp pictures of my mother, sister and 1 brother at my father’s grave site. You see they did not even think to communicate with me and let me know. Even in this I blame myself. It must be my fault since I did not go out of my way to find out if there was going to be anything specific going to take place. A part of me wanted to see if even one member of my family would take the initiative to reach out to me.

Seeing another example of how I’m always excluded within my family is the norm. If I do not always take the initiative I would never know what is going on. This was just another example of how I’m always made to feel separate and isolated. It took a friend to mention and validate that this behaviour is cruel continually excluded me in these physical and emotional ways.

I still need others to point out all the unhealthy behaviours my family of origin continually exhibit towards me. For what I take as normal behaviour others around me help to validate how unhealthy they really are. How their emotional abuse and neglect is unfairly cruel and unjust. Supporting me to understand I truly do not deserve this unjust treatment.

A few years ago I believed there was something so fundamentally wrong with me that I somehow deserved their continual criticisms and judgements. Deserving of their unprovoked attacks of my character. You see I have been the family scapegoat since the day I was born. I was continually gaslighted at every turn. I’m always in the wrong. I had been so conditioned to believe I was the common denominator to being always the problem. That I was the one who never made sense and did not know how to communicate. I’m too “sensitive”. That I continually blow things out of proportion and bringing up uncomfortable situations and emotions for no reason. Always trying to make everything about me because I’m so selfish and self absorbed. I was so convinced of their opinions of me that I doubted my own mind, I had almost no self-esteem, self-worth or self-confidence.

So that would mean my anger I still hold for the past 4 years is completely unwarranted. Feeling anger for being made to sit outside of the hospital by myself for 5 hours while my father was connected to tubes, was not a big deal. That for 3 days I watched my 2 brothers and 1 sister be allowed to see and talk to dad while he regained consciousness. That by day 4 when he passed I was not supposed to feel resentment and hurt for not being given the opportunity to say goodbye. I had to accept the conversation I had on Father’s Day was going to be the last 1 on 1 connection we had. At least I had made my peace during that conversation. I accepted that while he spoke about his legacy of his work, even though he had been retired for years at that point. I accepted he was not capable of seeing his wife of 59 years or his 4 children and 2 grandchildren were not part of his legacy. I could accept my father for his limited capacity to show and express love. I forgave him for only being able to be who he limited himself to be. It was not my fault for his limited capacity.

I’m learning my feelings are valid in spite of the rest of my family deny my perspective and lived experiences. It still takes others to validate that my feelings make sense based on how I’m unfairly treated by my family. I have come to understand when there is never any repair for each emotional wound they remain open to fester. I can say almost every single emotional wound from my family of origin has been left to fester since the day I was born. I only beginning to learned the complexity of being raised by emotionally immature parents. This has left me with so many festering wounds which have become so infected and extremely hard to heal. I have been struggling to figure out how to heal from decades worth of blood poisoning. How does one heal from so many wounds that had been left untreated and unattended for decades. By 56 it has become so complicated in figuring out how to treat and recover from these wounds. That there is not a straightforward treatment plan.

It is only because of my years of therapy. My determination to keep going inspite of my latest diagnoses of #complexposttraumaticstressdisorder #ptsd #majordepressivedisorder #dysthymia #anxiety #adhd #autism #highlysensoryperson . The clarity I have gained with understanding my diagnoses has finally allowed me to begin to heal.

I’m learning to become my own loving parent. Taking on the responsibility that I have to find it within me to heal. Internal Family Systems (IFS) has helped me find the tools to accept all my parts. I’m not perfect, I’m human and deserve to be seen, heard and understood. I can learn to to see hear and understand myself first and foremost. I also now know I love myself enough to only look to, and surround myself with people who see, hear and understand me. Right now none of those people are my mother, sister or brothers.

I can love my family but hate their behaviour. I have even come to terms of the grief and physical loss of my father. I’m now learning to grieve and accept the emotional loss of what will never be. My mother, sister and brothers do not have the capacity to express unconditional love. I have proven to myself I have the capacity to learn to love myself. That I’m worthy to only surround myself with those who prove in their actions and behaviour that they love me and have my back no matter what. I will no longer waste my energy begging to be seen, heard and understood. I’m worthy to just be. To live by my own values and principles.

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At the moment, I’m feeling very anxious. My heart is racing rapidly. My mind feels numbed. My body, tired.

Nothing happened in particular today, it’s just something overwhelming came over me. My anxiety gets heavier as the day goes on, and the triggers are more prevalent. I think it’s just because there’s been so much on my mind lately.

I’m under a great deal of stress. And most of the time, I don’t know how to navigate that. I just let it build up until I burst. I haven’t quite mastered how to calm myself down during these moments. I try to do the usual. Breathe deeply. Exhale gently. Anything to get my mind out of the chaos inside.

But for some reason, I can’t pull myself out of my funk. I’m just so used to being my head all of the time, worrying about everything. I try to apply helpful tools from therapy and other sources, but I never follow through. I’m essentially just ignoring things that are useful and will actually help me.

Have you ever felt like that? When you completely ignore or neglect something beneficial for your health? It’s like self-sabotage.

I try really hard to stay positive and have a better outlook on life in general, but sometimes I can’t bring myself to do it. I’m rather ashamed of it. I don’t want to be the way I am most of the time. All mopey and stuck in my head. It’s difficult to unlearn years of that type of mentality.

But I’m truly trying my best to improve that aspect of my life. I’m trying to see the good, instead of the bad all the time. I’m on a journey of healing, and it’s slow, but I know that with each day that passes, I’m putting in the effort.

There was a time where I would easily give up. I suppose it’s because I felt worthless. Hopeless. But something in me has changed. I don’t want to just keep doing what I’ve been doing. I’m honestly not helping myself that way. So, I’m working on new techniques to show myself gratitude and give myself some grace.

Hopefully, this anxious feeling will pass. I’m so tired of having anxiety following me around like a shadow. I wish I could just release it, but it’s too attached to me. I need to find some sense of stability. With time, and patience, I know I can make it through. I just have to keep trying my best.

“My anxiety doesn’t define me—it reminds me that I’m human, feeling, and healing.”—Unknown

#MentalHealth #Anxiety #Depression #ADHD

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The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk

In The Body Keeps the Score, renowned psychiatrist Dr. Bessel van der Kolk explores how trauma reshapes both the body and brain, deeply impacting emotions, relationships, and behavior. Drawing from decades of clinical experience, he shows how trauma, whether from abuse, neglect, violence, or emotional loss, can become lodged in the body, affecting physical health and mental wellbeing long after the initial experience.

Dr. van der Kolk presents a wide range of healing approaches beyond traditional talk therapy, including mindfulness, neurofeedback, EMDR, yoga, and creative expression. Ultimately, The Body Keeps the Score is a compassionate guide for anyone seeking to understand trauma’s lasting effects and how to support recovery through body centered, integrative care.

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The line we carry

What is a pack? A hierarchy of the same group of animals. One in charge above all.

What is a family? A line of the same sort. There’s always one in charge while the others follow around.

What happens when a wounded pup is found? An abandoned animal? Neglect, passing by, nature shows us a multitude of things.

Typically it’s the mothering type that bring them in, clean them off, nurture and love them.

How often is it the father?

What it becomes in theory is a ‘family’.

A pack.

Big and little.

A family by all accounts, something positive and good. Strong in faith and loyalty, ties.

What becomes of the unit when it’s fractured though?

Pieces displaced by history and time.

The family I speak of, the family I remember, it started all with a little Mexican woman with a cooler of beers in the kitchen, dancing at the stove with whoever was in her reach. Her fingers twisted at awkward angles but if you took the spatula from her, god help you.

Through this woman the love passed on in her line, even to the stray pup that was brought inside.

Somewhere along the years of memories and grief, it broke. The new speaker tried to over rule who was who; get rid of the memories of the pup all together.

With his pups along side him.

The three who mourned her passing too.

And the line? Oh, an ode to the line- he may be yours but by law and justice, in the eyes of God almighty we belong to him too.

In a world so cruel and harsh it would push out a child, deny him, starve him, neglect him- to be placed directly in the path of the alpha, hand delivered by God himself.

/Remember his word. You’re not here because of spirituality, HE called you here./

How could you be so cruel to ostracize him while the man who brought him in, ordered by God, is lying in a hospital stuck in the state he is.

’Like arrows in the hand of the warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them.’

He may be yours by blood but he is our by teaching, by love, and the legacy of sacrifice.

Years before our own pack was formed, before he added the ones currently in his life-

’Little’ was the first one there.

‘Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me and whoever receives me, receives not me but he who sent me.’

I don’t deny your lineage.

I don’t deny the history that was built between you- them- him.

So don’t deny our lives.

One of the reasons we’re here today.

He gave him that piece first.

He gave him your last name.

That pup, now grown, an alpha on his own, he passed it to us.

He is just as much ours as he is yours.

I see you praying in the hallway.

I hear you praying over him.

Bile rises in my throat at the waves of hypocrisy that roll off of you.

We are here today because of God and the decisions, the choices he laid directly in the path of the son who’s mother had the crooked hands.

I mean no disrespect towards the line but whether YOU like it or not, we’re apart of it.

I want to remind you, STAR, it started with them. It started with us. I may not be given the official title but I hold it proudly in my heart.

The first grandchild.

My name given to me by my parents, my middle name inspired by him.

Maria, forever tying me to my Mexican roots.

I don’t know what’s going to happen, only God does.

His eyes may open, he could turn us away, but too many visitors we were NOT.

“The evil tongue is a flattering tongue that will speak fair to one’s face but will defame- ‘He that hateth dissembleth with his lips.’

You can say what you want but his name is on that paper, his hand signed it. That can’t be undone.

History and pain aside, the stories, you can’t change any of it.

The foundation of our family was laid on the god given words woven into their lives which in turn, attached our square to yours.

‘Big’

‘Little’

You can’t erase it.

No matter what is said, what is done, that’s what they’re known by.

Loyalty isn’t just standing at his side and praying to the God that brought us here, the one you’re willing to ignore.

Loyalty is being there through it all and standing by his side praying, the nails of their monsters having grown over their shoulders, asking for him to come back and open his eyes to say

“I love you” just one last time.

#Family #Familydrama #Faith #healingthroughwriting #lettertotheline #loyalty #Love #hegaveushisname

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Anti-positivity

I’m here because I dealt with a high level of emotional abuse, higher than average level of physical abuse, and witnessed a higher than average level of neglect growing up. I’ve continued to deal with abuse throughout my adult life and several therapists (last year) stated my trauma was beyond their ability to handle. ChatGpt recommended this website.

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Madness: by Antonia Hylton

Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum by Antonia Hylton is a powerful blend of investigative journalism, historical research, and personal reflection. The book centers on Crownsville State Hospital in Maryland, originally opened in 1911 as the Hospital for the Negro Insane during the Jim Crow era. Hylton uncovers the harrowing conditions endured by its Black patients, who were often institutionalized for reasons rooted more in racism and poverty than mental illness. These patients were subjected to overcrowding, forced labor, experimental treatments like lobotomies, and systemic neglect.

Drawing from over a decade of archival work and interviews, Hylton brings to life the human stories lost to censored or destroyed records, including the tragic account of Elsie Lacks, who died at age 15 after a gruesome brain procedure. The book also examines how institutional racism shaped Crownsville’s practices, which echoed slavery-era systems of control. Hylton connects these historical injustices to her own family’s struggles with mental health, exploring how racism and generational trauma affect Black communities today.

In addition to documenting suffering, Madness highlights moments of resistance and advocacy from Black nurses, doctors, and community members who pushed for reform. The hospital’s eventual desegregation and closure in 2004 mark both progress and the long-standing neglect of Black mental health. Hylton ends by connecting the legacy of Crownsville to contemporary issues like the criminalization of mental illness and lack of accessible care for Black Americans. Through meticulous storytelling, Madness reveals how deeply racism has shaped mental health treatment in the U.S. and urges reckoning, remembrance, and healing.

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Art for healing

In this embrace, my adult self finds my inner child—
the one I lost to shadows of neglect and pain.
At nineteen, as breath slipped away,
I saw us fading toward the light—
a silent witness to a fractured past.
Now, I hold her close,
healing the wounds no words could reach,
offering the love she never received.
#PTSD #MentalHealth #Abuse

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Breaking Cycles: Why I Keep Choosing to Heal

I didn't choose to heal; it chose me.

I remember the moment I cut the cord from my parents, and it was scary and liberating. Not knowing how they would initially react, I was pleasantly surprised and heartbroken at their lack of outreach and misunderstanding. It's like they were waiting for this moment to happen. The longer I went without speaking to them, I began to realize the cold, hard truth that they didn't care at all.

Free from their grip, I began to spiral down a dark hole inside my mind of forgotten memories. I've lost count of how many times I've wanted to give up on that darkness. How many times I've told myself it's too hard, too painful, too much. But somehow I'm still here. Still trying to fulfill my purpose in this life.

I come from a lineage of people who survived by numbing, by silencing, by pretending nothing happened. So I came to this world to break all cycles, the ultimate generational curse breaker. It's literally in my birth chart. I felt a strong purpose since I was seven years old. I'm a firm believer that we choose our parents and the hardships we endure. I will clarify that we didn't sign up for exactly what happened; free will is truly a scary concept. I'm here to break the cycles of abuse, neglect, trauma, addiction, honestly, all of it.

All of the abuse I've been through, the neglect, the sexual abuse, emotional and verbal abuse has affected me in various ways. I'm emotionally intelligent, but my emotions explode because I was never taught how to regulate. I'm learning now. I stopped giving my body to random men well over ten years ago. Always searching for something that wasn't there or trying to fill the void of pain and loneliness. Teaching myself to be kind, not just to myself, but to others as well. Creating strong, healthy boundaries, learning to say no. The most challenging of them all: addiction.

I didn't start smoking cigarettes until the day after my 18th birthday, being peer pressured into it. I continued to smoke cigarettes until I was 31 years old and quit cold turkey. I started drinking the summer after high school, under peer pressure, to fit in with my friends, and I found an outlet. A way to cope with things that I didn't remember. I felt lost but found. There was smoking of cannabis during this time. I preferred smoking over drinking, but this was before it was legal in my state to purchase cannabis. I drank heavily for the next 8 years, always searching for someone to connect with on a physical level, but nothing beyond that. When I said the healing journey chose me, this is what I mean; in September 2015, I was at a wedding with some friends, and I had been drinking. Later in the evening, I got a migraine. My first ever, and that was the turning point in my life.

It was a glamorous journey. I struggled to be sober. I struggled with staying home on the weekends, not being able to be at the bar with friends. Who were not friends, just people that happened to be drinking at the same watering hole. It honestly wasn't until after the New Year that I started to make real changes. I saw a doctor, I went on depression meds, and started practicing Yoga once per week. I spent the next few years physcially detoxing from all the crap I put in my body. I changed my diet, tried to sleep more, exercise, etc. I felt like I was walking up an icy mountain, not really making any progress but still trying. Mainly because I was still living with my parents at this time. Still under their abusive manipulation. I had no idea what I had just started.

I did quit drinking. My mom was an alcoholic, so that's an easy no for me. She killed herself three years ago. That's another story, for another time. I did, however, utilize the fact that at the beginning of 2020, marijuana became legal in my state. It was a godsend. Marijuana helped me cope and process over the next 5 years, and now here I am present moment, writing this out and struggling to let go of my edibles. My body is rejecting them, just like my body was rejecting alcohol. I crave the numbness, the release, but my heart says no. It's an internal battle that I keep to myself, wishing to be sober, but the bridge to get there is burning, itchy cravings that are the hardest part to get through.

I'm at the end of my numbing journey. I now know that I don't need it anymore. It's the in-between the old and the new, learning to cope with new techniques. I now choose healing not because it's easy, but because I'm tired of pain being the only legacy I carry forward. I refuse to be like either of my parents. I won't let my story end the same way. I also know deep in my soul that I am meant to help bring great change. It may feel like to end is all around, but I have hope that this is the downfall that we all need. Whether that's on your own personal journey or in the current state of our world. The old must be exposed before the new can be accepted.

Even if you're the first in your family to choose healing, even if no one claps for you, your choice matters. You matter. And you're not alone.

#MentalHealth #change #CPTSD #healingjourney #soberiety #choices #TraumaRecovery #AddictionRecovery

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I'm new here!

Hi, my name is barbs_loves_oats. I'm here because I've returned home after the school year, which is where I've experienced alot of emotional neglect and trauma. I'm looking for support as my trauma responses are prevalent, and I'm experiencing lots of physical symptoms and dysregulations.

#MightyTogether #Anxiety #BorderlinePersonalityDisorder #Depression

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Things I wish I Could Tell My Younger Self

I think about her often - the little girl I used to be. She was small, but her heart carried mountains. There are things I wish I could whisper in her ear - things she should've known all along.

She lived in a home where love felt like walking on eggshells. She learned to shrink herself, silence her needs, and obey just to survive. Holding everything in. No one ever protected her - so she became her own protector.

She was a body, not a person. The only time she was shown love was when it was societally acceptable. Holidays and her birthday were her favorite days, she was a person who received love and gifts. But it was all for show. All was a lie.

What I'd tell her now... You were never too much, it wasn't your job to fix broken adults, your silence was survival, the blatant neglect proved how incapable they were as parents. You were not meant to just survive, you're meant to thrive, to exhale, to sleep soundly and safely, to play, to experience, to feel, and so much more. It was taken from you, I hear you and see you little one. It will be okay, one day.

Now I understand that love isn't supposed to hurt. Im learning to parent myself in real time, process my emotions. Sometimes I feel like a child when I cry and scream and don't understand why things are difficult. My anger makes sense now. I am now the version of me that I needed as a child. I've become my own savior, my own guardian angel. I will stop at nothing to make sure people know what was done to you little one.

Your voice will become your most powerful asset.

I will keep showing up for her.

She's safe with me now

We're healing - together.

What would you tell your younger self, if they were listening?

#MentalHealth #Trauma #survival #innerchild #healingjourney

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