Neglect

Have you ever wondered how your childhood experiences shape your current interactions? The attachments formed during your formative years are a significant piece in determining the quality and nature of how your adult relationships function.

The Four Main Attachment Styles

Attachment theory helps us understand how early childhood experiences shape our relationships throughout life. This concept illuminates the impact of caregiver interactions on a child’s emotional development and future interpersonal dynamics.

At the core of attachment theory are four distinct styles. These patterns, formed in our earliest years, often persist into adulthood, influencing our romantic partnerships, friendships, and professional relationships. Understanding attachment styles and learning about your own relational patterns -- often done with the help of an experienced therapist -- can be a powerful tool for starting to understand how to navigate your interpersonal relationships.

Secure Attachment

According to attachment theory, secure attachment often develops when caregivers consistently respond to a child’s needs with attunement, warmth, and care. These children tend to grow up feeling safe, loved, and supported, fostering a strong sense of self-worth and the ability to form healthy relationships. Securely attached individuals typically approach adult relationships with confidence, trust, and emotional openness.

Anxious Attachment

Conversely, inconsistent or unpredictable caregiving can lead to an anxious attachment style. Children who experience this may develop a heightened need for closeness and reassurance, often coupled with a fear of abandonment. As adults, they may struggle with feelings of insecurity in relationships. It may lead to seeking validation and experiencing intense emotional responses to perceived threats of rejection.

Avoidant Attachment

This is characterized by a tendency to maintain emotional distance from others. Individuals with this attachment style often struggle with intimacy and trust. They may avoid emotional closeness, fearing vulnerability or rejection. A person with avoidant attachment may experience relationships at arm's distance, and will often push for distance when the other comes toward intimacy.

Disorganized Attachment 

This is a more complex pattern that stems from unresolved trauma. This is also known as anxious-avoidant, which basically combines the two above attachment styles. People with disorganized attachment exhibit inconsistent behaviors, often switching between seeking closeness and intimacy, while also avoiding it. This can lead to confusion, fear, and difficulty regulating emotions. If you've experience a "push-pull" dynamic in your relationships, this may be a sign of disorganized attachment. At times you may want to become closer and more intimate, but then the fear of rejection or abandonment pushes you away again. This can become a destructive vicious cycle for relationships, leading to self-fulfilling prophecies and sabotage of relationships by acting out in response to perceived threats of rejection or distance, or even pushing away care and love that is there when it feels too scary to take in.

How Childhood Attachments Impact Adult Relationships

Whether secure or insecure, childhood attachment patterns often become a blueprint for interactions with partners later in life, and in how you dynamically navigate romantic relationships.

People with secure attachments tend to more naturally navigate towards more supportive and fulfilling relationships with trust, intimacy, and emotional support. While no relationship is perfect and all relationships have their struggles, secure attachments are more likely to communicate more effectively, resolve conflicts constructively, and maintain strong bonds with their partners even when issues show up. On the other hand, those with anxious attachments may struggle with insecurities such as jealousy and possessiveness. On a deep level, they may fear abandonment, which can lead to more controlling behaviors -- often having the effect of pushing their partner away in the process.

Individuals with avoidant attachment may struggle to form deep emotional connections or trust others. They may distance themselves from their partners, fearing emotional vulnerability or dependence. In contrast, individuals with disorganized attachment may show inconsistent behaviors, which can cause confusion, fear, and difficulty with emotional regulation. This can impact your relationships, from controlling behaviors to difficulty forming stable connections. This often happens when someone craves the closeness and intimacy of a secure relationship, but when they start to achieve that it feels threatening and scary to be so close (where they can be hurt again, whether from abuse, neglect, loss, or otherwise) so they go back to the safety of the distance. It can make it hard to know where you or your partner stands in a relationship, and can create a constant sense of instability in the relationship.

Developing More Secure Relationships

As you reflect on your relationships and relational patterns, it may be worthwhile to think about how your early experiences may have shaped your adult interactions. While childhood attachments give a sense of how your dynamics tend to operate, they are possible to modify and reshape to find more of a sense of security.

#Relationships #Anxiety #Trauma

I’ve been working on a letter to my grown children. They’re in their upper 30’s and 40’s. I was married and had my first baby at 19. I always said that, if I ever had kids of my own, I would be such a good mom, the mom I never had. I’d tell them I loved them every day and keep them safe. I did those things. It’s very easy to get caught up in parenting when our children are small. We practically live and breathe nurturing them. And it’s a significant commitment.
I took care of all of their basic needs, did my best to teach them right from wrong, took them to church, braided their hair, etc. As they got older, we shopped for dresses for dances, I helped plan all of their weddings. I was there when they had their own babies. Over time, that mother/daughter relationship goes through changes.
I certainly wasn’t a perfect mom. I was young and made my mistakes, but I never stopped loving them. it was important to me that they knew how much they mattered. I poured everything I possibly could into being a good mom, the mom I never had. I don’t know. Maybe I lost myself along the way. You see, I believe I matter too. My life is just as precious. I didn’t always think that way. Years of abuse and neglect, and everything that followed, wore me down. It was pounded into me that I was nothing, nobody. But now I’m recognizing the truth. I matter! I do! And I no longer want to be afraid to say that. It hurts that I was brave enough to go on a big trip recently to Texas and not one of my daughters asked me how it was, if I had a good time, or acted at all interested. They did like the gifts that I brought back for them though. I’ve recently been very sick. Not one of them has called to ask me how I’m feeling or to see if they can do anything for me. I can’t tell you how much that hurts. I’ve decided that from now on, if something isn’t good or right for me, I’m going to say no. You see, I believe I’m more than a daughter or wife or mother or grandma. I me! Oh, and I’ll also be saying yes more often too. I’ll say yes to what is good for me, yes to things or activities which show I matter. I will begin to do more things that benefit my mental health. I’m going to live, just like other people do. They may see some changes. It may mean that I’m not always available anymore. It doesn’t mean I don’t love them. It just means I need to prioritize myself. I am God‘s investment and I should take care of that investment, shouldn’t I?
And I pray that my daughters never lose sight of who they are as a person like I did. Because one day, they will wake up, and their children will be adults living their own lives. I pray they don’t only call my daughters when they need something. I pray they have a mutual respect for each other, a real relationship. Not a one-sided effort. Maybe someday I’ll get that. But I won’t waste any more time hurting over it. I’m ready to be happy. I’ll share my life with people who are interested in me as a person. That’s where my time will be invested.

Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD), also known as complex trauma, generally stems from enduring repeated traumatic events, frequently within a close relationship, over an extended period.

Unlike single-incident PTSD, complex trauma can lead to a range of psychological and emotional challenges manifesting additional symptoms, including impaired emotional regulation, altered consciousness states, distorted self-perception, and relationship difficulties.

These challenges can significantly impact your daily functioning, relationship dynamics, and overall wellbeing.

Causes of Complex Trauma

Causes may include physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, consistent neglect (especially in childhood), bullying, exposure to domestic violence, or living through intensely threatening circumstances (such as war, for example). However, complex trauma can also develop in adulthood due to ongoing mistreatment, such as domestic violence.

Childhood Abuse or Neglect: Physical, emotional, sexual abuse, neglect, or bullying can have a profound impact on a child’s development.

Witnessing Violence: Exposure to violence, such as domestic violence of parents in your childhood, or community violence, such as repeated fights at school growing up, or worse, can be traumatic.

Prolonged Exposure to Traumatic Events: People who are repeatedly exposed to traumatic events, such as war or natural disasters, may also develop complex trauma.

How to Recognize Complex Trauma

Psychological and Emotional Symptoms

Complex trauma often manifests through intense emotional experiences, including deeper shame, guilt, or feelings of alienation. You may experience altered states of consciousness, such as memory gaps in adulthood when trying to recall parts of childhood, or a sense of detachment from your emotions or physical self. To cope, you might avoid certain places, people, or experiences in general that trigger discomfort.

Complex trauma can also affect your psychological wellbeing. You may experience a persistent sense of worthlessness and shame, significantly affecting your self-perception and self-esteem. Emotional regulation can become really challenging with C-PTSD, leading to outbursts of anger or prolonged periods of sadness. It can also lead to phobias and fears that seem to be irrational, or anxiety that danger is lurking in places (or people) even when they aren't displaying actual signs of danger. These issues can significantly disrupt social interactions and daily functioning, limiting your life, making healing a complex (but essential) journey.

Physiological Symptoms

Complex trauma can also manifest physically. You may experience hyperarousal, feeling constantly on edge with heightened startle responses. Physical symptoms often include panic attacks, light-headedness, brain fog, fatigue, nausea, recurrent headaches and migraines, persistent muscular tension, gastrointestinal distress on a consistent basis, and more. These stress-related reactions can significantly impact your daily functioning and overall health.

Healing

Complex PTSD needs a mind-body therapy approach rooted in trauma healing. While this should involve some coping techniques, a trauma approach generally requires getting to know and work through what you are carrying on a deeper level in order to reduce and be able to shed the power these traumas have asserted over your emotional, psychological, and physiological wellbeing.

Other Coping Strategies

Self-Care

Self-care plays an important role in managing complex trauma symptoms and enhancing overall wellbeing. This includes anything from diet, to regular physical activity, such as walking, running, yoga, or swimming, for example. Physical activity generally helps to reduce stress, release tension, and help with mood regulation. Self-care also includes finding things that nurture you in other emotional ways, as well -- for some this can be reading, writing, art and other creative outlets, seeing friends, and anything else that's helpful for you.

Trauma Therapy

Remember, self-care is an essential part of healing, but it doesn't replace the deeper healing work that needs to be done. Often people try to use coping techniques to replace the deeper healing, and what eventually tends to happen is the deeper traumas that go unaddressed start to grow and take over, and can make it so the coping tools are no longer as effective. It's important in therapy to figure out the coping techniques that work for you, so you also have them available to you alongside the deeper explorative work.

#complextrauma #Trauma #Anxiety #MentalHealth #Depression #Migraine

Do you find yourself pushing others away, even when you crave connection? Fear of intimacy is an intense aversion to emotional or physical closeness. It is often rooted in anxiety or childhood trauma, and it can hinder close relationships despite a desire for connection. People affected by fear of intimacy may push others away or sabotage partnerships, especially as the relationships show signs of become closer. This can happen early on, or even years into a relationship.

Understanding Fear of Intimacy

Fear of intimacy often stems from deeper anxieties of abandonment, vulnerability, loss of control, and rejection. These fears typically originate from childhood experiences or past trauma, creating significant difficulties in building and maintaining close relationships. You may struggle to open up emotionally or physically, even when you desire a connection.

Anxiety

Anxiety (or social anxiety) can impact your ability to form close relationships. For example, you may fear judgment and rejection, making opening up, or allowing people in to be emotionally or physically challenging. This heightened anxiety can lead to avoidance behaviors, further complicating intimacy.

Fear of Abandonment

The fear of abandonment often underlies intimacy issues. You may worry that getting close to someone will inevitably lead to being left behind or rejected. It can make it almost automatic to start pulling away anytime you feel the potential for connection and closeness happening. This anxiety can stem from childhood experiences or past relationships that have resulted in pain, causing you to keep others at arm’s distance as a protective mechanism.

Growing Up in a Family with Blurred Boundaries

Growing up in a family where boundaries are unclear can heavily impact your ability to form intimate relationships, as well. You may struggle to understand personal space, emotional limits, or appropriate levels of give and take. This confusion can often lead to difficulties in establishing healthy connections as you navigate the balance between closeness and independence in adult relationships.

Surviving Past Abuse

If you have survived past abuse, whether growing up or in another relationship, closeness and intimacy can be very difficult. It is not impossible to overcome, but it makes sense that it would be scary to get too close to anybody when it means you could be hurt, physically, psychologically, or emotionally. While self-protection is important, past abuse can make the balance difficult to navigate, often leaning towards keeping the other at a significant distance, even when you may crave the intimacy on another level.

Experiencing Emotional and Physical Neglect

Childhood neglect can also have a significant impact on your ability to form intimate relationships. When your emotional and physical needs aren’t met consistently, you may struggle to trust others or feel worthy of love. This fear of intimacy often stems from a deeply ingrained belief that closeness leads to pain or abandonment. Especially with a history of abuse and/or neglect, when love and care is offered in later relationships, it can actually become automatic to start pushing away and even destroying the love and care, as a reaction to the fear that comes with becoming close and vulnerable to another. Losing control is very scary in these moments and may feel like it's only going to lead to intolerable pain and hurt that you'll be left alone with.

Overcoming the Fear of Intimacy

It is more possible than people often realize to overcome fear of intimacy. Previous experiences of pain certainly have their lessons to hold onto, however, these lessons can also be combined with the room to allow for growth and trust in relationships so you can have the intimacy and closeness you desire, even while still protecting yourself.

A therapist can help you explore and work through the deeper causes of your fear, which may stem from past experiences and relationships, or things that happened during childhood -- whether trauma, or anything else that had enough of an impact to stay with you deeper down. A therapist can also help you start building trust, closeness, and intimacy, while also helping you break the patterns that have kept you at an emotional distance in your relationships.

#Relationships #intimacy #Trauma #Anxiety

Life experiences, especially during childhood -- though not only from childhood -- significantly shape your daily functioning moving forward into adulthood. Childhood is a critical period for developing essential coping skills you use as an adult. However, adverse experiences, or trauma during these formative years can disrupt your ability to build important skills and respond effectively to various life situations as adults.

There is a deep connection between childhood trauma and the social anxiety that can develop (and strengthen) into adulthood. Emotional mistreatment or abuse in childhood can have a way of distorting your overall sense of security and safety in the world, leading to issues such as substance abuse, anxiety, and depression.

Understanding Social Anxiety

Social anxiety is generally experienced as an intense feeling of stress and worry around social situations, including fears of being criticized, judged, shamed, rejected, bullied, or otherwise interpersonally mistreated. Socializing isn't fun, it's perceived as a threat. It can be incredibly crippling for many people, to the point of completely isolating away from social situations.

Unlike shyness, which usually fades as one becomes more comfortable in a social setting, social anxiety tends to persist and have a more widespread impact. The fear experienced in social settings is often not aligned with the actual threat. You may find yourself sweating, or your heartbeat increasing, or stomach discomfort, or other physiological symptoms. You're essentially in fight-flight-freeze mode as if you actually are facing a true threat. You may not actually be bullied, shamed, judged, or rejected, but when you've had enough experiences growing up in these types of environments, your body and emotions are ready to react to the potential attack that the past has shown you, regardless of what may be really happening in the current situation.

How Childhood Mistreatment Can Lead to Social Anxiety

Adverse childhood experiences and traumas can significantly increase the prevalence of mental health struggles later in life. As a child, you're still developing skills and coping mechanisms for life’s stressors. This makes you much more emotionally impressionable to what is taking place at the time.

Stable and supportive connections with parents and general caregivers helps create a sense of security and safety in the world. However, when trauma is inflicted by the same people who are supposed to be nurturing and protecting you, this makes it really hard for a child to develop a strong sense of emotional resilience in life. Your world becomes constantly preparing for attack. It essentially disrupts secure attachment and can lead to longer-term effects, including developing social anxiety and other mental health difficulties as an adult.

Emotional Abuse, Neglect and Social Anxiety

Emotional abuse and neglect tend to set the foundation for social anxiety. Abuse and neglect in childhood almost automatically spikes your sensitivity and awareness of potential shame and rejection, which is at the core of social anxiety. This can have a way of making you feel you have to be more careful, or less authentic, and constantly looking out for how the other is perceiving you in an interaction, and overall spending a lot of energy trying to avoid the landmine that will lead to the attack. (This is one reason while people with social anxiety often feel exhausted after social interactions).

Impact on Relationships

When the impact of childhood emotional mistreatment goes unaddressed, the wounds tend to grow over time and be reinforced by avoidance, which usually increases social and emotional difficulties as adults. Trauma and violation created by parents, in particular, can eat away at your overall sense of safety, support, and self-worth in the world. This can lead to a variety of issues with anxiety, and also depression.

As you grow up and into adulthood, the social insecurities coming from adverse childhood experiences may show up in a number of ways, including:

Anxiety

Panic attacks

Isolating yourself from others

Low self-esteem and self-worth

Coping mechanisms that are often unhealthy (such as substance or alcohol misuse, or sexual acting out)

Relational and interpersonal difficulties beyond social anxiety (such as dynamic issues and friction in close relationships)

And others not listed here

Social anxiety often leads to avoiding social situations as a whole, and only reinforces isolation and feelings of inadequacy. It's a defeating cycle. Avoidance tends to breed more avoidance. If you struggle as an adult with social anxiety, or with any form of anxiety, it is possible to overcome the challenges of painful childhood experiences and have more meaningful relationships in your life. Moving forward just takes one step.

#Anxiety #MentalHealth ##SocialAnxiety #Depression ##Trauma #neglect #Abuse

I”m only recently learning to understand my innate neurodivergent processing styles of being an extremely empathic highly sensory person (HSP) with ADHD. I have a disorganized insecure attachment style and struggle with C-PTSD. I grew up with so many unconscious strategies to dissociate and be emotionally disconnected.

It had been so challenging to understand how the early developmental trauma/emotional neglect/abuse from being raised by narcissistic emotionally unavailable parents impacted my ability to connect to my emotions. That I now know meant they were emotionally immature parents incapable of showing, modeling, and expressing emotions in healthy ways. This messed with being innate empathic. While I could rarely connect to my own emotions. I was like an emotional sponge to everyone and everything around me.

I noticed this group today. I have not been on the Mighty in a long time. I have grown so much since first posting on this app in 2018. Tracking emotions is still very difficult for me.

I only discovered this week that when multiple life challenges overlap and overwhelm me at the same time makes me extremely resentful. I only recently learned that resentments is stored anger. Think of built up anger of decades of being emotionally dismissed by those who are supposed to love you the most. I became so counter dependent. Growing up thinking I have only myself to count on. That I do not expect help from anyone. I don’t expect anyone to love me. So when faced with challenges I automatically feel completely abandoned, alone and unlovable.

So today I can say I am feeling angry, hurt, isolated, alone, abandoned, dismissed, resentful, sad, uncertain. I’m actually allowing myself to sit with this discomfort. Oddly with this clarity also has me feeling some acceptance of just being in my present experience. Surprisingly the clarity is bringing a sense of peace. Well I think it’s peace. It is new for me to recognize I can experience both pleasant and unpleasant emotions at the same time.

Anxiety is a common mental health condition that can stem from a variety of things. However, one of the reasons many people struggle so much with anxiety is due to the impact of underlying trauma — especially when that trauma goes unaddressed.

Traumatic events — no matter how long ago they occurred — can leave a mark on your mental well-being. Understanding the relationship between anxiety and underlying trauma can be the first step forward as you address the experiences you’ve been through.

It's important to note that while it's possible to cope with anxiety as you work through traumatic experiences, without actually addressing the trauma, the overall anxiety only tends to grow.

The Lasting Impact of Trauma

A traumatic experience might be a one-time thing, or it might be something more consistent and ongoing, like abuse or neglect, or relational experiences such as bullying or otherwise. Whatever the case may be, any kind of traumatic event can leave a lasting impact on your life, if not addressed.

Even if the trauma occurred when you were a child, you could still struggle with some of these effects as an adult without really realizing it -- at least at first. Some of these common lasting impacts include:

Feeling guilt or shame

Mood swings

Aches and pains in the body (headaches, back pain, digestive issues)

Chronic fatigue

Trust issues

Flashbacks

Social withdrawal

Panic attacks

Difficulty with intimacy

And others

It’s also not uncommon for people who have experienced trauma to deal with mental health issues like depression or anxiety. Anxiety, in particular, can make you feel like you’re in a constant state of fear or activation. Your mind and body may feel like they’re in “fight, flight, or freeze” mode, even when there is no present threat.

Coping With Triggers

One of the reasons anxiety can be so problematic when you’re dealing with underlying trauma is that you may likely experience underlying triggers. A trigger could be a person, place, thing, situation, tone, scent, or even a random memory or flashback that pops up.

These trauma triggers can make you feel like you’re right back in a dangerous situation. You may consciously be aware you're not in a dangerous situation, but your body is responding as if you are. They send signals to your brain that make you think you’re in danger, even when you’re not. Because anxiety often thrives on a fear of the unknown, it makes sense that these triggers would cause your thoughts or body experiences to become overstimulating and overwhelming.

Acknowledging Your Trauma

Recognizing your triggers can be a positive step forward. Even simply starting to pay attention to why certain things make you so anxious. For example, are you dealing with flashbacks or memories you don’t fully understand?

Some people try to avoid thinking about the trauma they’ve experienced. Others repress it so much that they consciously forget all about it. However, no matter how deeply it's pushed down (and often even more so because it's pushed so deep), one can still have symptoms years later.

Working with a therapist is often the best way to address underlying trauma. The process can help clear away the weeds while allowing you to process the experiences you've been through in a safe, healthy, and supportive environment.

Managing Anxiety

While addressing underlying trauma is a good way to better understand and reduce your anxiety, being able to cope with your symptoms can also make you feel more in control and make life more enjoyable while in the process.

Emotional regulation and mindfulness can be helpful as you address the deeper issues. As mentioned earlier, however, it's important to keep in mind that unaddressed and unprocessed trauma and anxiety has a way of building and growing. This can lead to the symptoms eventually pushing through the coping skills. Think of it as the coping skills are the bandaids and the deeper work cleans the wound. If you're not doing the work of cleaning the wound, eventually the bandaid won't do much.

If you’re concerned that you might be carrying underlying trauma, don’t hesitate to reach out for help. The anxiety that often stems from trauma doesn’t have to dictate your life. 

#Anxiety #Trauma #MentalHealth #PanicDisorder #PanicAttack