Dear Zindagi : On Emotional Neglect and Abuse
Emotional Abuse is real and it's debilitating effects can go unnoticed for several decades. Emotional invalidation and manipulation by parents and primary care-givers are of the worst kind for they are often worded as if they are meant for your benefit and well-being.
You'll know one day and this knowing will be painful and require time - you'll know by the kind of partners you attract in romantic contexts, your own poor health choices, the weariness caused by a perpetual rebellion, when you are constantly exhausted by all the mental work you take on behalf of people who should care but don't, when during major events of illness or change you reguarly find yourself managing alone, if you are in a state of discomfort when your parents are around alternating between over-doing and exhaustion, you'll know you haven't been loved the way you should have.
Emotional abuse by parents can particularly be very confusing for children because of the inherent nature of the parent-child relationship which is globally accepted to be one that is nurturing and full of love.
The child or victim in emotionally abusive relationships remains stuck in cognitive dissonance for years as they are routinely subjected to acts of aggression, verbal abuse, emotional abandonment, neglect and sometimes even physical abuse. All of this has happened with me.
For several years, I was reluctant to talk about my childhood to therapists due to the feelings of betraying my parents. For many years up until recently, I would see the unfairness during CBT sessions but return to over-giving, people-pleasing outside of the session.
I am 39 years old, recently in a particularly dramatic episode my emotional boundaries were severely violated. Again. My feelings were invalidated repeatedly. Yet again. When I asked to be recognised as another child instead of a responsible parent for my sibling, my father screamed that I was being jealous of my sibling. My mother called me toxic when I asked to be treated fairly as well.
The guilt-tripping continued by them giving several fake examples of other children who supposedly didn't talk back to parents as such. Children who regularly stood for their own feelings and spoke on behalf of themselves. Through their entire tirade, I was able to see this same pattern repeat as long as I would allow it to. My mother mocked my faith in God and spiritual practices when I pointed out that there was never enough love to go around.Is believing in God supposed to turn a human into an unfeeling, unthinking piece of wood ?
I broke down in abject pity for myself for everything I had given up for my family for all these years. I had had enough and wanted out.
Perpetrators of emotional abuse will never accept responsibility for their part in hurting you. They will always choose to be victims and will even gaslight you to believe, that it is you who hurt them. They will hate and fight with each other constantly but will unite and cooperate to insult and bully you. If you give examples over examples of them hurting you, humiliating you, as children they will make you believe you deserved it. They will constantly try to change the version of events as they happened in your memory and narrative to absolve themselves of any wrong-doing.They will invalidate your feelings instead of helping you regulate your emotions and navigate through them.
You are equals when it is about them hurting you, you are never helpless children. But they are victims when you ask for your emotional needs to be met - suddenly they act all confused, unable to understand what you want inspite of you articulating yourself clearly repeatedly.
If parents are narcisstic and controlling, they almost consider it their right to not show children appreciation, never give credit where it is due turning their children into hamsters running on the wheel seeking their approval and validation. Having never apologised or taken real responsibility to reflect or change their behavior, they return to mundane conversations dumping their mundane shit on you citing that you never tell them anything about yourself, and hence they must tell you everything about their lives even if you want no part in it.
There will always be an excuse for their insensitivity such as old age when they are old or financial hardship when they were young. You are always supposed to be the more understanding one who listens and understands while these excuses very conveniently disappear for your sibling on several occasions. It's not they can't, they won't for you.
A hallmark of such relationships is that when you bring up unmet needs, they make you feel guilty and ashamed for asking for love. They will make you feel that you got only what you deserved or that you are too much.
They keep you stuck in their psychological control by asking you to not share details of violent and traumatic episodes with your friends in school or other relatives who truly care about you. They criticise all your friends and people whom you love and isolate you from the rest of the world. Then they demean you by saying that you don't have any friends and that you are difficult to live with. The only self-respecting option out of this situation is for the elder child to step up way beyond they should, often forgoing in the process their dreams, ambitions, wishes, desires, innocence and their sense of ease and trust in themselves and others.
When you make a decision for yourself based on the outcome they wanted and later tell them that you did it for their approval or validation, they dismiss your sacrifice and tell you that you should have done what you wanted to. But they made you choose between what they wanted and what you wanted. If you bring up that this choice was unfair, or that you never really had a choice except to not choose what you wanted, they guilt-trip you for asking for credit or validation for sacrificing yourself.
By randomly shifting the bar, by always criticising you, by over-appreciating a peer in front of you without fully knowing them, they keep you constantly worried to lose their attention, none of which they ever gave you anyway.
They never choose you and ensure that you do not choose yourself.
I turn 40 in a few months and am putting this out here for my own mental, psychological and emotional clarity as I decide to walk away from my emotionally manipulative and on occasion even physically abusive parents. I am never going to look back. Attention is not love, the hope of validation and approval is not love.
Once I clearly see the well organised system and the steps that keep repeating in this toxic game, it is easy to put aside the fact that they are my own parents. Parents are supposed to be loving, not manipulating in the name of love. To call this behaviour out even on an unseen corner of the internet means that I recognise what I have been through and that I need not endure this for the rest of my life.
My father would shout, there are worse parents out there - yes, this is very possible but they aren't mine to deal with. I can only speak for my experience. I do not seek applause or attention or any kind of judgement or sympathy for myself or for the tide to be turned against my family's favour. I do not write this out of rage, only a deep sadness for the years I have lost. Outside of this dynamic and role, I am just a regular human who will perhaps require decades of kindness, consideration and compassion to heal.
I am only grateful to all my coaches, mentors and healers who held the mirror all these years. I owe them my clarity to be able to recognise completely through this incident my parent's hypocrisy and extent of inconsideration for my emotional needs. I am proud of myself for not backing down under all the confusion and gaslighting. I am happy that I waited so long that I have evidences of several incidents in which this same dynamic played out over and over again. This way, they cannot confuse me any more.
This way I am certain that I gave them complete consideration for generational trauma they might have faced, listening to their stories of hardships and struggles they faced while growing up. 40 years is a long time for giving someone chances to make different choices, use kinder words, do the inner work. It is time to call a spade a spade.
I am aware that I will be called ungrateful, selfish and unkind for my decision. I will be guilt-tripped for washing dirty laundry in pubic. Many people who know my parents as guests, relatives and aquaintences might even find all this difficult to believe because of the fake charade of niceness that they put before guests. Infact they'll even confirm that my parents always speak very highly of me to them, but they do not know that none of this praise ever comes my way directly. Instead my flaws are constantly criticised and all my original ideas for myself are dismissed.
But I am not doing this for anyone else but myself. By putting everything plainly as it is out here is the first step towards reclaming my agency. One is the product of one's choices, and I am happy to say that I made mostly noble ones for others out of sincerity, generosity and not caring about praise from an audience. I showed them by example how stepping up for another can be done, instead of lauding my efforts I was made to feel guilty for bringing it up.
Perhaps I hoped my parents would one day choose me, validate my actions and appreciate me, naturally because I was the first born and was constantly giving even when I was not given. I wished they realised my value and as a reward not make me constantly give up whatever I wanted just because I was a girl.
But that is only a pipe dream and without it I already feel liberated. My parents are not the gatekeepers of the universe and its abundance.
Without that hope of getting anything from them, I am excited to discover what my future holds.
That sudden spurt in which Bamboo grows after being a fledgling for 20 years has come to pass, der aaye par durst.
You'll know one day and this knowing will be painful and require time - you'll know by the kind of partners you attract in romantic contexts, your own poor health choices, the weariness caused by a perpetual rebellion, when you are constantly exhausted by all the mental work you take on behalf of people who should care but don't, when during major events of illness or change you reguarly find yourself managing alone, if you are in a state of discomfort when your parents are around alternating between over-doing and exhaustion, you'll know you haven't been loved the way you should have.
Emotional abuse by parents can particularly be very confusing for children because of the inherent nature of the parent-child relationship which is globally accepted to be one that is nurturing and full of love.
The child or victim in emotionally abusive relationships remains stuck in cognitive dissonance for years as they are routinely subjected to acts of aggression, verbal abuse, emotional abandonment, neglect and sometimes even physical abuse. All of this has happened with me.
For several years, I was reluctant to talk about my childhood to therapists due to the feelings of betraying my parents. For many years up until recently, I would see the unfairness during CBT sessions but return to over-giving, people-pleasing outside of the session.
I am 39 years old, recently in a particularly dramatic episode my emotional boundaries were severely violated. Again. My feelings were invalidated repeatedly. Yet again. When I asked to be recognised as another child instead of a responsible parent for my sibling, my father screamed that I was being jealous of my sibling. My mother called me toxic when I asked to be treated fairly as well.
The guilt-tripping continued by them giving several fake examples of other children who supposedly didn't talk back to parents as such. Children who regularly stood for their own feelings and spoke on behalf of themselves. Through their entire tirade, I was able to see this same pattern repeat as long as I would allow it to. My mother mocked my faith in God and spiritual practices when I pointed out that there was never enough love to go around.Is believing in God supposed to turn a human into an unfeeling, unthinking piece of wood ?
I broke down in abject pity for myself for everything I had given up for my family for all these years. I had had enough and wanted out.
Perpetrators of emotional abuse will never accept responsibility for their part in hurting you. They will always choose to be victims and will even gaslight you to believe, that it is you who hurt them. They will hate and fight with each other constantly but will unite and cooperate to insult and bully you. If you give examples over examples of them hurting you, humiliating you, as children they will make you believe you deserved it. They will constantly try to change the version of events as they happened in your memory and narrative to absolve themselves of any wrong-doing.They will invalidate your feelings instead of helping you regulate your emotions and navigate through them.
You are equals when it is about them hurting you, you are never helpless children. But they are victims when you ask for your emotional needs to be met - suddenly they act all confused, unable to understand what you want inspite of you articulating yourself clearly repeatedly.
If parents are narcisstic and controlling, they almost consider it their right to not show children appreciation, never give credit where it is due turning their children into hamsters running on the wheel seeking their approval and validation. Having never apologised or taken real responsibility to reflect or change their behavior, they return to mundane conversations dumping their mundane shit on you citing that you never tell them anything about yourself, and hence they must tell you everything about their lives even if you want no part in it.
There will always be an excuse for their insensitivity such as old age when they are old or financial hardship when they were young. You are always supposed to be the more understanding one who listens and understands while these excuses very conveniently disappear for your sibling on several occasions. It's not they can't, they won't for you.
A hallmark of such relationships is that when you bring up unmet needs, they make you feel guilty and ashamed for asking for love. They will make you feel that you got only what you deserved or that you are too much.
They keep you stuck in their psychological control by asking you to not share details of violent and traumatic episodes with your friends in school or other relatives who truly care about you. They criticise all your friends and people whom you love and isolate you from the rest of the world. Then they demean you by saying that you don't have any friends and that you are difficult to live with. The only self-respecting option out of this situation is for the elder child to step up way beyond they should, often forgoing in the process their dreams, ambitions, wishes, desires, innocence and their sense of ease and trust in themselves and others.
When you make a decision for yourself based on the outcome they wanted and later tell them that you did it for their approval or validation, they dismiss your sacrifice and tell you that you should have done what you wanted to. But they made you choose between what they wanted and what you wanted. If you bring up that this choice was unfair, or that you never really had a choice except to not choose what you wanted, they guilt-trip you for asking for credit or validation for sacrificing yourself.
By randomly shifting the bar, by always criticising you, by over-appreciating a peer in front of you without fully knowing them, they keep you constantly worried to lose their attention, none of which they ever gave you anyway.
They never choose you and ensure that you do not choose yourself.
I turn 40 in a few months and am putting this out here for my own mental, psychological and emotional clarity as I decide to walk away from my emotionally manipulative and on occasion even physically abusive parents. I am never going to look back. Attention is not love, the hope of validation and approval is not love.
Once I clearly see the well organised system and the steps that keep repeating in this toxic game, it is easy to put aside the fact that they are my own parents. Parents are supposed to be loving, not manipulating in the name of love. To call this behaviour out even on an unseen corner of the internet means that I recognise what I have been through and that I need not endure this for the rest of my life.
My father would shout, there are worse parents out there - yes, this is very possible but they aren't mine to deal with. I can only speak for my experience. I do not seek applause or attention or any kind of judgement or sympathy for myself or for the tide to be turned against my family's favour. I do not write this out of rage, only a deep sadness for the years I have lost. Outside of this dynamic and role, I am just a regular human who will perhaps require decades of kindness, consideration and compassion to heal.
I am only grateful to all my coaches, mentors and healers who held the mirror all these years. I owe them my clarity to be able to recognise completely through this incident my parent's hypocrisy and extent of inconsideration for my emotional needs. I am proud of myself for not backing down under all the confusion and gaslighting. I am happy that I waited so long that I have evidences of several incidents in which this same dynamic played out over and over again. This way, they cannot confuse me any more.
This way I am certain that I gave them complete consideration for generational trauma they might have faced, listening to their stories of hardships and struggles they faced while growing up. 40 years is a long time for giving someone chances to make different choices, use kinder words, do the inner work. It is time to call a spade a spade.
I am aware that I will be called ungrateful, selfish and unkind for my decision. I will be guilt-tripped for washing dirty laundry in pubic. Many people who know my parents as guests, relatives and aquaintences might even find all this difficult to believe because of the fake charade of niceness that they put before guests. Infact they'll even confirm that my parents always speak very highly of me to them, but they do not know that none of this praise ever comes my way directly. Instead my flaws are constantly criticised and all my original ideas for myself are dismissed.
But I am not doing this for anyone else but myself. By putting everything plainly as it is out here is the first step towards reclaming my agency. One is the product of one's choices, and I am happy to say that I made mostly noble ones for others out of sincerity, generosity and not caring about praise from an audience. I showed them by example how stepping up for another can be done, instead of lauding my efforts I was made to feel guilty for bringing it up.
Perhaps I hoped my parents would one day choose me, validate my actions and appreciate me, naturally because I was the first born and was constantly giving even when I was not given. I wished they realised my value and as a reward not make me constantly give up whatever I wanted just because I was a girl.
But that is only a pipe dream and without it I already feel liberated. My parents are not the gatekeepers of the universe and its abundance.
Without that hope of getting anything from them, I am excited to discover what my future holds.
That sudden spurt in which Bamboo grows after being a fledgling for 20 years has come to pass, der aaye par durst.
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