My parents loved me very much. They also ignored me. It took me decades to learn that they are both true and not mutually exclusive. When I use the word “neglect”. therapyclients often bristle. – No, my parents loved us!
They describe the extreme situations we see in the news, where a child is starving, abandoned in a house of rats, or living in some miserable condition. Obviously, everyone recognizes these situations as negligence. But neglect is a constant and many do not realize it. I see another type of neglect that permeates the experience of many people.
What is “neglect of love”?
I call it loving neglect, which at first sounds like an oxymoron. How can someone love you and ignore you at the same time?
People often hear the word neglect and immediately think that I am blaming or accusing their parents of being abusive or neglectful. i am not Abuse is often about something that is actively done to a child. Neglect is often about what was missing. A child can grow up in a home full of food, sacrifice, and good intentions, but still lack emotional stability, guidance, or protection. This lack has its impact.
For many families, especially immigrant and minority families, this was their reality. The root of indifference was not cruelty and indifference. It often consisted of sacrifice, survival, and simply not knowing any other way, while unconsciously passing on patterns that had existed for generations.
Looking back, I see that my parents’ neglect was born out of love and selflessness. They worked hard to provide for our family. My father worked long hours as a Chinese cook and my mother as a waitress. Their sacrifice has given us opportunities they never had.
But their jobs also meant that we were often home alone. We learned to fight on our own. We played outside with the neighborhood kids without adult supervision. Looking back, I can appreciate their sacrifice and also recognize that it was also a form of neglect.
There was also emotional neglect. Again, this was not intentional. As traditional Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong, my parents came from a culture where emotion was often considered secondary to duty and action. Love wasn’t something you talked about. It was something you showed by working hard, putting food and making sacrifices for your children.
The message was simple: You don’t have to say “I love you”. You show.
sad fearand even anger often have to be solved yourself. It is a form of stoicism that has been passed down through generations. It has helped many families to survive in difficult circumstances.
But survival is not the same as growth.
Many adults who have grown up with loving neglect are left with feelings of abandonment, feelings of inadequacy, perfectionismdifficulty expressing feelings or the belief that their needs are a burden to others. Effects may include avoiding conflict, suppressing emotions, people pleasing, putting on a good face, and being withdrawn. openness or vulnerability due to the fear that no one will truly love or accept them as such.
Healing from love neglect
One of the hardest parts of healing from love neglect is grieving something you’ve never experienced. However, with the courage to look inward through therapy, books, introspection, or conversations with trusted friends, many people find that neglect also means having caregivers who understand difficult feelings, ask about your inner world, or teach you that your feelings are important.
It may seem like a subtle loss, but its impact lingers on our relationships, our emotional reactivity, our drive to succeed and achieve forever, and the compulsive coping patterns we develop to protect ourselves.
This is why it is so difficult. Acknowledging neglect is not the same as accusing our parents of being bad people, but that distinction is often lost. It doesn’t erase their sacrifices and it doesn’t take away their love. In fact, both things can be true at the same time.
Important relationships to read
Our parents may have done the best they could with what they could, and their limitations still shaped us. nervous system. Healing often begins when we stop forcing ourselves to choose one story or another. We should not blame our parents. But we should not deny its influence either.
Healing does not require us to rewrite our parents as villains. It only asks us to tell the truth about what happened to us.
