Emotional Neglect. It may possibly be the root of all human suffering and global chaos.
If you missed part one on this topic, you may want to refer back for context.
Emotional Neglect is making the choice to do nothing about your own emotional state and choosing to ignore the emotions of the people you consider yourself to be in relationship with - adults and children.
My brain has decided to divide Emotional Neglect into categories in hopes that this may be more helpful in understanding how neglecting emotions rears its ugly head and infiltrates our day to day living.
Emotional Neglect towards Self:
1. suppressing feelings that cause you to feel discomfort.
2. choosing not to talk about what you feel out of fear of how it will be received or misperceived.
3. dismissing any emotion that feels too heavy to express, particularly if you feel shame about what you’re feeling.
4. telling yourself that you don't want to deal with feeling...sad, disappointed, hurt, angry, anxiety, fear.
5. pretending you are not hurt when really, you are deeply hurt by a situation or by a person.
6. resisting an emotion like anger because you think it is not okay to express anger because someone in your life influenced you to either fear anger or feel disgust towards anger.
7. refusing to listen to your own needs.
8. not giving yourself what you need in the moment when your body, mind, spirit, and emotions are clearly communicating what that need is.
9. holding back tears when every cell in your body is begging you to release them.
10. doing nothing about feeling depression and anxiety and instead choosing to be a victim of these states of being.
11. choosing not speak your truth with others because of fear that you will be judged, rejected or abandoned.
12. making choices that do not align with what your true self is wanting and needing.
13. not being compassionate with yourself.
Emotional Neglect towards Self is rejecting Yourself.
Emotional Neglect towards others:
1. telling others around you how to feel or what not to feel.
2. shaming someone for feeling a certain way.
3. refusing to talk to a person you know is feeling hurt, sad, or angry because those emotions cause you to feel discomfort or scare you.
4. pretending like feelings don't exist or instilling the belief that feelings are inadequate.
5. laughing at a person when they are crying or throwing a temper tantrum.
6. brushing things under the rug particularly when people’s feelings are involved.
7. placing value on what others think and not caring about what others feel.
8. choosing to ignore a person's needs because doing so would inconvenience your needs or desires.
9. not believing someone when they tell you about an experience that felt painful or confusing.
10. being dishonest and choosing to hide the truth out of fear of how you may be judged or seen.
11. not comforting a person when it is clear they are seeking comfort either with words or affection.
12. not validating a person's feelings when it is obvious (through actions and words) they need to feel seen, heard and felt by you.
13. not being compassionate with others.
Emotional Neglect towards others is a form of abandoning another person.
From my years of experience working as a counselor and hearing people's stories, I have learned that most of us feel a deep seated pain from feeling either rejected or abandoned at some point in our lives.
Rather than dwell on how we have been rejected or abandoned by others, the path to healing requires that we stop rejecting and abandoning ourselves.
We all have the power and awareness to know what we need, when we need it, and how to get it.
Love is intrinsic and comes from your very own heart. The way in which we grow our capacity to love is by first exploring what it means to love Self by learning to meet our own needs. We connect with our mind, body, spirit, and emotions, listen to what they need from us and we nourish them the way a mother or father would feed his or her own child.