I don’t know how many of you know of a psychological experiment called The Still Face Experiment but it was used on babies by psychologist Dr Edward Tronick and its highlights the need a baby has to be contained and mirrored emotionally by a mother. In the experiment a normally responsive mother actually stops responding in any way to her babies cues of engagement and over the two minute period the baby at first tries in any way to get her mother’s attention, she smiles, she laughs, she claps her hands and waves them and when no response comes the baby then starts to scream, she loses body posture and starts to twist and turn and finally she starts to get extremely distressed and cry. At the end of the experiment obviously the mother responds and comforts the baby but what Tronick explains is that in the situation where no re-engagement or repair is made the baby ends up in what he calls ‘an ugly situation’ riven with painful feelings the child has nowhere to go with and not much capacity to endure.
In therapy today with Kat we were exploring the impact of being ignored, overlooked or just neglected. It is a situation that can be retriggered for me, when people get my order wrong at the restaurant, when my comments are ignored or I am talked over, I can start to feel really distressed (at least I used to) there were actually times in childhood I got forgotten, Mum just didn’t come to pick me up and I was left having to walk a very long way home because there was no other transport. The same feelings came up at the market yesterday when my sis walked right past me while looking over my shoulder into the distance for a moment I noticed how helpless I felt but then she saw me.
What is emerging in therapy for me lately is how prevalent this distressing left alone feeling has been for me and still is at certain times of day. It happens in families where the parents are too involved in themselves to really recognise or notice a child’s needs. Where does the child go in this situation? Worse then they may later in life be accused of attention seeking behaviour (say engaging in self harm as a way to prove they exist, feel and are real in the absence of loving attention and care) when the real truth is that attention and love at the time it was needed WAS JUST SIMPLY NOT PRESENT.
The need to cry out, the need to protest lack of attention, respect and care IS SO VERY VERY IMPORTANT for children, the need to know how to meet or get needs met is equally important and the need to know that we are necessary and have value is also important. Its one of the reasons the no self concept of religions such as Zen Buddhism to me seems a bit problematic for abuse, emotional neglect and trauma survivors. It is my personal opinion that we need to have and establish a solid sense of self before we seek to surrender or give it over to something.
Maybe if we are selfish narcissistic individuals we need to see our self and needs and wants are not the be all and end all and that those of others matter too, but if we struggle with a sense of self and self value we need to know there may be a reason hidden back in childhood and it may relate back to emotional disinterest or neglect.
In the movie A Star is Born the issue of not being seen by an emotionally unavailable father comes up when the lead character Jackson Maine goes into rehab treatment. Young Jackson becomes emotionally enmeshed with his father who he ends up becoming a drinking buddy for. In this way he could bond with a father who did not see him and in the end he could take on the negative evaluation of someone who also did not really see him or the reasons for his deep pain and struggles either and eventually he ended up taking his own life.
The still face experiment shows what may happen to those of us who never had or held the loving attentive gaze of an available parent. It may show the reasons for the silent despair and deep hole within the soul of emotional absence that we can carry well into adulthood and try to fill up with addictions. Rather what we are really hungering for is the presence and emotional connection of and with our deepest self. But if this was not given in childhood it leaves us with deficits that we take into later life and may end up being blamed for, far better for us to know what happened to us and why we feel this way. Then we can start to address the deficits without blaming ourselves for something that was never ever really our fault in the first place.
Emerging From The Dark Night 