Emotional neglect leaves us so vulnerable

Our greatest need as human beings is to be connected to.. We literally cannot survive in this world well, let alone thrive if we do not learn what it means to really love and care for ourselves by having that love and care (as well as respect, attunement and mirroring of our True Self and needs) demonstrated to us by others. When we are left alone, and unseen, dismissed, ignored, devalued, we just do not get the right stuff to develop well, so we become fractured and we develop deficits as well as survival coping mechanisms that may only make things harder.

One of the worst aspects of neglect that Dr Jonice Webb talks about in her excellent book on the subject Running On Empty is that not knowing the source of our wound or pain leaves us subject to self judgements and self negation, even often prey to strong suicidal feelings. We may compare ourselves unfairly to others who may have got more than we did (or who were less sensitive) and then, lacking that awareness or being in denial about it we will be extra hard on ourselves. If we give up loving our true self and acknowledging this we may turn to things that are self indulgent but soul emptying. We may also look to have that empty well inside of us filled up from the outside and in all kinds of surruptitious or toxic ways. Lacking a sense of who we are and of our true power we may give it away as adults or continue to look elsewhere, in all the wrong place.

For myself lately I have been experiencing huge amounts of anger and grief lately at seeing where my own emotional neglect left me.. It made me over give in ways that were not healthy for me, my need to be connected to projected out meant I tried so hard to help others but not often from a full place inside and coupled with high sensitivity and vulnerability to other’s pain that was a difficult legacy. Its been a nasty shock lately to see where it led me but I am thankful to transiting Saturn now applying back to my own Mars Saturn Moon for showing me this over the past few years by pulling me into difficult but growth inducing situations.

The failure to develop good and healthy ego boundaries also leaves us both vulnerable and porous.. it kills off our instinctual knowing too and may make us more vulnerable to predators. Seeing where my own neglect has taken me is happening in stark clarity after both Saturn and Uranus have turned retrograde over the past months, Uranus opposing my Natal Neptune in Scorpio in the third house of siblings the house ruled by my mother’s Sun sign and Mercury Saturn placement also shows the legacy of that loneliness wound I absorbed from her and played out.. and that sadness over her own lack of siblings led to we children of hers, as siblings not often being as close as we could be, sadly.

There is nothing about things I have done in the past now that can be fixed or changed, I can only learn to be wiser in the present.. I have given away things I needed and failed to fight for what was of value and important to me and I ended up losing part of myself but the one good thing about suffering and pain is that it will, in calling attention to our deepest wound, make it most essential that we find ways to deal with that pain is a positive way. Our suffering can serve a purpose if we do let others use it to control us.

At the same time I know to shame myself over survival coping strategies would be the wrong thing to do, after all as one of my old friends I met in AA used to often say to me “If we knew better, we would do better!” And that perfectionistic idea that we failed on some level does not take into account the true legacy of what we dealt with our came out of in terms of emotional neglect and it vast multigenerational and collective components.

For me these days I can learn new ways.. I can learn it is good to take care of myself.. I can nurture and value my inner child and give her good things. I can listen to her feelings, wants and needs. I can listen into that gut instinct when it comes and MOST OF ALL I CAN TRUST THAT WHEN ANGER RISES UP ITS FOR A SPIRITUAL PURPOSE.. in astrology parlance Mars (planet of assertion, desire and anger) fights FOR the Sun which is our sense of solar essence, when it cannot due to past legacies of going under (in my case shown by challenging aspects to both Neptune – planet of self undoing and Pluto – planet of hidden subconscious legacies that thwart us until faced and brought up into the conscious mind from the deep (often ancestral unconscious) then we are weakened or attracted to those who may try to pull on our buried shadow strength.

Anger often felt dangerous to me in the past which is sad.. I never got to know how to trust in it nor channel it in a good way. I remember a year or two after Jonathan left me when I failed to make the choice for our own best interests at that point that I had a dream where there was a loaded gun pointed at my face, in the dream I took hold of the hand of the person holding the gun and turned it around the other way, to face outwards.. That for me was a profound message from within of what I needed to do.. To me acting in the world on my desires felt dangerous and risky and there a very complex reasons for this, most of all the suffering I saw in my family that kept me bonded in an unhealthy way as the youngest.. Today when I cried in therapy about missing my dead sister’s third’s son’ son’s birthday a few days ago Kat suggested I needed, at the moment to turn the care towards my own inner child. She said there will be a time I no longer forget birthdays and can be there but for now that is not my work.

The truth is that for so long I blamed and shamed myself for what was outside of my control at the same time as I tried to keep showing love in our dysfunctional family but the truth is all of us siblings have different forms of emotional neglect. For me slowly I am coming to understand where it took me and how to turn it around.. it is still early days but I am getting there.. for now, just for a while, my own needs really do need to take priority.

I am closing this post with a lovely inner child meditation that in speaking words of love helps us to give that back to the part of us that is always seeking to grow, be real, true, free, and express in this world. As Beth Aisbett writes in her book on anxiety.30 Days 30 Ways to Overcome Anxiety . it is when we abandon and shame our inner child that our inner anxiety grows. Showing it love will soothe that anxiety.. Remind him or her that she is safe!