Coping With the Death of an Abusive Parent

One of the most complicated experiences of grief is coping with the death of a parent who abused you.

This is especially true if there were times when this parent was kind and caring and, at other times, abusive or just abusive most of the time, which can create confusion for the child being abused. And that confusion often continues into adulthood.

Coping With the Death of an Abusive Parent

In a prior article, Unresolved Trauma: Coping With a Passive Parent Who Didn't Protect You From Abuse, I wrote about an example of this issue in the vignette in that article.

Under these circumstances, it's common to feel a mixture of feelings including relief, sadness, grief, guilt and shame.

Since the parent who abused you is dead and if they didn't express remorse, this means that they can no longer express their remorse and ask for forgiveness. For many adult children, this is its own form of loss.

How to Process Your Emotions While Coping With the Death of An Abusive Parent

• Acknowledge All Your Feelings: It's important to acknowledge all of the mixed feelings you might have towards your dead parent--all the messy feelings like relief, grief, sadness, anger, resentment, guilt and shame.

Coping With the Death of an Abusive Parent

• Be Aware of Your Personal Survival Strategy: Whether your brain and body are numbing or your mind is overanalyzing, recognize that these are your coping strategies for the moment. Grounding techniques and breathing exercises can help you to stay relatively calm. Exercise, even walking, can help you to release some of this "stuck" energy.

• Grieve For the Lost Potential: You might find yourself grieving for the parent you wish you had and deserved to have in addition to any grief you might feel for your actual parent.

Why is Grieving Under These Circumstances So Complicated?

• Biological Paradox: Your brain's attachment system, which seeks connection, and your threat system, which detects danger, are both activated simultaneously. This can lead to internal chaos for you.

• If There Was No Reconciliation: Death removes any chance for the parent to understand, acknowledge and make amends for the abuse. You are left with many unresolved and complicated feelings that you need to work out on your own or, preferably, with the help of a licensed mental health professional who has an expertie in this area.

• Fragmented Memories: It's not unusual for a parent to be warm and loving at one point and threatening and abusive at other times. This can make it very difficult to understand who this parent was to you and how you feel about them. If the abuse occurred when you were young, you might even experience this parent almost as if they are two different people in your life.

• Lack of Validation: Other people might praise your deceased parent at a funeral or memorial service which can feel isolating because it doesn't match your reality. Even close relatives who might know your parent's abusive nature might tell you, "Don't speak ill of the dead" which can also make you feel alone and lonely in your experience.

What Can You Do to Heal?

• Validate All Your Feelings: Accept that it is normal and common to feel many contradictory feelings at the same time. 

• Prioritize Your Peace of Mind: You are not obligated to place your deceased parent who abused you on a pedestal, nor are you obligated to attend their funeral if it will compromise your peace of mind. Others might not understand or agree, but you have to do what is right for you.

• Externalize Your Emotional Pain: Writing a no-holds-barred letter, which you do not send, or writing in your journal can help you to express all your contradictory feelings and begin to process any unfinished business between you and your deceased parent.

• Get Help in Trauma Therapy: Grief counselors often don't have specialized training in how to deal with complex grief like this. Working with a trauma therapist, a licensed mental health professional who is trained in complex trauma, can help you to work through your mixed feelings and overcome the unresolved trauma. There are various modalities of trauma therapy including:

• EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)

• AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy)

• Somatic Experiencing 

• Parts Work Therapy (IFS and Ego States Therapy)

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT (for couples), Parts Work (IFS and Ego States Therapy), Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist.

As a Trauma Therapist, I have helped many individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Also See My Articles:

Grieving For a Parent Who Wasn't There For You

Coping With the Loss of a Loved One: Common Reactions 

Coping With Complicated Grief 

Mourning the Loss of a Father You Have Never Known 

Letting Go of Resentment

Unresolved Trauma: Coping With Resentment For a Passive Parent Who Didn't Protect You From Abuse

Coping with resentment towards a passive parent for their role in childhood abuse or neglect is usually a difficult process (see my article: Letting Go of Resentment).

Coping With Resentment For a Passive Parent

When you were younger, you might have seen this parent as the "safer parent" or the "nice parent" as compared to the parent who was mistreating you.  However, as an adult, you might come to the realization that the parent you thought was safer or nicer didn't protect you from the parent who mistreated you.

Coping With Resentment For the Parent Who Didn't Protect You

Resentment is often a signal that your boundaries were violated and your need for safety was ignored.

Shifting from a child's view to an adult view often includes:

• Allowing the Pedestal to Fall: Shifting from idealizing the passive parent to a realistic understanding of their complex role is a first step in recognizing and coping with your anger and resentment. While it's understandable that, as a child, you might have seen the passive parent as the "good one" compared to the abusive parent, now that you're an adult, you can develop a more mature understanding of why they prioritized the abusive parent's comfort over your well-being. There can be many complex reasons for their passivity, but being aware of this parent's role in your mistreatment is essential to your healing.

• Understanding Responsibility vs Blame: There is a difference between blaming versus responsibility. The passive parent had a responsibility for your safety and well-being when you were a child. This is often a trap that many traumatized individuals get stuck in because they want to be empathetic towards the passive parent and yet they feel resentment towards them.

• Considering the Passive Parent's Humanity: At some point, as an adult, when you have worked through some of your resentment, as part of your healing, you can consider that your passive parent wasn't infallible. Acknowledging your passive parent's flaws, including their own fear, conditioning and their possible unresolved trauma, can help you to see them as a flawed peer.

What Steps Can You Take As An Adult to Deal With Your Resentment?

• Validate Your Reality: Your feelings of resentment and betrayal are real and valid. In many instances, the passive parent tends to minimize your experience in order to keep the peace with the mistreating parent. This might involve the passive parent telling you as an adult, "This happened a long time ago. Why don't you let it go?" or "You turned out alright so why are you still resentful about this?" Rather than allowing the passive parent to minimize your experience, you don't have to participate in the gaslighting as you reclaim your power (see my article: Self Validation).

• Set Firm Boundaries: Boundaries are for your own well-being. They are not meant to hurt your parents. Start by affirming your right to be treated with respect and prioritize your healing and personal growth (see my article: How to Set Boundaries Without Guilt).

• Learn to Stop Self Abandoning: In situations like these, many adult children learn to abandon their own needs to placate the passive parent, so it's important not to self abandon (see my article: What is Self Abandonment?).

• Expect the Possibility of Resistance: If you have changed your role with the passive parent, you might encounter resistance in terms of being described as someone who has been "brainwashed" or, from their point of view, they might say you are unnecessarily resentful. Try to remain calm and firm in your stance.

• Consider Their Limitations: You cannot force the passive parent to change or leave their situation. Each of you must make your own decisions. You also need to prioritize your well-being.

• Get Help in Trauma Therapy: Untangling these complex situations can be difficult to do on your own. You could benefit from working with a trauma therapist who can help you to heal and grow (see my article: How Trauma Therapy Can Help You to Overcome Unresolved Trauma).

Clinical Vignette

The following clinical vignette illustrates the complexities involved in terms of coping with resentment towards a passive parent and how trauma therapy can help with unresolved trauma:

Ann

As an adult, Ann revealed to her mother that had her father touched her inappropriately multiple times when Ann was 10 years old. In response, her mother remained silent for a long time. Then she said, "You're 25 years old. These things happened a long time ago. Why can't you just let it go?" 

Coping With Resentment For a Passive Parent

Ann was stunned. When she could find her voice, she told her mother that the of sexual abuse by her father was traumatic and, as an adult, it impacted her sexual relationship with her boyfriend as well as her prior relationships with other men.

Ann's mother looked uncomfortable, "You know your father was drinking at the time. He probably didn't even know what he was doing. Now that he's dead, let him rest in peace."

Suddenly it dawned on Ann that her mother might have known about the sexual abuse when Ann was a child and her mother didn't stop it, "Did you know what he was doing to me?"

Her mother left the room quickly and Ann realized that her mother did know and she didn't protect her.  Ann felt enraged and followed her mother into the living room, "You knew, didn't you?"

Her mother looked upset, "You don't understand what it was like. When your father got drunk, he would threaten me. I was terrified that if I confronted him, he would hit me. And I wasn't working so I had no money. What was I supposed to do? Where was I supposed to go?"

"So you didn't do anything!" Ann shouted at her, "You just let him do it!"

"You were so young. I thought you wouldn't remember what happened when you got older" her mother responded.

Ann was speechless and she froze in the moment. But when she reconnected with her body, she left her mother's home and drove back to her apartment (see my article: Understanding the Freeze Response Related to Trauma).

On the way home, Ann was in tears. She recalled, as a child, hearing her parents arguing when he was drunk. At the time, she thought of her mother as an angel and her father as a devil.

Now she realized that, as a child, she had idealized her mother. But, as an adult, she now realized that her mother didn't protect her or try to get help to make the abuse stop--even though she knew about the abuse.

After several months of trauma therapy, Ann became aware that of just how angry she was that  her mother didn't take responsibility to protect her from her father.

She told her therapist that, when she was 15, a few months prior to her father's death, she confronted her father about the abuse. Her father told her he couldn't remember what he did when he got drunk and said, "Let's just put this behind us."

Her therapist used a combination of EMDR Therapy and Parts Work Therapy (IFS) to help Ann work through the unresolved trauma including Ann's feelings of resentment and betrayal towards each of her parents.

She and her boyfriend, Mike, also attended sex therapy to work on their relationship. Initially, when they first met, their sex life was good, but as their relationship became more emotionally intimate and Ann felt more emotionally vulnerable, Ann would freeze whenever Mike touched her.

During her treatment, Ann's trauma therapist and her sex therapist collaborated for the benefit of Ann and Mike's therapy.

Eventually, Ann's mother began her own individual therapy to deal with her role as the passive parent.

After a year in her own therapy, Ann's mother told her that she was ashamed that she didn't try to protect Ann and she apologized. She realized she needed to take responsibility for not doing her part to stop the abuse. She had profound regret and shame and she wanted to work towards reconciling her relationship with Ann (see my article: Understanding the Barriers to Reconciliation in Families).

Her mother also revealed to Ann that she had also been sexually abused as a child by her father and, in hindsight, she realized that her own experience complicated her feelings about her husband abusing Ann. She said she didn't want to make excuses. She just wanted Ann to understand.

Ann had a lot of mixed feelings towards her mother, but she wanted to forgive her. She also had mixed feelings about father because there were times when he was sober when Ann was a child that he was mostly a kind and loving father. 

She continued to work in trauma therapy to reconcile her feelings towards each of her parents. Since her father died, Ann had no way to reconcile with him directly, but she realized that adult children continue to have an internal relationship with their parents even after they are gone.

In the meantime, Ann and Mike continued to work on their relationship in sex therapy so that Ann could separate her traumatic experiences with her father from her sexual experiences with Mike.

Conclusion

The first step in these situations is to look at your childhood history with adult eyes.

Get Help in Trauma Therapy

Each person has to decide whether they are willing to reconcile with their parents or not. 

Some people decide that what happened when they were a child was unforgivable and others try to reconcile with one or both parents. 

Others decide to maintain a superficial relationship as opposed to being completely estranged (see my article: Family Estrangements: Understanding the Barriers to Reconcilation).

There is no right or wrong decision. There is only the decision that is right for you as an individual.

Trauma therapy can help you to free yourself from your traumatic history so you can live a meaningful life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT (for couples), Parts Work (IFS and Ego States Therapy), Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist.

As a trauma therapist, I have helped many individual adults and couples over the years.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

 

How IFS Parts Work Therapy Can Help You to Recognize When a Younger Traumatized Part of Yourself Has Taken Over

I've written prior articles about IFS (Internal Family Systems) Parts Work as a trauma therapy (see a links for these articles at this end of this article).

This article provides a basic understanding of what happens when a younger part of you, also known as an exile in IFS, takes over when you get triggered.

Recognizing When a Younger Part of Yourself Has Taken Over

There is a lot more to IFS than exiles, including protector parts ("Manager" Parts and "Firefighter Parts") which you can read about in a book I recommend at the end of the article.

The focus for this article is how to recognize when you're immersed in a traumatized younger part of yourself which has taken over your current emotional experience and how to understand that this part is usually rooted in earlier traumatic experiences (see my article: Working Through Emotional Trauma: Separating "Then" From "Now").

What Are Younger Parts of Yourself?

In Parts Work Therapy, like IFS, there is a recognition that we all have many different parts that make up our inner world, including younger parts. 

You can think of parts as being metaphors for your intrapsychic experiences. Thinking of them as parts, as opposed to intrapsychic experiences, helps to simplify the concept of internal parts.

Recognizing When a Younger Part of Yourself Has Taken Over

Another way of thinking about a younger part is using the term "inner child" which has been popularized and made accessible in the work of John Bradshaw who wrote Homecoming: Reclaiming and Healing Your Inner Child.

Parts Work Therapy, including Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy and Ego States Therapy, also recognizes that traumatized individuals carry younger, vulnerable parts of their psyche and these parts carry heavy unprocessed traumatic emotional burdens including shame, fear and feelings of being unworthy.

In IFS these parts are called "exiles".

What Are the Characteristics and Examples of Exiles?

Some of the common characteristics include:

• Vulnerability: They represent younger, childlike selves needing care.

• Frozen in Time: These parts relive past traumatic experiences in the present including experiences of childhood emotional neglect and abuse. Not only are these parts frozen in time, they also have the same childhood capabilities you had at the time of the trauma. This is why when these younger parts/exiles erupt, you can't think logically and handle the current situation like an adult. In other words, you don't have access to the logical part of your brain at that moment.

Trauma Response: Frozen in Time

• Burdened Beliefs: These parts carry the burden of the original trauma and they often hold beliefs like "I'm unlovable" or "I'm broken".

• Examples of Exiles: The rejected child, the abused child, the neglected child, the frightened toddler, the unloved teenager or the humiliated younger self are some of the many examples of exiled younger parts.

How Do Exiles Function?

The feelings associated with exiles are usually too painful to feel on a conscious level so they remain unconscious until they are triggered.

This doesn't mean that exiles are "bad" or that any part of your inner world is bad. Rather than thinking of them as something to get rid of, which you can't do anyway, think about these parts as stuck or frozen in time and, through IFS Parts Work Therapy, they can be "updated" to be a healthier part of you.

When these feelings get triggered, they can suddenly erupt without warning (see my article: Parts Work Therapy: Is an Unconscious Part of Yourself Running Your Life?).

How Do You Know When a Younger Part (Exile) Has Taken Over?

The following are signs that an exile might have been triggered and taken over:

• Intense Emotional Flooding: A sudden and rapid onset of fear, sadness, hopelessness, helplessness or terror

• Reactions That Are Disproportionate to the Situation: A relatively minor event can trigger an extreme response which can relate to feelings of rejection or abandonment (see my article: Responding Instead of Reacting).

Triggered and Overreacting 

• Feeling "Young": You might feel small, young--like you're a child again--even though you're an adult.

• Somatic Sensations: Sensations might include a heaviness or tightness in your chest, intense cold, feeling unsafe and so on.

• Negative Core Beliefs: Sudden feelings of "I'm unlovable" or "I'm broken" or "I'm unsafe"

• A Sudden Need to Escape: You might feel a sudden need to escape in the moment and, afterwards, you might engage in compulsive behaviors to numb yourself again including:

• Compulsive cleaning or organizing
• Compulsive working 
• Compulsive shopping and/or overspending
• Drinking excessively
• Using drugs to numb out
• Out of Control Sexual Behavior
  
• Compulsive gambling including grief gambling
• Scrolling on your phone aimlessly for lengthy periods of time
• Other forms of compulsive and impulsive behavior used to numb and distract yourself

When you're immersed in an exiled part, the feelings are usually raw and painful. 

Since you're "blended" with this part, you no longer have the ability to witness your feelings in an objective and logical way. Instead of saying, "A part of me feels devastated", you experience the devastation as a overall feeling, like "I am devastated."

There is no separation between your Core Self (also known as Adult Self or Higher Self) and the exiled part because your Core Self is wrapped up in the exiled part, so you can't take space from the experience to be objective.

What to Do When Your Core Self is Blended With an Exile Part

This requires practice. Instead of lashing out at your loved ones, pause so you can observe what you're feeling instead of completely identifying with the feeling.

To unblend from this younger part/exile:

• Name the Feeling: Acknowledge the sensation: "I'm feeling frightened right now" or "I'm feeling unlovable right now" or "I'm feeling abandoned right now". This will help you to observe what is happening to you instead of being immersed in the experience (see my article: Overcoming Fear of Abandonment).

• Ask the Part For Space: If possible, have an internal dialog with the exile/traumatized part and ask this younger part for space so you can be in the present moment and not stuck in feelings related to your traumatic past.

• Be Curious and Compassionate: Instead of being judgmental and self-blaming, get curious and feel compassionate towards this part of yourself.

Clinical Vignette

The following clinical vignette is a composite of many cases and illustrates the dynamics described in this article:

Dana

Dana had a significant history of childhood trauma including emotional neglect and physical abuse.  There was no one available to help Dana as a child during her traumatic experiences.

After she graduated college, Dana moved far away from her family. She believed that if she moved away from Southern California, where her family lived, to New York City, her family would no longer affect her.

She developed a career as an executive coach which she really enjoyed. Her clients praised her work and she finally felt free of her family's influence.

When she got into an exclusive relationship with Tom, she felt like everything in her life was falling into place. Several months after they met, they moved in together in Manhattan.

Tom had a career as a management consultant that involved a lot of travel, which Dana knew about from the start of their relationship. However, his frequent travel brought up feelings of loneliness, abandonment, fear and panic.

If he didn't call or text her several times a day, Dana would have doubts about Tom and their relationship. Even though she knew he was in all day meetings, she still believed he could have found times during the day to call her instead of waiting until the evening.

Stuck in a Child Part

During those evening calls, Dana needed constant reassurance that Tom still loved her and he wasn't abandoning her. When Tom asked Dana where her fears were coming from, she was so immersed in her younger traumatized part that she couldn't think clearly. 

There were times in the middle of the night that Dana would feel on the verge of a panic attack and she called Tom and woke him up. Groggy with sleep, Tom couldn't understand why Dana was feeling so panicky and neither could she.

Afterward, they would talk about it and Dana would feel calmer for the moment--until the next time she got triggered with feelings of rejection and fear of abandonment.  Then, the cycle would begin again where Dana would demand reassurance from Tom, but nothing he said reassured her for long.

After several similar incidents, Tom spoke to Dana about getting help in therapy. He was kind and compassionate, but he knew that there was nothing he could do to help Dana overcome these problems. She needed professional help.

When Dana began therapy with an IFS therapist, she became aware that her triggers were related to unresolved trauma. 

Her therapist helped Dana to develop better coping skills including: Skills to develop a stronger observing self who could pause, witness herself when she was triggered, name the feeling and have a dialog with that inner part of herself to ask it to give her space so she could get curious about what was happening to her and approach this part with curiosity and compassion.

As Dana learned to remain grounded and not get derailed by her younger self, she had fewer incidents where she panicked when Tom was away. 

The work wasn't easy or quick. She still had times when she would regress into that younger part, but she would also recover faster than she had in the past (see my article: Progress in Therapy Isn't Linear).

Once Dana was stabilized, her IFS therapist was able to begin work with Dana on her traumatic history. 

The work was experiential--feeling the parts that came up--rather than just talking about it as she would have done in traditional talk therapy (see my article: Why is Experiential Therapy, Like IFS, More Effective Than Traditional Talk Therapy to Overcome Trauma?).

Over time, Dana was able to work through her unresolved childhood trauma so it was no longer affecting her or her relationship.

Her childlike part still came up at times, but once it was no longer carrying the burden of the childhood trauma, she experienced this part as being happy and playful rather than triggering unresolved trauma.

Conclusion

One blog article can't explain all the nuances of IFS. So, I suggest you read No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness With Internal Family Systems by Richard C. Schwartz.

Get Help in Parts Work Therapy

There are many different types of Experiential Therapy for trauma, aside from IFS Parts Work, including EMDR Therapy, Somatic Experiencing, AEDP and other trauma-related therapies.

Get Help in IFS Parts Work Therapy

Parts Work is unique in that you can do deep intrapsychic work without spending the amount of time you might in psychoanalysis.

A skilled IFS therapist can help you to work through unresolved trauma so you can have a more meaningful life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT (for couples), Parts Work (IFS and Ego States Therapy), Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist.

As a trauma therapist, I have helped many individual adults and couples over the years.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Also See My Articles

How Does Parts Work Therapy, Like IFS and Ego States Therapy, Help You to Understand Yourself? 

Discovering Your Core Self in IFS Therapy

How IFS Therapy Can Help You With Anxiety 

How Are Emotions Processed in IFS Therapy? 

The Silent Treatment and Gaslighting As Emotional and Psychological Abuse

The combination of the silent treatment and gaslighting is a powerful form of emotional and psychological abuse (see my article: What is Psychological Manipulation?).

Let's look at each one separately and then we'll look at them together.

What is the Silent Treatment?

It's important to distinguish the silent treatment from someone who communicates they need a break from an argument.  

The Silent Treatment

When someone communicates they need a break, they usually do it because they are feeling overwhelmed or they feel a conflict is getting out of control and both people need a break. The understanding is that this is a temporary break and both sides will come together again in a calmer state to continue talking.

The silent treatment a deliberate and prolonged withdrawal of communication. It's usually used to control and inflict punishment.  

What is Gaslighting?

Gaslighting involves manipulating someone into questioning their own thoughts, perceptions and memories (see my article: What Are the 7 Stages of Gaslighting in a Relationship?).

Gaslighting

Gaslighting is a control tactic to get someone to doubt their reality so they often become dependent upon the abuser.

    Common tactics or phrases include:

• Denial of Facts: "That never happened" or "I never said that" even when they are confronted with proof

• Trivializing Feelings: "You're overreacting" or "You're too sensitive"

• Diverting/Blocking: "You're just imagining things" or accusing someone of being "crazy"

• Twisting Information: Manipulating events to make the other person feel guilty or at fault

    Signs of Gaslighting:

• Second-Guessing Yourself: You constantly second guess your memories or decisions.

• Confusion, Anxiety, Disorientation: You feel confused, anxious or disoriented.

• Self Doubt: You feel like you can't do anything right.

How Does the Combination of the Silent Treatment and Gaslighting Function as Abuse?

• Gaslighted By Silence: When someone uses the silent treatment, they are withholding emotion and connection. If they deny they were cold or indicate that they were "just taking space", despite engaging in a cruel and prolonged shutdown, they are using silence as a form of gaslighting.

Gaslighting By Silence

• Creating "Crazy-Making" Doubt: They might ignore the other person after a disagreement and then act as if nothing happened or accuse the other person of overreacting when they try to address their prolonged coldness. This can cause the other person to question their perceptions.

• The Cycle of Punishment and Reward: They use silence to punish the other person as a way to manipulate them into "working" for the resumption of the conversation (e.g., apologizing for something they didn't do).

• Narcissistic Tendencies: People who use the silent treatment and gaslighting tend to have narcissistic tendencies. They often engage in this behavior to avoid taking responsibility.

What is the Psychological Impact of the Silent Treatment and Gaslighting?

• Internalized Blame and Feelings of Inadequacy: The person who is experiencing the silent treatment and gaslighting can feel shame, guilt and a decrease in their sense of self worth.

Self Blame and Doubt

• "Walking on Eggshells": They can develop high anxiety and hypervigilance while monitoring the other person's mood to avoid another episode of the silent treatment.

• Trauma Bonding: The unpredictable cycle of severe disconnection followed by sudden reconnection can create trauma bonds making them increasingly dependent on the other person (see my article: What isTrauma Bonding in a Relationship?.).

• Physical and Neurological Pain: Research indicates that being deliberately ignored activates the same area in the brain, the anterior cingulate cortex, that processes physical pain.

• Long Term Effects: Prolonged exposure to a combination of the silent treatment and gaslighting can lead to symptoms similar to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) including chronic stress, anxiety, depression and confusion.

What Can You Do If You're Experiencing the Silent Treatment and Gaslighting?

• Be Aware This is Abuse: By recognizing this behavior as abuse that is meant to control you can help you to reduce self blame.

Setting Boundaries

• Set Boundaries: Communicate that you won't engage with someone who refuses to communicate openly and effectively (see my article: Setting Boundaries in Your Relationship).

• Document Incidents: Keep a record of these incidents to counteract the effects to gaslighting.

Getting Help in Therapy

• Seek Support: Reach out to trusted friends, family members and a licensed mental health professional to break the cycle of isolation.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT (for couples), AEDP, Parts Work (IFS and Ego States Therapy), Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist.

I have over 25 years of experience helping individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Healing From Childhood Trauma: What is the Difference Between Abuse and Emotional Neglect?

I've written about childhood trauma in prior articles, including articles about childhood abuse and neglect.

Childhood Abuse vs Neglect

A common question that clients ask when they are in trauma therapy involves understanding the difference between abuse and neglect, which is the subject of this article (see my article: How Trauma Therapy Can Help You to Overcome Unresolved Trauma).

What is the Difference Between Abuse and Neglect?

The main difference between childhood abuse and neglect is action versus inaction of the caregiver as well as the intent of their behavior. 

• Abuse: Abuse is often an active, intentional, effort to harm, threaten or injure a child. It is an act of commission. Examples include (but are not limited to) physical harm, emotional abuse and sexual abuse. Abuse usually involves intentional, reckless and premeditated behavior.

• Emotional Neglect: Emotional neglect is often passive. It is an act of omission. The caregiver does not provide the necessary basic care (food, shelter, medical care) and emotional nurturance which includes the emotional support, validation, empathy and secure emotional connection for healthy childhood development.

Clinical Vignettes

The following clinical vignettes illustrate the difference between childhood abuse and neglect.  All identifying information has been removed to protect confidentiality.

An Example of Abuse: Sara

When Sara was a young child, her father would often come home drunk and beat Sara and her siblings. He would also hit their mother who felt powerless to stop him from hitting her and the children. By the next day, when the father was sober, he didn't remember hitting his wife and children. But after Sara's maternal uncle moved into the home, he put a stop to the abuse by restraining the father and calling the police. After several incidents where the police were called, the father was court mandated to get into alcohol treatment and the family received mental health services from a local community mental health service.

An Example of Neglect: Tom

When Tom was a young boy, he was emotionally neglected by both of his parents. His mother focused on her design business so that she rarely went to any school activities that Tom participated in. She would frequently place Tom in front of the television while she entertained clients in the house. His father was usually away on business trips and, when he was at home, he spent most of his time in his den watching sports while Tom was alone in his room. When a young family moved next door, the mother would invite Tom to come over to play with her children. She was also kind and compassionate with Tom because she realized he was a lonely boy.

The Trauma of Childhood Abuse and Neglect

Both abuse and emotional neglect are traumatic.

There are times when emotional neglect can be more damaging than abuse because:

• Emotional Neglect is Often Invisible: Emotional neglect can be hard to identify because it's often invisible. Neglect is characterized by what didn't happen (lack of love, attention or validation) as opposed to certain forms of abuse that can be detected based on marks or scars on a child's body that are noticeable.

Childhood Abuse vs Neglect

• Children Internalize Neglect: Whereas children who are abused might blame the abuser, children  who are emotionally neglected often blame themselves. These children believe they are flawed in some way and, as a result, they were unlovable (see my article: Overcoming the Emotional Pain of Feeling Unlovable).

• Brain Development: Many children who are severely and chronically neglected can experience cognitive and language deficits.

What Are the Long Term Effects of Childhood Abuse and Neglect?

Both abuse and neglect can have a long lasting potential psychological effects including:

• Mental Health: Anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

• Relationship Problems: Problems with trust, fear of intimacy or self abandonment in relationships (see my article: What is Self Abandonment?)

• Problems with Emotions: Difficulty identifying, managing and expressing emotions 

Conclusion

Although both abuse and neglect can have long lasting effects, studies have shown that neglect is often particularly damaging especially when the neglect is unseen, ignored or overlooked.

Although I have discussed abuse and neglect separately to distinguish one from the other, there can also be a combination of abuse and neglect.

Many adults believe their experience wasn't bad enough to get help.  However, the trauma of abuse and neglect usually require the therapeutic interventions of trauma therapy.

Getting Help in Trauma Therapy

Trauma therapy includes a group of therapies that were specifically developed to help clients to overcome the traumatic effects of their history (see my article: Why is Experiential Therapy More Effective at Resolving Trauma Than Talk Therapy?).

Getting Help in Trauma Therapy

Trauma therapy includes:

• EMDR Therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)

• Somatic Experiencing

• AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy)

• Parts Work (IFS and Ego States Therapy)

Rather than struggling on your own, seek help from a licensed mental health professional who is trained as a trauma therapist.

Working through unresolved trauma can help you to free yourself from your history so you can live a more fulfilling life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT (for couples), Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist.

As a trauma therapist, I have over 25 years of experience helping individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.