In our daily life or in my psychotherapy career, it is not easy to recognize adults with childhood neglect. It is because many of them may live a normal life on the surface with lucrative occupation, stable social relationships and healthy lifestyle. In fact, they may be very self-sufficient and self-reliant. Sometimes, their success in career unknowingly camouflages their inner insecurity, self-doubts and shame. A client of mine always presented herself perfectly in her attire in every session. She has a successful career as a professional and is an independent woman in her personal life. On the surface, it seems that she has no psychological issues. However, she told me that she always feels insecure and doubts herself for her capabilities. When her colleagues challenged her, she felt anxious inside and ruminated about being found to be inadequate. Due to her insecurity on her self-worth, she held every high expectation herself in every aspect of her life. In the therapy, she told me that she wanted to improve herself in terms of her characters, such as being demanding and critical to others. Furthermore, due to her insecurity, she thought that she does not deserve to seek psychotherapy. However, when I explored with her on her childhood experience, she kept telling me that her childhood life was normal. She was provided good living environment and study opportunity. She lived with her parents throughout her childhood. What is being missing in her childhood?
This client was raised in a typical family with father being the bread winner, who was always busy with his work. Her mother always stayed home and watched TV. The mother diligently did all the household chores and cooking for the family. In mealtime, both parents never talked, and it was always silent while eating. My client was so used to the silence and learned to keep everything to herself in her childhood. As a result, my client never talked about her school life with her parents. One day when she was around age 7, she remembered that her mother went shopping in a department store with her. During the shopping, her mother lost her, and she wandered in the store to search for her mother frantically. It took an hour for her mother to find her.
With thorough exploration with my client, I discussed with her about the possible childhood neglect in her early years. She tended to look away from me and had no clue that she was neglected in her childhood. It is because she even did not know she had emotional needs as a child. It is very common for those who was neglected by their parents in childhood to be very independent and self-reliant. They have a belief that asking other for help is unsafe. In fact, if we as friends or therapists ignoring this belief and tried to force them to accept our help, they would even shut off more.
Usually, these clients usually have some close friends. In this case, it is easy for their close friend to help them when these clients solicited help. There is no definitely answer whether we should help these clients to step out from their “one-person-world”. Sometimes, what they need most is enough personal space and solitude. Of course, if they reached out to you, we should give them our helping hands with empathy and deep understanding. Without thorough understanding of their needs, we become too demanding and not trauma-informed to force them to accept our help.
