Emotional Neglect and Complex PTSD

[serafaery]

"The fact that verbal and emotional abuse can be traumatic is lost on many childhood trauma victims. Many never learn to validate its crippling effects. They never accurately assign current time suffering to it. Attempts to acknowledge it are typically blindsided with thoughts that it was nothing compared to kids who were repeatedly beaten – who had it worse. Yet for me, and many of my clients, verbal and emotional abuse was much more injurious than our physical abuse. Being ongoingly assaulted with critical words systematically destroys innate self-esteem and replaces it with a prevailing consciousness of toxic self-criticism. Even worse, words that are emotionally poisoned with contempt [a deadly cocktail of intimidation and disgust] infuse the child with fear and toxic shame respectively. Fear and shame condition him to refrain from asking for attention, from expressing himself in ways that draw attention, and before long from seeking any kind of help or connection at all.Unrelenting criticism, especially when it is ground in with parental rage and scorn, is so injurious that it changes the structure of the child’s brain." -Peter Walker