something i wish we heard more about is
2012-11-24
something I wish we heard more about is neglect.
I mean. my parents were also abusive. but i remember trying to do some research into the impacts of neglect and whatever on people, but a lot of the research is on abuse or it conflates the two.
what research you can find, is that neglect can serious (sometimes overlapping) impacts on people throughout their lives. some studies even indicate that the outcome is worse for people who were just neglected vs. those who were abused (but I don’t like the way that either the research is framed or the way that i just framed it in this sentence, because it isn’t a fucking competition to see who was hurt the most by their shitty parents).
but this isn’t to say that people who were abused need to be giving space or way to those of us who were neglected. Not at all. especially since it is the case that many people will have experienced both abuse and neglect (definitely true of me).
Just more me wishing that i was able to see more discussions of neglect happen. more discussions from people who survived. it is also very possible that these discussions are just happening somewhere that i don’t know about yet.
because tumblr and other places/people have taught me a lot about the experiences of abuse i’ve had. how to understand them. how to recognize them. and even how to start healing from them.
but i can still barely articulate the neglect. or see its shapes. or how it has impacted my life. how i can start healing from it and overcoming it.