Childhood chronic ignorement, can anyone relate?

the experience of trauma being actively denied by parents is very common, but have any of you here been ignored instead?

what I mean is even if they are aware of the trauma, or symptoms of, it is ignored and not even considered enough for them to actively argue against it or try to rewrite the truth. they might actually be generally supportive but with the caveat of never truly acknowledging trauma.


Im experiencing this with my mum. no trying to rewrite history or anything; Ive been allowed to express what I want, which is met with just complete disengagement and ignoring. she doesn't make contact with it. or extremely temporary, shallow contact when I was little, which was locked away like it never existed after the fact.
my mum doesn't act as if it's untrue, but she doesn't act at all. I think it's a much more passive denial that plays on how kids naturally rely on their parents. Im left to think whatever I want because there is no feedback, at all, but naturally, as a kid, her perception of my experience made things true or untrue, to me. as a child, if adults ignored I was sad, maybe I wasnt actually sad. if they ignored I was suffering, maybe I wasnt actually suffering. etc etc.

even going into therapy I still felt as if I needed someone above me to say what I was going through was real, so it could be real. I think kids need feedback to understand how they feel and experience the world, and what to do in response to that. and Im still learning to understand my own emotions and treat them as real things without a second or third opinion telling me that. instead of taking other people's reactions/opinions as my reference for how I should feel about my experiences. I think it's taking me a very long time to grow out of needing other people to tell me whats going on inside me as if I cant feel it for myself.

I have grown up very ignored, which is a confusing place to be in because I haven't been badly physically neglected (though the ignorement also spread to things like hygeine and eating) , nobody is fighting to shut me down, I am just left to experience things in isolation, maybe in hopes it will resolve itself on its own. so there's not very much to talk about, because it's so incredibly passive and unnoteworthy to experience. it's just left alone. and I think my parents have it to a fine art. ignoring me while making it seem like theyre not. it blends in so well with other interactions that often I havent been able to tell what is happening.

it's a PR tactic right, to not engage and wait for it to blow over?


my stepmum also did this, sit and watch and pretend like nothing is happening and like she is not involved, completely separate from the rest of the house. but that is more erroneous because it was happening in front of her. thats more compliance than the ignoring Im talking about here, I think.


I have intense feelings of nonexistence sometimes and I think it stems from this. Im not telling the truth, or making things up, it just doesn't exist. with nobody to receive my feelings I went into nonexistence.

Maybe not the same thing here, although with my father it seems he didn't want a third child when I arrived, while I suspect there was hot debate between him and my mother to the extent of what he might contribute in the form of care should my mother carry me to term. What resulted was something I couldn't make sense of for years; i.e. my father not speaking to me, no real memories of my being held or played with, no independent adventuring in the care of my 'proud' father, dismissive and contemptuous judgement passed by him concerning my emotional frailty, etc. Should I have emerged from the womb in full football gear I wonder if anything might have been different.

I appreciate that the novelty and wonder part and parcel of having children likely wears off a bit for parents as memories of the workload and economic stress a new mouth to feed comes into view, but odd to flip through picture books to see just a few scattered images of maybe a washcloth tossed against a kitchen countertop and very tiny me positioned for a photograph that could only have been taken by my mother. She was in this alone and no one was really poised or positioned to help her. Being impossibly young and unsophisticated me, I had no clue...

Time passed, my father's employment situation deteriorated in tandem but not strictly related to his alcoholism, whereas by about my tenth year he was out of the scene, dead after a long hospital stay and gone when I was eleven. Some rough and unsteady efforts were made by my father to warm up to me late in his life, while I appreciate that often toddlers are difficult to relate to, whereas it's appreciated that boys growing older typically merit greater interest on the part of fathers looking for a role.

Not enough really, angered then and now that some otherwise benign observers would challenge me to be the 'man of the house' at a mere eleven when in attendance at a certain funeral, whereas the sensitivity I feel/experience in relation to what I'll term 'father/son combinations' walking the streets, shopping and generally making the rounds conveying all the while that fatherhood can be a rewarding if not delightful experience every now and again just cuts into me. I still feel like a defective product, wondering why I wasn't returned to the store/hospital forthwith, and the pain never really goes away. All I have to do is be exposed to some comparatively loving father/son combo - and that outrage, that pain is tapped.

sorry for taking so long tp respnd.

Resilientbibliophile said:

What resulted was something I couldn't make sense of for years; i.e. my father not speaking to me, no real memories of my being held or played with, no independent adventuring in the care of my 'proud' father,

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I had this with my mother, I dont have any memory of actually spending time with her or doing anything one-on-one other than appointments she had to take me to. especially after my first sibling was born when I was about 6, like the tap that had been dripping was completely shut off after that. not quite the same as you but Ive found it confusing too, she completely stepped out of my life for the most part, with the exception of medically.

Resilientbibliophile said:

I appreciate that often toddlers are difficult to relate to, whereas it's appreciated that boys growing older typically merit greater interest on the part of fathers looking for a role.

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I'd disagree, toddlers are always developing and discovering things, learning to communicate, developing personality. a normal parent is very interested in these. toddlers aren't easy or able to engage in the ways adults and older kids are but that doesn't make them unloveable or uninteresting. parent's love should not be based on the potential of their child to become like them. you should not have to feel the need to have earnt his attention.

Resilientbibliophile said:

angered then and now that some otherwise benign observers would challenge me to be the 'man of the house' at a mere eleven when in attendance at a certain funeral

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yes, that's wrong. and veru unempathetic on their part to ask this of a 11yr old, especially when he's just lost his father. regardless of the relationship it is always impactful to lose a parent. even more so as a kid. makes me angry too, it was not your job to replace your dad and his role after he was gone.

Resilientbibliophile said:

'father/son combinations' walking the streets, shopping and generally making the rounds conveying all the while that fatherhood can be a rewarding if not delightful experience every now and again just cuts into me. I still feel like a defective product, wondering why I wasn't returned to the store/hospital forthwith, and the pain never really goes away. All I have to do is be exposed to some comparatively loving father/son combo - and that outrage, that pain is tapped.

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can relate. I get this for parents and children in general, and I can feel suspicious of or anxious when I see it, or confused and hurt as it reflects something I didn't get. sometimes I feel it cannot be genuine and to have wanted that kind of relationship is asking too much, which logically I know isn't true, but the feeling comes up.

when we have this kind of relational developmental trauma there is a very big tendancy to blame it on ourselves, naturally. I get it a lot. I wonder how much of your anger is directed inwardly at yourself

I still feel like a defective product, wondering why I wasn't returned to the store/hospital forthwith, and the pain never really goes away

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for me the impression of myself I got from my father's abuse has stuck around strongly, and it becomes all about what is wrong with me and how I could have prevented being treated like I was, or how I could have earnt being treated well, instead of the fact he chose to be cruel to me, and my mother chose to neglect me, which was completely outside of my power to influence.

Yes. I experienced something similar. Denial of the seriousness. Blaming me. In my case early in childhood I was stuttering by age 3 and incontinence a lot till age 10 when I was diagnosed with neurogenic bladder. There were emotional issues too. I got to the point in my recovery I stopped wanting my parents to acknowledge these issues and the harm caused. It did not do any good. My focus on my recovery physical and mental outweighed all that.

I reasonate a lot. I had a confusing mix of being ignored, implicit and explicit messages of nothing bad happened but even if the thing that they decided didn't happen actually did, it was my fault anyway. So being ignored mixed with actively rewriting the narrative. A total mind f*ck that I am till trying to unpick at the age of 48.

Dark.Green.Feathers said:

what I mean is even if they are aware of the trauma, or symptoms of, it is ignored and not even considered enough for them to actively argue against it or try to rewrite the truth. they might actually be generally supportive but with the caveat of never truly acknowledging trauma.

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Yes, although I don't have the generally supportive element.
My mother does this all the time. Just last week this has triggered me. With my mother sending me a photo of me as a child saying "happy memories", ignoring the fact it was only last year, so should be fresh in her mind, that I told her of the sexual harm I was experiencing around the time that photo was taken..
For my mum, my needs and experiences are just not important enough to acknowledge.

Dark.Green.Feathers said:

if they ignored I was suffering, maybe I wasnt actually suffering. etc etc.

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Yes, this makes total sense. I feel I was the "lost child" in my narcissistic family dynamic.
If I cried because I was upset , this was would laughed at by my mother. I learnt that if I felt sad or scared it was funny. Which made me not have the sad and scared feelings because no one taught me what those were. There was nothing to hook them on to. It was amusing to my mother and yet I felt awful.
Which resulted in me not showing those feelings, then repressing them and switching off etc.
And being totally ignored.
And now even blamed. Because "I didn't tell her" about being sexually harmed at the time, it's my fault she didn't know.
How can you tell someone something when they laugh at what you tell them or ignore you?
And a child only has themselves as their frame of reference so of course as children we internalise it all.
It's complete brain washing.
So cruel.

Dark.Green.Feathers said:

still felt as if I needed someone above me to say what I was going through was real, so it could be real.

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Yes. How can you trust your feelings when there has been implicit or explicit messages that they are wrong?

Dark.Green.Feathers said:

I have intense feelings of nonexistence sometimes and I think it stems from this. Im not telling the truth, or making things up, it just doesn't exist. with nobody to receive my feelings I went into nonexistence.

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Relate.
I feel I have spent so long not being.
The not mattering.
The not having impact on others.
I'm learning that I matter and I do have impact on others. But I forget this all the time. I forget I can tell my partner things. I forget that she will worry about me if I have SI. It blows my mind that she would. I forget that she might want to come to a medical appointment with me to support me or be involved, or even know it is happening. So I inadvertently shut her out because it never occurs to me that someone cares in that way.
I think I inadvertently hurt people by dismissing their care because I don't understand or have any awareness that they do care or how that care may show up. If that makes any sense.

oh my, yes. i wouldn't even try to share this stuff with the vast majority of my family, not even the shared traumas.

way back in the 70's there was a psych fad which didn't quite make it to the internet. "healing as an orphan" is the moniker by which i started the therapy. it was designed for patients with families in denial and/or too dysfunctional to help themselves, far less anyone else. my own birth family fell into the "too dysfunctional" bracket. the theory is that approaching the therapy with an orphan's mindset skips that tedious and seldom successful step of looking for empathy or support from people who are not quite capable of supporting a recovery.

i'm a bit sad that this theory set faded out with groovy hipps. it worked for me. in alanon, one translation is, "ya don't go to the hardware store for bread." leave the hardware folks be and find a proper bakery.

KA60 said:

I got to the point in my recovery I stopped wanting my parents to acknowledge these issues and the harm caused. It did not do any good. My focus on my recovery physical and mental outweighed all that.

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Im glad you got there. slowly Im getting there, maybe even a lot of the way there, but I think part(s) of me still believe that a parent has to believe/validate it in order for it to be real. or are struggling to wean off that idea and evolve from it.

Movingforward10 said:

Yes. How can you trust your feelings when there has been implicit or explicit messages that they are wrong?

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I find feelings extremely difficult. got such a hard to shake belief that my feelings are meaningless and have to be remedied instead of being related to any real life thing. my feelings are fiction and reality is reality.... makes reality a pretty hard concept too. how is anything Ive been through real when I mostly have feelings as proof? and when people like my dad have always been rewriting my feelings, or reality. and Ive sort of always gone "okay".

Movingforward10 said:

With my mother sending me a photo of me as a child saying "happy memories", ignoring the fact it was only last year, so should be fresh in her mind, that I told her of the sexual harm I was experiencing around the time that photo was taken..

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it's very sad. I feel it's like trying to brush it under the rug. if they say it's X thing then it is...? and the other stuff is pushed out.
before I left after seeing mum she said something to the effect of "so we're both happy, thats good!". felt kind of forced. "if I say something is true then to you it is and that makes it real" kind of thing

Movingforward10 said:

Which made me not have the sad and scared feelings because no one taught me what those were. There was nothing to hook them on to. It was amusing to my mother and yet I felt awful.

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my feelings were often treated like they were overreactions I think. being unreasonable, so in a similar way they aren't what they are and arent real.

Movingforward10 said:

And now even blamed. Because "I didn't tell her" about being sexually harmed at the time, it's my fault she didn't know.
How can you tell someone something when they laugh at what you tell them or ignore you?
And a child only has themselves as their frame of reference so of course as children we internalise it all.
It's complete brain washing.
So cruel.

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Im sorry, it's painful to see that, being laughed at, it is unbelievably cruel.
difficult to not feel the guilt though isnt it? even though obvuously it isnt your fault. it's asking of the impossible for you to have told but it's hard to not make it your fault because thats the reality they're pushing.
I think both my parents have implicity and/or explicitly said that I didnt talk to them enough/my fault for not being engageable with. or howeevr to articulate it I dont know. my fault for not being more communicative. or for being secretive. but you leanr that from somewhere.

Movingforward10 said:

So I inadvertently shut her out because it never occurs to me that someone cares in that way.
I think I inadvertently hurt people by dismissing their care because I don't understand or have any awareness that they do care or how that care may show up. If that makes any sense.

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yes makes 100% sense, I think I do the exact same sort of thing.
I think also that kind of care can feel like a fire I have to put out. Im not even thinking about how they feel or that Im shutting them out, Im just focussed on making them stop that because it's somehow my fault for making them offer support... care doesnt even come inot the picture for me. Im just tying to deflect resources being used on me. all it comes down to. I think theyre doing it out of obligation and have to be stopped from accidentally making a wrong choice and offering something to me.

arfie said:

the theory is that approaching the therapy with an orphan's mindset skips that tedious and seldom successful step of looking for empathy or support from people who are not quite capable of supporting a recovery.

i'm a bit sad that this theory set faded out with groovy hipps. it worked for me. in alanon, one translation is, "ya don't go to the hardware store for bread." leave the hardware folks be and find a proper bakery.

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there's something valuable in not needing others to be on board for you to get better... because often they never are. it woul be greta if they could be but letting go of needing especially whoever was standing by / ignoring / part of your abuse.. valuable. theres enough grief in them not being there in the first place.

Dark.Green.Feathers said:

there's something valuable in not needing others to be on board for you to get better... because often they never are.

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that hard to describe something might have evolved into a cornerstone of my recovery. healing is an inside job. nobody can do it for me, not even the ones who are ready, willing and able.

Dark.Green.Feathers said:

it woul be greta if they could be but

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it would be great if i could have my own fairy godmother, too. no harm in wishing.

Dark.Green.Feathers said:

Im glad you got there. slowly Im getting there, maybe even a lot of the way there, but I think part(s) of me still believe that a parent has to believe/validate it in order for it to be real. or are struggling to wean off that idea and evolve from it.


I find feelings extremely difficult. got such a hard to shake belief that my feelings are meaningless and have to be remedied instead of being related to any real life thing. my feelings are fiction and reality is reality.... makes reality a pretty hard concept too. how is anything Ive been through real when I mostly have feelings as proof? and when people like my dad have always been rewriting my feelings, or reality. and Ive sort of always gone "okay".


it's very sad. I feel it's like trying to brush it under the rug. if they say it's X thing then it is...? and the other stuff is pushed out.
before I left after seeing mum she said something to the effect of "so we're both happy, thats good!". felt kind of forced. "if I say something is true then to you it is and that makes it real" kind of thing

my feelings were often treated like they were overreactions I think. being unreasonable, so in a similar way they aren't what they are and arent real.

Im sorry, it's painful to see that, being laughed at, it is unbelievably cruel.
difficult to not feel the guilt though isnt it? even though obvuously it isnt your fault. it's asking of the impossible for you to have told but it's hard to not make it your fault because thats the reality they're pushing.
I think both my parents have implicity and/or explicitly said that I didnt talk to them enough/my fault for not being engageable with. or howeevr to articulate it I dont know. my fault for not being more communicative. or for being secretive. but you leanr that from somewhere.


yes makes 100% sense, I think I do the exact same sort of thing.
I think also that kind of care can feel like a fire I have to put out. Im not even thinking about how they feel or that Im shutting them out, Im just focussed on making them stop that because it's somehow my fault for making them offer support... care doesnt even come inot the picture for me. Im just tying to deflect resources being used on me. all it comes down to. I think theyre doing it out of obligation and have to be stopped from accidentally making a wrong choice and offering something to me.


there's something valuable in not needing others to be on board for you to get better... because often they never are. it woul be greta if they could be but letting go of needing especially whoever was standing by / ignoring / part of your abuse.. valuable. theres enough grief in them not being there in the first place.

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Not to add more heartache but I am learning repeatedly that my illnesses connected to this issue- not assigning blame anymore- just cause effect correlation- is.minimized shamed etc by others too. I am letting go of that too. No respect for others comorbities..Including if someone else's words or actions can make that comorbiting worse..

Thanks for your detailed reply and interest expressed, whereas I suppose what's recorded below constitutes Part II of my tale of invisibility:

Just mulling things and for recent reading of what might be termed social aggressive/bullying literature as it relates to secondary school experiences fitfully endured, I had some further thoughts. Raised in a rather rough and tumble blue collar environment where physical toughness carried more cultural weight versus intellectual prowess, from sixth grade on in particular, school here was a truly frightening experience. Violence aplenty at school, but no mass shootings given socially marginal and reviled kiddos such as myself apparently just hadn't the imagination to show up one day to quite suddenly turn the tables with whatever implements and devices might be scrounged up. Consistent with the times, one local school has a sign out front exclaiming their commitment to addressing the everlasting problem of bullying within their walls, while I guess I take tacit solace in this trace evidence of concern that came too late for me.

Sad to register that an entire industry has taken root to 'save our children' from the proverbial 'one bad apple', the greater weight of the sales pitch established upon the presumption that unhinged weirdos sprout from cabbage patches intact ready to inflict mayhem versus the less pleasant reality of one or several being subjected to incredible pressure across years and yes - being subject to dynamics those professionals looking on blithely opted to ignore and/or officially minimize. Something within me believes even with a higher profile given to certain abusive tendencies and certain identarian rallying points in terms of organizations present within some or even most contemporary schools, that the results are less of a safeguard to abuse than the promotional literature boasts. For those who thrill to engaging in social aggression, the delicious thrill is too great, the costs of discovery minimal ranging to trace. I suppose with each passing year and successive generation that the cyclical turnover of live and in-person staging of The Lord of the Flies cannot strictly be prevented, hence there will always work to do, policies and intervention practices to calibrate and further refine, etc.

If nothing else, ambitions to have children just to set up some potential little one to be psychologically and physically assaulted by the unreflective spawn of parents who may well have hated me fills me with loathing and contempt, for why on earth would I set such a dynamic in motion? Further evidence of the Tyranny of the Normies, presuming their legacy of occupying a certain King of the Hill social status was their birthright and one to silently pass onto to their kids. From one rather clueless and insensitive ex-brother in-law I'll receive birthday greetings with a film still from Napoleon Dynamite - as though my horror from that period was his humor.

Swirling back to my past, mostly I drew attention for the misfit crew I hung with; i.e. a certain confederation of the friendless with many due in course to reveal to their families that they hadn't raised a boy fated to identify as CIS, but rather a 'sissy'. I don't know where I really fell for I was a social and sexual nothing - inert mass just barely passing as animate in a human sense for personal interest in myself let alone validation of most any sort was but a dream. The totality of who I was during this period was to survive, to remains small, not to be noticed. I was a prey animal negotiating social space; i.e. the question was how might I face the (very) long walk to school, the school surrounds/playing fields, hallways, bathrooms, showers in tandem with the hopelessness of physical ed., as well as the terror of plotting a safe path home. Careful timing and mixing up routes just sort of obviated any agreeable experience of education that might otherwise have been established combining a tolerable/normative mix of the good and bad, and while some confrontations were avoided - sadly not all were. A film adaptation of this period in my life would doubtless feature a hip soundtrack, but then John Hughes films so-themed were never all that violent. Bitter then, bitter now to recall that period which seemed never to end...

Reporting abuse and/or threats that hung over me produced next to no response, while it seemed everyone around me was a freshly baked latchkey kid with divorced working parents for whom conversational intimacy was a no-go. I remember friends sometimes seeking help from teachers only to be rebuffed (i.e. vivid memories of just reaching a classroom door and making a plea for help only to have the door firmly shut in our faces by whomever was staffing that room) or their concerns minimized in the style of what we'd each suffer at home; i.e. I guess we kiddos ought to have drawn inspiration from mixed martial artists pretending to act across many a cable television B-picture consistent with measuring up and fighting back! This indeed was a test of our manhood - something that would ensure that what would was dubious about our respective presentations as fearless and hairy-chested males would be shaken out and (cue the music) transcended! Indeed, our respective heads were soaked in pop culture norms of the day and we really did wish to believe these largely blue collar pep talks endured behind the stage curtains - but then we'd return to a competitive arena not of our making or choosing, reprising our respective roles as psychologically beaten prey animals, and the cycle(s) would repeat, year-after-year. Hmm - seems I'm remembering/recalling the life and legacy of one Chuck Norris...

What residual core of friends I had and carried forth coped differently. I think I radiated such despair that I ceased to be much fun to hang around with (hence the friends departed), whereas the greater percentage of them were on the path towards embrace of a homosexual identity. Late night almost hookups with the dangerous working class rough trade where strangers on telephones were teased and taunted to meet this friend and that featured an element of risk that some found appealing. Sleepovers where older gay men were tempted to meet somewhere by teens role playing for sport is what I suggest, up to and including surreptitiously traveling to this or that meetup location to see if the other interested party would show. I'm just one person with views of a solitary individual when I say this, but who wants these memories? It was an awful time, hardly one characterized by patterns of assertive discovery in relative safety, whereas right across it I'd rather have been dead.

Another friend was followed by car by two other friends to an area gay bar whereupon the 'truth' was related back to his parents who proceeded to toss him out of the family home. All of this was related back to me in what was construed as the most 'hilarious' terms via a telephone call from people I hadn't heard from in months. I guess this splinter group had to tell everybody in a projective self-loathing fashion synched to the very unhappy social norms then in circulation. No - there was no multi-colored flag flying from the school flagpole during that period, whereas to believe that any of my friends would go on to become tech. giants living in studio apartments in the trendiest urban environments (both then and now) seems a stretch. Curious that; i.e. why is it sometimes presumed high achievement and LGBTQ identification are necessarily linked? Yes - sometimes and even in a moderate statistical sense, although hardly a vouchsafed mass experience earned for prior suffering that will necessarily offset memories of heartless marginalization and abuse.

I don't know - I shifted, largely losing touch with 'friends' and humanity at large from 11th grade on. It's not that I'm strictly adverse to people feeling comfortable in their own respective skins and loving whom they'd wish to love as consenting adults - no, hoping for relating such that I'd not profile as an identity-threatened prig. What's odd though and in a residual way is that structurally heterosexual relationships were then nothing less than impossible, for in a manner of speaking I was categorized as homosexual and a perpetual target. The last two years of grade school were socially bizarre for me; i.e. friendless, although curiously the violence and threat of the same fell away to nothing almost to my measured shame. So utterly behind the curve though with regards to what might be termed the rudiments of courting, coming out of single mother family with two older sisters quite constantly wracked and occupied by relationship dramas all their own, etc. Again - it was too much to expect that really anyone would strictly be looking in concerning my development, my psychological state of being, my very existence as such things go. I identified solidly as a nonentity.

I think I relate to part of it. Sometimes its like being invisible to yourself. It does feel odd when people act like you are a person too. Once i went for a neurology appointment knowing they were giving me the results of a scan with the possible outcome i had a brain tumour. It didn't occur to me I should have had someone with me. To me ,it was just a job to get done. Why did i need someone there?

I think the act of being independent at the wrong times can be hard to let go of too because there is a sort of security in that, for me anyway. Like " I dont need anyone".

I suppose that's part of connection and trust. I try to think about what other people accept as normal, people reflect back something and use that as a benchmark.