Healing Childhood Abuse and NeglectHealing Childhood Abuse and Neglect

I'm in the process of re-designing the whole of Mental Health Today. It is quite a process. I'm doing more than just putting the old material in a new template. I'm reading most of the material again so that I can improve the meta tags, alt tags for the search engines as well as putting in a special "Related Books" section on most pages.

Thus, at this time a lot of technical information as well as opinions and other's experiences are flooding my mind. I am noticing that I am having an emotional reaction occasionally. I just had one and I wanted to share it because it is something that most of us consumers are dealing with and that is abandonment. That's what I want to talk about.

In an article on the site is one entitled "Healing the Abandonment Wounds." Just one sentence made me stop typing and sit in my computer chair staring at the ceiling.

The article says:

"I have counseled individuals, couples, families and business partners for the past 35 years and authored eight published books. Every individual I've worked with has had some abandonment wound to heal, and most relationship problems stem from abandonment wounds.

It is not possible to grow up in our society without some abandonment wounds. The following are some of the ways it can occur:

*

Being torn away from mother at birth and put into a nursery.
*

Being left to cry in a crib or playpen.
*

Being given up for adoption or being left in foster care.
*

Being physically and/or sexually abused.
*

Being emotionally abused - ignored, yelled at, shamed.
*

Being pushed aside at the birth of a new sibling.
*

Having a parent or caregiver who is emotionally unavailable.
*

Being unseen or misunderstood by parents or other caregivers.
*

Being lied to.
*

Being unprotected by a parent or caregiver.
*

Being left alone in a hospital during an illness.
*

Losing a beloved parent or grandparent at a very young age.
*

Divorce.
*

Being teased or left out with siblings or peers.
*

Being ridiculed by a teacher.
*

Being forgotten - not being picked up from school or other places.
*

Being left at a young age to care for oneself, a parent, or other siblings."

And the article continues on.

The sentence "Being left to cry in a crib or playpen" was the sentence that stopped me in my tracks.

My aunt, in the past has shared with me that her mother, my grandmother babysat me from birth to age 3 as both of my parents worked. I did have this information confirmed by my grandmother but I did it slyly so as not to cause shame or blame. My brother was a difficult child to raise and needed constant attention. I was a quiet child and entertained myself.

It is important to know that my family lived in an apartment at the time in the same complex as my grandparents. My grandmother told me I really preferred to be in my own place, in my crib so I was there in my crib alone in the apartment 95% of the time from birth to age3. My grandmother would come and check on me from time to time.
Experiencing Memories of Feelings of Abuse or Neglect as an Adult

When I found this out I was both saddened and relieved. All my life I would not call it a memory, but a memory of my feelings. I don't actually remember seeing myself in the crib alone. However I do recall EXTREME feelings that, "I'm alone and no one will ever comes. I wait and wait to the point where the emotional pain of no one coming for a long, long, long, long time, is so strong it is as if my mind twists I can't stand it. The feeling of waiting and no one coming is so strong it's as if I go into another dimension of pure and total hell." I cannot tell you how bad it is. I don't have the words. It is a memory of feelings. I did not get that statement from any books. It is something that simply explains my experience as an adult.

There were actually two times in my adult life where I waited for my boyfriend - different ones as it was years apart - to come and I waited and waited and I went once again into that never never land and both times I laid on the floor in fetal position.