My spouse bought me the pictured coffee mug as a gift. As I read down the list, I teared up and had a bit of a revelation. Kuro was always more to me than just a dog. I don’t trust a lot of people – if any. But I had complete trust in my four legged companion. There was always love with no judgement. There was no betrayal. However, in that list, I paused when I got here.

I shall grow to become your defender…

It hit me. Growing up, I never had anyone who defended me. I was always on my own. I had to learn to stand up for myself, even though I was often knocked down. My need for my dog was simply a need for a defender. In Kuro, I found something I never had – a stalwart defender who would die to protect me.

At first I didn’t know what to do with this revelation. I sat with this revelation for several weeks. I never realized for my entire life I felt that no one ever had my back. Slowly, my understanding of this began to expand. It wasn’t just a defender from physical harm. It was much, much more than that.

As a child, I was always physically in danger from my father as well as the bullies from school. But it was more than just the physical abuse. There was the verbal abuse and emotional neglect. I never put the proper importance onto the verbal and emotional abuse. I often caught myself comparing my abuse to the abuse others suffered. I was merely bruised – nothing was ever broken. I was never sexually abused. “Others had it much worse than I did. What is wrong with me that I am this messed up from just being beaten?” But it wasn’t just being beaten. It was more. Much more.

While I was in deep thought about this, I came across the article “Emotional Neglect and Complex PTSD” on Pete Walker’s site. I found a lot to unpack in the article. This article focuses on the effects emotional neglect has on a developing child.

To say I have struggled with my recovery might be an understatement. I have felt at times my therapy goes nowhere. This article explained much to me about how denial or minimization can have a negative impact on healing. For me, it is one part understanding, and two parts minimization.

“Denial about the deleterious effects of childhood abandonment
seriously delimits our ability to recover. Continuous emotional
neglect turns the child’s psyche into a quagmire of emptiness, fear
and shame – a quagmire that she will, as an adult, frequently
flashback into until she understands and works through the
wretchedness of her childhood. Without such understanding, her
crucial, unmet needs for safe and comforting, human connection
will continue to cause her an enormous amount of unnecessary
suffering.”

I have too long focused on the role my father played. His role of abuse was the obvious abuse. The physical abuse that left the marks on my back. Others played a critical role in my C-PTSD. Their roles I have minimized and in some cases denied.

“Recovery from PTSD correlates with an
individual’s ability to understand on deep impactful levels how
derelict her parents’ were in their duty to nurture and protect her.”

To fully heal, I have to acknowledge ALL of the neglect. Not just the abuse.

“As denial is significantly deconstructed, the
recoveree feels genuine compassion for the child she was. This in
turn motivates her to engage the healing process of identifying and
addressing the specific wounds of her childhood. Over time she
becomes aware of her specific abandonment picture and the pattern
of physical, spiritual, verbal and emotional abuse and/or neglect
that she experienced.”

As I previously mentioned, the abuse from my father shifted from his hands to his mouth. No, the physical part never really ended but his words became more biting, more cutting, more destructive. My father’s actions were intentional. These actions were obvious. What I missed was the lack of actions from others.

“Minimization about the debilitating consequences of a childhood
rife with emotional neglect is at the core of the PTSD denial onion.
Our recovery efforts are impeded until we understand how much of
our suffering constellates around early emotional abandonment –
around the great emptiness that springs from the dearth of parental
loving interest and engagement, and around the harrowing
experience of being small and powerless while growing up in a
world where there is no-one who’s got your back.”

I understand now, why Kuro was so incredibly important to me – he had my back, physically and emotionally.

But now, my hardest revelation of all – my mother was never there for me. She is as much a part of this as my father was, just in a different way.

It was not her fault. My father was at the root of all of this. His abuse of her started on their wedding night – it never stopped for over 40 years. I was lucky. I got out in 17 years. I believe his abuse of her drained her of everything. There was nothing left after what he took. She also may have lived in fear of him if she paid attention to me. Additionally, my father gave her nothing. She had to earn money to cloth us and herself. If she wanted to buy anything, it had to be from the money she made. She did this by being a seamstress. What memories I have of her as a child was her with her back turned at the sewing machine.

“Many survivors never get to discover and work through the wounds that correlate with this level, because they over-assign their suffering to overt abuse and never get to the core issue of emotional abandonment. As stated above, this is especially true when they dismissively compare their trauma to those who were abused more noticeably and more dramatically.”

As I sit here and write this, I am still thinking whether of not I am assessing this correctly or not. Was she really never there for me? Am I just not remembering my childhood right? Am I creating things that were not there? Yet, I don’t remember ever having the feeling of being cared for. Yes, she kept me clothed, clean, and fed as best she could. But there was something definitely missing, something I struggle to put my finger on correctly.

“Traumatic emotional neglect occurs when a child does not have a
single parent or caretaker to whom she can turn in times of need or
danger, and when she does not have anyone for an extended period
of time who is a relatively consistent source of comfort and
protection.”

No. She did not have the power to protect. There was no refuge to be sought in her. He was too strong. She was too weak. I knew from an early age there was no safe harbour to be found at home. My mother could not protect me, my siblings never tried – at home or at school. They were like Cinderella’s step sisters – they encouraged others’ abuse.

My next steps involve some serious reflection and introspection. What the coffee mug has taught me was a deep an innate need for a protector. This led me to revelation of my childhood. Now I am on a new path.

“De-minimization is a lifetime process, and
remembering a crucial instance of being abused or neglected may
occasionally impact us even more deeply on subsequent
remembering as we more fully apprehend the hurt of particularly
destructive parental betrayals. One such occasion left me reeling
with the certain knowledge that getting hit felt preferable to being
abandoned for long hours outside my depressed mother’s locked
bedroom door.”

I don’t know exactly yet where this path is going to lead. I now understand I need to “de-minimize” my past to find a path to healing. My abuse was real. My abuse is valid. I cannot compare my abuse to that of others. For me, my abuse was “enough” and created one hell of an inner critic. Now it is time to gag the critic and drag it outside.