Neglect-The Silent Abuser Quotes

“Discovering the method by which you survived and the associated feelings is a primary goal in becoming aware of why you do the things you do. This is vitally important in Self-discovery. It is only when you know what certain feelings are really about and why certain behaviors developed, that you can begin to take charge of your life.”
― Enod Gray, Neglect-The Silent Abuser: How to Recognize and Heal from Childhood Neglect

“If you have experienced neglect, it is likely that you have learned to shut down your feelings in order to survive. Your psyche has very wisely developed a mechanism to allow you to function on the outside, even though something may be very wrong and well hidden inside. Through distracting yourself with staying busy or obsessing about things on the outside, you may not even be aware of the pain you carry on the inside.”
― Enod Gray, Neglect-The Silent Abuser: How to Recognize and Heal from Childhood Neglect

“The other extreme when you are triggered is to stuff your emotions. Many neglected people do this, because this is the strategy they learned in childhood. However, acting as if something didn’t bother you, denying reality, making up a story to justify what happened, or just numbing out doesn’t work in the long run. Stuffing feelings doesn’t make them go away. Those feelings will end up coming out sideways, often in the form of an overreaction to something rather insignificant.”
― Enod Gray, Neglect-The Silent Abuser: How to Recognize and Heal from Childhood Neglect

“When a child is programmed to deny the Self and only obey orders, that person, as an adult, likely hasn’t developed the skill of knowing what he or she likes or doesn’t like, so, therefore, he or she does not have the ability to make a wise decision when choosing a partner. It’s easier to take orders and be compliant than to make a decision based on Self. Being told what to do, including who to be with, feels comfortable and familiar to adults who were overly controlled as children because that is how they have been programmed. As stated earlier, I believe neglect to be the foundation stone of outright abuse, although many neglected adults have developed ways of denying, justifying, and minimizing the abusive behavior they experience in relationships.”
― Enod Gray, Neglect-The Silent Abuser: How to Recognize and Heal from Childhood Neglect

“When children are neglected, they learn not to expect too much, and that they have to do things for themselves because no one is going to be there for them. Often, because they are still children and their brains are not fully developed, they make poor choices that lead to negative outcomes. As adults, they may teach themselves to deny or minimize traumatic childhoods by telling themselves that it wasn’t so bad after all, while living in a constant state of anxiety—waiting for (and expecting) things to go awry. When life does bring happy and joyful events, they engage in catastrophic thinking because this is how they learned to think.”
― Enod Gray, Neglect-The Silent Abuser: How to Recognize and Heal from Childhood Neglect

“Most people who have been neglected have learned to avoid feelings.”
― Enod Gray, Neglect-The Silent Abuser: How to Recognize and Heal from Childhood Neglect