INTRO
Childhood trauma, including emotional neglect, attachment issues and abuse, often leaves deep-rooted scars that influence our self-esteem, relationships, and overall well-being into adulthood. When combined with the emotional impact of abortion, these hidden traumas can shape our behaviors and perceptions even further. Understanding how these issues form and addressing them effectively is crucial for breaking free from their grip and paving the way to comprehensive healing and personal growth.
IS EMOTIONAL NEGLECT ABUSE?
I was in high school when I met a guy I’ll call Tony. That’s not his real name, but it works, because he was from Queens, and so different from anyone I’d ever met in my Southern hometown. I’m from what you’d call an “old family” and we lived in this house with the giant porches and the whole deal. The day I met Tony; I saw him standing out front of the school. He stuck out in a big way. Not only was he new, and we hardly ever had new kids, but he looked so different. Nobody in my school dressed like that. I was watching him as my mom dropped me off. She had a huge black Escalade and was always on her phone. I got out of the backseat, and she drove off without saying a word to me. This was so typical I didn’t even notice it, but Tony said, “Did she even know you were there?” That was the first thing he ever said to me, and it dawned on me how weird it was that my mom never spoke to me on the way to school. That same day, he gave me a nickname—Lulu. He was teasing me for wearing Lululemon, but my name is also Louise, which I’ve always hated. Lulu was like an instant alter ego, a different person, but most importantly a different person that someone else was interested in.
When people speak of child abuse, visions of physical violence or abandonment may be what first springs to mind, but ongoing emotional neglect is also a form of trauma that can negatively impact the development of self-esteem and identity, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Aurisha Smolarski, LMFT, founder of Cooperative Coparenting, says, “Emotional neglect can be hard to spot because it is not always visible—even to a professional. It is also hard to spot because it tends to be based less on what a parent does and more on what they don’t do.”
Emotional neglect can reveal itself in a variety of ways. In an article reviewed by psychotherapist Yolanda Renteria, LPC, these can include:
- Withholding affection
- Being dismissed because the parent is focused on themselves
- Being told your feelings aren’t valid or worth further examination
- Lack of shared celebration when experiencing a positive emotion
- Punishment for expressing negative emotions
- Failure to intervene when a child is under emotional stress
- Not acknowledging difficult emotions like grief or embarrassment
The long-term impact of emotional neglect can result in avoidant behaviors, where the person who has been abused is reluctant to engage in relationships and quick to leave in fear of rejection. These self-protective behaviors keep the individual isolated in their suffering. On the flip side, childhood emotional neglect can also later manifest as “people pleasing” or codependency.
Mental Health America explains that in codependency, which is sometimes called “relationship addiction,” the desire to be needed, wanted, and found worthy of love and attention can lead individuals to sacrifice their own well-being in a quest to be the caretaker of choice for an individual willing to exploit their vulnerability.
Regardless of how the emotional neglect surfaces, much damage can result from the maladaptive behaviors that arise from that form of childhood trauma.
WHAT IS ATTACHMENT DISORDER?
My mom had been a big beauty pageant queen growing up, and she was still stunning. I looked like her, but like the funhouse mirror version. Instead of being elegant, I was too tall, instead of having a great smile, I had horse teeth. The one compliment my mom would give me was that I’d done a lot with the little God gave me, meaning I’d dress and do my makeup well. But I dressed and did my makeup to her specifications, and if she ever felt I wasn’t living up to her vision she could be so cruel, usually comparing me to somebody else’s daughter who was a “natural beauty” and reminding me I had to work extra hard to keep up. I’d work so hard to avoid that. Basically, the whole point of me and my brother was to fill out the Spring and Fall family photo shoots as perfectly as possible. When Tony started paying attention to me, and started telling me I was pretty, and then beautiful, and even hot, it completely blew my mind. I was instantly hooked on that affirmation he was giving me.
When abuse and trauma are present in childhood, there is a high rate of comorbidity, or the presence of two or more afflictions. Parents who lead with emotional neglect may also inflict psychological abuse in the form of criticisms that wound the child’s sense of self.
Attachment disorder arises when caregiving in early childhood lacks sensitivity and responsiveness, and is exacerbated by continued neglect and abuse, reports Psychology Today. The trauma that results can express itself with a harsh inner critic, especially when the child has been often negatively compared to others.
Even when the child appears to have everything they need in life, attachment disorder can result in the child living in “survival mode.” Because an infant is completely dependent upon their parents to survive, if a parent makes the child feel insecure, the result can be high levels of anxiety. Even when the child has reached their teenage years or even adulthood, there can be a deep-seated sense that their very survival is dependent upon pleasing their parent(s).
It is often the case that those with anxious attachment style wind up in romantic relationships with individuals who have avoidant attachment style, says Stephanie A. Sarkis Ph.D. in Psychology Today. She explains that these two attachment styles develop a “push pull dynamic” wherein the individual with anxious attachment style pursues reassurance from their partner who is avoidant, and actively seeks to evade giving that reassurance. It is a difficult dynamic that is hard to overcome. There is the old trope that those dealing with drug addiction are always “chasing that first high.” For those with anxious attachment style, the affirmation given early in the relationship can become the carrot at the end of a stick that they find themselves chasing.
CAN PHYSICAL ABUSE BE PASSED DOWN THROUGH GENERATIONS?
Tony had moved down South to live with his grandparents, who had retired here ten years earlier. His parents were in the middle of a divorce, but from what he told me their marriage had never really been whole in the first place. He didn’t act like he was going through anything traumatic. He was full of jokes and pranks and adventure, borderline an adrenaline junkie. He definitely struck me as wildly alive—the most alive person I’d ever met, and I loved that, but it was also scary. I really wasn’t a daredevil, but I found myself jumping off train trestles into the lake at midnight with Tony. After a while I started to see his temper, and I began to piece together the fact that Tony hated his dad, who was physically abusive. He would say he never wanted to be like his father. But while he didn’t get physically abusive with me, I got the feeling that it was something that could happen, and I became very keyed into his moods.
Intergenerational trauma is increasingly recognized as a phenomenon impacting the mental health and well-being of millions of Americans. It refers to patterns of behavior that can be carried on from one generation to the next—even when an individual grows up swearing that they will not repeat the mistakes of the past.
According to the National Children’s Alliance, 16% of children who experience abuse were physically abused, for a total 96,000 unique incidents in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available.
There are many theories as to why these patterns of behavior repeat, including anxiety impacting the body on a molecular level. While not yet a proven theory, research has suggested that biological changes caused by trauma can be passed down from mother to child. Rachel Yehuda of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has studied the impact of extreme stress, with indicators that the DNA of the children of Holocaust survivors exhibited the same molecular changes as their parents.
“Clearly there is a signal of something interesting happening on a molecular level with intergenerational trauma,” says Yehuda. “It will be a while before we figure it all out.”
The discussion of intergenerational trauma is not relegated to academia. The British Journal of General Practice discusses how it has now entered the everyday language, with public personalities such as Oprah Winfrey delving into the topic. Winfrey and Dr. Bruce Perry released the book, What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing in 2021 and it promptly became a New York Times Bestseller. Winfrey advocates examining past traumas to improve the present, saying, “Through this lens we can build a renewed sense of personal self-worth and ultimately recalibrate our responses to circumstances, situations, and relationships. It is, in other words, the key to reshaping our very lives.”
DOES DRUG ABUSE IN THE HOME IMPACT A CHILD?
In the beginning, I felt like Tony was just as addicted to me as I was to him, but about three months after I started having sex with him, I could feel him drifting away. I was desperate to keep him close, and I started doing whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. I was a complete doormat. I really had no desire to try lots of different drugs, but that seemed to make him happy, so I did it. I’d always hated drugs because of the way my mom abused benzos, and I really didn’t enjoy those experiences with Tony at all. The biggest impact they had on me was clouding my judgment, and I found myself having unprotected sex with Tony more and more often, because that’s what he liked. Toward the very end, I found out his father was an addict, and it made me feel like he was in the process of becoming his father.
Wherever significant dysfunction can be found, substance abuse is often found with it. The desire to self-medicate and hide from the pain of everyday living can be overwhelming and can lead to addiction. According to Psychology Today, 14% of children will experience substance abuse in their home by the time they turn 17. This is the second most reported “adverse childhood experience” or ACE.
Substance abuse disorder also increases the likelihood of physical or sexual abuse—parents struggling with addiction are three times more likely to abuse their children in these ways, according to an article in Social Work in Public Health.
Unsurprisingly, these children are more likely than their peers to develop “poor health, activity limitations, and chronic school absences than other children, and are two to four times more likely to develop mental health disorders, such as major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and substance use disorders of their own,” continues Psychology Today.
Substance abuse compromises a parent’s ability to parent, and therefore compromises a child’s ability to develop in healthy ways. Without a mature, successful, and dependable model of emotional regulation and responsibility, a child is left to self-parent as best they can. The results can run the gamut from trust issues and the inability to feel safe to the tendency to create chaos when things seem to be running too smoothly.
IS THERE A CORRELATION BETWEEN AN ABSENT FATHER AND UNINTENDED PREGNANCY?
When I found out I was pregnant I was petrified. My father was a remote figure in my life, he was always off making money, gone for weeks at a time, and when he was home, he was very strict. I felt like if he found out he’d kill me. Especially because of who the father was. Had my boyfriend been one of the country club boys that my parents knew it would have been a little bit better, but a guy who wore black and had a New York accent was complete devastation. My initial hope was that Tony would say we should run away together, but the day after I found out, I saw him flirting with someone else in the cafeteria. He looked over and saw me and just kept at it. He straight up didn’t care if I caught him. My stomach sank so hard it actually hurt, and I also felt like I only had one option—an abortion.
While up-to-date research is valuable in the ever-evolving scientific community, there are some seminal studies that remain relevant and influential years after they were first published. Such is the case with a study conducted by Bruce Ellis, PhD, of the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. After following 520 girls in the US and 242 girls in New Zealand, from age 5 to 18, he found that girls whose fathers left in early childhood (up to age 5), were seven to eight times more likely to become pregnant in adolescence than girls who still lived with their fathers.
Moreover, the study revealed that the correlation extended beyond financial issues and other common stressors in a single parent home, noted New Scientist. “The study rules out that these teenage girls are at risk for early pregnancy only because absence of the father introduces stressors into the home such as poverty,” according to Ellis.
Being physically present is no guarantee, either. Many studies show the negative impact of emotionally absent fathers. Caitlin Cantor, LCSW, CST, CGT, reports that daughters of such fathers may experience many issues, including:
- Low self-esteem
- Fear of abandonment
- Neediness
- Trust issues
- Using sex to affirm their worth
Greg Mayo, Men’s Healing Strategist for Support After Abortion touched on this in a recent webinar on Addressing Absent Father Wounds. He mentioned data showing that one-third of pregnancies in fatherless homes end in abortion. And he shared his personal story of abortion as a teenager in which both he and his partner came from father-absent homes.
HOW CAN I MOVE FORWARD?
Not long after the abortion, Tony moved back to New York and I never heard from him again. For five years, I struggled with a host of issues. Some of them I thought were bad luck, I felt others were the fault of co-workers or friends or family, I didn’t realize that any of it was connected. In the end, a stupid meme a friend sent me wound up prompting a realization that the only thing I could control was myself, and that I needed to figure out what was going on with me. I read some self-help books, which was a start, but more and more I was realizing I needed to deal with my abortion experience. I got online and found Support After Abortion, texted them, and started working my way through their resources. Keys to Hope and Healing really opened the door for me, and then I did Unraveled Roots, and so many things became clear to me that I hadn’t understood before. I began to have empathy and compassion for not just myself, but that high school girl I had been, and everything she had gone through. I’m grateful to be on this journey.
HOW CAN I UNRAVEL THE ROOT CAUSES OF DAMAGING BEHAVIORS?
Unraveled Roots empowers individuals to recognize damaging patterns and take the first steps towards healing from abandonment, addiction, abuse, and codependency.
Available in both women’s and men’s versions, the books focus on defining each root issue, discussing its manifestations in real life, and providing insight through true stories of individuals’ struggles with these issues. Each chapter concludes with reflection questions that encourage participants to acknowledge what happened, recognize the lies they believed about themselves, and identify behaviors resulting from those lies. The goal is to uncover the truth and foster positive behavioral changes. The online self-guided resources are available at no cost and offer videos to accompany each chapter and downloadable journals.
HOW CAN I BEGIN HEALING EMOTIONALLY FROM ABORTION?
Keys to Hope and Healing is a gateway resource for those navigating the complex emotions and behaviors that can follow abortion. This secular, introductory resource offers a compassionate and non-judgmental space for individuals to process their feelings and begin their healing journey.
Emotions after abortion vary. Some people may not experience adverse emotions, while others might struggle with feelings such as depression, anxiety, sadness, loneliness, anger, guilt, or grief. For those experiencing negative changes, their pain is valid and deserving of compassion and support. Our research reveals that both women (34%) and men (71%) report adverse changes after abortion.
Keys to Hope and Healing is available for women and men, in English and Spanish and in various formats including print and digital books and an audiobook for men. Accompanying resources include downloadable journals and self-guided video series for both women and men. Whether used independently, in one-on-one sessions with a mentor, or within a facilitated group, Keys to Hope and Healing supports individuals through their unique experiences.
WHICH SHOULD I DO FIRST – UNRAVELED ROOTS OR KEYS TO HOPE & HEALING?
Choosing whether to start with Unraveled Roots or Keys to Hope and Healing depends on the individual’s needs and circumstances. Greg explains, “Some may first need to address childhood issues like abandonment or addiction through Unraveled Roots before tackling abortion-related behaviors with Keys to Hope and Healing.” Lisa Rowe, LCSW, notes, “We’ve had success with both approaches. Unraveled Roots can address past issues that may be contributing to current struggles, while Keys to Hope and Healing can focus directly on processing abortion experiences.” Each approach has proven effective, and the decision should be guided by the person’s immediate challenges and goals, allowing for tailored support throughout their healing journey.
The Support After Abortion Provider Training Center features video series and facilitator guides for both the women’s and men’s versions of Unraveled Roots and Keys to Hope and Healing for those who lead participants either individually or in groups.
HOW DO I GET STARTED WITH UNRAVELED ROOTS OR KEYS TO HOPE & HEALING?
Reach out to our After Abortion Line by online chat, phone, text, email, or messaging on Facebook or Instagram. We offer free, confidential, compassionate support. We can connect you to the healing resource that best meets your preferences – that may be one-on-one, group, or independent; counseling or peer facilitator; virtual, in person, or self-guided; religious or secular; etc. Check out our website!
HOW CAN I LEARN MORE ABOUT PROVIDING AFTER-ABORTION SUPPORT?
Explore our Provider Training Center and attend our free monthly Abortion Healing Provider webinars, Men’s Healing Matters webinars, and Quarterly Facilitator Trainings. You can also reach out to learn about our personalized facilitator coaching program.
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