Deprivation trauma is about what you missed out on when you were growing up.

But, when we think about trauma, we usually think about the things that happened, or were done – like physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse or exposure to family violence. We may sometimes include neglect in our list of traumas, but we typically only think about the extremes of neglect, which is the very obvious/visible type -not being fed, clothed, housed, cared for adequately.

But here’s the thing…

The most common type of trauma I see in my practice is deprivation trauma.

Otherwise known as emotional neglect.

Types of deprivation trauma / emotional neglect:

Feeling like you had no-one to go to with when you were hurting or needed support
When you were an infant, having a mother who was unable to engage with you
Being left alone, for long periods of time, by yourself
Receiving the message that you had to be someone else to be accepted or loved
Discovering, on whatever level of awareness, that you were same-sex attracted, and having a parent ridicule or invalidate that
Not feeling nurtured
Being autistic (even if you did not know that) and being encouraged to be neurotypical
Lack of emotional support
Feeling like you weren’t understood
Feeling like the love from your parents was conditional on an external factor (like getting good grades, following the right career path, being polite etc.)
Not feeling ‘seen’ or ‘noticed’ by your parents
Not feeling validated, but feeling like everything you say is wrong, or not good enough
Coming to know, on whatever level of consciousness, that you are trans or gender diverse, and having a parent invalidate or criticise that

Emotional neglect is invisible to outside observers. In therapy, I often hear people saying things like:

“But my parents took good care of me. They took me to dancing and gymnastics”

“They watched me play soccer every weekend without fail.”

“They never hit me, I went to private school, we went on holidays every year”.

“I had a good childhood…didn’t I…?”

None of this is about blaming your parents or beating up on them. Or destroying your memories of your childhood. Your parents parented the way they did because of the way they were parented. They hurt you the way they did because they were wounded as well.

Of course if you have anger towards your parents there is space for that as well.

But I digress.

If you connect to the statements above, then your parents probably did take good care of you physically. But perhaps they didn’t know how to take care of you emotionally, and that’s what is causing some of your problems now.

The good news is, it’s never too late to heal old wounds.