This is one of the best articles I’ve read on Medium! Your tips for coping are really helpful and in my personal experience practicing most of these, they are really effective. I was in therapy last year for 6 months to help understand and overcome my traumatic childhood, I discovered that emotional neglect was a big issue. It’s hard to even recognise emotional neglect because it is the absence of something, as opposed to abuse which is the presence of something (being hit regularly in my case). It was easy for me to remember abuse but I was not even aware of neglect, even though neglect was by far the bigger issue in my childhood.

Since therapy, I’ve gone through the stages of grief, mourning the lack of love from my parents. I’m now in a good place of acceptance and sometimes I even feel sorry for my parents. It’s a relief for me to not feel angry and scared all the time. Practicing gratitude has helped a lot — recently I’ve been feeling thankful that my parents showed me how NOT to do it, so I can not make their mistakes with my son. In this way, they’ve helped me to be a better father.

This article will really help others to recognise childhood neglect in themselves, thank you!