The quest to un­der­stand that peo­ple’s be­hav­iour is a prod­uct of their ear­ly-life ex­pe­ri­ences has been a per­son­al one for decades.

Ear­li­er in my life, I had great dif­fi­cul­ty man­ag­ing my emo­tions, erupt­ing with over­ly in­tense re­ac­tions of­ten dis­pro­por­tion­ate to the sit­u­a­tion. This most­ly drew the ire of peo­ple and elicit­ed harsh judge­ment be­cause peo­ple were most­ly with­out the knowl­edge of the dis­tress I suf­fered and the im­pact on my life.

No one knew my pri­vate dis­may af­ter an out­burst. The in­ten­si­ty of my emo­tions and some­times volatile re­ac­tions would leave me ex­haust­ed, moody, ir­ri­ta­ble and very of­ten car­ry­ing guilt, shame, and a promise to be bet­ter, which I seemed nev­er able to keep.

Emo­tion­al dys­reg­u­la­tion was what I found in the lit­er­a­ture to ex­plain those times. De­fined as a con­di­tion where a per­son can­not man­age emo­tion­al re­spons­es ef­fec­tive­ly, lead­ing to in­tense and dis­pro­por­tion­ate re­ac­tions to stim­uli, this cap­tured my at­ten­tion and led me on the jour­ney.

Now, when I see vi­o­lent or volatile sit­u­a­tions, I first have com­pas­sion for the vic­tim. But as well, I hold space for the per­pe­tra­tor, in­ter­ro­gat­ing the con­duct/be­hav­iour of the lat­ter with pained emo­tions for what they may have suf­fered that make them in­flict suf­fer­ing on oth­ers.

Sus­pend­ing judge­ment is a de­ci­sion. I learned to leap be­yond my first re­ac­tion to peo­ple’s ac­tion and see the per­son be­hind the ac­tion from years of prac­tise and a firm de­ci­sion not to be too quick to judge or con­clude with as­sump­tions from my ex­pe­ri­ence. Rather, I choose kind­ness for peo­ple first es­pe­cial­ly be­cause peo­ple’s judg­ments con­tin­ue to hurt me.

De­spite my prac­tised re­sponse, my mind still har­bours ill feel­ings, but I am most­ly able to go be­yond the first im­pulse. Last week, look­ing at the im­age of the man ac­cused of killing Mer­cedez Layne, I imag­ined so many ways to harm him, but I land­ed on the thought that some­thing broke in him.

Child­hood ne­glect is one of those root caus­es of dys­reg­u­la­tion in adult­hood and the fo­cus of this week’s trau­ma in­stal­ment.

The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO, 1999) de­fines child ne­glect say­ing:

“ . . . the fail­ure to pro­vide for the de­vel­op­ment of the child in all spheres: health, ed­u­ca­tion, emo­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, nu­tri­tion, shel­ter, and safe liv­ing con­di­tions, in the con­text of re­sources rea­son­ably avail­able to the fam­i­ly or care­tak­ers, and caus­es or has a high prob­a­bil­i­ty of caus­ing harm to the child’s health or phys­i­cal, men­tal, spir­i­tu­al, moral, or so­cial de­vel­op­ment. This in­cludes the fail­ure to prop­er­ly su­per­vise and pro­tect chil­dren from harm as much as is fea­si­ble.”

Ne­glect is broad ac­cord­ing to this de­f­i­n­i­tion en­com­pass­ing all as­pects of a child’s life and well­be­ing and caus­ing all-round long-term in­jury.

Child­hood ne­glect is more preva­lent than we may recog­nise or ad­mit but has pro­found­ly se­ri­ous con­se­quences in both the short- and long-term of peo­ple’s life.

“Ne­glect is the most com­mon and, in many cas­es, the most se­vere form of child mal­treat­ment, sur­pass­ing even phys­i­cal and sex­u­al abuse in preva­lence... How­ev­er, ne­glect con­tin­ues to be the most dif­fi­cult form of child mal­treat­ment to de­tect since, un­like oth­er forms, it does not in­volve a proac­tive act to­ward the child but rather con­sti­tutes mal­treat­ment by omis­sion” (Her­rero-Roldan & Mar­tin-Ro­driguez, 2025).

Ne­glect pro­found­ly al­ters a per­son’s ner­vous sys­tem and self-worth, say re­searchers. In adult­hood, these trau­mat­ic ear­ly-life ex­pe­ri­ences show up as a deep-root­ed fear of aban­don­ment, chron­ic strug­gles with emo­tion­al reg­u­la­tion, and per­va­sive feel­ings of shame or un­wor­thi­ness.

“Ne­glect can al­so re­sult in emo­tion­al is­sues, such as low self-con­fi­dence and neg­a­tive self-im­age, and can con­tribute to the de­vel­op­ment of psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­or­ders such as de­pres­sion, post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der (PTSD), and anx­i­ety dis­or­ders” (Si­mon et al, 2024).

But un­re­solved trau­ma may look dif­fer­ent on every­one.

The lit­er­a­ture says in ad­di­tion to men­tal health chal­lenges, ne­glect re­sults in re­la­tion­ship and at­tach­ment strug­gles with peo­ple de­vel­op­ing ei­ther an at­tach­ment or avoid­ance style ei­ther be­com­ing peo­ple-pleasers or avoid­ing the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of emo­tion­al in­ti­ma­cy by iso­lat­ing them­selves.

Self-es­teem and iden­ti­ty is­sues de­vel­op be­cause ne­glect teach­es a child that their feel­ings do not mat­ter. Chil­dren grow in­to adults who in­ter­nal­ly dis­miss­es their own emo­tions and con­tin­u­ous­ly dis­count their own feel­ings. And as well, may ex­pe­ri­ence long-term neu­ro­log­i­cal changes and some vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to phys­i­cal health is­sues.

Weir (2014) writes:

“The list of prob­lems that stem from ne­glect reads like the in­dex of The Di­ag­nos­tic and Sta­tis­ti­cal Man­u­al of Men­tal Dis­or­ders (DSM): poor im­pulse con­trol, so­cial with­draw­al, prob­lems with cop­ing and reg­u­lat­ing emo­tions, low self-es­teem, patho­log­i­cal be­hav­iours such as tics, tantrums, steal­ing and self-pun­ish­ment, poor in­tel­lec­tu­al func­tion­ing and low aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment.”

De­spite the pro­found ef­fects of child­hood ne­glect, the brain’s neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty al­lows for heal­ing. Be­cause these wounds form dur­ing im­pres­sion­able de­vel­op­men­tal years, heal­ing them usu­al­ly re­quires in­ten­tion­al, spe­cialised care, says very­well­minds.com.

My par­ents were good providers in their cir­cum­stance, so it took a while to re­alise I was grow­ing up ab­ject­ly poor and even longer to recog­nise how a com­bi­na­tion of many oth­er ear­ly-life fac­tors im­pact­ed my men­tal well­be­ing.

To­day, with­out much ma­te­r­i­al at­trib­ut­es, my wealth must be count­ed as recog­nis­ing and ad­mit­ting there was a prob­lem and mak­ing fi­nan­cial in­vest­ments in ther­a­peu­tic in­ter­ven­tions.