Are you a person that was ignored as a child? Did you feel invisible? Do you wonder if you are showing the signs in adulthood of a person who was ignored as a child. Instead of having parents that talked to you, understood you and supported you, did your parents ignore you or tell you it’s not a big deal, get over it or don’t be so sensitive.

• Fear, anger and resentment reside deep underneath, and it’s hard to explain.
• Do you have difficulty understanding your emotions?
• Difficult to connect to others authentically.
• Do you get stressed when you are expressing your authentic emotions?
• Do you avoid social situations? Do you sometimes isolate yourself?
• Do you have low self-worth? Parents that ignore send a message that you don’t matter.
• Do your emotional expressions come out angry? are you hiding anger?
• Fawning. People pleasing, agreeable, being super nice, asking lots of questions, meant to avoid conflict
• Are group dynamics overwhelming; feel pushed out; feel last in line.
• Are long silences in conversations uncomfortable, such that you fell you must always fill in the gaps with “um” and other filler words.
• Do you talk very fast so that you won’t take up the listeners time, out of “consideration”?
• Do you get overly intense in conversations because you fell you might not be listened to, believed or helped.
• Are you bragging too much? Are you exaggerating a lot?
• Do you feel awkward when you are the center of attention (birthdays, celebrations for example)
• Do you interrupt a lot or do you repeat yourself in conversations in order to be heard and believed?
• You get angry when you are asked to explain it again or repeat it, because you perceive it as a challenge?
• Hedging. You say “I don’t know, it’s just my opinion, maybe it’s just me, but…”
• You give too much information about yourself too soon when the best thing to do at the time is to just listen and be compassionate.
• You get “dysregulated” when some really really listens to you?
• Strategizing. Calculating. Do you sometimes not listen to others because you are focusing on what you will say next? Waiting for them to finish their sentence? It’s another sign you weren’t listen to as a child.

Fawning

Like the more well-known trauma responses, fawning is a coping strategy people employ to avoid further danger. Rather than trying to fight or escape (flight) the threat, the fawn response attempts to befriend it. They attempt to appease the other person. Here are some examples: ignoring your needs to take care of somebody else; ensuring that you are as helpful and friendly as possible; responding to criticism with praise or admiration; never being able to say no. Fawning is to love others more than yourself. Fawning is “being a doormat”. Fawning is surrendering boundaries and over accommodating. Fawning is saying what you know they want to hear.

While fawning is meant to neutralize danger, it also causes us to abandon our own needs, thereby reinforcing our wounds; thinking my value could only be found in my helpfulness or caretaking or caregiving.

Fawning is one of the four fear responses: fight, flight, freeze or fawn. Signs of fawning: self-isolation, shutting down your own emotions to satisfy the needs of others. Don’t forget to be kind to yourself. Remember, it’s not your fault. If you are fawning or freezing, try a flight response instead.

Dysregulation is an inability to control or regulate one’s emotional responses, which can lead to significant mood swings. It can involve many emotions, including sadness, anger, irritability, and frustration. Emotional dysregulation can lead to a lifetime of struggles, including problems with interpersonal relationships, school performance, and the inability to function effectively in a job or at work.

As Brene Brown puts in in Atlas of the Heart on page 175, “Given that we are all here to be seen, known and loved, invisibility is one of the most painful human experiences.”