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Silent Scars: Understanding Emotional Harm In Children · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, this is Kim Lee, Child, an adolescent psychotherapist.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is episode six in the ten-part series entitled Facing Psychological Reality.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in this particular episode, I'm talking about something that I've spoken about before in previous episodes, and it has to do with emotional harm.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the context in which that was offered before was to do with emotionally harmful relationships between adults.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I've spoken a good deal about this because it is something that I work with on an almost daily basis, and the effects upon those who are victims of coercive control, etc.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose the thing which my attention is so often focused upon is that emotional harm doesn't show in a physical sense, it shows in other subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: But today I want to turn my attention to children and what it looks like to suffer emotional harm and injury.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because when we think about harm, we often pay attention to that which is visible, a bruise or an obvious injury of some kind.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: But some of the most psychological wounds leave no visible physical marks at all because they occur quietly and repeatedly, and they occur in relationship.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: So because they're invisible, they're often minimized or missed entirely.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to talk about the fact that this experience, though leaving no bruises, does actually leave psychological wounds and scars.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Not just once, but repeatedly.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And repeatedly enough that the child begins to question their own emotional reality.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Children rely on adults to help them interpret reality.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: So if a parent says, I can see that, yes, I understand, the child learns that my feelings make sense and it's okay for me to have them and it's okay to voice them.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: But if a parent repeatedly spawns with you're imagining it, or that never happened, or you're overreacting or being dramatic, then the child might begin to think, my feelings aren't real.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I can't trust what I think and feel.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'm the problem.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is not to do with discipline or the the parent exercising discipline.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's about erosion.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: And erosion is quiet.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: One of the most destabilizing forms of emotional harm occurs when reality is persistently reframed in a way that invalidates the child's experience, that events are denied, responsibility is avoided, the emotional impact is minimized.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: And over the time that the child learns something very painful, which is that truth or my truth is unsafe.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And talking about it creates conflict.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: So it's easier to silence myself.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the result is not often rebellion, although it can be, but it's more likely to be withdrawal.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because if your experience is repeatedly dismissed, you stop communicating it, you simply suppress it.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now shame is an organizing force because when emotional harm frequently generates shame, not guilt, which says I did something wrong, but shame which says there is something wrong with me.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: If a child's distress is treated as inconvenience, weakness, or exaggeration, the child might internalize my feelings are unacceptable.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: I must hide part of myself.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: I am too much.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now this comes to life in the consulting room when I see children and young people who are unable to voice what they are authentically feeling because they've learned not to.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I might suggest to a child, when that happened, I can imagine you might have felt, and then I might go on to describe the emotion.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes children will say, No, it was fine.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, that learned suppressed and denied reaction-based reaction is quite common.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: But little by little, what happens in my experience, and I accept that I'm I'm looking at this from a clinical, but also personal perspective, you know, the child being the person, is that little by little the child will be able to begin to acknowledge that which has been dismissed or denied, and we start to put words to what the child is feeling.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of young people tell me that they trust me, and they trust me in their words because I am calm, because I don't judge, and because I listen.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm here to do.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: But what it tells me is that the observation that the young person has reflects the fact that this isn't a common experience for them.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And my endeavoring to help them find words, voice words, and tolerate the feelings that those words may generate or reflect, that learning to do that actually helps you to become okay, and it helps you to understand that your internal psychological reality is real.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: So shame reorganizes identity and it shapes how the child sees themselves.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: And because it operates internally, it's often invisible to others.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, emotional harm can be quite hard to detect because it doesn't always involve cruelty.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: It may occur in families where parents are stressed, overwhelmed, anxious, or carrying their own unresolved pain.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I see this too.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: I see parents who are really trying incredibly hard to do a whole host of things, but somewhere in that they lose sight of how they their own distress is internalized or experienced by their child.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: But it also sometimes is not so subtle.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, and particularly when there is acrimony or opposing parental styles, or where there is separation and divorce where parents are at entirely opposite ends of the relational spectrum, children can sometimes be used as vehicles.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that acrimony, disapproval, is voiced to the child about the other parent.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is incredibly harmful because it creates a wound inside the child which is extraordinarily hard to heal.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: So in such situations, I think of it as wounds that aren't treated heal badly and create scar tissue.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Compromising a child's sense of loyalty is, in my view, unforgivable.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: So it isn't it most often this this is this emotional harm occurs not because of malice, but it can happen even when intentions are benign.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because a child's nervous system doesn't measure intent, it measures experience, and repeated emotional misattunement can leave a child feeling chronically unsafe even in the absence of overt conflict, because the programming of the central nervous system has become something which is easily triggered.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: So when internal reality is repeatedly invalidated, children may become hypervigilant, overadaptive to please others, emotionally shut down, struggle with their sense of identity, doubt their perceptions, or experience anxiety without understanding why.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: And also that finds expression through their educational attainment, their relationships, because they develop a sense that they are intrinsically, fundamentally, there is something wrong or bad about them.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now repair is possible, and it's important to say this clearly.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: All parents misattune, or in simple language, miss the point.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: All parents get it wrong.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Emotional harm becomes a developmental injury when misattunement is persistent and unacknowledged, because that is it it is the case that children can tolerate misattunement so long as there is some repair of the misunderstanding, because that changes everything.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: And when a parent can say, I'm sorry, I misunderstood, or I I that I didn't realize at the time that you know that that might have been hard for you to hear, and it's it I was wrong.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't get that right, or just tell me more.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: The child experiences something really powerful, and essentially that's what happens in the consulting room.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: The child experiences that experiences this sense of what I've said and what I feel matters.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Repair restores trust in internal reality, and trust is foundational for psychological strength.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes parents fear that acknowledging a child's emotional experience will make them fragile.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, the complete opposite is true.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Children become fragile when they feel alone with their emotions.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: They become more resilient when emotions are understood and integrated.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: And sensitivity, when supported, becomes death.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: But when it becomes vulnerability, it's likely to be because it's been dismissed.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: So emotional harm without bruises is quiet.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make headlines, it's not always dramatic, but it shapes the way a child comes to experience themselves.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: So the task for parents is not about perfection, it's about presence, not flawless attunement, but a willingness to notice, reflect, and repair.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because when a child can trust their internal experience, they can face external reality without losing themselves.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the beginning of integration.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: I want to just say that emotional harm, the exact term, is understood and validated in law when we think about safeguarding.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I say this because very often, if I need to make a safeguarding referral, the basis upon which I make it has to fit into a particular safeguarding and risk category.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: When I explain in my referral that there is evidence of emotional harm, this is a very specific clinical definition that the experiences the child has had have harmed the child emotionally, and that the emotional harm is ongoing, and that the evidence for this can be demonstrated through my clinical observations about the child's presentation and the things they tell me.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: So it isn't a kind of throwaway term, you know, it has legal and clinical depth to it.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I say that emotional is something which can be repaired, but in more extreme cases, there has to be a preparedness to do that repair work.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I encounter parents who justify their actions, do not see or are not prepared to take responsibility for the damage that they've caused.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that puts us into a different position, a different situation.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because the protection of children isn't just physical, it's psychological as well.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: In the next episode, we're going to explore anxiety and how it develops, what it protects against, and how it can signal that something internally hasn't been fully processed.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because anxiety is not random.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like a cold virus.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's often the mind's attempt to manage something deeper.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.