Somatic Tao

Somatic Tao Simple, effective relief for stress and trauma PLEASE NOTE: Somatic Tao does NOT use Messenger. Please contact: [email protected]

SOMATIC TAO is the home of BEN – Babyhood Emotional Neglect – and a developing therapeutic framework for understanding how insufficient emotional attunement and co-regulation during babyhood can shape the developing nervous system and affect emotional, psychological and physical health throughout life.
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At the centre of Somatic Tao is the proposition that emotional neglect is not sim

ply the absence of good parenting. During babyhood, when the nervous system depends upon caregiver co-regulation, insufficient emotional attunement can result in internally mobilising emotion becoming organised as threat within the developing nervous system.
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Somatic Tao explores how this early adaptation may influence our later capacity to remain embodied with emotion, regulate autonomic state, experience aliveness, maintain relationships and respond flexibly to the demands of life.
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Central to the framework are:

• BEN – Babyhood Emotional Neglect: the developmental problem
• Emotology: understanding emotion as embodied energy and information
• Emoturity: the nervous system's capacity to remain embodied with emotion while maintaining coherence, flexibility and flow
• BEA – Babyhood Emotional Attunement: the relational conditions through which emotional capacity can develop
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Somatic Tao integrates contemporary understanding of developmental trauma, attachment, affective neuroscience and nervous-system regulation with the embodied understanding of emotion and health found within classical Taoist medicine.
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The framework is informed by, amongst others, the work of John Bowlby, Peter Levine and Stephen Porges, alongside emerging research into early development, emotional neglect, trauma and nervous-system organisation.
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This page exists primarily to EDUCATE, EXPLORE and DEVELOP understanding of BEN and its potential lifelong consequences, and to provide information about the developing Somatic Tao framework for adults seeking to understand the impact of their earliest emotional environment.
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Somatic Tao content is provided for educational and informational purposes. It is not intended to provide individual medical, psychological or therapeutic advice, diagnosis or treatment, nor should it replace appropriate professional healthcare.

THE TAO OF SENSE OF ANNIHILATIONIn recent posts, Somatic Tao has been exploring the connection between BEN, Babyhood Emo...
31/08/2026

THE TAO OF SENSE OF ANNIHILATION

In recent posts, Somatic Tao has been exploring the connection between BEN, Babyhood Emotional Neglect, CPTSD, existential threat and sense of horror.

Historically, horror has been classified in relation to both fear and disgust [1], although this does not establish horror as a combination of the two. More recently Dr Karl Albrecht, author of Social Intelligence, has argued that horror is underpinned by fear of annihilation – a primary existential anxiety involving bodily destruction, predation or absolute death [2]. This implies that BEN might somehow involve fear of annihilation. Yet with BEN there is no obvious destruction of the body, predation or cause of possible death.

In the previous post Somatic Tao proposed that the horror may involve opposing emoto-somatic movements: the Yin downward contraction of terror and the Yang upward expulsion of disgust, driving Yin and Yang away from one another. From a Taoist perspective, this proposal has other implications regarding sense of annihilation.

According to the Classical Chinese text of The Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor, the Huang Nei Jing, specifically the third chapter of the Suwen (素问 - Basic Questions):

“Only when Yin remains calm and harmonious will the yang qi be contained and not overly expansive, the spirit normal, and the mind clear.

If the yin and the yang separate, the jing/essence and the shen/spirit will also leave each other” [3].

This passage describes the interplay of Yin and Yang as fundamental to health. Life depends upon Yin and Yang remaining dynamically interrelated, whilst their separation corresponds ultimately to death.

Somatic Tao is not proposing that BEN causes the infant’s Yin and Yang to literally separate as in physical death. Rather, the proposal concerns the felt sense of a powerful, internal movement of pulling apart. If horror involves the Yin movement of terror powerfully pulling away from the Yang movement of disgust, might this movement towards separation carry an embodied sense of impending dissolution of self?

Could horror feel annihilatory because its emotology reproduces the directional signature of dying?

Somatic Tao proposes that, without adequate co-regulation, mobilisation of emotion energy may escalate towards the opposing emoto-somatic movements of terror and disgust – an internal pulling apart experienced as the existential dread of horror and sense of impending death.

Perhaps Taoism offers an explanation for how the body's own defensive movements could generate experiences of sufficient magnitude to approach Winnicott's “primitive agonies”.

MORE INFORMATION:

📌 UNDERSTANDING COMPLEX PTSD, (CPTSD)
https://facebook.com/share/p/1Db2cEH3mK/

📌 MEET BEN – BABYHOOD EMOTIONAL NEGLECT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1UoSjqTnxJ/

📌 THE THREAT IN BEN
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BR3rEVGsE/

📌 EMOTIONAL NEGLECT AS PSYCHOLOGICAL THREAT
https://facebook.com/share/p/1Hb1Bz4RZ5/

📌 THE PRIMITIVE AGONIES OF BEN
https://facebook.com/share/p/19PUkViLFy/

📌 WHAT IS THE EXISTENTIAL THREAT IN EMOTIONAL NEGLECT?
https://facebook.com/share/p/197SQz922U/

📌 THE EMOTOLOGY OF EXISTENTIAL THREAT
https://facebook.com/share/p/1N3Tf9AKxz/

📌 THE ISSUE IS NOT EMOTION ITSELF
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DC6LBRo7F/

📌 THE MISSING IN EMOTIONAL NEGLECT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1LVG1zYHBx/

📌 BEHAVIOUR IS EMOTOLOGY
https://www.facebook.com/share/1P39SDPgjp/

📌 EMOTURITY – NERVOUS SYSTEM EMOTIONAL MATURITY:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16Hh4tXebz/

📌 EMOTURITY AFFECTS HEALTH & LIFE:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/152MdeR72ew/

📌 EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IS NOT EMOTURITY:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/15HmjdyGMc/

📌 BEN CHANGES WIRING OF THE BRAIN:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1A2TFYgTt6/

RESEARCH:

[1] Cowen, A. S., & Keltner, D. Self-report captures 27 distinct categories
of emotion bridged by continuous gradients. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 114, 2017
E7900–E7909. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1702247114

[2] Albrecht, K., The (Only) 5 Fears We All Share - When we know where they really come from, we can start to control them, Psychology Today, 2012, https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/brainsnacks/201203/the-only-5-fears-we-all-share [2026 08 26]

[3] Ni, Maoshing, The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Medicine: A New Translation of the Neijing Suwen with Commentary, p.11, Shambhala Publications, 1995













30/08/2026

SOOTHING SUNDAY - Meditating with Ancients ...

Come and meditate with
Some ancient Beings.
Yew trees aged
500 to 900 years old.
Symbols of regeneration
With a red heart.








WHEN NOTHING IS THE THREATEmotional neglect is sometimes understood as simply the absence of something good. Kathrin Sta...
28/08/2026

WHEN NOTHING IS THE THREAT

Emotional neglect is sometimes understood as simply the absence of something good. Kathrin Stauffer captures why it can be far more consequential than that.

For a baby, indifference is not neutral. When distress, fear or other internally mobilising emotion meets with nothing, there is no caregiver response to help the developing nervous system remain embodied with what has arisen.

This is the territory of Babyhood Emotional Neglect (BEN): not only what happens to the baby, but what happens WITHIN the baby when nobody responds.

MORE INFORMATION:

📌 MEET BEN – BABYHOOD EMOTIONAL NEGLECT:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1UoSjqTnxJ/

📌 THE THREAT IN BEN:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BHBRhLTpY/

📌 EMOTIONAL NEGLECT AS PSYCHOLOGICAL THREAT
https://facebook.com/share/p/1Hb1Bz4RZ5/

📌 WHAT IS THE EXISTENTIAL THREAT IN EMOTIONAL NEGLECT?
https://facebook.com/share/p/197SQz922U/

📌 THE ISSUE IS NOT EMOTION ITSELF
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DC6LBRo7F/

📌 EMOTION WIRES THE NERVOUS SYSTEM:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BbHRZub7o/

📌 BEHAVIOUR IS EMOTOLOGY:
https://www.facebook.com/share/1P39SDPgjp/

📌 EMOTURITY – NERVOUS SYSTEM EMOTIONAL MATURITY:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17xwXG7Fip/

📌 THE MISSING IN EMOTIONAL NEGLECT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1LVG1zYHBx/
📌 EVIDENCE BEN IS INTERGENERATIONAL:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19qoVjjsmq/

📌 Situations of Risk of BEN 1 – 6:
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/15kqeh5FPz/

📌 Situations of Risk of BEN 7 – 12:
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/162dvUJZTu/

📌 Situations of Risk of BEN 13 – 18:
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1FMbewz9EA/

📌 BEN & CAREGIVER PARENTING STYLE – USE OF “CALM DOWN”:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1fS3NDTsDs/

📌 BEN & VERBAL ABUSE AT HOME:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Ck6ueHUmR/











THE EMOTOLOGY OF EXISTENTIAL THREATOver sixty years ago paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Woods Winnicott proposed ...
26/08/2026

THE EMOTOLOGY OF EXISTENTIAL THREAT

Over sixty years ago paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Woods Winnicott proposed that failure of the infant's emotionally “holding” environment could give rise to unthinkable agonies associated with physical and psychological annihilation [1]. More recently, new research has proposed that experiences of emotional neglect may fall within domains of existential and relational threat [2]. Yet, what might be happening within the baby’s nervous system for emotional neglect to create experiences of such magnitude?

Exploration of “existential threat” leads to characteristics of existential dread, helplessness, anticipatory grief, chronic anxiety and “objectless fear”. “Objectless” because, unlike fear directed towards an identifiable predator, there is said to be no specific target [3]. Instead, existential dread is said to be abstract, or associated with vast, intangible threats such as climate collapse or nuclear winter [4]. But is that actually so? Perhaps existential threat is not objectless at all. Perhaps, in BEN, the “object” of threat has moved inside.

From a Somatic Tao perspective, BEN leads to the nervous system organising around the body’s emotions as an internal threat. A threat that is energetic rather than material and so possible to categorise as abstract or invisible. A threat that cannot simply be escaped and, more importantly, one that may become excessive and intolerable within.

Viewed through the lens of Emotology, when something is experienced as contaminating or noxious, the nervous system mobilises disgust to reject and expel. Might the same Yang expulsive movement be mobilised against emotion energy that has become excessive and intolerable to remain embodied with? But what if the body is simultaneously contracted through the Yin mobilisation of terror? Somatic Tao proposes that the result may be an internal conflict: intense mobilisation alongside profound inhibition. All can culminate in rootedness, restricted breath, immobility, a frozen or screaming face, a sinking feeling in the stomach and rising nausea. Together, these begin to describe the felt-sense experience of horror.

Historically, horror has indeed been classified in relation to both fear and disgust [5], although more recent research suggests that horror is experientially distinguishable from both, and particularly associated with severe or abnormal harm [6]. This does not establish horror as a combination of fear and disgust. Somatic Tao proposes something different: that the distinctive felt experience of horror may involve conflict between the opposing emoto-somatic movements of terror and disgust:

• Unmet needs within BEN lead to internally mobilising emotion energy;

• continued unmet need and absence of sufficient co-regulation escalate the mobilisation towards terror;

• terror contracts in response to the internal threat, whilst disgust attempts to expel what has become intolerable within;

• simultaneous mobilisation of these opposing defensive movements may create an emoto-somatic conflict experienced as the existential dread of horror – a response to something experienced as already happening or having happened.

All reveals how BEN can lead to simultaneous incompatible defensive directions: the infant cannot escape a threat experienced within the body, yet neither can it expel what is part of the body or energetic in nature. The catastrophic internal state isn’t merely anticipated. It is actually happening: the complex, heavy emotional state of existential dread associated with possible annihilation – the territory Winnicott described through the “primitive agonies.”

MORE INFORMATION:

📌 UNDERSTANDING COMPLEX PTSD, (CPTSD)
https://facebook.com/share/p/1Db2cEH3mK/

📌 MEET BEN – BABYHOOD EMOTIONAL NEGLECT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1UoSjqTnxJ/

📌 THE THREAT IN BEN
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BR3rEVGsE/

📌 EMOTIONAL NEGLECT AS PSYCHOLOGICAL THREAT
https://facebook.com/share/p/1Hb1Bz4RZ5/

📌 THE PRIMITIVE AGONIES OF BEN
https://facebook.com/share/p/19PUkViLFy/

📌 WHAT IS THE EXISTENTIAL THREAT IN EMOTIONAL NEGLECT?
https://facebook.com/share/p/197SQz922U/

📌 THE ISSUE IS NOT EMOTION ITSELF
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DC6LBRo7F/

📌 THE MISSING IN EMOTIONAL NEGLECT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1LVG1zYHBx/

📌 BEHAVIOUR IS EMOTOLOGY
https://www.facebook.com/share/1P39SDPgjp/

📌 EMOTURITY – NERVOUS SYSTEM EMOTIONAL MATURITY:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16Hh4tXebz/

📌 EMOTURITY AFFECTS HEALTH & LIFE:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/152MdeR72ew/

📌 EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IS NOT EMOTURITY:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/15HmjdyGMc/

📌 BEN CHANGES WIRING OF THE BRAIN:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1A2TFYgTt6/

📌 BEN's NEUROINFLAMMATION:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Foy23rEjq/

📌 DSM LABELS of BEN:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17NRmtgiyo/

RESEARCH:

[1] Winnicott, D. W. (1974). Fear of Breakdown. International Review of Psycho-Analysis, 1, 103-107. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1745-8315.12148

[2] D. Draczyńska, A. Nowakowska, M. Anczewska, Is emotional neglect the first psychological threat? Differentiating ICD-11 PTSD and complex PTSD with comorbid anxiety and depression, Journal of Psychiatric Research, Volume 191, 2025, Pages 138-147, ISSN 0022-3956, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2025.09.017

[3] Mowat, S.M. How do we understand anxiety? A Heideggerian
approach to modern psychiatry. The University of Edinburgh. 2009. https://era.ed.ac.uk/server/api/core/bitstreams/e5951196-e0cf-4535-be33-1172275f5ce8/content [2026 08 16]

[4] Lyon, H.Z., How to Cope With Existential Dread: Evidence-Based Strategies That Actually Help. therapistsinbaltimore.com. 2026. https://www.therapistsinbaltimore.com/therapy-insights-blog/2026/7/2/how-to-cope-with-existential-dread-evidence-based-strategies-that-actually-help [2026 08 16]

[5] Cowen, A. S., & Keltner, D. Self-report captures 27 distinct categories
of emotion bridged by continuous gradients. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 114, 2017
E7900–E7909. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1702247114

[6] Taylor PM, Uchida Y. Horror, fear, and moral disgust are differentially elicited by different types of harm. Emotion. 2022 Mar;22(2):346-361. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/emo0001061












THE PRIMITIVE AGONIES OF BENRecent research has proposed that experiences of emotional neglect may fall within the domai...
24/08/2026

THE PRIMITIVE AGONIES OF BEN

Recent research has proposed that experiences of emotional neglect may fall within the domains of existential and relational threats that shape individual vulnerability [1].

Such a proposal should not be viewed as revelatory. Over 50 years ago, English paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Woods Winnicott described the catastrophic consequences of failure in the child's emotionally “holding” environment [2]. Such experiences can be understood as a structural trauma felt as literal, physical, and psychological annihilation.

Emotional holding is particularly critical in the period of “absolute dependence” if ego integration and a stable continuity of being are to develop [3-4]. Winnicott proposed that failure of such holding could give rise to “primitive agonies” with corresponding psychic defences – interpreted here as follows:

• A return to an unintegrated state – the terrifying sensation of physically and fundamentally falling apart, shattering or scattering into pieces. DEFENCE – pre-emptive disintegration.

• Falling forever – an unresolvable, bottomless dread of having no support; a literal feeling of cosmic, endless dropping. DEFENCE – self-holding.

• Loss of psychosomatic collusion – failure of indwelling (interpretable as somatic dissociation). DEFENCE – depersonalisation.

• Loss of the sense of real – feeling like a ghost moving through a hollow world. DEFENCE – exploitation of primary narcissism.

• Loss of the capacity to relate to objects – the utter destruction of the ability to form a meaningful connection. DEFENCE – states relating only to self-phenomena.

N.B. Winnicott stated the above was not an all-encompassing list.

Crucially, Winnicott did not regard these defences as the breakdown itself. They protected against an underlying primitive agony that was, in his words, “unthinkable”. His striking proposition was that the later fear of breakdown is fear of a breakdown that has, in some sense, already occurred – but at a stage when the immature ego could not integrate the experience.

More than sixty years before contemporary developmental neuroscience could offer the mechanistic explanations available today, Winnicott was describing the catastrophic subjective consequences of failure in the infant's facilitating environment. Viewed through the lens of BEN, his primitive agonies offer a striking phenomenological account of what profound failure of emotional holding during babyhood may mean to a nervous system in absolute dependence. This raises the possibility that BEN may provide a contemporary emoto-neurobiological hypothesis for why the “primitive agonies” inferred by Winnicott could arise in the first place.

Yet, what is happening within the baby’s nervous system that makes failures of emotional holding capable of producing experiences of such existential magnitude?

MORE INFORMATION:

📌 UNDERSTANDING COMPLEX PTSD, (CPTSD)
https://facebook.com/share/p/1Db2cEH3mK/

📌 MEET BEN – BABYHOOD EMOTIONAL NEGLECT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1UoSjqTnxJ/

📌 THE THREAT IN BEN
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BR3rEVGsE/

📌 EMOTIONAL NEGLECT AS PSYCHOLOGICAL THREAT
https://facebook.com/share/p/1Hb1Bz4RZ5/

📌 WHAT IS THE EXISTENTIAL THREAT IN EMOTIONAL NEGLECT?
https://facebook.com/share/p/197SQz922U/

📌 THE ISSUE IS NOT EMOTION ITSELF
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DC6LBRo7F/

📌 THE MISSING IN EMOTIONAL NEGLECT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1LVG1zYHBx/

📌 BEHAVIOUR IS EMOTOLOGY
https://www.facebook.com/share/1P39SDPgjp/

📌 EMOTURITY – NERVOUS SYSTEM EMOTIONAL MATURITY:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16Hh4tXebz/

📌 EMOTURITY AFFECTS HEALTH & LIFE:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/152MdeR72ew/

📌 EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IS NOT EMOTURITY:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/15HmjdyGMc/

📌 BEN CHANGES WIRING OF THE BRAIN:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1A2TFYgTt6/

📌 BEN's NEUROINFLAMMATION:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Foy23rEjq/

📌 DSM LABELS of BEN:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17NRmtgiyo/

📌 BEN’s RISK OF ADHD
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1EAaz3vLjR/

RESEARCH:

[1] D. Draczyńska, A. Nowakowska, M. Anczewska, Is emotional neglect the first psychological threat? Differentiating ICD-11 PTSD and complex PTSD with comorbid anxiety and depression, Journal of Psychiatric Research, Volume 191, 2025, Pages 138-147, ISSN 0022-3956, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2025.09.017

[2] Winnicott, D. W. (1974). Fear of Breakdown. International Review of Psycho-Analysis, 1, 103-107. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1745-8315.12148

[3] Su-qing Meng, Bao-yu Bai, Cheng-zhi Bai, Silu Shrestha, Yi-zhen Ren. Invalidating environment and meaning in life: The Chain Mediating Effects of regulatory emotional self-efficacy and basic psychological needs satisfaction, Child Abuse & Neglect, Volume 151, 2024, 106736, ISSN 0145-2134
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2024.106736

[4] Winnicott C. Fear of breakdown: a clinical example. Int J Psychoanal. 1980;61(3):351-7. PMID: 7440074. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7440074/













23/08/2026

SOOTHING SUNDAY – Sparkles and Threads...

Enjoy following
Some sparkles and threads.












WHEN PHYSICAL NEEDS COME FIRSTThe physical needs of a baby are usually easy to see. Emotional needs can be much easier t...
21/08/2026

WHEN PHYSICAL NEEDS COME FIRST

The physical needs of a baby are usually easy to see. Emotional needs can be much easier to miss – particularly when family life becomes difficult and time, energy and attention are stretched.

Meeting a physical need may also change the outward signs of distress: the hungry baby is fed; the crying stops. Yet cessation of distress does not necessarily tell us that emotional co-regulation has occurred, or that the developing nervous system has experienced safety.

Perhaps this is one of the ways emotional neglect can occur without ever being intended.

MORE INFORMATION:

📌 UNDERSTANDING COMPLEX PTSD, (CPTSD)
https://facebook.com/share/p/1Db2cEH3mK/

📌 MEET BEN – BABYHOOD EMOTIONAL NEGLECT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1UoSjqTnxJ/

📌 THE THREAT IN BEN
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BR3rEVGsE/

📌 EMOTIONAL NEGLECT AS PSYCHOLOGICAL THREAT
https://facebook.com/share/p/1Hb1Bz4RZ5/

📌 THE ISSUE IS NOT EMOTION ITSELF
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DC6LBRo7F/

📌 THE MISSING IN EMOTIONAL NEGLECT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1LVG1zYHBx/

📌 BEHAVIOUR IS EMOTOLOGY
https://www.facebook.com/share/1P39SDPgjp/

📌 EMOTURITY – NERVOUS SYSTEM EMOTIONAL MATURITY:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16Hh4tXebz/

📌 EMOTURITY AFFECTS HEALTH & LIFE:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/152MdeR72ew/

📌 WHERE THERE IS FLOW THERE IS AGENCY
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1F2cmjg3He/

📌 EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IS NOT EMOTURITY:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/15HmjdyGMc/

📌 EMOTURITY IS BUILT ON NEUROPLASTICITY
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1CFA4pMemf/

📌 BEN CHANGES WIRING OF THE BRAIN:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1A2TFYgTt6/










WHAT IS THE EXISTENTIAL THREAT IN EMOTIONAL NEGLECT?Neglected forms of trauma, particularly relational and developmental...
19/08/2026

WHAT IS THE EXISTENTIAL THREAT IN EMOTIONAL NEGLECT?

Neglected forms of trauma, particularly relational and developmental adversity, remain underrepresented in traditional diagnostic models of PTSD [1]. Now mainstream psychiatric research has taken an important step towards recognising something Somatic Tao has been arguing for some time.

A recent study exploring emotional neglect and CPTSD found emotional neglect to be the strongest and most consistent predictor of CPTSD, as well as a significant predictor of PTSD symptom severity [2].

The authors report that their findings support the Memory and Identity Theory of CPTSD [3] and resonate with the General Process Model of Threat and Defense [4]. The latter suggests emotional neglect may belong within broader domains of psychological threat, including relational and existential threat. They conclude that emotional neglect appears to function as a foundational psychological threat. This raises a fundamental question: what might the existential threat in emotional neglect actually be?

With many forms of trauma, something threatening happens. Emotional neglect is different. Its defining developmental condition is an absence – insufficient emotional responsiveness, attunement and co-regulation. How can the absence of something drive a sense of existential threat? Because what is absent externally still has consequences internally.

Existential threat does not necessarily require an identifiable external object. It concerns fundamental threats to survival, security and continued existence and can be accompanied by profound vulnerability, dread and helplessness.

Yet this presents a developmental problem. A baby cannot cognitively understand abandonment, mortality or existential danger. It cannot think, “I may not survive this.” Nonetheless, its nervous system can experience intense physiological and emotional mobilisation when its needs remain unmet. This distinction may be crucial.

From a Somatic Tao perspective, unmet needs mobilise emotion energy, while the absence of adequate co-regulation leaves the baby without sufficient external support to remain embodied with that mobilisation. This leads to a different hypothesis about where the threat of emotional neglect ultimately resides:

The existential threat in emotional neglect may not be what is absent, but what happens inside the body because of the absence.

Without sufficient co-regulation, internally mobilising emotion can become overwhelming. The developing nervous system may consequently organise around its own emotion energy as something threatening.

Emotional neglect may therefore be the developmental process through which the nervous system comes to experience its own internally mobilising emotion energy as existential threat.

Rather than CPTSD being the starting point, CPTSD may be one possible later expression of a nervous system organised around internal emotional mobilisation as danger.

Somatic Tao takes us one step further upstream:

• The external absence creates an internal state.
• The internal state becomes the threat inside.

MORE INFORMATION:

📌 UNDERSTANDING COMPLEX PTSD, (CPTSD)
https://facebook.com/share/p/1Db2cEH3mK/

📌 MEET BEN – BABYHOOD EMOTIONAL NEGLECT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1UoSjqTnxJ/

📌 THE THREAT IN BEN
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BR3rEVGsE/

📌 EMOTIONAL NEGLECT AS PSYCHOLOGICAL THREAT
https://facebook.com/share/p/1Hb1Bz4RZ5/

📌 THE ISSUE IS NOT EMOTION ITSELF
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DC6LBRo7F/

📌 THE MISSING IN EMOTIONAL NEGLECT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1LVG1zYHBx/

📌 BEHAVIOUR IS EMOTOLOGY
https://www.facebook.com/share/1P39SDPgjp/

📌 EMOTURITY – NERVOUS SYSTEM EMOTIONAL MATURITY:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16Hh4tXebz/

📌 EMOTURITY AFFECTS HEALTH & LIFE:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/152MdeR72ew/

📌 WHERE THERE IS FLOW THERE IS AGENCY
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1F2cmjg3He/

📌 EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IS NOT EMOTURITY:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/15HmjdyGMc/

📌 EMOTURITY IS BUILT ON NEUROPLASTICITY
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1CFA4pMemf/

📌 BEN CHANGES WIRING OF THE BRAIN:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1A2TFYgTt6/

📌 BEN's NEUROINFLAMMATION:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Foy23rEjq/

📌 DSM LABELS of BEN:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17NRmtgiyo/

📌 BEN’s RISK OF ADHD
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1EAaz3vLjR/

RESEARCH:

[1] C.R. Brewin, F. Rumball, F. Happé, Neglected causes of post-traumatic stress disorder. BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 365 (2019), Article l2372, https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l2372

[2] D. Draczyńska, A. Nowakowska, M. Anczewska, Is emotional neglect the first psychological threat? Differentiating ICD-11 PTSD and complex PTSD with comorbid anxiety and depression, Journal of Psychiatric Research, Volume 191, 2025, Pages 138-147, ISSN 0022-3956, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2025.09.017

[3] P. Hyland, M. Shevlin, C.R. Brewin. The memory and identity theory of ICD-11 complex posttraumatic stress disorder. Psychol. Rev., 130 (4) (2023), pp. 1044-1065. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000418

[4] S. Reiss, E. Leen‐Thomele, J. Klackl, E. Jonas. Exploring the landscape of psychological threat: a cartography of threats and threat responses Social and Personality Psychol. Compass, 15 (4) (2021), https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12588












THE MISSING IN EMOTIONAL NEGLECTRecent research has identified emotional neglect as a foundational psychological threat,...
17/08/2026

THE MISSING IN EMOTIONAL NEGLECT

Recent research has identified emotional neglect as a foundational psychological threat, disrupting identity, self-regulation and relational security [1]. Significantly, it was also the strongest and most consistent predictor of CPTSD.

In light of their findings the authors make three important recommendations:

1. Patients presenting with affective dysregulation, negative self-concept and relational difficulties should be routinely assessed for chronic emotional neglect.

2. Patients with CPTSD should be offered trauma-focused therapies (e.g., EMDR, TF-CBT) with skills addressing affect regulation and interpersonal functioning (e.g., STAIR, DBT).

3. Healthcare and educational systems should recognise neglect as a major, yet often hidden, determinant of mental health.

Whilst these are positive steps forward, something striking remains absent: consideration of what emotional neglect may have done to the developing nervous system itself, specifically its capacity to remain embodied with emotion energy. Whilst the recommended therapies work with emotion and affect regulation, none explicitly conceptualise the therapeutic task as building emoturity – the nervous system's capacity to remain embodied and in coherence and flow in the presence of emotion energy. Instead, the focus remains on symptoms, affect regulation and interpersonal functioning rather than the developmental organisation underlying the nervous system's relationship with emotion energy.

From a Somatic Tao perspective, emotional dysregulation indicates more than emotion needing regulation. It indicates a developmental nervous system organisation altered by emotional neglect. When early co-regulation is insufficient or absent, the nervous system becomes organised around emotion energy as a threat. Its ability to develop emoturity becomes compromised, changing the behaviour of body and mind to protect biological integrity.

If emotional dysregulation reflects adaptation to emotion energy experienced as threat, then a therapeutic focus on regulation alone does not address the developmental organisation underlying it. The issue is not the emotion energy itself, but how the nervous system has come to experience it and organise the body and mind around it. If emotional neglect compromises the development of the nervous system's capacity to remain embodied with emotion energy, shouldn’t building that capacity itself be recognised as a central therapeutic objective?

MORE INFORMATION:

📌 UNDERSTANDING COMPLEX PTSD, (CPTSD)
https://facebook.com/share/p/1Db2cEH3mK/

📌 MEET BEN – BABYHOOD EMOTIONAL NEGLECT
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1UoSjqTnxJ/

📌 THE THREAT IN BEN
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BR3rEVGsE/

📌 EMOTIONAL NEGLECT AS PSYCHOLOGICAL THREAT
https://facebook.com/share/p/1Hb1Bz4RZ5/

📌 THE ISSUE IS NOT EMOTION ITSELF
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DC6LBRo7F/

📌 BEHAVIOUR IS EMOTOLOGY
https://www.facebook.com/share/1P39SDPgjp/

📌 EMOTURITY – NERVOUS SYSTEM EMOTIONAL MATURITY
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16Hh4tXebz/

📌 EMOTURITY AFFECTS HEALTH & LIFE
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/152MdeR72ew/

📌 WHERE THERE IS FLOW THERE IS AGENCY
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1F2cmjg3He/

📌 EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IS NOT EMOTURITY
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/15HmjdyGMc/

📌 EMOTURITY IS BUILT ON NEUROPLASTICITY
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1CFA4pMemf/

📌 BEN CHANGES WIRING OF THE BRAIN:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1A2TFYgTt6/

📌 BEN's NEUROINFLAMMATION:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Foy23rEjq/

📌 DSM LABELS of BEN:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17NRmtgiyo/

📌 BEN’s RISK OF ADHD
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1EAaz3vLjR/

RESEARCH:

[1] D. Draczyńska, A. Nowakowska, M. Anczewska, Is emotional neglect the first psychological threat? Differentiating ICD-11 PTSD and complex PTSD with comorbid anxiety and depression, Journal of Psychiatric Research, Volume 191, 2025, Pages 138-147, ISSN 0022-3956, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2025.09.017











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