Children have more than just physical and material needs. They have emotional needs too. Even if a child’s material needs (food, clothing, education, etc.) were met, it is still possible that they were emotionally neglected.
Childhood emotional neglect is when a child’s emotional needs are consistently not met. Some of these needs include feeling loved, feeling a sense of belonging and acceptance, emotional validation, nurturing, empathy, support, encouragement and emotional safety. Emotional neglect can be difficult to identify, because by its very nature, it has to do with what the child did not get – as opposed to what they did get.
Examples of Childhood Emotional Neglect:
- A child feels sad after being excluded by a friend group and the parent scolds them for crying.
- A child gets a B in a test, but the parent asks why they couldn’t get an A like their friend.
- A parent seeks emotional support in their child by sharing financial struggles or marital issues.
- A child speaks about something that excites them, but the parent is focused on their phone.
- A child shares disappointment about not being selecting for a sports team, and the parents criticize the child for not trying harder.
Children whose emotional needs are not met learn to suppress their emotions as they start to believe that their emotions do not matter. This belief starts to infiltrate into adulthood.
How Childhood Emotional Neglect Manifests in Adulthood
Adults whose emotional needs were not met in childhood often struggle with low self esteem and self doubt. They may become self-critical as a result of internalizing critical voices that they’ve heard in childhood. This can lead to perfectionism as a way to seek validation and impostor syndrome as they doubt their own abilities and worth.
Another significant consequence is poor emotion regulation. In fact, it is common for such adults to either feel disconnected from their emotions and struggle to identify what they are feeling. Because the express of emotions was unsafe, not modelled or encouraged in childhood, it can lead the child to disconnect from their emotions. They may compensate for this by overthinking.
Childhood emotional neglect can lead to challenges in adult relationships in a few different ways.
Some examples include:
- Hyper-independence as they’ve learned that they have to have their own backs
- Difficulty trusting others, because they fear disappointment
- People pleasing, as a means of getting validation
- Emotional unavailability as they may fear rejection
- Accepting less than the bare minimum if they feel that they don’t deserve more
- Emotional hypervigilance, where they read into micro expressions and body language (often incorrectly).
- Anxious attachment where they require excessive reassurance.
Some other manifestations of childhood emotional neglect in adulthood are self sabotage (due to fear of failure), indecision (due to fear of someone being disappointed in their choices or not having received guidance in decision-making as a child), low self esteem (due to being compared to others or not being validated) and becoming the ‘rescuer’ in relationships (as they learnt this role early on).
Healing from Childhood Emotional Neglect
- Acknowledge the experiences that shaped you, while practicing self compassion.
- Reflect on feelings as a regular practice to develop greater emotional awareness
- Find safe spaces to express emotions, either by journaling or by speaking to others who are emotionally safe
- Reparenting is a useful practice, where as adults, we start to give to ourselves things that we wish we had as children. This includes validation, encouragement, compassion, patience and allowing ourselves to feel all our feelings without judgement.
- Notice your self talk and make a point of replacing any judgmental thoughts with self compassion.
- Be more intentional about the relationships that you choose.
- Be clear on your values and priorities and align your decision making accordingly.
- Notice where you can set healthier boundaries.
- Therapy is often useful to understand how our childhood has shaped us, and more importantly to learn the tools to break those cycles.
While the scars of emotional neglect may be invisible, there is a clear impact on our adult lives. With self awareness, reflection and intention, we are capable of healthier relationships and living emotionally rich lives.
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