What is Emotional Neglect?

Maybe one of your parents suffered from mental illness and did not receive proper treatment. 

Or they struggled with alcohol and other substances. 

Or they worked long hours and were almost never available.

Or they were in and out of the hospital due to a chronic medical condition. 

They were in your life. To an extent, at least. Yet, they were not emotionally accessible to you when you needed them most. Even if they tried to be, even if there was no malice, they weren't. They didn't soothe you when you were afraid, heartbroken, or anxious. They didn't celebrate your milestones and triumphs. At least not in the way you hoped. 

So you had to find ways to soothe and celebrate yourself. You had to figure this out on your own early on. 

As an adult, you might experience some of the following:

You often fear that you are "too much" for others to handle. You try to tone your emotions and personality down to prevent rejection. 

You dismiss your own emotions because you don't think they matter. It may be hard for you to acknowledge how you feel, let alone verbalize it to others.

Connecting with others at an intimate emotional level might feel foreign. Others may describe you as emotionally unavailable, cold, or distant. It's not that you don't want connection, you just don't know what that looks like. 

You have an unhealthy relationship with your parent because you know something is missing. It's hard for you to put your finger on what is missing. Nonetheless, the resentment is there and it impacts your relationship with them in the present. 

You deny or minimize the emotional neglect because you found a way to cope with it. You may even justify the neglect or blame yourself for it.

You may find yourselves in adult relationships that mirror the one you had with your neglectful parent. In these relationships, you feel like you give more than you get. That's you the one sacrificing, compromising, and forgiving. 

Healing from emotionally neglectful parents

Understanding the dynamics of our family of origin can help us from repeating painful generational patterns. It can help us heal the wounds with our parents, work through our current adult relationships, and parent in a healthier way (should we want to have kids). This kind of work is never easy, but it is so rewarding. You are not just healing yourself, you are also helping those around you heal, and those after you.