Childhood Emotional Neglect
Written by: Karin Brauner, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
“My childhood was quite normal.”
How often do we hear this? How many times is it actually true?
I can’t answer that question, but I leave you to ponder on that, and now I challenge us to consider the following question:
Is what’s normal always good for us?
When people experience emotional neglect, it is not obvious to the child or the people around them. It seems almost imperceptible. As if it never happened.
Sometimes I think it’s worse than things that people can see like psychological, physical, and even sexual abuse. That is not to diminish the harm these cause. They are all on the same level, but the invisibility of childhood emotional neglect makes it a different kind of insidious and dark.
I work with people teaching them how to meet their emotional and physical needs. I find it very important in our lives to meet our needs, and to acknowledge that we also have needs like other people do. That we also deserve to voice what we need and get what we need in one way or another.
As Dr Jonice Webb states emotional neglect is a parent’s failure to respond enough to a child’s emotional needs. Emotional neglect is, in some ways, the opposite of mistreatment and abuse. It’s a failure to act.
What can we include in childhood emotional neglect:
Difficulty in acknowledging, understanding and valuing their emotions
Depression, anxiety might be a regular aspect of their lives
Feeling a disconnection from life in one way or another
They might think they have to do everything for themselves, as people are not reliable (just like growing up they couldn’t rely on their parents for emotional support)
Self-blame
As I mentioned above, childhood emotional neglect (CEN) seems invisible to the observer but is very real to the experiencer.
Gaslighting might be a regular occurrence in people that experienced CEN growing up – “that didn’t happen like that”, “you’re making that up”, “your parents / we would never do that to you!”, “how dare you say that about your parents”, “but they are such lovely people”.
This gaslighting and negating of lived experiences might make someone with CEN feel like they are the ones at fault. Like they are crazy.
But it really happened. In spite of life looking “normal” (whatever that is), there were things that didn’t go according to plan:
Your emotional needs weren’t met, even if your physical needs were (there was always food, shelter, holidays, stuff)
Your parents were always more focused on work or other things, that led them to not pay attention to your emotional needs (it might not have been on purpose, but it impacted you)
Maybe your difficulty in making an emotional connection with someone comes from your parents not being able to offer you that emotional connection when you were a child
When you cried, got angry or challenged your parents, you were either ignored, told to shut up or that you were being silly by feeling this way – that stings and sticks around in our subconscious
As I said before, parents don’t mean to do this on purpose. It happens because their own emotional awareness is slim to non-existent.
When we talk about CEN, we talk about behaviours or the absence of them, not the people that perform these behaviours. This usually helps people open up about what happened to them. And it’s true, we don’t condemn parents, but we do acknowledge the behaviours that led the individual to feel disconnected from themselves, their emotions and their world, amongst other things.
Does having these experiences mean we can’t live an emotionally connected life? Not at all.
This is why I continue to work with people in my practice, helping them gain awareness of their own needs, both physical and emotional, and how they can ask for what they need.
Here are a few practical things you can start doing to meet your needs and show yourself and others that they also matter:
When you feel angry, sad, happy, sit with those feelings and allow yourself to experience them fully
Start allowing yourself to express your emotions – first to yourself, then to others. Maybe start with the positive emotions, as it might be easier, then as you see that people are okay and welcome your emotions, you can start trying with some of the emotions that are more difficult to you.
Write down a list of things you need, but are not sure of how to get them. Maybe a hug from your partner, or a raise from your boss. Maybe start with asking for a cup of tea, if you’re the one that makes them all the time; or try getting someone to do some small, inconsequential task for you. This will give you more and more evidence to show that people value what you need and are willing to meet your needs, even if they weren’t met when you were younger.
I hope this article helps you explore the difficult things that you might have experienced. Those unnamed, invisible things that still affect you to this day.
Remember, you can change how you are by dealing with these realities and putting some things into practice. For more, you can visit my website, order my book which relates to this topic, and also visit Jonice Webb’s website which has lots of content on this topic.
Karin Brauner, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Karin Brauner is passionate about helping people get on track – or back on track – in their personal and professional lives through practical tools and inspirational conversations in a variety of settings. Karin teaches tools that she’s learned and developed throughout her own life and career. She knows how hard things can get, but also how great things can be once you move through to the other side. She now shares the knowledge she’s gained, through various mediums, to show people a path to better self-care, support when processing their past, and working out their present so they can lead an improved life and thrive in their personal and professional relationships.
