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You may have had an absent or distant parent. If it influenced your development, you’re not alone. Understanding how to heal from childhood emotional neglect could help you move toward a healthier you.
At Rose Wellness, our trusted attachment therapists in Maryland understand how childhood trauma manifests. We provide compassionate therapeutic support, so get in touch for a listening ear and evidence-based treatment approaches.
Defining Emotional Neglect and Identifying How It Manifests
Typically, emotional neglect occurs when parents don't provide an appropriate response to a child's feelings. If a child falls off a swing set, an emotionally neglectful caregiver may say something like, "Stop crying and grow up!"
It's understandable that some parents struggle to deal with their own negative emotions or consider feelings to be weak. However, these individuals may inadvertently or intentionally train their child to only show superficial reactions, like fake happiness or politeness, and bury real ones. As adults, those children may follow in their parents’ footsteps and not have a good grasp on their own emotions.
Look For the Most Common Symptoms of Emotional Parental Neglect
Many parental interactions can qualify as emotional neglect, so it isn’t cut and dried. The following are common manifestations of emotional neglect:
- Extreme behavior and mood swings
- Problems with compliance, aggression, or demands
- Infantile behavior as an adult
- Delayed emotional or physical development
- Mental health conditions like depression, suicidal ideation, and severe anxiety
- Unhealthy relationships
- Difficulty forming emotional bonds
- Extreme sensitivity to perceived rejection
- Issues with trust
- Repression of negative feelings
- Trouble communicating emotions
You might also experience low self-esteem, perfectionism, and a preference for isolation.
Best Strategies for Overcoming a Neglected Childhood
If you're wondering how to heal from childhood emotional neglect, the first step is to connect with a qualified therapist. People can overcome this trauma with an adequate support network, helping them develop emotional skills and new patterns of thought. Here are some strategies therapy might implement:
Acknowledge and Accept the Problem Affects You
The first step of healing from any trauma or mental health condition is acknowledging it. The act can feel painful. It means accepting that you're not in complete control and admitting that you didn't have the best parents.
Understand Your Emotions Are Just Below the Surface
Emotional neglect puts up a wall between feelings and consciousness, but everyone still has emotions, even if they do not acknowledge them. They're waiting there, below the surface. It’s a bottle of soda you occasionally shake up but haven't opened yet.
Develop Emotional Awareness To Sit With Discomfort
After a lifetime of repressing them, reconnecting with your emotions can feel excruciating, and that’s okay. It's like finding mold behind the walls, ripping away the surface, and spending considerable energy cleaning up things that no longer serve you, like unhealthy coping mechanisms.
Sit with discomfort, and you can let the negative feelings and pain wash away like a receding tide. As you clean house, you'll develop emotional awareness, which has characteristics like:
- Identifying and communicating your feelings.
- Understanding what events and experiences produce certain emotions.
- Preventing emotions from dictating your actions and behaviors.
- Increasing empathy to boost your ability to relate to others.
List Your Likes, Dislikes, and Emotional Triggers
When you're learning how to heal from childhood emotional neglect, it helps to keep a list of everything you like and dislike. As you gain a greater awareness, the list will include certain experiences that trigger things like anger, depression, and anxiety for you. Keep it in an accessible place, like on your computer or nightstand.
Practice Reparenting With Inner Child Work
Reparenting is a process. You’re learning to meet your own physical, emotional, and mental needs, which your parents couldn't fulfill. For example, self-compassion helps you develop better coping mechanisms and seek validation from yourself, rather than from others.
Inner child work is a crucial part of reparenting. It involves searching your memories for instances of trauma, understanding how they affected you, and reframing them.
Learn To Set Boundaries and Become More Assertive
As you heal your inner child, you'll also learn to set boundaries. If you don't stick up for yourself, you may feel used, unseen, and unable to stop the explosions as anger simmers beneath the surface. When you set and enforce boundaries, your mental and physical health can benefit.
Work With a Professional Therapist at Rose Wellness
If you’re asking how to heal from childhood emotional neglect, your next step is to partner with a therapist. Professionals like those at Rose Wellness can help you work through your emotional triggers and feel more in control. Call 202-681-1348 or get in touch online.
