If you were a child surviving with narcissistic and enabling so-called ‘parents,’ or ‘caregivers’, you were most likely emotionally neglected; meaning your emotional and psychological needs were not met. The ‘parents” needs were the only ones that mattered, and they were in no way attuned to yours.

If nothing personal to you was ever acknowledged, let alone resolved, then you may have been emotionally neglected. For instance, if there was an issue at school with being bullied, with boyfriends, or if you struggled with learning, it was dealt with by you – and you alone. (Although, being bullied at school would be somewhat normalised since you were most likely being bullied at home. The child may also feel they deserve to be treated that way because it has been instilled in them that they are a defective child).

Signs of childhood emotional neglect:

  • you may never have been comforted when you cried as a child, either for being in pain or feeling sick for example. In fact, your self-involved ‘parents’ may have become angry with you for crying and threaten to, ‘Give you something to cry about.’ There are no hugs, no kisses and no kind attention – comfort, nurturing and affection was withheld
  • blaming you for your behaviour as a child
  • you were constantly ignored, no interest was shown in you; the ‘parents’ were completely indifferent and pretended that you didn’t exist
  • a ‘parent’ was constantly interrupting you and failing to listen to you, or you were literally told to, ‘shut up’
  • there was a lack of validation for anything expressed
  • your achievements (for example, academic/sporting) were minimised
  • labelling and treating you like an emotional burden and telling you that you are ‘bad’, and saying, for example; “I should have put you in a home”, “Get out of my sight, I can’t stand the sight of you,” and/or “You make me sick,” and, “I had ‘b*tches for daughters.'”
  • constantly trauma dumping on you, also known as ‘parentification.’ It is not the child’s role to take on the ‘parents” issues, whilst their own emotions and feelings were ignored
  • a failure to provide basic life skills, guidance or boundaries
  • a mechanical or uninvolved parenting approach

How emotional neglect shows up when you become an adult:

Inability to recognise and process feelings

You will not realise emotional neglect is happening at the time, but it will show up when you become an adult, especially as you may have trouble recognising, processing and expressing your feelings. We grow up completely out of touch with our emotions and don’t know how to feel. We can therefore feel, ‘numbed out’ or ‘hollow inside’.

Self-isolation

We can also self-isolate as it feels overwhelming to be around people; people who will possibly ask us questions that we don’t feel comfortable answering. We believe is easier and safer to be alone, although the consequence is that we could end up feeling lonely without having any connection to others. It is a double-edged sword.

Mental health and relationship issues

Our unresolved trauma from childhood emotional neglect can manifest in experiencing mental health issues in adulthood, including low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, and PTSD or C-PTSD. We can also struggle with developing healthy relationships, as our relationship modelling normalised by our ‘parents’, can see us attaching to partners who are emotionally unavailable, while emotionally healthy partners can feel wrong for us.

Defensiveness

You may become defensive when people ask how you are going, or ask what you are doing, like you’re doing something wrong and they are out to attack you. There could be fear around opening up and showing any feelings, as you may not be able to regulate them since they have been pushed down for so long. Therefore you either shut down completely or the feelings overwhelm you and you can’t control them. You can also conceal your inner truth from others as a protective mechanism so no one can hurt, reject or invalidate you. You can have a heightened sensitivity to being spurned.

People pleasing

People pleasing can be an issue. You place others’ needs before your own, and when others are happy and settled, then you can feel all right. Being emotionally neglected, you have only ever been able to focus on other people’s needs, since yours never mattered. You may also not be able to ask for help when you need it. Since we are defensive, we may think that people might perceive that we can’t handle things appropriately, and we don’t want to trouble them anyway. As a result, you could become extremely independent and self-sufficient.

Shame and perfectionism

You can feel shame after making mistakes, even small ones, and go to great lengths to cover them up since you don’t want anyone to discover your errors and become angry with you, even punish you. Perfectionistic tendencies can then result from feeling you have to do everything yourself, and importantly, to get it right. This too reinforces the above traits of independence and self-sufficiency. We don’t realise that by making mistakes, that is how we learn and grow.

Decision-making issues

Since we aren’t in touch with our emotions, who we really are, or what we want as we do not have an identity of our own, we can have trouble making decisions. Our anxieties can get in the way and confuse us as we may feel we will make the ‘wrong’ decision, leading to shame and discouragement. We can have strong responses to not only making decisions, but whenever we feel stressed, known as, ‘fight, flight, freeze and fawn.’ (Pete Walker’s book, “Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving” extensively explores these responses).

Recovery

We can heal from our emotionally neglectful childhoods by seeking an appropriately trained empathetic, compassionate therapist to guide, support and empower us in identifying our feelings and needs. Modalities may include re-parenting yourself through inner child work, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), and tapping or Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT).

Other considerations may be to go No Contact or Low or Very Low Contact with the abuser(s).