Parents play a crucial role in teaching children healthy emotional expression and regulation. When they neglect their child’s emotional needs, it can leave lasting scars. This kind of emotional neglect is a form of trauma and can significantly impact a person well into their adult years. Here are 15 common struggles experienced by adults who grew up with emotionally neglectful parents.
1. They’re tongue-tied when angry or sad.
A childhood where emotions were ignored or dismissed can make it incredibly difficult to express feelings as an adult, PsychCentral notes. They might freeze when asked about their mood or simply not know how to put their emotional experience into words. This can lead to confusion and frustration for those who haven’t learned to identify what they’re truly feeling.
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2. They avoid talking about their feelings.
The struggle to express emotions can lead to a deep fear of being asked about them. To avoid the discomfort and stress of having to articulate their feelings, adults with a history of emotional neglect often prefer to either avoid the topic or deflect to talking about other people instead of themselves.
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3. They’re focused on pleasing other people.
Childhoods marked by constant shame or rejection for expressing emotions leave lasting scars. To avoid feeling dismissed again, some adults who experienced this neglect can go to extreme lengths to please others. This deep-seated fear of rejection drives a constant need to seek approval and validation, often at the expense of their own well-being.
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4. They don’t trust many people.
A history of emotional neglect destroys trust over time. When someone’s feelings were consistently disregarded by the people meant to protect them (their parents), it becomes incredibly difficult to trust others. Even with close friends, adults who experienced this kind of neglect may be plagued by a lingering fear that their trust will be betrayed again.
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5. They don’t find self-love easy to achieve.
Self-love is linked to self-care, Healthline notes. It’s an essential part of mental and emotional well-being, but people who were emotionally neglected as children might avoid engaging in acts of self-love, such as self-compassion or viewing themselves positively. They were always told they were bad as kids, and they still feel these wounds.
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6. They suffer from anxiety.
Research has found that anxiety can sometimes be an indication of childhood emotional neglect. Growing up with emotionally unavailable parents can make it difficult to understand, process, and express your own emotions. This often leads to intense anxiety, as the body registers internal turmoil that the person can’t easily name or address.
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7. They internalize stress.
Instead of finding healthy outlets for stress, people who suffer from childhood emotional neglect might internalize the tension or pressure that they feel during tough situations because they don’t have any coping strategies they can use to regulate these overwhelming feelings. Over time, this can cause relationship difficulties and low self-esteem.
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8. They can be clingy.
In friendships and relationships, those who survived childhood trauma might hold on too tightly to people, per Psychology Today. This could show up as always initiating contact, checking in with people, or trying to spend as much time with them as possible. They fear being rejected or abandoned by those they love, so they become stage-five clingers.
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9. They feel empty.
It’s common for survivors of childhood emotional neglect to make statements such as, “I don’t know what I want.” They’ve never learned to figure themselves out, from their feelings to what they desire out of life. Whatever they felt was slammed by their parents, which has caused them to lose touch with themselves.
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10. They’re scared of being a burden.
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Although some people who’ve experienced emotional neglect might become clingy, others might hold back in relationships because they don’t want to feel like “too much” for the other person to handle. This could be because they learned to stuff down their feelings and needs.
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11. They blame themselves when things go wrong.
A childhood filled with emotional neglect often breeds deep-rooted self-blame. When your feelings weren’t acknowledged or validated, it’s easy to internalize every setback as your own fault. This habit of self-criticism can lead to a cripplingly low sense of self-worth, as it reinforces the belief that you are somehow not enough.
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12. They give up instead of pushing through.
Emotional neglect whittles away at a person’s self-worth, making them feel like they can’t achieve what they want. They also tend to have a strong fear of failure, which causes them to give up on projects and goals instead of persevering until they succeed.
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13. They refuse help.
While someone might try to deal with their own problems because they’re fiercely independent, another reason for doing this could be that their previous emotional neglect prevents them from putting themselves out there — the rejection is too scary, so they avoid asking for or accepting help.
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14. They’re perfectionists to a fault.
Parents who emotionally neglect their children teach them that they’re not good enough as they are. They grow up feeling like they always have to try super-hard to achieve their goals and be the best. This could result in perfectionist tendencies, which are associated with stress and anxiety.
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15. They isolate themselves.
People carrying wounds from emotional neglect might find it difficult to maintain healthy relationships. For example, they might isolate themselves from others, not because they don’t love them, but because they fear experiencing further emotional pain.
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