Child Development
How Emotional Neglect Makes You Feel Excessively Responsible
Being responsible is a good thing, but being overly responsible is a burden.
Posted September 20, 2022 Reviewed by Michelle Quirk
Key points
- Feeling you are responsible for other people's feelings, happiness, or needs can be exhausting and makes you vulnerable to being exploited.
- Experiencing childhood emotional neglect directs your attention away from yourself and toward others, a set-up for being overly responsible.
- There are three things you can do to adjust your focus back toward yourself so that you can attend more to your own needs.

It’s important to be responsible, of course. It means that you’re dependable, committed, and caring. But, for some, it’s too easy to over-swing the pendulum and become excessively responsible, and it’s even easier to become overly responsible if you experienced childhood emotional neglect.
Feelings like numbness, shame, and guilt are common emotions that emotionally neglected folks report. But the feeling of responsibility, because it’s generally thought of as a positive, gets overlooked. Yet, it can spoil your fun and burden you. Like when you’re hosting a party and feel it’s your job to make sure everyone is having a good time. Or when you find yourself picking up your coworker’s slack at work. Or even when someone else is struggling and you want to make it better. You feel responsible for all of it.
Feeling responsible is common among emotionally neglected adults. Perhaps you’ve labeled yourself the one other people can count on, the one people can go to if there’s an issue, or just the person that is always willing to give. With so much giving, you are likely to overlook yourself: your feelings, your needs, your wishes. And it's burdensome.
Why does this happen? It’ll be helpful to first understand childhood emotional neglect.
What Is Childhood Emotional Neglect?
When there is a lack of emotional awareness, emotional validation, and emotional attunement in your childhood home, these are the makings of childhood emotional neglect.
Emotional neglect is nothing your parents did to you. Instead, it’s what they failed to do for you. Emotions are a necessary component of living, so, when your emotions go unacknowledged in childhood, you can miss out on a lifetime of connection and understanding.
Your emotions are there to guide you, connect you, and motivate you. Without being taught this by your parents, you may end up feeling confused and disconnected from yourself.
The message you have lived by without even knowing it is that your feelings don’t matter. Because you grew up in your emotionally neglectful family believing you are less valid than everyone else, you quite naturally learned to tune into the feelings and needs of those around you instead of your own. This is where that feeling of responsibility overdevelops.
Responsibility and Childhood Emotional Neglect
Common characteristics are shared by emotionally neglected adults due to the indelible impact of emotional neglect. There are four themes that stand out because of their direct ties to feeling a deep sense of responsibility.
1. You are highly competent.
It’s easier to do than to feel. This is where folks with childhood emotional neglect thrive. You know how to get things taken care of. People come to you for help and perhaps take advantage of all of you have to give.
Overly responsible message: It is my duty to be efficient and productive, no matter how it affects me.
2. Your focus is on the external world.
Since your emotions live within you, you may tend to avoid them by focusing your attention outward and away from your inner emotional world. You may grow uncomfortable when the focus is directed toward you. After all, your emotional world is uncharted territory.
Overly responsible message: I will focus on others and take care of business. I am not important.
3. You neglect your own feelings and needs.
You treat your feelings the same way your parents did—as if they don’t exist. Without emotions to guide you, you may miss out on knowing what you like or dislike, your passions and interests, and, ultimately, your understanding of yourself. You are left feeling out of touch with who you are.
Overly responsible message: I don’t know what I want or feel so I’ll make sure everyone else gets attended to.
4. You feel like you’re not good enough.
When parents acknowledge and validate your feelings, you feel valid and understood. But the opposite is also true. You may be prone to see yourself as less-than in relationships. Taking that role sends the message: Your feelings and needs matter; mine don’t.
Overly responsible message: I don’t matter.
With everyone else’s feelings and needs at the forefront of your mind, an eagerness to help others instead of yourself, and believing others are more worthy than you, it’s no wonder you take on a great amount of responsibility. You believe you are in charge of helping others feel comfortable, happy, successful, healthy, and satisfied.
You may have noticed that there’s an unfair power dynamic at play here. What about your comfort, happiness, success, health, and satisfaction? You are missing the most important thing to be responsible for: you.
3 Steps to Feeling Less Responsible
- Focus inward. The first step to overcoming your sense of over-responsibility is tuning into your feelings and needs. This can be challenging when you’re so used to focusing on the external world. It takes practice and compassion, but it’s worth it. Paying attention to your feelings can help grow and strengthen your understanding of yourself.
- Prioritize yourself. You were mistakenly taught that your feelings don’t matter. While it may feel true that you are less valid than others, it is not! Your new responsibility is to yourself: You are responsible for prioritizing your needs above all else.
- Set boundaries. Step out of that one-down role and enter into assertiveness. When you can be assertive with others and communicate your feelings and needs clearly, you are sending the message: My feelings and needs matter, and yours do too. It’s healthy and necessary to set limits with others.
It’s simply impossible to be responsible for everything and everyone, but it’s entirely possible and healthy to be responsible for yourself. Take some time to evaluate what responsibilities you are carrying, and I’m sure you will find that most do not belong to you.
Your ability to identify, respond to, and fulfill the needs of others around you is an extremely valuable skill. But this skill goes to waste if you neglect yourself in the process. Becoming aware of your own needs is possible, and with that comes a new, balanced awareness of your responsibilities. Just imagine how much more fulfilling your life can be if your needs are met, too.
© Jonice Webb, Ph.D.
References
To determine whether you might be living with the effects of childhood emotional neglect, you can take the free Emotional Neglect Questionnaire. You'll find the link in my Bio.