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Child Development
3 Things Missing From Every Emotionally Neglectful Family
There's nothing like the holidays to drive emotional neglect home to your heart.
Posted December 20, 2022 Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster
Key points
- Emotional neglect from childhood breeds resentment of your parents and discomfort with your family years later.
- These negative feelings often arise right before, during, or after a family gathering, so the holidays generally intensify them.
- Naming the problem, taking it seriously, and treating yourself with emotional attention are good ways to counter the effects.
For every annoyed, disappointed, or uncomfortable person at a family gathering, there is a reasonable explanation for how that person feels.
I know this because I’m a psychologist and have yet to meet a person whose feelings about their family can’t be explained. Usually, to understand, you only need to look at the person’s family history and childhood experience.
Before, during, or after your holiday family gathering, do you tend to:
Feel bad for being annoyed at your parents, but just can’t help yourself?
End up feeling let down or oddly sad?
Experience anxiety or dread beforehand, but also feel confused about the reasons why?
Feel out of place almost like you don’t fit in?
Legions of good people struggle during the holidays, and many of them are confused about the reason why. Their families may have all the happiness trappings, yet they don’t feel so much that way. In many of these cases, the explanation is silent and invisible, yet powerful and destructive.
Childhood Emotional Neglect
Childhood emotional neglect sounds like something that would happen in highly dysfunctional families, and it surely does. But it also happens in many loving families that provide well for their children’s every material need.
In an emotionally neglectful family, the parents only need to neglect their children in one specific way: emotionally. These parents, often unintentionally and unknowingly, fail to notice their child’s emotions and respond to them with care and compassion. So, they do not have honest conversations with you about conflicts or problems you’re facing, provide enough soothing when your feelings are hurt, or teach you vital emotional skills, like how to be aware of, verbalize, or manage your emotions.
People whose parents failed them emotionally in childhood are usually not aware that this failure happened. It’s because of the way the human brain works. The failure to respond is not an action or an event. Instead, it’s a failure to act and a non-event. Our brains don’t record things that we don’t see, hear, or experience, so, as an adult, you will likely have no memory of it.
Yet childhood emotional neglect profoundly affects your ability to feel happy and fulfilled as an adult. It not only plays out in your adult life; it also silently undermines and damages your relationships with your parents and family going forward.
Emotional neglect from childhood breeds resentment of your parents and discomfort with your family. It can also leave you feeling empty, disconnected, and unfulfilled.
If you grew up in an emotionally unresponsive, neglectful family, there’s nothing like the Holidays to drive it home to your heart. You may find yourself immersed again in the neglectful family dynamic, feeling unseen, unknown, or unheard. Just the way you felt as a child.
Bennett
Sitting in his parent's living room surrounded by his siblings, nieces, and mom, Bennett looks around. It's their annual Christmas day gift opening, and the children are talking excitedly. Bennett knows he should be feeling happy and cozy, but instead, he sits uneasily in his easy chair. He feels deeply misplaced, as if he is among strangers. He feels unseen, uninvolved, and bored. "What the heck is wrong with me?” he wonders.
Heather
Heather calls to her three children to grab their jackets and boots. "We have to leave now to get to New Year’s family brunch!" While collecting the pumpkin soup and cranberry apple pie to take to the brunch, she puzzles over her mood. Both excited to see her parents and sibs and dreading it. She feels confused about what’s wrong. A pervasive feeling of sadness comes over her. “I must be crazy,” she thinks, frustrated with herself. Closing her eyes, she takes a deep breath and commands herself to just be happy.
Heather and Bennett are not aware that they are caught in the trap of childhood emotional neglect. They are feeling their confusing feelings because of what’s missing in their families: emotional warmth, connection, and validation. But, typical of the emotionally neglected, instead of finding their answers in their families, they are getting frustrated with themselves. They blame themselves for what they didn’t get.
Three Things Missing From Emotionally Neglectful Families
- Meaningful talk about personal and life issues or the associated feelings.
- The feeling that your parents are genuinely interested in you.
- A sense of being deeply and fully known, understood, and loved.
Heather and Bennett both believe their parents love them, but they don’t feel it. They are each deeply saddened by what’s missing. Their family parties are, sadly, a recreation and continuation of what they grew up with. Just as their parents didn’t ask them meaningful questions in their childhood, they still do not ask them today. Just as they didn’t notice their feelings in childhood, they still do not notice them today.
Since the problem of emotional neglect is caused by an act of omission, Heather and Bennett may never see the real problem between them and their families. They can feel it, but they cannot see it.
What to Do Differently
Understanding how emotional neglect happens and how it affects you gives you the opportunity to become stronger as a person and navigate your family relationships in a new way.
Instead of trying to force your feelings like Heather did when she commanded herself to be happy, do the opposite. Take special note of your feelings and regard them as important messages from your body. Know that you cannot choose your feelings. They choose you, so you should never judge yourself for what you feel, only for what you do.
Give yourself permission to take care of and protect yourself this holiday season. You might decide to leave your family dinner earlier than usual or choose/take a support person to help you through the event. You may try to lower your expectations of your family and your happiness so that you’ll be less likely to end up disappointed or feeling let down.
The power of childhood emotional neglect to drag you down comes from your lack of awareness of it. Truly, seeing it gives you the chance to beat it. By honoring your own feelings as important and caring about what and how you feel, you can give yourself what your parents couldn’t and can’t.
When you take these key steps, you will give yourself the chance to experience your family in a very different way. And then you might see that it makes all the difference in the world.
© 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.
