What didn’t happen to you as a child?
In more than 20 years of psychology, I have observed a factor from people’s childhood that weighs on them as adults, drowns out their joy, and causes them to feel disconnected and helpless.
This factor is so subtle that it is practically ignored by everyone, while it takes a silent toll on people’s lives. I call this factor emotional neglect, and it is the subject of my book, Working with blanks.
Emotional neglect is a parent’s failure to meet a child’s emotional needs. In other words, emotional neglect is something that could not happen during one’s childhood.
Why “Nothing” is hard to see
To show why emotional neglect is so invisible, I want to do a little experiment. I ask you to close your eyes for a moment. Get comfortable in your chair and go back to yesterday. I have two things I would like you to think about:
First, I want you to think about what happened yesterday. It could be anything, big or small… just something that happened.
Now, I want you to think about something that didn’t happen yesterday.
My guess is that the second request was a bit more difficult to do than the first. This is because our brain records events as memories. Things that do not happen are ignored, overlooked and forgotten.
The invisible nature of emotional neglect
Mental health professionals, as well as most of society, have long recognized that what happens to us as children has a huge impact on who we become. I have found that the opposite is also true; that what does not happen to us in childhood has an equal or even greater impact.
Remember, emotional neglect is a parent’s failure to meet a child’s emotional needs. Because it’s the parent’s failure, not the parent’s actions; as we saw in our little experiment, it is invisible, invisible and memorable.
How small moments shape a child’s inner world
Emotional neglect comes in an infinite number of different forms. It can be so subtle that 50 people watch it not happen and be completely unaware. Here is an example:
Let’s say that the child is sad about school. Parents either do not notice the child’s sadness or do not say anything about it. It probably doesn’t seem like much. In fact, this happens in every home around the world, and it’s nothing at all.
So how can an event like this traumatize a child and leave scars into their adulthood? The answer lies in the natural developmental needs of children. In order for a child to develop a full and stable understanding of himself, who he is and what he is capable of, he must receive enough awareness, understanding and acceptance of his feelings from his parents. If there is a deficiency in any of these areas on the part of the parent, the child will feel incomplete and will lack some of the skills, self-awareness, and self-care needed to thrive in this world.
So, let’s go back to our son who came home sad from school. If this happens occasionally, it’s okay. If it happens with enough frequency and depth that what the child is feeling is not noticed, responded to, or validated by the parent, that child is stunted in their emotional development. The child may feel that their feelings are inappropriate, unimportant, or even shameful or unacceptable.
A lasting effect that you may not recognize
As a psychologist, I have seen many times that these subtle failures of parents in childhood lead to adults feeling incomplete, empty, unfulfilled, and even questioning the purpose and value of their own lives.
It becomes even more difficult when emotionally neglected adults look to their childhoods to explain why they feel the way they do. I’ve heard many emotionally neglected people say: “I had a beautiful childhood. I was not abused or hurt. My parents loved me and provided me with a good house, clothes and food. If I am not happy, it is my own fault. I have no excuse.”
Why are you blaming yourself instead?
Adults who are emotionally neglected generally do not remember things that did not happen in their childhood. So, they adults blame themselves for everything that goes wrong in their life. They don’t have memory about what failed them, so they have no way to see it or overcome it to make their lives happier.
How emotional neglect is repeated across generations
In addition to self-deception, another unpleasant aspect of emotional neglect is that it is self-promoting. Emotionally neglected children grow up blind to their own feelings and the feelings of others. When they become parents themselves, they are unaware of their children’s feelings and raise their children as a blind spot. And so on and so on and so forth, through generations.
Invisible show
My goal is to make people aware of this subtle but powerful factor. Giving everyone a chance to look back and see the unseen, words to talk about it and a chance to fix it and stop blaming themselves.
I want to make “childhood emotional neglect” a household term. I want to help parents understand how important it is to respond to their children’s emotional needs and how to do it. I want to stop this insidious force from breaking people happiness and connecting with others throughout their lives. I want to stop the transmission of emotional neglect from one generation to the next.
I want to respond to those people who live their lives in a state of isolation and failure and wonder what happened to them.
The original version of this message can be found here emotionalneglect.com
© Jonice Webb, Ph.D.
