Emotional Neglect and its Impact

Emotional neglect happens when one person treats another person's emotions and emotional needs as if they are inconsequential, do not exist, or are a useless burden, Emotional neglect can happen in any type of relationship: marital, familial, parental, friendship, and even in workplace relationships. Emotional neglect is often communicated through behavior rather than stated directly. It is typically not an active statement but is communicated through a lack of response, which has a particularly powerful effect on a developing child when the emotional neglect is of the parent-child variety. Specifically, Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN) occurs when parents do not respond to their children’s feelings enough while raising them, which communicates to children that their emotions are invisible or unimportant. CEN children naturally wall off their feelings as a coping mechanism, and this separation from their own emotions forms the basis for many struggles throughout their adult lives.

Because it’s not typically observable as a trauma when it happens, and it does not usually feel traumatic to the child. Likewise, it will likely not be recalled as traumatic by the child after he grows up. CEN usually happens in a thousand small moments of a person’s childhood. In fact, since CEN is not a parents’ act but is a failure to act, most CEN adults do not even recall it happening to them. Even though most incidents of CEN seem small, the overall effect on the child, once grown, is profound.

Since Childhood Emotional Neglect or CEN is the absence of emotional attention, response, and validation from one's parents, it isn't something that happens to you as a child, it's something that fails to happen for you as a child. Since it’s a non-event, our eyes can’t see it and our brains don’t record it, rendering it difficult to see or remember. Therapists trained in CEN can often see it in their clients long before the clients realize it for themselves. I developed the Emotional Neglect Questionnaire, available free on my website, which focuses on aspects of adult life which are highly indicative of the effects of Childhood Emotional Neglect.

Growing up in a household in which emotions are ignored or discouraged sends a subliminal message which the child receives and internalizes: “Feelings are useless and burdensome.” Emotionally neglected children naturally push their feelings down and away so that they will not be a problem to their parents and family. This separation from their own feelings automatically continues throughout adulthood. Virtually all of the signs of CEN in adults are the result of this lack of full access to their feelings.

Adults with childhood emotional neglect share 10 common characteristics:

Feelings of emptiness or numbness Counter-dependence: a deep fear of relying on another person Low self-knowledge Lack of compassion for themselves (may have plenty for others) Guilt and shame Self-directed anger and self-blame The feeling of being fundamentally flawed Difficulty nurturing themselves Poor self-discipline Alexithymia

In this question you have combined emotional neglect and abuse, which is a common way to conceptualize neglect. Part of my goal has been to separate these two adverse child experiences because they have very different effects. I have seen that emotional abuse and physical abuse may be more similar than emotional neglect and emotional abuse. That’s because emotional neglect is passive and often invisible and unmemorable, whereas all forms of abuse are active mistreatments of the child. I liken the difference between emotional/physical abuse and emotional neglect to the difference between knocking a plant off of a table (abuse) vs. failing to water it day after day after day (neglect). Research has shown that emotional neglect in childhood has significant influence upon the brain development of children. Its impact is made far more severe by its insidiousness since many people living with the effects of CEN actually believe they had a good childhood and assume there is something inherently wrong with them.

This question gets to one of the most useful aspects of the CEN concept. The vast majority of CEN parents were emotionally neglected themselves as children. If your parents had a blind spot to your emotions as they raised you, you grow up to have a blind spot as well. You are not only blind to your own emotions, you are also blind your children’s feelings as well. This is how emotional neglect silently transfers between generations. This is how the CEN concept offers compassion for all parents, who simply cannot give their child what they do not have themselves. I typically have a separate session with the parent(s) to talk about their own childhoods. This allows me to educate them about what’s wrong in a non-blaming way that is not in front of the children.

I have identified a series of 5 steps that walk adults through a process of discovering their own feelings, beginning to tune into their feelings, and learning how to use them to empower, protect, connect, guide, and energize them. These steps are easy for the CEN person to understand, and most CEN people find them reassuring and motivating. That’s not to say the steps are easy to do. They involve body-centric mindfulness techniques, emotional self-discovery and self-awareness exercises, learning emotion skills, and then applying them in relationships.

The CEN concept offers a helpful pathway to working with Axis II parents for two reasons: It removes the blame by explaining that they can’t give their kids what they didn’t receive in their own childhoods. It also offers a clear and direct path to reclaim their own emotions and start to make more emotionally validating connections with their children. Both of the Running On Empty books were written specifically with both of those goals in mind.

Parents who are struggling with their own sense of identity, validity, and emotions (for example parents with personality disorders), can be so focused on meeting their own needs for attention and validation that their children become vehicles to fulfill the parents’ needs. This is a setup for children to feel unseen and misunderstood as well as, perhaps, even competed with by a parent. Children who feel their parents do not see and understand their true selves on an emotional level are, by definition, emotionally neglected.

I would advise the parents to focus on the child’s feelings instead of their behavior. Emotions drive behavior. Are the “funny little things” a sign of a problem? If not, then it becomes simply a matter of accepting the child for who he is. Ask the parents what they admire about their child. Perhaps this child needs to feel truly seen and accepted on an emotional level by his parents. Full attention and talks are wonderful, but they must occur at an emotional level to fulfill a child’s needs. Perhaps these parents grew up with a lack of emotional validation and attention themselves and are finding it difficult to give it to their child. If so, it’s not their fault and they can change this.

First, it’s important to say that narcissism is not a typical result of childhood emotional neglect. The right conditions must be present to create narcissism. In addition, I would not use the word “all” simply because of the complexity of the human mind and the potential contribution of biology/genetics to narcissistic personality. That said, most narcissistic people were raised by parents who rewarded or loved them for some particular trait or ability (beauty, athleticism, wit, intelligence or piano-playing, for example), whether real or imagined, that the parents needed and/or valued. Since children in this scenario are not being emotionally seen and responded to by their parents, they are at risk of growing up without a deep sense of who they are and without feeling that their true self is real or adequate. The combination of deep insecurity and a need to be validated for that one true trait that their parents rewarded can cause a narcissistic approach to life.

Volumes of attachment research plus studies on abuse and on neglect have shown that we humans have a natural tendency to parent the way we were parented. Think of childhood as a programming phase for life. Sadly, an abused or neglected child is set up with this programming. But the good news is that many, many people who grew up with either are able to “reprogram” themselves. I would advise anyone who feels unable to change this to seek the help of a therapist who is trained to treat abuse or neglect, whichever is needed.

Either can be equally damaging, depending on the family setup and family dynamics. The primary caretaker is likely to have more impact simply based on the primacy of the parent-child relationship.

I have identified 11 types of emotionally neglectful parents which naturally fall into 3 different categories: 1) Self-absorbed parents; 2) Struggling parents; 3) Well-meaning-but-neglected-themselves Parents (I call these WMBNT).

Parents who are fully occupied by their own needs, like narcissistic or addicted; struggling to manage life for the family like depressed, financially challenged, or caring for a family member in need; or simply do not possess the emotional awareness and skills that are needed to respond emotionally in the way their child needs.

Absolutely. Healing is not simple or easy but when a CEN person follows the steps and does the work in a persistent way over time, they change. It’s a change that is not only noticed and felt by the CEN person but also is usually noted by the people close to them.

This is when the parent is compromised or needy in some way (or in the case of a struggling parent, working three jobs and seldom available, for example) the child may need to step up and act as the parent. Some children end up caring for younger siblings, or even in the role of caring for the parent. This can surely be a setup for CEN.

Absolutely. Being over-focused on these more superficial traits is a sign that the parents may not be able to tune in to the full and complex nature of the child’s emotions and respond to them. It may be simply a function of the parents being unaware of the emotional needs all children have. Some parents who focus on such things are doing so out of love and genuine aptitudes of their child. Others may be looking to draw attention to themselves or live through their child. Either way, the child must feel deeply seen and emotionally validated to escape the effects of CEN.