Childhood emotional neglect often affects adults in several ways, leaving them emotionally and mentally drained. Here are the effects of emotional neglect and some coping methods.
As a child, you desperately need the emotional knowledge, awareness, attentiveness, and affirmation you don’t get. This, in turn, interferes with your ability to feel, trust, and control emotions. If you were neglected as a child, you would have learned that your emotions are unimportant. Accordingly, you put up a wall around your feelings to withstand your impersonal surroundings and lose touch with your emotions as an adult. As a result, you undergo specific struggles such as low self-awareness, trouble expressing yourself, problems with social and emotional skills, and feelings of emptiness, humiliation, and guilt.
While all of these are struggles you undergo because of emotional neglect s a child, they also affect the path of your adulthood mentally, emotionally, and physically.
So, what are the effects of childhood emotional neglect, and how to cope?
Effects of childhood emotional neglection in adults
- Difficulty regulating your emotions
You might find it difficult to recognize, experience, communicate, and control all the “feels” of emotions, having a limited emotional vocabulary and tending to use the exact few words (“I’m sad, I’m pleased, I’m ok, I’m not ok”) to describe how you’re feeling. You may feel perplexed as to why you think the way you do, as you might frequently feel out of your element and appear bewildered by the emotions others show to you. You may respond by staring blankly.
- Trust issues
You might have acquired the ability to rely on yourself and care for yourself as you discover that you resist depending on or asking for aid from others because you fear being let down. The notion of feeling as helpless and inconsequential as you might have when you were younger worries you, so you may fear reaching out for aid, care, or affection and being rejected or disappointed.
- Self-blame
You may not have learned that emotions are healthy to experience if you observe that you immediately start self-examining and criticizing yourself for making (human) mistakes, feeling (human) emotions, and feeling ashamed for anything that occurred. You may feel that you are guided by your emotions, feelings, and emotional cues as to what matters, what is significant, what to approach, and what to stay away from.
Methods to cope with childhood emotional neglection
- Be aware of your emotions.
Learning to distinguish between positive and destructive emotions is the first step if you’ve lived your adult life detached from your emotions. It’s crucial to start by acknowledging positive and uncomfortable feelings. Once you’ve mastered it, you can concentrate on observing more minute variations in feelings. For example, if you didn’t grow up in a home where people talked about their feelings, it’s very natural not even to have words for how you feel.
- Identify and meet your needs.
Many adults are subjected to emotional neglect as children frequently lack awareness of their needs and feel undeserving of receiving care. You can expand your emotional vocabulary by learning about your emotions and needs. It’s time to act upon your needs once you have determined what you require.
- Practice self-compassion
Adults who were emotionally neglected as kids often struggle with self-care. They usually don’t know where to start. So instead, treat yourself with the same tenderness and care you would extend to a helpless kid. So be kind and sympathetic to yourself.
- Encourage positive self-talk
A unique coping mechanism is a self-talk. Your time will be well spent efficiently if you develop and practice this habit. It entails talking yourself through an uncomfortable scenario, a terrifying challenge, or a challenging moment. For example, you might question negative beliefs, repeat a phrase you need to internalize, or remind yourself of your strengths.
You may trust your judgment by practicing all these habits and addressing your emotional neglect from childhood! Trust the journey!
