9 signs you experienced childhood emotional neglect

Sign number nine is being out of touch with our emotions this means that if I were to ask you to identify what you're feeling today you might not be able to give me an answer. You won't know how to explain what agitation or even excitement feels like to you and if you do feel something you have no idea how to experience it and regulate its emotions because they are so foreign to you and can feel out of control. We never got the chance to get to know our feelings or learn how they can be used so we slowly lost touch with them. The reason this is the first sign I want to talk about is that it's at the Crux of emotional neglect when our parents don't support our emotional expression. It's often done because they can't handle emotions they are stunted and therefore they can't support our natural reaction to the world. They have to suppress it or ignore it altogether and I'm not saying this to condone their behavior at all rather helps us understand why this could have happened.

Sign number eight is being extremely defensive. One of our community shared their experience with this they said I hate the question What are you doing because it makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong and I'm being told to justify my stupid Behavior right now. It triggers the worst reaction in me and I can't stand that I get so pissy about it because it's like never coming from a bad place. It's always genuine curiosity yet I can't hear it without feeling like I'm being shouted at. When our emotional expression is constantly being suppressed maybe we were told to stop crying or to just get over it or we were ignored until we quote-unquote calmed down. When someone asks us how we're doing or what we're doing it can feel like an attack like they're going to treat us just like our parents did and we're going to get in trouble. It's almost like just being there and having feelings is too much that's another key issue with emotional neglect. When we don't get support for how we feel any amount of feeling can feel like too much. I used to hear this a lot in my practice patients would tell me that they were scared to open up or talk about what was going on because they thought they would drown in it like all of the emotions. They've stuffed down, would somehow sweep out and like swallow them whole, and of course it would feel like that if we were never allowed to have feelings at all right the idea of expressing anything is too much. We could have been told that we were always too much so we associate emotions with being too much therefore when someone comes along and wants to check in with us we don't think it's safe. We get defensive and shut down.

Number Seven is people-pleasing. Now I'm not talking about someone who wants to just keep the peace sometimes or goes along with things. I'm talking about doing whatever we can to ensure that other people are okay first because it's only when everyone else is okay that we know. How to relax that why people pleasing is just a form of manipulation. Yes, I was just as offended by that when my therapist said it to me but it's true because we're trying to ensure others are happy. So that we can be okay which makes sense if we were emotionally neglected we didn't know how to check in with ourselves. We only knew how to read other people and check in with them meaning that if our parents were upset that could mean that they were even more distant or cold towards us. So it was in our best interest to keep them happy without realizing it. We may have been trying to keep them happy so that they would offer us the emotional support we truly needed, but that's just a thought.

Unable to ask for help is number six. We are often unable to ask for help, there was this meme going around where a guy was moving a couch and the other side of the couch was being held up and wheeled by an office chair. Have you seen it anyway the caption reads how good are you at asking for help when you need it. It's true when we grow up thinking that we're too much and every feeling we have shouldn't be had at all we can think that our needs aren't okay and therefore we don't feel comfortable or even warranted in asking someone else for assistance. If you consider back to sign number eight that we're extremely defensive, we can worry that if we do ask for help it will be met with upset or frustration and we don't want anyone to think that we are too much or we can't handle it. So we just don't even ask for help even when we need it.

Sign number five is a shame after Shame. Even the smallest mistake our concerns upsets and painful feelings weren't accepted or maybe even acknowledged. So we grew up thinking we had to deal with everything ourselves we could have even developed what I like to call toxic Independence, where we take pride in doing everything ourselves we don't need anyone else ever. But this is a reaction to our parents' inability to support us and if we believe that we are supposed to do everything ourselves then when we mess up we can feel intense Shame about it. You go to Great Lengths to cover up even the smallest errors because when people are mad at you that means that they don't love you so they cannot ever find out this lack of outside support can put unnecessary pressure on us to be perfect. We all make mistakes and that's really how we learn and grow.

Sign number four is Isolation. We want to isolate ourselves all the time being around other people means that we are reminded that we're too much and it can make us want to people please. We can worry that they're going to ask us how we're doing and honestly, it can all just feel too overwhelming. Therefore it's easier to be by ourselves right it's less stressful to be alone. As one member of our community States, I'm 35 years old and reading this under the comforter in my bed because that's

my safe hidey-hole and no one can be mad at me. If they can't interact with me in many ways, not interacting with others, feel safer. We can't let anyone down or be too much, if we aren't around anyone else right obviously the tough side of this is that we do need others around. It's how our nervous system is wired and even if we try to tell ourselves that it's better to be alone that loneliness feeling will creep in. It's like we're trying to remove one stressor that we think is upsetting us and we end up creating an entirely different.

Sign number three is we compulsively lie. Compulsive lying is when we tell falsehoods out of habit because it feels safe and sometimes for no reason at all. When this happens as a result of childhood emotional neglect it's done because telling the truth may not have been accepted or safe. If we spoke up and said how we felt it could have been shut down or dismissed. If we asked for what we needed it could have been ignored or laughed at so we learned to lie to survive. It wasn't safe to trust the adults in my life with my feelings so I developed a sense of safety in line. It helps me feel like my inner truth is protected because nobody can invalidate it.

If they don't even know about it, the problem with this is that it may have helped us when we were growing up. As we get older, it can lead to other problems like issues at work or in relationships. When they find out that we lied about something important it can be stressful and hurtful and just like the isolation.

Sign number two is difficulty in making decisions. If we aren't in touch with our emotions, we often feel like we don't know who we are or what we want and this can make it hard for us to decide between one thing and another. Also if we're more of an anxious people-pleaser type we can worry that we're going to make the wrong decision and upset somebody else.

Finally, sign number one, and this one is going to hurt we Seeking out unavailable partners. I know that's a hard truth but when our parents weren't emotionally attuned with us. We can think that that's what relationships look like, and go out into the world, seeking it out, when we find someone who isn't emotionally available. We can feel comfortable and want to attach to them because it's what we know as normal. Even if someone healthy and emotionally available seeks us out, we can feel like they're clingy. But don't worry this is something we can overcome through therapy and by being curious, and not judgmental about who we are attracted to. It does take time and you may be uncomfortable with it at first, but trust me when I tell you that it does get better know that even though our childhood may not have been the best. It could have been the worst that doesn't mean that we can't heal and work toward a healthy and happy future. Our past does not have to dictate our present or future.

9 signs you experienced childhood emotional neglect