Most people know someone, or have been that someone, who has dealt with a painful life challenge: addiction, grief, physical illness, mental illness, and so on.
Dealing with these life-altering struggles takes its toll. It takes time, energy, and attention away from life and love and toward the pain of the struggle.
Often, it’s no one’s fault. It just is.
But what happens when you’re dealing with one of these struggles and you’re also a parent? The one who is in charge of raising a child. The one who is responsible for meeting your child’s physical and emotional needs. Big needs ... that take time, energy, and attention. Just like the needs of your struggle.
As a psychologist and author of the first book written about childhood emotional neglect, I can confidently say that children raised by struggling parents are at risk of being emotionally neglected. As adults, they may end up with their own special struggles in life.
This is because many struggling parents, however well-meaning, loving, and caring, are so preoccupied with their own fight that they do not have the capacity to meet their child’s most crucial needs: their emotional needs.
While these are just a few examples of the life challenges some parents may be struggling with, many didn’t get their emotional needs met by their parents either. It is difficult to give your child something you don’t have yourself.
It doesn't have to be that your parents were completely absent and totally consumed by their struggle. In reality, many children of struggling parents had most of their needs met. A home to live in, school to attend, food to eat, opportunities to play, new shoes to wear. Yes, your physical needs may have been met. But that does not mean that your emotional needs were met. Your parents, in whatever struggle they found themselves, were giving much of their attention to their struggle at the expense of your emotional needs. They didn’t have the capacity to notice your feelings or respond to them.
Growing up with your feelings unrecognized and unresponded to by the most important people in your life is devastating. But, remarkably, many children don’t even know that they are going through something devastating … because it’s invisible. The lack of emotional acknowledgment and validation is what’s not there. And while this invisible force is entrenched in your childhood home, you are left feeling unseen and unheard. Invisible.
Time and time again, I work with these invisible children, now adults, and notice something poignant. Not only did they feel invisible in their childhood home, but, now, they also treat themselves as though they are invisible today.
When you feel invisible, you tend to act invisible. And when you act invisible, you actually become invisible to others. Accustomed to feeling unseen and unheard, you go about your business in life feeling like you don't matter.
What this looks like is someone who does not believe they are important. Someone who is out of touch with their emotions, who doesn’t believe their feelings matter. Someone who doesn’t believe they matter. They push down their needs, their desires, and their passions. They feel like they’re on the outside looking in.
Looking back on their childhoods, many invisible adults have a sense of loving respect and empathy for their parents. They saw the toil and strain their parents went through. They knew how hard their parents may have worked to care for their family. At the time, these children may have even tried to take on some of the parenting duties to lighten the load their parents were carrying. They may have found themselves cooking meals, cleaning the house, or caring for their younger siblings.
These children learned how to reduce the burden on their parents. The answer was to have as few needs as possible. To stay invisible so as not to add to the burden.
If you’re identifying with being an invisible child, or now an invisible adult, I want you to reflect on ways you stayed hidden.
Did you…
If you are relating to these examples, you grew up learning to hide your feelings and your needs. Your feelings are at the core of who you are as a human being. And, so, by hiding your feelings, you ultimately learned to hide your truest self.
By staying hidden, you were not able to be seen, to be known.
Childhood emotional neglect happens when your parents do not notice, attend to, or respond to your feelings enough as they raise you. It’s not something that happens to you; it’s something that does not happen. It’s subtle, unmemorable, and invisible.
While there are so many reasons your parents could not give you the emotional attention you needed, those reasons don’t matter. It only matters that your feelings were not tended to in the way they needed to be.
Knowing that your parents were struggling does not change the fact that you have been left with the lasting effects of childhood emotional neglect. Of course, it’s nice if you have compassion for your parent’s pain and sacrifice. But what I want you to have compassion for today is that you, as a young child, did not get what you needed, what you deserved.
And now you are living with the unintended consequences of childhood emotional neglect.
1. Accept that you are missing a lifetime of acknowledgment and validation and it’s in no way your fault.
Adults who live with the aftermath of childhood emotional neglect walk the world believing they are not as valid or important as everyone else. This is simply not true. But the messages childhood emotional neglect taught you are deep and falsely remind you, “You don’t matter” and “Your feelings and needs aren’t important.”
2. Give yourself the emotional acknowledgment and validation you’ve been missing.
It’s time to begin paying attention to something important: You. Every day, multiple times a day, ask yourself these questions:
These questions will help you see yourself for who you truly are. And this eventually will allow others to see and know you, too.
3. Free yourself of your parents’ struggle.
Your parents’ struggle does not belong to you. This might be confusing, especially since you’ve learned to carry some of their burden. But your parents’ lives are theirs to live. And your life is your own. Begin separating what belongs to your parents from what belongs to you. You’ll be amazed at how much lighter you feel when you realize you don’t have to carry most of the things you have been lugging around for so long.
As you do this important work, you’ll begin to find yourself walking through the world with your head up, knowing that you take up space as you deserve to do. Instead of the whisperings of childhood emotional neglect telling you to stay small and invisible, you’ll have your own voice in your ear. This voice is the one that reminds you that you are valid, that you are important, that you matter.
That you were born to be seen and known.
© Jonice Webb, Ph.D.
References
To determine if 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.
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