What is Childhood Emotional Neglect and Why Does it Matter?

People start therapy to deal with mental health struggles and reduce their symptoms (think panic attacks, relationship conflicts, depression, etc.). But childhood emotional neglect (CEN) is different - it’s about something that didn’t happen to you. Does this sound confusing? Read on and everything will become clear. You’ll finally understand why you are baffled by the discontent you feel. I’ll explain what didn’t happen to you and how that omission has effected you.

What exactly is childhood emotional neglect?

Psychologist and author, Jonice Webb, describes CEN as a parent’s habit of invalidating your feelings, or their failure to respond enough to your feelings. The key word is enough. All parents fail their children sometimes. After all, parents are only human. Emotional neglect is a style of relating, or not relating, to children. It occurs when your parent, over the long term, doesn’t meet your threshold of emotional needs.

It’s interesting to note that parents who emotionally neglected their children were attentive to their physical needs. They probably took you to the dentist twice a year, prepared three meals a day, and did your laundry regularly. Your family operated well on a functional level, but, and this is big, your inner life was neglected.

What makes CEN invisible?

It’s not that your parents did something, it’s that they failed to do something. They failed to notice your feelings and address them. An example of childhood emotional neglect could be something like this: You come home from school looking sad and withdrawn, but your parent doesn’t take notice of it. An emotionally attuned parent would detect your mood and ask you about it. The emotionally neglectful parent would not notice that you looked withdrawn, and they might go straight into functional mode by saying, “Do your homework now, so after dinner, I can take you to buy those school supplies you said you need.” This is a perfect example of what CEN is. It’s not something that happened to you, but something that failed to happen for you.

Another form of emotional neglect

Another form of CEN is when your parents invalidate your feelings. Children need to be validated; we all do. Sometimes that’s all we need. Doesn’t it feel good to talk to someone when you’re upset and after hearing you out, they say, “Wow, that must be so disappointing”. We find comfort by being seen and understood.

Some parents who are emotionally neglectful parents don’t do this. What’s worse, they often invalidate your feelings. The message you got was that having feelings is wrong. The message conveyed often sounded like, “You shouldn’t be angry” or “You shouldn’t feel that way”. Your parents might have punished you for being emotionally expressive by criticizing you instead of helping you sort out your feelings.

The opposite of validation is invalidation

Another way to pronounce invalid is in-vuh-lid. Although we do not use this word to describe people anymore, there was a time we used this word to describe someone who could not care for themselves because of a disability. To a great degree, that’s what happens to people with CEN. They become emotional invalids since they struggle with knowing what they feel and how to cope with their feelings. That is a disability because to successfully navigate through life, we need to know what we feel.

I want to make something clear. I am not bashing parents who were emotionally neglectful. Often, they were emotionally neglected when they were children. We’re not here to blame, we’re here to understand. We are trying to understand CEN and it’s important to know that most emotionally neglectful parents love their children. Their failure is that they don’t know how to nurture them emotionally.

 Why feelings matter

If you’ve grown up with the type of CEN where you were invalidated, you learned feelings don’t matter or that your feelings are wrong.

Therefore, you cut yourself off from your feelings by pushing them behind a wall.

That becomes a problem because feelings are not wrong; feelings do matter.

When you push your feelings behind a wall, you don’t have access to them. Here’s how to remove the wall and get connected to your feelings.

How to heal from emotional neglect

Dr. Jonice Webb describes a four-step approach, which like a map, guides you towards your goal - having a healthy relationship with your feelings.

Name your feelings

The first thing to do is identify what you’re feeling. If you’re not used to this, it can be a challenge. Using a feelings wheel (easily found online). Scan the different feelings and see which one fits your present emotional state.

There’s a difference between feeling pressured and feeling busy. Or between feeling guilty and feeling ashamed. The more accurately you identify your feelings, the better you will understand yourself.

Accept your feelings without judgement

After identifying your feelings, accept the feeling without judgement. Feelings are neither good nor bad. They are just feelings. Lots of people judge negative feelings as bad feelings and they want to shove them behind that wall. But feelings are not bad or good. They are just feelings.  

Attribute your feelings to its source

After labeling and accepting your feelings, try to attribute the feeling to its source. Ask yourself, why am I feeling this way? If I feel angry, what am I angry about? You might think you feel angry, but the actual feeling is rejection. For example, you learned your friends went out for coffee but didn’t include you. You feel left out. Once you understand that your anger comes from feeling rejected, you got the message the feeling sent you.  

Honor your feelings by taking appropriate action

The last step after identifying, accepting, and attributing is acting. If you felt rejected, you can act on your feelings, but action is only helpful if you take the right action. Don’t snub or stonewall your friends. Instead, talk to the people who hurt you and let them know how you feel. This can be very healing. You are showing yourself that you do matter (something you have a hard time believing). You’ are showing yourself that your feelings are important and valid (something your parents failed to do). Taking the right action will be a corrective emotional experience.

Understanding your past will improve your future

Discovering that you experienced childhood emotional neglect can be affirming. You have a better understanding of why your childhood was so painful. It happened in your childhood, but you’re not a child anymore. Now you can re-parent yourself by learning how to identify your feelings and validate them. It’s a process, but a process that will improve all your relationships, especially the most important relationship you have, the relationship you have with yourself.