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Emotional Neglect
Brought up with little or no Emotional Intelligence? Living the life of Childhood Emotional Neglect?
If you were raised by parents who lacked emotional awareness and the skills that go with this, then you may well be struggling today…
- Since your parents don’t know how to identify their own emotions, they don’t speak the language of emotion in your childhood home.
So instead of saying, “You look upset, sweetheart. Did something happen at school today?”, your parents absent-mindedly say, “So how was school?”
When your grandmother passes away, your family marches through the funeral acting like it’s no big deal.
When your first date stands you up, your family show their support by making an effort to never speak of it. Or, they tease you about it relentlessly, never seeming to notice or care how very mortified you are.
The Result: You don’t learn how to be self-aware. You don’t learn that your feelings are real or important. You don’t learn how to feel, sit with, talk about, or express emotions.
- Since your parents are not good at managing and controlling their own emotions, they are not able to teach you how to manage and control your own.
So, when you get in trouble at school for calling your teacher, a prat, your parents do not ask you what was going on or why you lost your temper that way. They don’t explain to you how you could have handled that situation differently. Instead, they ground you, or they shout at you, or blame your teacher, so letting you off the hook.
The Result: You don’t learn how to control or manage your feelings or how to manage difficult situations.
- Since your parents don’t understand emotions, or why we have them, they give you many wrong messages about yourself and the world through their words and behaviour.
So, your parents think you’re lazy and have a go at you for this – they haven’t noticed that it’s your anxiety that holds you back from doing things. Your siblings call you cry-baby and treat you as if you’re weak because you’ve been upset and have cried for days after your beloved cat was run over by a car.
The Result: You go forward into adulthood with the wrong voices in your head. “You’re lazy,” “You’re weak,” say those ‘Voices of Low Emotional Intelligence’ at every opportunity.
All these results leave you struggling, baffled and confused. You are out of touch with your emotional self (your true self), and you see yourself through the eyes of people who never really knew you. You have great difficulty handling situations that are stressful, conflictual or difficult.
The opposite of mistreatment or abuse, you are living the life of ‘Childhood Emotional Neglect’………
So, is it too late for you? What can be done if you grew up this way?
Fortunately, it is never too late and there are many things that you can do:
- Learn everything you can about emotion. Start your own Emotion Training Programme. Pay attention to what you feel, when and why. Start observing other people’s feelings and behaviour. Listen to how other people express their emotions, and start practising yourself. Think about who in your life right now can teach you. Your spouse, your sibling, a relative or a friend? Practise talking about your feelings with someone you trust.
- Talk back to those false messages in your head. When that “voice” from your childhood speaks, stop listening. Instead, take it on. Replace that voice with your own. The voice that knows you and has compassion for what you didn’t get from your parents. “I’m not lazy, I have anxiety and I’m doing my best to face it.” “I’m not weak. My emotions make me stronger.”
- Stop fantasising about a solution knocking on our door. The reality is, as adults, we must now learn these skills on our own. Hopefully, we will see that we missed out on some vital building blocks, simply because our parents did not know. Hopefully, we will realise that we have emotions for a reason, and will learn how to value them, hear them and manage and speak to them. Hopefully, we will start beating down those ‘Voices of Low Emotional Intelligence’. Hopefully, we will forgive our parents, recognising that they were simply doing their best, and devote our time to no longer blaming them, but to learning who we really are….and then, daring to be it.
- If you can identify with any of the above, check out www.emotionalneglect.com or the book, ‘Running on Empty’ for more information about how you may be affected by your parents’ low emotional intelligence and how to build your emotional skills for a better life today.