Healing from Childhood Emotional Neglect: Steps to Rebuild Your Self-Worth

Childhood is a formative age. Memories and feelings we experience in childhood, both good and bad, tend to stay with us for the rest of our lives. Even the things we don’t remember have a way of subconsciously influencing the way we act and the relationships we form with other people. Childhood emotional neglect can leave deep and lasting scars well into adulthood. Moreover, these scars are usually followed by feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness. But these feelings don’t have to last forever. Healing from childhood emotional neglect is possible. The journey to rebuild your self-worth requires time, patience, and self-compassion.

What Is Childhood Emotional Neglect

Childhood emotional neglect (CEN) is a type of neglect that occurs when parents or other caregivers don’t sufficiently address a child’s emotional needs. Since the lack of emotional support, sympathy, and validation is the problematic part, and not outright active harmful behavior like abuse, this neglect can be subtle and frequently goes unreported.

However, just because it’s more subtle, it doesn’t mean the effects are not damaging. Generally speaking, abuse and neglect can both have traumatic effects on a person, and they aren’t and shouldn’t be comparable.

Signs of Childhood Emotional Neglect

As we already mentioned, it might be difficult to recognize childhood emotional neglect because it’s often subtle and frequently goes unreported. However, it can show itself in several ways.

One of the biggest signs of CEN is caregivers who are physically there but emotionally absent. In other words, parents who are present but don’t provide their child with any emotional validation or support.

Kids who experience childhood emotional neglect often feel invisible and unimportant if they are left to handle emotions on their own. As adults, these people frequently encounter feelings of numbness or disconnection and may struggle with self-awareness and emotional expressiveness. Some common signs of CEN are:

• Having trouble building meaningful connections or trusting people,
• feeling empty all the time,
• having low self-esteem,
• having a tendency to downplay one’s needs and emotions.

Recognizing these signs and symptoms is essential to start the healing process.

Narcissistic Parents and CEN

While not all parents who neglect their children are narcissists, narcissistic parents’ lack of empathy and self-centered actions frequently lead to childhood emotional neglect. That’s why, to recognize CEN, you often need to look for common indicators of narcissistic parenting. These parents don’t give much thought to their kids’ emotional requirements since they’re more concerned with their wants and needs.

Therefore, these children frequently experience feelings of invalidation, unheard, and unimportance. Because they’re taught to put their parents’ demands before their own, these children are conditioned to feel unworthy and self-conscious, which stunts their emotional growth and self-esteem.

How to Heal from Childhood Emotional Neglect

Healing from childhood emotional neglect is a long process. The first necessary step before you can start healing is to acknowledge and validate the feelings you’re having about your experience and neglect. Accepting that what occurred to you was not your fault and that it’s acceptable to feel upset, dissatisfied, or depressed about it is the first step in this process. During this stage, journaling can be a useful tool that helps you deeply understand your feelings and experiences. You can begin to analyze your emotions and better grasp your emotional terrain by writing about your past and how it has shaped you.

Recognize The Effect

The next step on your healing journey is recognizing and understanding how CEN has affected your beliefs, actions, and interpersonal interactions. Consider how your upbringing influenced how you saw yourself and interacted with others. You can use this introspection to pinpoint unfavorable thoughts and behavioral patterns that result from your childhood experiences.

For example, you may notice you tend to suppress your feelings or have specific reactions to stressors that CEN causes. Only after you understand your feelings and reactions can you begin to reverse CEN’s harmful effects and replace them with more constructive ways of thinking.

Get Professional Help

You alone might not be able to fully understand the effects childhood emotional neglect had on you and your beliefs, thoughts, and feelings. And that’s fine. After all, you’re not a professional. However, you should consider consulting with a professional if you can’t analyze these things alone or need extra help.

A therapist can help you identify the causes of your problems and create useful coping mechanisms. Reframing unfavorable ideas and lessening the emotional effect of upsetting memories are two ways therapy can help you achieve emotional well-being and a higher sense of self-worth.

Practice Self-Care

While healing from childhood emotional neglect, you must take care of your physical, emotional, and mental well-being. That entails doing all the things that nourish and revitalize you. The cornerstones of self-care are relaxation, a healthy diet, and regular exercise. However, you should also make time for your hobbies and other enjoyable and relaxing pursuits that make you feel like a kid again.

Initially, it might be hard to accept self-care as a priority. You might feel like you’re rewarding yourself for nothing or don’t deserve it. But you have to keep reminding yourself that’s not the case. Remember that you must be well-rested and in the right state of mind to heal.

Final Thoughts

Any type of healing takes time. Healing from childhood emotional neglect is a long process that requires a lot of work. Simply realizing you’ve experienced childhood emotional neglect is not enough. It’s just the first step. After that, you have to work on putting those experiences and all your feelings and beliefs about yourself in the context of your upbringing. You can build back your self-esteem only when you take a more serious approach.

Meta: Healing from childhood emotional neglect is a long process that takes time. Read more about the steps to take to rebuild your self-worth.