Emotional neglect: No end to the beginning of your life

Emotional neglect can have a significant impact on your life without you realizing it right away. For example, you might keep quiet more often than necessary because you think people won’t respond to you the way you expect them to anyway. Due to circumstances in your childhood, you may have certain expectationsof people that aren’t entirely accurate.

So let's take a look at emotional neglect, its effects and what you can do to process it and live on with confidence.

What is emotional neglect?

In emotional neglect, your emotional needs are not addressed, your needs are ignored or even denied altogether. Emotional neglect is not always something parents do intentionally.

Sometimes parents themselves do not have the knowledge or emotional development to take good care of their child emotionally. For example, they themselves also do not have a good grasp of their emotions or recognition of their own emotions and therefore cannot do this well with their children.

In conscious emotional neglect, parents don't do their best to make you feel good. For example, you are not comforted when you are sad about something, or your sadness is denied altogether. You don't get the feeling that they love you, and sometimes they may even treat you like a small child even though you are already a little older.

The difference between abuse and neglect

Abuse and neglect are both forms of abuse, but with abuse you speak of an active form. People actually do something, whereas with neglect, something is not done when something should be done. It is a passive form of mistreatment.

Both are harmful to children, but the resulting damage differs.

There are several types of abuse that people can suffer from, namely:

1. Physical abuse
2. Emotional Abuse
3. Sexual Assault
4. Emotional Neglect
5. Physical Neglect

German research shows that when a child is abused, the likelihood of emotional and physical neglect is highest. Nearly ten percent of the German population experienced this, while physical abuse, for example, was something that only occurred in nearly three percent of the population[1].

Because neglect is so common, it's helpful to take a look at its effects and what you can do about it.

Effects of emotional neglect

The effects of emotional neglect are not amiss either. If children feel that they are being emotionally neglected (and that feeling doesn't even have to be true) they are more likely to have mental health problems when they are 15 years old[2].

This can lead you to keep your problems to yourself, causing you to struggle with anxiety and depression for a long time without others noticing. As a result, even later in life, you may not always feel that people are there to help you. Whereas if you were to express how you feel, people could show you that they’re there for you, and this could actually help you overcome your feelings of depression and anxiety.

Anyway, you may also find it difficult to distinguish one emotion from another.

Children who are neglected often have even more problems than children who are "merely" mistreated. For example, neglect can cause poorer school performance, more social isolation, less interaction with peers, and you internalize problems more than you externalize them. You are then pretty quick to think that you are to blame for your problems.

Young people around 22 also show that if a female caregiver, such as your mother, neglects you emotionally you are then more likely to suffer from mental health symptoms than if a male caregiver, such as your father, neglects you emotionally. It does not matter whether you yourself are a man or a woman to suffer from this effect[3].

This also makes it difficult to build relationships and develop a healthy self-image. This is because, in order to do so effectively, children initially mirror their parents’ behavior[4]. If that behavior involves emotional neglect, they do not learn how to deal with their own emotions or those of others, which makes building relationships difficult. It does not matter whether these are friendships or romantic relationships.

Coping with Neglect

Processing neglect as an adult is often done through treatment similar to that used for PTSD.

At the same time, trauma is a complex thing and you can't always give a standard treatment to every survivor of emotional neglect.

What does matter in treating adults who have suffered from emotional neglect in their lives is to rebuild the following:

1. Regain your confidence
2. Rebuild connections
3. Building your own identity
4. Being able to tolerate intense emotions
5. Be able to regulate and express emotions

In building your own identity, it is important that you are more than just what you have experienced and that you may also focus on the future. You are anyway, even if you look at your past and at the now, more than just the trauma you experienced.

A form of psychoanalysis may be used in treatment. Clients are then encouraged to tell their life story , and this includes exploring what role the trauma has played and may still play in their lives. In this way, the memory of the trauma can be stored differently in the memory[5].

In hypnotherapy, regression can be used for this purpose, for example.

Anyway, hypnosis can play a role in coping with emotional neglect and other abuse. For example, it can be used with people who suffer from depression and have a history of abuse[6].

A good rapport with the practitioner is also essential for the success of the treatment (source 5).

Working with sharing

In addition, work can be done with "parts" of the client's personality. Dissociation is often something people who are victims of some form of abuse do to protect themselves, but because of this, parts of their psychology may be underdeveloped.

For example, you may function well professionally, because in school everything was fine in that regard, but maintaining personal relationships was not going well. These were then two different parts going on, the professional self and the private self. In this way, you may have created even more "parts" of yourself because this was necessary for survival.

Treatment then focuses on turning all those parts back into a beautiful whole.

During training at the Hypnosis Institute Netherlands, one of the more advanced courses ( the third) also addresses sharing work. In addition, it may be necessary to talk to the inner child (source 5).

During this session, you can provide your inner child with the proper upbringing. A therapist can guide you through this process.

By the way, everyone has "parts" of themselves to a greater or lesser degree. So this is not something that is a big deal, but working with this is helpful in dealing with the trauma of emotional neglect.

Dealing with triggers

As an adult person, you have adult problems and can sometimes get off track with misdevelopment due to emotional neglect. By identifying your triggers, you can also work on dealing with them differently (source 5).

This can help you keep your relationships good and reestablish bonds that have been disrupted by triggers.

With hypnosis, for example, you can visualize how you will react to a trigger in the future, so that it comes to your subconscious instead of how you are currently reacting.

Other hypnotherapy techniques

A case study also involved a past-life regression of a woman who suffered from depression and a history of emotional neglect. During this regression, she found out that she had a spiritual observer who inspired her to improve her life.

Now as a hypnotherapist you don't have to believe in past lives and spiritual observers, but if this is something that helps your client overcome trauma then that's only better.

So emotional neglect can have many effects on your life, but you can certainly do something with hypnotherapy to lessen those effects. To feel better and to regain meaning in life.

The effects of emotional neglect, such as anxiety and depression, can also be treated well with hypnosis.

Want to learn more about hypnosis and how it can help victims of emotional neglect and other abuse? Then come to the free online master class for an introduction.

Or sign up right away for one of our courses or seminars. The courses are taught in a classroom setting or live online. Choose the format that suits you best.

Sources:

[7] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13034-017-0185-0

[8] https://acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2011.02390.x

[9] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0145213403001625

[10] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1751722208002138