Why Your Feelings Feel Distant or Overwhelming

Childhood emotional neglect occurs when caregivers fail to respond adequately to a child’s emotional needs, often unintentionally. This can send a silent message that feelings do not matter. Repeated exposure leads the brain to hide emotions by walling them off so they do not bother caregivers or the self. As a result, emotions may seem to disappear during childhood, but later become a problem in adulthood. Adult effects can include not taking emotions seriously, feeling emotionally numb, or becoming unexpectedly overwhelmed, with limited range between states. Relearning to value and respond to emotions can rebuild connection, clarity, and self-trust.

"Childhood emotional neglect happens when your parents (perhaps unintentionally) fail to respond to your emotional needs enough when they are raising you. Yes, that's all it takes. When your parents don't respond to your emotions enough, they send you a powerful, subliminal message that your feelings don't matter. This never-stated-out-loud message in your childhood has an incredible ability to disrupt your adult life in immeasurable ways."

"As a child, when you receive these subliminal messages over and over, your brain somehow understands the unspoken request to hide your feelings and, surprisingly, knows just what to do. It walls off your emotions so that they will not bother your parents-or you. Tucked away on the other side of your internal wall, your emotions may seem to virtually go away."

"While this may allow you to cope in your childhood home, later on, as an adult, your walled-off emotions may become a great problem for you. You don't take your emotions seriously enough. Growing up with emotional neglect, you learn an important lesson that is false: that your feelings are useless, insignificant, unacceptable, excessive,"

"You may feel either emotionally numb or unexpectedly overwhelmed, with little in between. Relearning to value and respond to your emotions can restore connection, clarity, and self-trust. Important: Before you read about these problems, I want to tell you that there are answers to all of them. The one good thing about emotional neglect is that all three of these effects can be healed."

Read at Psychology Today