Understanding Childhood Emotional Neglect in Adults (with Multicultural Perspectives)
Image by Caroline Hernandez on Unsplash
When we talk about childhood trauma, people often think of big, obvious events. But sometimes, it's the absence of things that leaves the deepest wounds.
I remember my therapist once asking, "Who checked in on you? Who made you feel safe as a child? Who comforted you when things were hard?" I struggled to answer. That silence spoke volumes.
For much of my early childhood, I lived with my dad’s side of the family. Growing up in a busy Chinese household in Thailand, I was constantly surrounded by people, yet I couldn’t recall anyone being there for me in that way. While I never doubted my parents' love, I always felt like I had to face things on my own. Asking for help never seemed like an option—not because others wouldn't help, but because it never felt like an option for me. I learned to rely on myself, finding my own way and fighting my own battles.
For years, I swung between two extremes: feeling disconnected from everyone—convincing myself I didn’t need anyone—and desperately wanting someone, anyone, even if they weren’t good for me. This led to a period of misspent youth, and I developed unhelpful coping mechanisms like becoming overly self-reliant, self-sabotaging, running away from home, and people-pleasing… often to the wrong type of people.
Emotional neglect isn’t always loud or obvious like other forms of trauma. It’s quieter, harder to see, but just as impactful. It shapes how we see ourselves and how we connect with others. It’s OK to acknowledge the gaps that were there—and it’s OK to heal from them.
Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN)
CEN is a subtle form of trauma that many people experience, often without realising it. Its long-lasting effects can persist into adulthood, shaping how we think, feel, and behave in both our personal and professional lives. While the consequences of CEN may seem subtle, they can significantly affect emotional health, self-perception, and relationships.
At its core, emotional neglect is not about what’s done, but what’s not done. It’s the absence of emotional acknowledgement, validation, and support.
Unlike physical or verbal abuse, it manifests as silence—the empty spaces where attention, affection, approval, and acceptance should be.
For children, CEN can show up in various ways, such as parents or caregivers struggling to express love, care, and support, not being present, avoiding difficult conversations, or ignoring their child’s emotional world. CEN often leaves children with a sense of emptiness and confusion, without a clear narrative to explain their experiences and feelings. This can lead to internalised, unhealthy beliefs about themselves and the world. They may feel they’re the problem, not good enough, or that they’re too much to be loved and accepted as they are. Some children may feel responsible for their parents' happiness and well-being. They might develop the belief that love is conditional or transactional, and that they must do or be more to be worthy of love. Others may feel that because everyone is working hard to provide for them, they should stay quiet, avoid making a fuss, and take care of themselves to avoid being a burden.
The list of possible effects goes on, and each person's experience with CEN will vary. However, the common underlying feelings are often similar: “I’m not good enough” or “I’m too much.”
For people from multicultural backgrounds, this experience can be particularly nuanced. Cultural expectations, identity conflicts, and familial dynamics may shape how emotional neglect is experienced. What’s considered emotionally neglectful in one culture might be normal in another, making it challenging for individuals from multicultural backgrounds to recognise or process their experiences, and identify and articulate their emotional needs. Although the manifestations of CEN may vary across different cultures and countries, its effects are universally profound.
Let’s explore the layers of emotional neglect and how they could impact us.
How Childhood Emotional Neglect may present in adults:
Difficulty Identifying and Expressing Emotions
Adults who have experienced emotional neglect as children often struggle with identifying their own emotions. They might find it hard to describe what they're feeling when emotions are bubbling beneath the surface, or recognise when they are feeling something significant.
Low Self-Esteem and Self-Worth
One of the most pervasive effects of childhood emotional neglect is a diminished sense of self-worth. Adults may grow up feeling "unworthy" of love, success, or happiness because their emotional needs were invalidated or ignored in childhood. They may consistently doubt their abilities at work or in relationships, believing that they don’t deserve positive outcomes or attention.
Chronic Guilt or Shame
People who experienced CEN often feel guilty for expressing their needs or desires. They might internalise the idea that asking for emotional support or attention is selfish, which can lead to chronic feelings of guilt or shame.
Difficulties with Emotional Acceptance and Regulation
Because their emotional needs were not met in childhood, many adults struggle with accepting and regulating their emotions. They may feel overwhelmed by emotions like sadness, anger, or anxiety, causing them to shut down or become highly reactive and feel out of control.
Feeling of Emptiness or Disconnection
Adults who experienced CEN may feel emotionally numb or disconnected from themselves and others. They may have difficulty forming deep emotional connections with others, leaving them feeling isolated and empty. Even in a stable relationship, a person might feel detached or believe that something crucial is missing or anticipate something going wrong, despite external signs of stability or success.
Perfectionism and Overachievement
In some cases, adults with a history of emotional neglect become perfectionists or overachievers, striving to prove their worth to themselves or others. They might push themselves relentlessly in their career or personal life, constantly setting higher goals to avoid feelings of inadequacy. This drive often stems from a deep need to feel valued, which wasn’t nurtured in childhood.
Fear of Dependency or Intimacy
Adults with CEN may struggle with issues around dependency and intimacy. They may have learned to be self-reliant to an extreme degree, finding it difficult to rely on others or form close emotional bonds. Fear of vulnerability is common, as they never received emotional validation in childhood. They might avoid serious relationships or push partners away when things become emotionally intimate, fearing dependency or rejection.
Difficulty Trusting Others
Many adults who grew up with unmet emotional needs develop trust issues. This can manifest in difficulty opening up to others or fearing betrayal in relationships, even when there is no evidence to suggest it.
Overly Independent or Self-Sufficient
CEN survivors often feel the need to handle everything on their own. They may feel that relying on others is a sign of weakness or believe that no one will be there to support them, as this was their experience growing up.
Avoidance of Emotional Self-Reflection
Some adults with a history of CEN avoid looking inward, as they are conditioned to ignore their emotions. As a result, they may avoid therapy or any form of deep emotional work, fearing what they might uncover or simply not seeing the value in it. They may dismiss the importance of discussing feelings or self-reflection, instead focusing on external goals and practical solutions to problems.
People-Pleasing Tendencies and Poor Boundaries
Adults who have experienced CEN may have strong people-pleasing traits, constantly putting others' needs ahead of their own and don’t see the importance of their own boundaries. This behaviour stems from the belief that their own needs are unimportant or that they must earn affection through self-sacrifice. In relationships, they might go out of their way to accommodate others, even at the expense of their own well-being, for fear of rejection or abandonment.
Chronic Loneliness
Despite being surrounded by friends, family, or colleagues, adults with a history of emotional neglect may experience deep, chronic loneliness. This loneliness arises from the emotional disconnection they feel with others and the difficulty in forming authentic, deep relationships. Someone might have a social circle yet feel persistently alone, as though no one truly knows or understands them on an emotional level.
The Role of Culture in Emotional Neglect
In many cultures, emotional expression is not universally encouraged. For instance, in societies where family reputation and duty are prioritised over individual feelings, open communication about emotions might be viewed as unnecessary, over the top, or even selfish. Children may be raised to suppress their feelings to maintain harmony within the family or community. While these cultural values serve a purpose, they can also contribute to emotional neglect by invalidating the child's personal emotional experience.
For those growing up in multicultural homes, where one parent may come from a culture that values emotional openness and the other from a culture that emphasises emotional restraint, this creates a confusing emotional world. The child might internalise conflicting messages about their emotional needs, unsure of whether expressing emotions is acceptable or shameful.
Parents who have lived through trauma, displacement, or financial hardship may focus on providing for their children’s basic needs—food, shelter, education—while emotional needs are neglected.
To them, emotional expression might seem like a luxury, overshadowed by the more pressing need for survival. This mindset can leave children feeling emotionally abandoned, despite their parents’ best efforts to ensure their physical and material well-being.
Multicultural individuals frequently navigate hybrid identities, balancing the expectations and norms of multiple cultures. This duality can create feelings of emotional isolation, as they may struggle to fully identify with any single cultural group. In these instances, emotional neglect extends beyond the absence of validation from parents or caregivers, and includes a lack of recognition from the wider community.
A child might feel emotionally distant from their family if their experiences, shaped by a different cultural context, aren’t recognised or understood. For instance, a child born in a Western country to immigrant parents might experience emotional neglect when their struggles at school or with identity aren’t acknowledged. The parents, raised in a different cultural environment, might not fully grasp the child’s need for support in navigating systemic racism, identity confusion, or social pressures that weren’t part of their own upbringing.
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As a child, I often heard my dad recount the story of my grandmother, who migrated from mainland China to Thailand with nothing. She worked tirelessly to raise her seven children, sometimes gathering rice grains from the temple grounds to ensure they had food. My dad wasn’t an affectionate man (universe rest his soul); his love came in the form of humour, life lessons and blunt honesty about what he perceived as my shortcomings. He believed that by pointing them out, I could better myself, be loved by others, and achieve success. Though his intentions were good, he was rarely around—his time was consumed by work and ‘adult business’ (as many elders used to call it). In his absence, I learned self-reliance and built a protective wall around myself.
On the other hand, my mum, who is Thai, shows her love in an entirely different way—through affection and self-sacrificing gestures. She doesn’t want her children to experience the pain of rejection and abandonment she had endured. My young self felt adored by her love, so much so that the thought of being without it was paralysing. If she was upset with me, it felt like my entire world crumbled, and I believed it was my responsibility to make things right again. In my early childhood, when I was with her, being caring and pleasing to others became my way of maintaining the role of the 'good girl' and ensuring my needs were met. In relationships, I often used to find myself in an unhealthy rescuing role with my partners.
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Points of Reflection:
How do cultural and family dynamics shape your understanding of love and care?
Reflect on the ways your upbringing may have influenced how you give and receive love and care. Did your parents express affection directly, or was their care shown in more practical or indirect ways?
Are there emotional needs you had as a child that went unmet?
Consider whether your emotional needs for validation, safety, or attention were consistently met when you were growing up. How might this have shaped your self-esteem and emotional resilience as an adult?
Have you adopted behaviours to maintain emotional security?
Think about whether you’ve developed habits, such as people-pleasing or self-reliance, as a way to feel secure in your relationships. Are these behaviours serving your current emotional well-being, or do they create challenges for you?
How has your cultural background influenced your response to emotional neglect?
Reflect on whether cultural expectations have influenced your perception of emotional neglect. For example, in some cultures, emotional expression may be more restrained, leading to different expectations around emotional care.
Do you feel pressure to live up to certain family expectations?
Consider whether your family’s hopes for you, such as striving for success or maintaining specific roles, have shaped how you view yourself and your worth. How does this affect your emotional health today?
Childhood emotional neglect shapes how adults perceive themselves, manage emotions, and relate to others, often leaving deep emotional scars. In multicultural families, emotional neglect is uniquely influenced by cultural expectations, identity conflicts, and generational divides. The silence around emotional needs can be further complicated by the multicultural experience, making it harder to recognise and address.
While the effects can be profound, recognising emotional neglect is the first step towards healing. With the right support, it’s possible to overcome the long-term impact of emotional neglect and build healthier, more fulfilling lives.
I hope this blog helped you better understand Childhood Emotional Neglect. If you'd like to learn more about how therapy can support you, I’m Star, an experienced therapist supporting adults from multicultural and international backgrounds. Don’t hesitate to contact me for a free 15-minute introductory chat.