Maltreatment can cause victims to feel isolation, fear, and distrust, which can translate into lifelong psychological consequences that can manifest as educational difficulties, low self-esteem, depression, and trouble forming and maintaining relationships.
Effects of Emotional Neglect In Adult Relationships
Some effects of emotional neglect are: Higher rates of anxiety, depression, and other psychiatric disorders. More frequent negative emotions like anger, guilt, shame, and fear. Higher risk for substance use disorders and addictions.
Most unresolved childhood trauma affects self-esteem and creates anxiety. Did you suffer a serious childhood illness? If so, you were likely isolated at home or hospitalized. This meant being removed from normal social activities and you probably felt lonely, maybe even worried about being different.
Studies show that those who have experienced abuse and neglect at an early age have a harder time learning, forming, and maintaining attachments and relationships. Mental health takes a hit as well, so depression, anxiety, and stress are likely to be in the picture.
For children, affectional neglect may have devastating consequences, including failure to thrive, developmental delay, hyperactivity, aggression, depression, low self-esteem, running away from home, substance abuse, and a host of other emotional disorders. These children feel unloved and unwanted.
If your daughter feels unloved, she may suffer from several emotional problems. Symptoms can include depression, anxiety, self-harm, and more. These feelings are often the result of the way her parents treated her during her childhood.
A child who has experienced this type of trauma and holds much shame may show us behaviours such as: envy, anger, and anxiety, effects of sadness, depression, depletion, loneliness, isolation and avoidance. They will highlight to us their inadequacy, their powerlessness and at times their own self-disgust.
When children's feelings aren't validated or downplayed or dismissed, they are told that they don't matter to the adults in their lives. This impact is devastating. Essentially, childhood emotional neglect is a type of trauma.
Surviving abuse or trauma as a child has been linked with higher rates of anxiety, depression, suicide and self harm, PTSD, drug and alcohol misuse and relationship difficulties.
Symptoms of Unresolved Trauma
Lack of trust and difficulty opening up to other people6. Dissociation and a persistent feeling of numbness7. Control issues, to overcompensate for feeling helpless during the traumatic incident8. Low self-esteem and feelings of worthlessness9.
About 4 million cases of child abuse and neglect involving almost 7 million children are reported each year. The highest rate of child abuse is in babies less than one year of age, and 25 percent of victims are younger than age three.
Child maltreatment, particularly neglect and emotional abuse, can cause long-term, critical impairment to brain development. These alterations can affect a wide variety of functioning in the child, including affecting memory, self-control, and responses to stress.
Shame, guilt, low self-esteem, and a poor self-image are common among children with complex trauma histories.
Re-experiencing or re-living unwanted memories as flashbacks or nightmares. Hyper-arousal: problems with sleep, irritability, anger, anxiety, hyper-alertness, exaggerated startle response. Hypo-arousal: feeling numb or cut off, feeling detached from others, dissociating, feeling flat or empty. Emotional dysregulation.
Without treatment, repeated childhood exposure to traumatic events can affect the brain and nervous system and increase health-risk behaviors (e.g., smoking, eating disorders, substance use, and high-risk activities).
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Children and adolescents with PTSD have symptoms such as persistent, frightening thoughts and memories or flashbacks of a traumatic event or events.
“Children who are not raised in safe, loving, respectful, and consistent environments tend to grow up feeling very unsafe and untrusting,” explains Manly. As a result, they tend to experience challenges trusting themselves and others throughout life.
Emotionally absent or cold mothers can be unresponsive to their children's needs. They may act distracted and uninterested during interactions, or they could actively reject any attempts of the child to get close. They may continue acting this way with adult children.
There is increasing evidence from the fields of development psychology, neurobiology and animal epigenetic studies that neglect, parental inconsistency and a lack of love can lead to long-term mental health problems as well as to reduced overall potential and happiness.
How do I know if I was emotionally neglected as a child? There are several signs such as feelings of detachment, lack of peer group, dissociative inclinations, and difficulty in being emotionally present.