Emotional Neglect: How It Happens in Relationships, Its Effects, and Overcoming It

Relationships can be the most beautiful thing ever; places where you can know someone and, in turn, be known. Relationships can also be deeply challenging spaces, where, instead of being known, they can result in feeling isolated, disconnected, and hurt. Emotional neglect can happen in big and small ways in every type of relationship imaginable. While it is deeply damaging, there’s always hope that healing can be found.

The term “emotional neglect” points to certain patterns of behavior in a relationship that result in a person’s emotional needs being ignored, unmet, or disregarded by a loved one or someone who has some level of responsibility to meet those needs. These emotional needs include being heard and understood, being given attention, feeling accepted and loved for who you are, and receiving support and comfort.

We all have these emotional needs, and the people around us, such as parents, caregivers, romantic partners, and other loved ones, are the very people we depend on to meet these needs. ‘Emotional neglect’ doesn’t refer to the failure to meet these needs once, or only rarely; the issue with emotional neglect is that it is part of a pattern in the relationship.

Different Ways Emotional Neglect Manifests

A pattern of emotional neglect can manifest in various ways in any relationship. Some of these may feel innocuous, perhaps because they have become part of how the relationship works. In other instances, you may feel as though there’s nothing you can do, or even that it’s justified. However, emotional neglect can be a form of abuse, and there are many ways for that neglect to occur.

Some examples of emotional neglect include downplaying or invalidating another person’s feelings or experiences. Similarly, downplaying another’s worries or fears or dismissing their concerns is another form of emotional neglect. Emotional neglect could also involve not providing emotional support in the form of empathy, comfort, encouragement, or validation.

Other instances of emotional neglect would include being emotionally unavailable. This could look like being preoccupied, distant, or altogether unresponsive to a loved one’s emotional needs. A person might be physically present, but if they’re emotionally unavailable or absent, if they aren’t present, interested, or engaged in conversations or important moments, that could be a form of emotional neglect.

When you care about someone, you ask about their life, the things that fascinate them, and what’s happening in their life. As such, emotional neglect could also show up as a lack of genuine interest in a person’s life. Another way this happens is by ignoring bids or attempts for connection. If a loved one reaches out, expresses their needs, or displays cues that indicate they want connection, and these are ignored, it’s a form of neglect.

Lastly, emotional neglect can happen through stonewalling, which is when a person clams up and refuses to communicate or shuts down conversations with their loved one. Stonewalling takes away the opportunity to connect, or even to remedy whatever is going on. It isolates both parties, leaving the root problem untouched.

Why Emotional Neglect Takes Place

A relationship has lots of moving parts, and there could be many reasons why emotional neglect takes place. As you approach a given situation, it may be helpful to begin by extending grace and not presuming bad motives until you’ve managed to investigate further. There aren’t always malicious or bad intentions behind why emotional neglect happens in a relationship.

Emotional neglect can take place in a relationship due to various reasons, and these include the following:

Low emotional bandwidth Dealing with your own or another’s emotions can be taxing. If you’re struggling or preoccupied with your own personal issues, or if you’re experiencing emotional burnout or significant stress, it can leave you with too little emotional bandwidth to be as attentive to a loved one as you would typically be. Struggles with depression or anxiety may also make it harder to have bandwidth.

Unresolved trauma When you’re carrying emotional baggage or you haven’t dealt with past trauma, your own emotional pain may make it hard for you to be emotionally available for others. This is due to unresolved hurt becoming the central focus and causing internal distraction from seeing the other person’s perspective.

A lack of emotional intelligence Emotional intelligence is the skill of being able to understand and effectively respond to your own and others’ emotions. Emotional intelligence may be diminished for any number of reasons, including never having learned it or if it’s impaired through neurodevelopmental disorders that make it hard to recognize others’ emotions.

Avoidance A person may also have a deep discomfort with emotional closeness, and that aversion toward emotional intimacy may inform their desire to shut down or avoid emotional connection with others. These learned patterns can develop from childhood and become ingrained as habits in relationships over time.

Different styles If two people have different styles when it comes to expressing their emotions or needs, they could have mismatched expectations or misunderstandings about what they need. Think about personality types and how temperament influences the way in which we feel naturally comfortable or uncomfortable expressing feelings.

Poor communication A lack of empathy and poor communication skills can result in a loss of emotional connection or in the inability to provide effective recognition and validation of a loved one’s experiences and emotions. Skills such as active listening can make a huge difference in a relationship, and their lack can result in emotional neglect. Being able to express your needs clearly helps others know what you need in a given moment or situation.

These and other reasons can contribute to patterns of neglect, though this may not always be intentional. It’s important to recognize underlying issues and individual blind spots as you go about addressing the issues and attempting to strengthen the relationship.

The Damage Emotional Neglect Can Do

We all have needs, including the need to matter to others. Emotional neglect can communicate – intentionally or unintentionally – that a person, their needs, and their experiences don’t matter. As you can imagine, this is incredibly damaging. We matter; if not to other people, then to God, who loves us with a steadfast love. How other people respond to you doesn’t diminish the inherent value the Lord created you with, but earthly relationships can still impact you.

Experiencing emotional neglect can affect a person’s relationships, their sense of identity, their mental health, and their overall sense of well-being. Emotional neglect can result in low self-worth and feelings of isolation. It can be hard to engage in relationships with others if you carry the suspicion that they will take no account of you.

One of the biggest challenges that can result from emotional neglect is difficulty learning how to regulate one’s own emotions. This struggle can result from several realities, including the fact that when your emotions and experiences are ignored or dismissed consistently, you don’t develop the ability to understand or validate your own emotions. As a result, the heightened stress and anxiety from neglect can make self-regulation challenging.

When a person doesn’t have reliable emotional support, it’s harder to process any emotional distress. One possible outcome is a turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms to regulate difficult emotions. The mood swings, emotional dysregulation, and increased vulnerability to mental health issues can worsen feelings of isolation and result in deep resentment toward others.

Finding Healing and Wholeness After Emotional Neglect

There’s no doubt that emotional neglect can damage a person in a surprising number of ways. If you suspect that you have neglected a loved one emotionally, there are some things you can do:

Acknowledge and apologize Instead of hiding in denial, it’s more helpful to recognize the hurt caused and apologize sincerely for it. This process may also involve doing serious self-reflection to identify the reasons behind the emotional neglect, then plotting steps you can take to grow or address any issues underlying the neglect.

Practice active listening Try to understand and validate your loved one’s emotions, thoughts, and experiences. Listen to understand, not to respond or to judge. This will often require doing things radically differently, like creating a distraction-free space to have conversations, not jumping to conclusions, allowing them to finish their thoughts, and asking questions to clarify instead of making assumptions.

Show support Being present, validating a loved one’s emotions and experiences, and doing this through open, empathetic communication can help show a loved one that they matter.

If, on the other hand, you’ve been emotionally neglected, you can pursue healing and wholeness by taking the following steps:

Self-reflection Take the time to identify and name your emotional needs. You may have needs that you can’t name, and that, in turn, makes it hard to communicate these to others, feeding into the cycle of emotional neglect. You can also put work into understanding your emotions so that you can better regulate them and know best how to meet the needs underlying those emotions.

Self-care As part of healing, take the time to prioritize activities that nourish you and help you flourish. If emotional neglect invalidates you and tells you that you don’t matter to others, self-care is a way to say to yourself that you do matter, and your needs matter. Taking care of your well-being is investing in the reality that God made you in His image, you matter, and are deserving of love.

Set healthy boundaries Emotional neglect may happen when you overemphasize others while neglecting yourself. Your boundaries communicate your limits, and they are also a way of asserting your emotional needs so that loved ones know best how to love you. Practice the use of “I” statements to find your voice, such as “I feel…”, “I need…”, or “I prefer…” as a start.

Seek support Working with a professional counselor can help you to address any underlying issues in your relationships, communication style, or the coping strategies you use to work through things. Not only can this setting be a great space to unpack and process things, but you can also grow your communication skills as well as your emotional intelligence.

If you are concerned about emotional neglect in your relationship and are ready to get help, contact me today and schedule an appointment.