Childhood Emotional Neglect
Psychotherapy for Adults healing from Childhood Emotional Neglect
You have this nagging empty feeling.
You feel like there’s this gaping hole inside and you’ve been trying to fill it with overworking, over performing and trying to keep yourself busy with self-help ideas so you can finally feel ok.
But it’s not helping.
You’ve come to realize that though your parents did the best they could, you were emotionally neglected in some way. You may be having this awareness due to parenting your own children, which has been kicking up some painful childhood memories from the past.
You’ve either been cold and distant with those in your life, or you’re on the other end of the spectrum, feeling extra clingy and worried with your loved one(s). Your google search landed you on CEN - Childhood Emotional Neglect. No matter what it is called, deep in your heart, you’re sad and lonely.
Heal your inner child wounds
Through psychotherapy for CEN, we help individuals to grow into the kind of parent, partner, lover, friend, colleague and community member who is self aware, present, connected and kind. Our hope is for you to be emotionally intimate with your partner and open your heart to your children, friends and loved ones.
Heal Childhood Emotional Neglect
CEN Therapy in Long Island, New York
Psychotherapy helps you heal so you can process the invisible scars of emotional neglect so that they don’t weigh you down anymore. Our Childhood Emotional Neglect therapists are here to help you process your relationships with your primary caregivers and make sense of your past. Doing this will allow you to develop a steady sense of self, build self confidence and build rich, fulfilling relationships.
At Integrative Psychotherapy, our therapists understand the reality of what it’s like living in New York, and using their professional experience, help you:
Identify and name your experiences growing up with childhood emotional neglect
Work though the negative beliefs you have been carrying because of the neglect
Identify the needs you have in a relationship for it can be fulfilling and meaningful to you
Work past the fear of being shamed, isolated or ignored for having needs (healthy, normal needs!)
Navigate your relationship with your parent(s) and decide a healthy game plan for you
You’ll also learn to:
Clearly understand how codependency, enmeshment, attachment styles, and childhood emotional neglect impact your current relationships
Take steps to developing a secure attachment template
Develop meaningful relationships and/or feel safer in the relationships you already have
Develop an emotional vocabulary so you can better express yourself and your needs
Feel less anxious, depressed, and stressed out, and gain a healthier sense of self
Set healthy boundaries with others
……and improve all your personal relationships!
Ready to live a life with meaningful relationships?
Click below to begin healing today!
What is Emotional Neglect? And Does It Impact You Today?” Read our blog written by Esther Goldstein, here.
Counseling for Childhood Emotional Neglect in New York. Long Island and Nassau County Offices.
Need More Details About Childhood Emotional Neglect?
Though the word “neglect” often evokes an image of an unkept hungry child left at the fire station, emotional neglect is a kind of neglect that isn’t visible but is very real, and leaves a lasting mark.
Childhood emotional neglect is when your primary caregiver(s) did not tend to your emotional needs in the way that you needed, as you were growing up. This can be anytime from birth until 18 years old.
Childhood emotional needs include:
To Be Heard, To Feel Seen, To Be Understood, To Feel Like They Belong, To be met with Empathy, Unconditional Positive Regard/Love, To be Validated (a lot!), To be Accepted, To have and learn about Boundaries….and a whole lot of physical and emotional affection.
Now, no parents are perfect all the time, but in healthy families, children get enough of the above “recipe”.
If you didn’t get what you needed in your childhood, it’s possible you were left feeling like you need to try twice as hard to get the love, attention and approval you desired. You may have desperately tried to “do it right” but kept missing the mark.
You learned to be self sufficient but it came at a price.
As a child, you realized that you’ll need to find a way to figure stuff out on your own. And as an adult, you’ve worked hard to build a life that makes you feel good. But even though you’ve got a lot working for you, you often feel the pangs of hurt, sadness, and emptiness.
You’re done feeling unfulfilled in your relationships. You find yourself struggling to really trust those around you, and you’re surrounded by people who don’t understand you. You want to build a better life of love, reliability and feeling a sense of meaning. You want to stop feeling stuck, depressed, anxious and insecure.
What is Emotional Neglect? And Does It Impact You Today?” Read our blog written by Esther Goldstein, here.
Do I really have childhood emotional neglect?
Some questions to help you gain clarity.
Do you feel all alone in the world, even when there are people around you, still feel that there is no one you can truly rely on?
Do you walk around looking confident on the outside, and seem independent, but on the inside you’re desperately wishing you could depend on someone and not need to seem so strong?
Do you ever have this nagging feeling of sadness but don’t know where it’s coming from?
Do you wonder what that secret ingredient is that makes other people content and happy?
Do you worry that if you truly shared what you want, need or how you really feel, that your loved ones won’t love you anymore or will feel burdened by your needs?
Do you judge yourself harshly and have a strong inner critic?
Do you have a hard time knowing how you’re feeling inside? a felt sense?
Do you feel afraid of and avoid emotional intimacy (even-though some part of you desires it)?
Do you sometimes feel like you just don’t belong?
As an anxiety, trauma and childhood emotional neglect specialist, I have found that these are common feelings for those who experienced CEN Childhood emotional neglect.
Part of the struggle is that the pain is “invisible” and that’s why it’s so easily missed, and so often misunderstood.
Dr. Joannice Webb gave these specific struggles a name by calling it “Childhood Emotional Neglect” and wrote a book called “Running on Empty”.
At Integrative Psychotherapy, our therapists have engaged in advanced trainings to help you heal from the invisible wounds of childhood emotional neglect and begin to feel better. We offer a blend of methods in our New York and Long Island Offices, including talk therapy, somatic therapy, EMDR therapy, parts work and expressive arts.
Simplifying childhood emotional neglect.
Children feel emotionally neglected when their parent(s) fail to respond enough to their emotional needs. The message that the child takes from this is that “your feelings don’t matter”. And since our feelings and emotions are what make us who we are, when children get the sense that their feelings don’t matter, the get a deeper message which is “you don’t matter”.
And here’s the truth: You DO matter and your feelings are important!
Now, I’m not one for parent bashing or parent blaming…
…Because there are often many reasons why parents can’t tend to their children properly. They may be tending to their own neglect, tending to their own trauma wounds, dealing with an addiction, living in poverty, needing to work to cover basic expenses or tending to an elderly or other demanding child.
However, in order to help you heal and in order to help you learn to have healthy needs in relationships, we do need to acknowledge the ways you were hurt, ignored or neglected. It can be painful to see the ways your caregivers may have caused pain. We go slowly in this work so we gently find a way for you to own your story while also noticing where others may have hurt or disappointed you.
Our focus is on helping you heal and focusing forward, not on dwelling on the past. However, sometimes we need to understand and heal the past so we can move forward and not keep getting stuck in unconscious “potholes”.
Making sense of your life and your patterns allow for the clarity needed to heal and change.
In healing, we help you learn to stop numbing, to stop shutting down and to start feeling, all the big, beautiful and sloppy feelings. You will learn to feel proud of your feelings, and invite them with love and grace, and learn to use them as an internal compass. And, with the support of a kind, skilled and caring therapist, you’ll be able to release repressed feelings you’ve been carrying such as rage, shame or sadness, so you can find relief.
Counseling helps you strengthen who you are as you evolve into a more confident, solid person.
Ready to start healing from your childhood emotional wounds?
We are here for you and ready to help! Reach out below to schedule your free 15 minute consultation and to begin setting up a treatment plan to helping you heal!
At Integrative Psychotherapy we help clients engage in mind-body focused healing so they can live more wholesomely and love more deeply.
We use scientific based methods such as EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Internal Family Systems/ Parts work, Expressive Arts and More. Reach out today for your free 15 minute consultation to see how we can help you feel better.
A note about our fees: our session fee for individual therapy is $250-350, and we provide the paperwork for your insurance company for out of network reimbursement if you have out of network benefits.