When you don’t get what you need in your childhood, it can affect your adulthood in negative ways. If your parents missed all your signs for help and if they didn’t give you all the love and affection that you craved as a child, it is normal that behavior like that will leave deep scars and that you will doubt all that you do. You will constantly seek proof that you are good enough and you won’t open up to people as much as they open up to you.
Unfortunately, there are so many emotionally neglected children nowadays and it can happen due to a mixed number of reasons. Some of them are children of divorced, narcissistic too strict or absent parents. And all those things made those children believe that they were doing something wrong and that they are not good enough.
If you wonder whether you were emotionally neglected in your childhood, check the following signs to help you realize if you really need help or not.
You are always struggling to open up to people
Do you have the constant feeling that you should always help others but you never share your problems with them? If your answer is positive, it can be a sign that you were an emotionally neglected child. This happens because you were a child who needed help and assistance, but you never got them and now you don’t ask for them from others. You think that nobody will listen to you and that the rest of the people, like your parents did, will fail to help you.
Feeling flawed
For you, all the people around you are perfect but that is not what you think about yourself. You feel that something is missing, but you can’t figure out what. There is always some bad feeling and you can’t get rid of it. So, you keep asking yourself what to do to feel better and you sometimes find help in the wrong places. You feel that you have a problem and that you are not likeable. You think that people won’t like you because you are not good enough.
You have problems expressing your emotions
Do you feel all frozen in a stressful situation, not knowing what to say? Do you question people’s behaviors just like your own too many times? If this is what happens to you on a daily basis, it is a sign that you were an emotionally neglected child and that you have issues from your past. Whatever you do, you just can’t relax and you don’t know what to do about it.
You have low self-esteem
Because of this trauma from your past, you have a lack of self-love. For you, other people are perfect but you are not. You keep thinking that you should improve yourself, but you don’t know how. You don’t cherish your empathy for others and your strengths to do things you think you are not capable of doing. You simply can’t see how amazing you are and it is all because of the mistakes of your parents.
You are highly sensitive
You are sensitive to everything but mostly, you are sensitive to rejection. When someone tells you that you should improve, you immediately think that things are very bad and you think about the worst case scenario. Just because someone mentioned a constructive criticism, you feel offended and that you are not good enough.
You enjoy yourself the most when you are alone
Since you have low self-esteem, you constantly think that you don’t fit in with other people. You don’t feel as worthy as they are and that’s why you like to spend time alone. In that way, nobody can hurt you with their actions and you feel safe, that nothing bad will happen to you.
You can’t find a valid reason for your unhappiness
Do you sometimes catch yourself feeling unhappy but you actually don’t know why? You feel like something is missing in your life and you need that small thing to be happy. So, you stuck with anxiety and depression and you make more problems in your life. If you feel this way, just know that you were probably emotionally neglected in your childhood and that you have consequences now when you are an adult.
You feel guilty for everything bad that happens to you
You somehow feel that everything bad that happens to you has something to do with your actions. You think that you made mistakes and that because of that, you can’t succeed in achieving your goals. What you don’t know is that you can’t be the only one to blame because there are a lot of factors in life that can ruin our dreams. So, don’t be too harsh on yourself and try to work on the things you think you need to. The rest actually doesn’t depend on you.
