2002 Atwood Ave, Madison, WI, 53704 / TELETHERAPY / 920.215.1254
Therapy for Childhood Emotional Neglect in Madison
Teletherapy throughout Wisconsin, Kentucky, and Oregon
Childhood Emotional Neglect—The Pain Of Not Feeling Seen, Heard, Or Understood
You never felt seen, heard, or understood growing up. Your feelings were ignored or dismissed. You were told to stop feeling so much or that your feelings were wrong.
Now, as an adult, you feel confused by your feelings. You may ignore them or hide them. You feel ashamed for having feelings. Or you don’t trust what you feel. You have a hard time understanding feelings– your own or someone else’s. A crucial part of you– your emotional life– has been cut off.
You feel so empty and depleted all the time. You’re either completely overwhelmed and stressed or totally numbed out and dead inside. You keep getting into relationships with people who also dismiss and reject your feelings. You want to understand this pattern of choosing people that hurt you. People that just keep repeating a pattern from your past.
You feel disgusted with yourself and hate having needs or feelings. You often wonder, “what is wrong with me?” You feel so broken inside. You don’t know how to talk about what you’re feeling or to put words to this pain. You clam up and tighten when people want to get close to you.
You may be afraid of appearing needy, weak, or selfish if you ask for help or express your feelings. You don’t want to depend on anyone. You struggle with knowing how to express what you feel and emotional needs in healthy ways.
How Can Therapy For Childhood Emotional Neglect Help You?
Our work together will prioritize your emotional experience and provide a space for you to process the full range of your emotional life. All your feelings will be welcomed without judgment. The complexity of your human experience and emotional life will be honored.
Psychodynamic therapy is an approach to address early wounds of emotional neglect. We will work to understand and be curious about all the ways you feel and how this shows up in your body. We may explore and bring to conscious awareness, thoughts and beliefs you have about your feelings. These unconscious thoughts and beliefs now make it hard for you to know and express what you feel. For example, you may not be consciously aware of the held belief that “feelings are bad” or the belief that “showing feelings is a sign of weakness”. Once they become conscious, we can explore these beliefs and loosen their grip.
During counseling for childhood emotional neglect, we will work together to help you reconnect to your feelings and find words to what you are feeling. We will explore what makes it hard to identify and verbalize your emotional experience. We will work to understand how expressing your feelings feels scary or unsafe or not allowed. Over time, childhood emotional neglect therapy will help you find it easier to connect to your felt, bodily sense and express your needs and wants.
What Is Childhood Emotional Neglect?
Emotional neglect is a failure to notice, attend to, or respond in a caring and validating way to a child’s feelings. It may include experiences of having your feelings dismissed, judged, or invalidated. Emotional neglect can include experiences of being shamed for your feelings, told you don’t feel the way you do, or having early caregivers be chronically misattuned to what you were feeling. It is a deep and long-lasting wound. Therapy can be a profound way to heal these wounds. Emotional neglect can be difficult to identify and hard to explain because it’s the absence of something. It’s an experience that should have been there when you needed it, but wasn’t. This can be difficult to acknowledge especially if your physical needs were met as a child or you didn’t experience abuse in your family.
Dr. Jonice Webb, Ph.D., an expert on childhood emotional neglect, identifies five ways this kind of neglect can occur in a child’s life. The neglect may have shown up in one or more of the following ways: 1) Absence of physical presence by caregivers, 2) Absence of structure and consequences, 3) Absence of observation and feedback, 4) Absence of depth in love and attention, 5) Dismissal/Invalidation/Refusal to attune to the child’s feelings.
Therapy For Childhood Emotional Neglect Can Address These Early Wounds
In counseling for childhood emotional neglect, we will prioritize your feelings and emotional experience. I will work hard to understand your feelings and see you. I believe you. Your feelings are real. Your emotional life is an incredibly important part of who you are.
We will help you reconnect with yourself and your body to support you in expressing yourself in more authentic and genuine ways. Childhood emotional neglect therapy can help you describe your emotions when you’re feeling them in the moment and learn how to effectively communicate your felt experience. Learning to connect with your feelings again will help you trust yourself and your intuition in a deeper way.
The healing power of having your feelings be seen and validated cannot be overstated. Increased self-awareness of your feelings, more capacity to process them, and increased ability to communicate how you feel to others can have a profound impact on your life and relationships. Over time, you will start to see that it isn’t wrong or selfish to attend to your emotional life. You have a right to your feelings! Feeling seen and heard can help you find more authenticity in who you are. You can trust yourself more. It can be easier for you to know what you want. It’s possible to feel more connected to your body and to feel more whole.
Your Emotional Life Is Core To Who You Are
Experiencing emotional neglect as a child may have left you feeling depleted and like you don’t exist. Seeking out therapy for these wounds can restore a deeper and closer connection to your body, your experience and in your relationships.
To experience this, please call 920.215.1254, email, or contact me to schedule a 30-minute complimentary phone or video consultation to find out how childhood emotional neglect therapy can help. I look forward to hearing from you.