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Healing from emotional neglect doesn't require involving one's parents in the process.

The type of parent one has determines if discussing neglect will help or hinder healing.

Having compassion for emotionally neglectful parents can ease pain, but should not replace self-protection.

Now that I see what my parents didn’t give me, how do I continue to interact with them?

Should I tell my parents how they failed me?

If I talk to my parents about childhood emotional neglect, won’t it make them feel bad?

How do I handle the pain that I feel now, as an adult, each time my parents treat my feelings like they don’t matter?

If you were raised by parents who were not tuned in enough to your emotional needs, you have probably experienced the effects of this failure over and over in your adult life. Once you realize how deeply you have been affected by childhood emotional neglect, it can become quite difficult to interact with the parents who neglected you.

One of the most frequent questions that I am asked by people who grew up with childhood emotional neglect is, “Should I talk to my parents about it?”

This is not an easy question to answer because no two childhoods are the same. In fact, the number of possible answers is as infinite as the many ways that childhood emotional neglect can happen. It can be healing when an adult child and parent come to a mutual understanding of how an emotional failure happened and why, and how it affected everyone involved. This, however, can be a complicated business, difficult, and even risky.

It’s important to keep in mind that you don’t have to include your parents in your recovery. As........

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