Understanding Child Development

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Growing up with ignored feelings can leave a person unsure of what they want or need as an adult.

Hidden, unrecognized emotions in childhood often surface later as confusion, pain, or self-doubt.

Learning to notice and value one's feelings can gradually restore direction and authenticity.

Childhood emotional neglect: A subtle, often invisible childhood experience that happens when your parents fail to notice or respond to your feelings enough.

Why does it matter if you grew up with your feelings ignored (childhood emotional neglect)?

To you, it may not seem to be all that important. So let’s talk about the three most tragic childhood emotional neglect symptoms in adults.

In all of my years as a psychologist, I have never seen anything so seemingly innocuous, yet so powerfully damaging as the simple failure of your parents to notice or respond to what you are feeling as they are raising you. It’s a “simple failure” that becomes a part of your everyday life forever.

Growing up with your emotions disregarded automatically communicates a silent, but powerfully effective, message to your deepest self: As a child, you accept, on a very deep level, that in your childhood home, your feelings do not matter. As a child, you must wall off your own emotions so that you will never appear sad, hurt, needy, or emotional to your parents.

Going through life ignoring and undervaluing your emotions has some........

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