Many of us were raised with the notion that kids are meant “to be seen and not heard,” meaning ‘don’t speak until you are spoken to.” While this idea may have only meant to keep the volume down at the Thanksgiving table, it can negatively impact a child’s psyche.
Worse still, many children suffer from Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN). These children were raised to believe that not only do their ideas not matter, but neither do their feelings or needs.
What Is Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN) and How Does It Happen?
Childhood Emotional Neglect, or CEN, is what happens when a child’s feelings are consistently brushed aside, minimized, or simply overlooked by the adults responsible for their care. Instead of receiving support and validation, the child learns—often without a word being said—that their emotions are inconvenient or unimportant.
This lack of acknowledgment can take many forms. Maybe your parents were preoccupied, emotionally distant, or believed that talking about feelings was unnecessary. Over time, you learn to bottle up your emotions, walling off parts of yourself just to get by.
Imagine trying to run a car without fuel. Our emotions are meant to guide, connect, and energize us. But when childhood teaches us to ignore or suppress them, we enter adulthood running on empty—cut off from a fundamental source of motivation and self-understanding.
Though the words may never have been said, the actions, or lack of, announced loud and clear: You don’t matter.
These children become adults who still believe they don’t matter and shouldn’t burden others with their needs or feelings. But this cycle of worthlessness can be broken.
Understand the Roots of Your Emotional Neglect
To move forward, it helps to look back with compassion and clarity. Take time to consider how emotional neglect showed up in your family. Was it both parents, or just one? Were they distracted by their own struggles, overwhelmed, or simply unaware of how to tend to your feelings?
Reflecting on the details—whether your feelings were disregarded because your parents didn’t know better or because they were wrapped up in their own worlds—can shed light on why you experienced what you did. Understanding how CEN affected you then and continues to shape you now isn’t about blaming yourself or even your parents. Instead, it’s about recognizing the patterns, letting go of misplaced shame, and giving yourself the validation you may never have received as a child.
When you see your story clearly, you can start to offer yourself the empathy and understanding you’ve always deserved. This deep self-awareness is the first step to breaking free from old beliefs and building a life grounded in self-compassion and authenticity.
Here are ways you can heal from childhood emotional neglect:
Share Your CEN Story with Someone You Trust
Opening up about your experience with childhood emotional neglect isn’t easy, but it can be a powerful step forward. When you share your story with someone close to you—whether it’s a friend, partner, or even a supportive therapist—you give yourself permission to take your feelings seriously.
Letting someone in on your journey does more than lighten your emotional load. It helps you:
- Feel less isolated, reminding you that you don’t have to carry the weight alone.
- Validate your experience, making it real not just for you, but for someone else, too.
- Foster connection and deepen relationships built on honesty and understanding.
You may be surprised at how relieving it feels to be truly seen and heard—possibly for the first time. And through sharing, you create space for healing to take root.
Embrace Your Needs and Emotions
You most likely grew up believing your needs and emotions were your enemies. You may have even been made to feel ashamed because of them.
To heal, you must embrace your needs and emotions and invite them to play an active role in your life. You can do this by listening to yourself and honoring the way you feel. When understood and managed, emotions can propel us and help facilitate positive change.
Invite People into Your Life
Growing up, you might have felt like adults were the enemy. After all, the adults in your life made you feel worthless. As an adult, you may have an instinct to keep people at a safe distance, to “protect” yourself. But, to heal, you must stop pushing people away and invite them into your life. When we form relationships with genuine, caring, and honest people, we feel good about ourselves while adding value to our lives.
Get to Know Who You Are
Survivors of CEN all have one thing in common: they don’t know themselves. That’s because the people in their lives who should know them the best, their family, never really took the time to get to know them.
But now is the time for you to recognize the truth fully; you are worth knowing, and it is your responsibility to get to know yourself. Knowing who you are, what you like, want, need, love, value, and desire in this life will give you a firm foundation to propel yourself into an awesome future.
Recovering from any kind of emotional trauma is not easy. It is a personal journey that will contain many highs and lows. But taking the journey one step at a time will lead you to the wonderful life you deserve.