Growing Up With Emotionally Unavailable Parents

Childhood is a time of learning the norms and expectations in your predestined environment. Being raised by emotionally unavailable parents hinders an individuals ability to trust and rely on the adults in their life, causing an out of balance regulation system.

What Are Emotionally Unavailable Parents?

Emotionally unavailable parents detach and disconnect from their children, failing to provide validation and loving connections. This results from their own mental health struggles, unresolved traumas, overburdened schedules, and avoidant attachment styles. As parents juggle their emotional load, they struggle to teach their children to do the same. Balancing these two worlds overwhelms the detached parent. The absence of emotional support makes children feel unimportant and devalued, resulting in lifelong difficulties.

Long Lasting Effects:

Experiencing childhood with emotionally unavailable caretakers can have long lasting effects on children. They develop a disconnected sense of self, experience low self esteem, and often feel worthless, questioning the value of their lives. Without the nurturing of an emotionally stable and supportive parent, children are prone to becoming dysregulated as adults. This pattern leads to difficulty achieving and maintaining healthy relationships with solid boundaries.

Dating Relationships Are Being Impacted:

When children lack access to an emotionally supportive environment in childhood, they tend to develop ongoing struggles in dating relationships. They may struggle to trust a significant other, express vulnerability, and share intense or raw emotion. Individuals withdraw from their partners and actively create emotional distance. Negative beliefs about intimacy and attachment further reinforce. The ability to verbalize desires and needs becomes increasingly challenging.

Boundaries and Self Care For Adults Raised by Emotionally Unavailable Parents:

Teaching children to distrust their emotions causes them to place a higher priority on the emotions of others. This leads to disregarding one’s true wishes and desires in order to please others and create a space of calm. These adult children struggle to practice self care due to intense desires to please others around them. Now you are wondering “How do I heal?”

Personal Restoration Is Possible:

The virtual therapy office offers a space to learn to examine and be present with these emotions. We will challenge the pattern of satisfying others above yourself and learn regulation skills to allow healthier connections with friends and family.

Through therapy, individuals will practice communication skills, gain understanding of attachment styles, and build a network of support. By learning to trust, speak more openly, and set boundaries in the therapy setting participants will create a space to practice healthy exchanges. These skills are duplicated into other environments.

It’s Time For Change:

Connecting with and supporting emotions is so valuable in raising children. It is possible to make a change. Having satisfying relationships through healing emotional wounds is possible. A burdened upbringing no longer has to conceal childhood emotions. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is the place to challenge the programming you received so you can be a healthier version of yourself.