Dear Adey, I just want to point out that it is never too late to make changes inside yourself that will change your whole life. You sound like a very insightful person who’s done a lot of work on self-understanding. I encourage you to shift over to self-care. You can learn to enjoy things and people and open yourself up to a whole new world. I hope you will do that work because you deserve full happiness and fulfillment. All my best to you!

Over here in England, I have found your work invaluable – although I found it far too late.

My parents did their best, but they were ignorant, uneducated and profoundly lacking in emotional intelligence. I think my mother also had a personality disorder; my father was a well-meaning enabler.

Probably like everyone else here, I didn’t know I was emotionally neglected.

By my early teens, I had withdrawn from social life, concluded that I’d never marry or have children, and decided that my priority must be getting out of the family home – getting my own space – as soon as I could.

So although I viscerally knew something was off, I just thought that that was how childhood and life were.

My parents somehow maintained the pretense that emotions simply weren’t a thing – at least not for children. Emotions were a taboo in the way that sex, politics and religion are often a taboo in families.

When, inadvertently, I used a word that alluded to emotion – ‘love’, ‘feel’ or ‘want’ for example – my father would explode into a rage and assert that “you don’t have [whatever I had alluded to]: you’re a child”. My mother wouldn’t say anything – because my mother hardly ever said anything, at least not until someone’s back was turned, whereupon she’d wish them an early and painful death with a smirk on her face.

Emotion was also not allowed to be expressed behaviorally, except when demanded. For example, if I was caught smiling without being instructed to smile at a joke made by a parent, my mother would break her silence and say “wipe that smirk off your face or I’ll wipe it off with the back of my hand”. She never actually hit me though: my father did that, but only when instructed. If I spoke uninvited, she’d say “stop drawing attention to yourself”. If I got excited, “bloody shut up and grow up”.

My parents, of course, not being children, were allowed emotion – although it was expressed through intemperate behavior rather than words, and it was always of the ‘negative’ variety. My father’s rages were in stark contrast to my mother’s sullenness. But neither of them ever uttered an emotionally-descriptive word. Neither showed the other, or either of their children, any affection at all. It was a barren life.

Neither my brother (older than I) nor I had any friends. We were never allowed out without our parents, and when we went out with our parents we were not allowed to speak: our parents would speak for us always, starting with “He’s too shy to speak…”. It was daily humiliation.

I now, in my late 50s, see that this has marred my life. I’ve never married or had children – both things I now know I wanted more than anything but which I had simply thought I was not entitled to aspire to – and every romantic relationship I have had has been with someone whose behavior was strongly suggestive of a ‘Cluster B’ personality disorder. I spent 15 years with someone I now believe had borderline and narcissistic personality disorder. That was a daily hell: almost everything I said or did led to rage, mocking, condescension or threats. I put up with it because never knew that there were women who were not abusive of men and I never knew I was entitled not to put up with it. She too had been raised by a mother exhibiting ‘Cluster B’ traits and a well-meaning enabling father.

I now know that I suffer with social anhedonia: I don’t enjoy, or know how to enjoy, the things everyone else seems to enjoy. As a result, no one can even remotely relate to me.

I’m fairly contented and outwardly successful, but very alone.

And very knowledgeable about emotional neglect and personality disorders.

I have recently joined a group of people who are siblings of disabled people. There is very little work around us as a cohort and we could really do with some help. The pain, guilt, responsibility and lack of acknowledgement we feel is a great burden.
Thanks for listening. It feels amazing to be heard.

I grew up in a household with an alcoholic/bipolar father, and depressed mother. Neither could provide emotional connection. My father was absorbed in his addiction, affairs, time in the neighborhood bar. At home, he was sleeping off the alcohol in his bedroom, or staring at the news or sports on TV. We could walk write across his face, across the TV and he would not say a word. Mentally, he was checked out. I can remember his anger when we had not done chores, I remember age 7 or so was the last time he played with us kids. I also remember during this time he hit my sister in the mouth causing it to bleed. During my teen years, his alcoholism got worse. He became a monster, Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, were the names we gave him when he went from episodes of depression ( would lie on the sofa staring at the floor with blank sad stare); and mania( irritable, hypertalkative, combative, delusional, dangerous). I thought he was problem, and mother was the safe space. Although she never protected us from his violent attacks that she would experience more often. When she finally put him out, I was 18. I then began to see my mother w/o the distraction of my father’s behavior. I began to see her emotional neglect, how she didn’t talk to us; she would come home from work, cook, and then retreat to her bedroom, close the door with a beer, talk to her girlfriends about my father’s cheating. She worked nights, so we didn’t get to see her during the school week. Until on the weekends, then she is on the phone, hushing us away as we knocked on her bedroom door, curious, or just wanting some attention, for her to talk to us. In my young adult years, I began to see her as emotionally manipulative. Due to her past, she is a child of incest, rejected by her mother, she had low-self esteem. She garnered self-esteem by putting her children down, making us feel confused, doubting our selves, gaslighting, belittling us in front of family members she held in esteem. She expected us to rise no higher than her level of self esteem, and therefore, me being the one who challenged her, I was ostracized and she tried to punish me for it. In my early 60’s I got strong, and I told her to her face ” You don’t get to do that no more”. She is careful with me now. my brother and sister continued to suffer with mother pleasing.

this sounds very interesting to me. i have suffered chronic back pain since i was 15. when i turned 30 my left shoulder and neck started hurting as well. now i feel pain everywhere everyday. i also wonder if it has to do with so much unresolved issues with my bringing up.

Hello Alistair.
I am 42 years old and I also went through the same situation. kinda. i had what I needed. Food, home, clothes. nothing fancy. more on the poor side to be honest.
“And no one said they loved me.
No one said it will be alright.
No one hugged me.
No one picked me up when I fell.
No one was interested in what I wanted.
No one asked me what I thought.
No one listened to me.
No one said I was good at anything.
No one said well done.
No one said, yes have a go.
No one!”
when you said this, i felt it.
what confuses me the most and causes the most pain is NOT understanding why only me.
i hace 5 brothers and 3 sisters and out of the 9 of us, i was the only one being so negleted and ignored. now i understand i was the scape-goat but i still dont fully understand why only me.
i have two grown sons. 25 and 24 years old and i sure as heck tried to never make one feel less important than the other.
know you are loved more than you know.

I am part of the CEN group that is a product of a generational neglect. I also am a highly sensitive person who gets easily overwhelmed and never felt seen or understood by my mom. Logically I know that my mom couldn’t be a parent who provided emotional understanding and guidance because its hard to do what you’ve never seen or felt.

One of my biggest struggles for me is having self-compassion and developing self-worth. One of my survival strategies as a child was to become an obsessive people-pleaser. It is very hard to stop when your whole life you learned that the only way to feel worthy, valued, accepted was to forget about what you liked, wanted, or needed.

My therapist and I are using Internal Family System therapy (IFS), and I find that it make the most sense to me. There are “parts” inside my life that are wounded/exiled, or try to manage/protect, or rush in to protect often in unhealthy ways such as addiction. For me this has been binge eating. It is not easy and takes a long time but I do think it will be the best way for me to be better.
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I experience the same with my parents – I don’t feel the love, and feel guilty about that.