Lacking Emotion? Learn Why

Two gentlemen wanted my help to reconnect with their emotions. They both suffer from angry outbursts and are criticised by their partners for lacking emotion’. They are in their late thirties; well educated and successful in their respective careers.

They both report that they had deprived and neglected childhoods. They remind me of Harville Hendrix’s story. He is the founder of Imago Therapy. He lost both of his parents at a young age. It took him several marriages and therapy to reconnect with his real feelings about this loss and what happened to him after they died.

Here I describe the mechanism of becoming ’emotionless’ and how to recognise the symptoms. At the end you can even take a test about it.

What is Emotion?

Emotions evolved to deal with fundamental life tasks such as mating, fighting, escaping predators; because they increase our chances for survival. When you are experiencing an emotion now, you might notice that you are dealing with a current similar repeating situation, such as love, reproducing or earning a living.

Emotions are not chosen by us; they are aroused at a physiological level very quickly without our intention before even we are aware. This involuntary aspect of emotion allows us to be mobilised without the need for cognition.

Emotional Neglect And Mechanism of Lacking Emotion

However my clients, like Harville Hendrix before going through their individual therapy believed that they were strange for ‘lacking emotion’, for not experiencing the spectrum of emotions like the other adults.

Since emotions are so ingrained in our species how come some people appear to have been deprived of them?

When parents fail to respond enough to a child’s emotional needs we call this emotional neglect. This occurs when children’s emotions are not validated appropriately. CEN is an acronym denoting ‘childhood emotional neglect’. A parent having unrealistically high expectations, not listening attentively, invalidating a child’s emotional experiences to the point he or she begins to feel self-doubt are examples of emotional neglect.

When a parent is not emotionally attuned to a child, there is no mirror held up, no positive reflection being shared with the child. As a result developing a positive sense of self becomes extremely difficult for the child.

My clients, like many other men and women disconnected from their emotions as a survival strategy at an early age in order to cope with the extreme loneliness, helplessness and the negative self image they experienced as a result of parental inability to be emotionally present. They just have learnt to shut their emotions out so well that they believed them to be non-existent. The price they pay as adults is quite high: Lack of joy, feeling disconnected, unfulfilled, and often a struggle with self-discipline.

Recognise The Symptoms of CEN

Emotional neglect is difficult to identify both by the child and others until the symptoms begin to appear in adulthood. Here are some of the symptoms displayed by adults who were emotionally neglected as kids:

• Feeling numb, cut off from one’s feelings so much so that their partner and kids refer to them as ‘mechanical like a robot’.
• Difficulty in recognising and trusting their own and others’ emotions. Emotion hides behind behavior. Behavior is driven by emotion. If we ignore it we will suffer from emotional blind spots for ours as well as others including our children’s.
• Whatever the level of parental failure, the emotionally neglected person have no childhood memories to explain feeling they are different than others; like there’s something missing, but not being sure what it is. Too often, they blame themselves for it.
• Feeling disconnected, empty, unfulfilled and hollow inside.
• Being easily overwhelmed or discouraged.
• They can’t trust or rely upon others.
• Low self-esteem and perfectionism.
• Pronounced sensitivity to rejection.
• Lack of clarity regarding others’ and their own expectations for themselves.
• Addictions are a good sign of the need to reconnect with emotions. Addictions can vary from sexually related behavior to computer games, they can even cover workaholism.
• When people are emotionally neglected as a child they behave like a two year old, throwing tantrums. As a result their close family members are not able to express themselves out of fear. If the situation involves emotions they might react inappropriately and become unwittingly emotionally abusive towards others.
• They may not have real close friends since they are stranger to themselves, unable to share their inner world.

If you are in a relationship with somebody who is lacking emotion, they are likely to be emotionally neglected as a child. You need to be aware of that, because in many cases, you may need to provide self-compassion and not expect them to be able to always connect on a mature level.
If you see the signs of CEN early on in your relationship, it may be something to consider. You are likely to be frustrated in everyday communications in your relationship with this person.

You and your partner can take the Childhood Emotional Neglect Test here. Next post is about how to reconnect with emotions.

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