Emotional Healing as an Adult After Feeling Unloved as a Child

When you're a child, nothing is more important than feeling safe and loved. The home should be where that love stems from, but many children don't have that advantage. The sad reality is that not every child experiences the love they should from their parents.

If you didn't feel consistently and unconditionally loved as a child, it can have a major impact on your psychological development. But it's never too late to start healing. It takes time, but with patience and effort, you can work through your childhood wounds and start building a happier life for yourself.

Feeling Unloved as a Child Has a Very Real Impact on You as an Adult

Honestly, the scars from living so many years feeling unloved can impact nearly every area of your life even many years later when you are an adult.

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If a child doesn't feel secure or confident that they are loved unconditionally, can lead to a constant fear of abandonment in adulthood. Unfortunately, that fear of abandonment can cause all kinds of problems in adult relationships. You may find yourself pushing people away afraid they will leave you. Or, you may keep an invisible, emotional barrier between yourself and those you care about avoiding being vulnerable and open.

Also, children who don't feel loved may not feel emotionally rewarded when they engage in positive, relationship building activities. The lack of emotional reward can leave you less likely to want to engage in healthy behaviors with future friends, coworkers and romantic partners. On one hand, you may come to believe that this is just how relationships are supposed to be- distant and unrewarding. This can lead to accepting "love" from people throughout your life that show love similar to your parents. In this way, you may end up in a pattern of relationships that don't really fulfill you or leave you feeling good about yourself.

On the other hand, you may know better but just not have the skills to foster healthy, supportive, close relationships. You didn't have the chance to practice that give and take in your household as a child so you may feel awkward trying to engage in relationships in a healthy way as an adult.

Additionally, some adults find that they're kind of always searching for that feeling of being loved. As an adult, you may find yourself trying to do everything you can to please supervisors, friends, significant others or anyone of significance in your life. But because of sensitivity you built up as a child, you feel easily rejected. This means that knowing you've somehow upset your boss can leave you feeling like you've been rejected all over again by your parent.

Every child's experience is different. And everyone has life experiences as an adult that are different. So, some of these may resonate more with you than others. But it is very likely that there was some sort of psychological or emotional impact on you if during key years of your development your primary supports in the world didn't exhibit unconditional love & support.

Healing from the Emotional Wounds of Childhood

The good news is that you can do something to start healing from the emotional wounds of childhood.

It starts with recognizing that your past has had a significant impact on you and then making a commitment to change things for yourself.

This process won't be easy but it's worth it. There are a variety of ways a counselor or other mental health professional can help you find healing. At the counseling practice I own in Missouri, each of our therapist has a slightly different approach to healing childhood emotional wounds. And each of us approach individual clients different based on the needs you have when you walk through our door. But let's take a look at some of the most common approaches we take in therapy to help you find healing and move forward as an adult.

EMDR for Childhood Pain

EMDR is an acronym that stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It's a powerful mental health intervention that's been found to be effective in helping people process traumatic memories. EMDR helps people to reprocess the memory so they no longer feel as emotionally overwhelmed by it.

I can't recommend EMDR highly enough if you feel like the pain you experienced as a child is impacting you now as an adult. This evidence-supported mental health intervention helps untangle the past and present.

With EMDR administered by a fully trained mental health clinician, you are able to go back and heal some of those childhood hurts.

Of course, nothing can erase the past. But EMDR helps people find more emotional freedom so they can think of those past hurts and it not feel so intense. Most importantly, they start to identify the links between the past and present so when something in the present moment reminds you of feeling rejected by a parent in childhood you can respond to what is actually happening in the moment rather than responding how you did as a child.

Although I've been trained in a variety of trauma therapies, EMDR was a game changer for me because of the focus on the link between the past and present. Over the last few years I've been using EMDR I've realized that nearly all of my clients have something from their childhood that is playing a part in how they respond to present day triggers. So, this is really common.

But EMDR is incredibly powerful and I've watched client after client find healing and freedom from some of the pain that has been impacting them for years. They've then been able to engage with what's going on in their daily life in a more meaningful way.

Mindfulness to Respond Only to the Present

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Mindfulness is another wonderful practice to develop. It helps you focus on the present moment and calm yourself when you feel triggered.

Many people find that they are able to use mindfulness to help them stay in the present instead of getting wrapped up in thoughts about the past or worries about the future. This can be really helpful when you're feeling triggered by something from your childhood.

If you're practicing mindfulness, you're more likely to be able to ground yourself in the present moment and not get lost in the pain of the past. Then, you can start responding differently to those old triggers.

Trauma Therapy for Childhood Wounds

There are a variety of trauma therapies that can be helpful for healing childhood wounds. Many people find that working with a therapist who specializes in trauma is a life changing experience and benefits them more than they dare even hope for when they first reach out.

Many people want to pretend they're completely "over" what happened as a child. Or they invalidate their own feeling by saying that it wasn't as bad as it could've been or they should just be grateful for what they have now. But the trauma you went through was real. And the child inside you still needs to be heard and still deserves support and healing.

The good news is that we have several really effective approaches to trauma therapy that we know work well. Some work better than others for healing trauma from many years ago. But it's important that if you are interested in doing this sort of trauma work, you really seek out a clinician who specializes in trauma and is trained in specific evidence-based PTSD treatment methods such as EMDR, Prolonged Exposure and/or Cognitive Processing Therapy.

Developing Self Love

Overall, if you didn't have that solid foundation of feeling loved as a child, it's important you learn to love yourself as an adult. A therapist can help you find different ways of developing that self acceptance & self love.

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This may mean developing a little morning routine where you meet your own personal needs and communicate to yourself that YOU deserve to be cared for before you ever start the day. Or it may mean journaling and speaking to yourself in a journal to really start to develop a healthy relationship with yourself. 

The point is to find some way to invest in yourself and show yourself that you DO matter. If you're only looking for that approval in others you may never feel fully satisfied. Instead, you can do for yourself what your parents should have done and that's communicate to yourself that you matter no matter what happens in your life.

And only through learning to fully accept, embrace and love yourself can you truly develop and continue to build healthy relationships with others.

Boundary Setting

Boundary setting is an issue that frequently comes up in therapy, because it is so essential to have healthy boundaries in order to protect ourselves from further emotional damage.

If you didn't have the opportunity to set boundaries as a child or didn't see healthy examples of appropriate boundary setting, it's important that you start learning to set boundaries now. This means communicating what you will and will not tolerate from others. It can be difficult, because we often want to please people and we don't want to rock the boat. But if you don't set boundaries, you're at risk for further emotional damage down the line.

A therapist can help you set boundaries in a way that is healthy for you. They can also help you to enforce those boundaries when necessary. And, importantly, they can help you to develop compassion for yourself as you learn to set boundaries. This is a process that takes time and practice, but it's so worth it in the end!

Boundary Setting with Parents & Family of Origin

It's ok to set boundaries with your parents or others who may have caused you pain as a child now that your an adult. It may feel "wrong" because you want so badly to have a good relationship. But it goes back to that thing where YOUR mental health is important.

So, if your mental health suffers when you interact with your adult parent, I highly recommend working with a mental health professional to learn how to appropriately set and hold boundaries with your parents.

This may look different for everyone, but it's important to remember that you have a right to your own feelings, thoughts and experiences. You don't have to tolerate abuse or emotional manipulation from your parents just because you're related to them.

Healing Takes Time

The pain that you felt from living with a narcissistic parents did years of damage so it may be slow going to heal. But you can heal. And you deserve to heal. So be patient with yourself and find a support system (preferably a therapist but also close friends, clergy, etc) that you can be open and vulnerable with throughout the healing process.

So, if you're feeling overwhelmed by all of this or like it's just too hard, please know that you are not alone. There are many people out there who want to help and support you in your healing journey. Reach out for help and keep moving forward. You can do this! :)

You're never too old to find healing from childhood

Many people think it's "too late" or that they "don't need counseling" because they made it through so many years doing just fine. But we've found it's not uncommon for childhood issues to come up, even more so than maybe they have in the past, around the time or retirement. This is because we're finally free from our obligations to work and can start to focus on what truly matters- ourselves. But sometimes what comes up isn't so easy to deal with.

Or sometimes other big moments in a person's life trigger that old pain. For example, attending your own child's wedding may remind you how you felt alone planning your own. Or caring for your aging or dying parents may trigger all kinds of past pain.

Just know that it's never too late to get support and heal some of those old wounds. It's ok to reach out for help, even if it's been years since the pain was inflicted. Healing is possible and you deserve to find peace in your life.

Professional Help Healing From Childhood Pains in Missouri

If you are in Missouri and are looking for help healing from childhood pains, please reach out to Aspire Counseling. We have several experienced trauma therapists who specialize in treating PTSD. All of our trauma therapists are trained and experienced using at least one evidence-based PTSD treatment such as Prolonged Exposure (PE), Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), EMDR or (for children and teens) Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT). You can find reach out here to get matched with a therapist who can help. We always offer a free consultation so you have a chance to meet one of our therapists and really talk through if now is the right time for you to start counseling before you commit.

You don't have to face this journey alone. People do recover and find healthy ways to move forward, even many years into adulthood.

About the Author

Jessica Tappana is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and the founder of Aspire Counseling. She believes in the power of psychotherapy to transform lives, and particularly believes in the power of effective, evidence-based therapy interventions to help people heal past hurts and get free from old traumas. She’s spent most of her career learning and using treatment methods that research has shown can help heal PTSD.  And she’s seen countless clients find that healing, many times even years after the trauma occurred.

Jessica started Aspire Counseling because she believed people deserved true healing. They deserved to work with a therapist who was fully committed to helping them find healing. One who’s allegiance lay with the client, not with an insurance company.  And she’s kept to that mission. As she’s built Aspire Counseling, she’s brought together a team focused on doing what’s best for the client and specializing in trauma therapy. They put the needs of the clients first and are constantly attending trainings and consulting with one another to make sure they get better and better at helping clients find healing & move forward with their lives.