Childhood Emotional Neglect Therapy
Sacramento
In person in Midtown Sacramento & Online Throughout California
Did your childhood caregivers leave you feeling alone or unlovable?
- Do you often feel like too much or like you are a burden to the people closest to you?
- Did you feel misunderstood or judged in childhood by the people who were supposed to love you?
- Do adult relationships feel anxiety provoking, leading you to need a lot of reassurance or avoid them altogether?
Survivors of Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN) often feel like they are overreacting or that their childhood wasn’t “that” bad. Their parents or caregivers usually met most of their physical needs by providing shelter, food, access to school, and a home that seemed normal to others. Physical violence may have been very rare or not happened at all in their families.
Even with all these factors, survivors of CEN may have felt a deep loneliness or like they could never get the support or love they needed. This may have led them to become extremely independent as they vowed not to need others or to only rely on themselves. Or they may have tried to find love in friendships or romantic relationships and find that they never feel secure in those either.
As adults they can feel anxious in relationships, lonely or even unlovable. They fear being abandoned by others and either try to be “perfect” in relationships so they can finally be worthy of love or they keep others at arm’s distance so they will never be hurt.
Childhood emotional neglect is a common, painful generational trauma. You can stop the cycle.
If you are a survivor of childhood emotional neglect, you likely have many complicated feelings about your parents and relationships. On one hand, you may be grateful for how much they did for you and you tell yourself it wasn’t “that” bad. On the other hand, you couldn’t go to them for support when you needed them the most and if you did, you may have felt judged or abandoned. Their love for you seems conditional and you wonder how you would be now if they had been able to show up for you differently.
You might blame yourself or you might blame your parents…or you might feel a mix of both.
What we do know is that you deserved more. Even if your parents didn’t have the tools to be emotionally available or if they did better than their own parents, it doesn’t excuse the fact that children need unconditional love and support. Therapy can help you heal from the void you felt and help you stop this cycle in your own family.
Childhood emotional neglect has lasting impacts on the survivors even if they grow up into adults who seem to have it all together.
Attachment-Focused Therapy can help you heal from childhood emotional neglect.
Whether your parents had mental health or addiction problems or their own trauma got in the way, they were not able to show up for you the way you needed in your relationship. Love Heal Grow therapists take an attachment-based approach to help you:
- Find self-compassion and learn to forgive yourself for any feelings of being too much or a burden
- Work through complex feelings of isolation, shame, anxiety, anger or grief
- Process the past in a way that integrates it into your life, but no longer gives it power over you in your present
- Feel less alone and more trusting in current relationships
- Find ways to ground yourself in the present so you no longer feel out of control during relationship conflict
- Create the life and relationships you want
Not all therapists are equipped to handle CEN survivors with the sensitivity and level of support that is needed. Love Heal Grow therapists are trained in evidence based models and trauma-informed modalities that will help you feel safe while you heal.
You aren’t too much.
Your brain was still developing in childhood. You needed your parents and when they couldn’t show up for you, your brain told you that was your fault. You survived by trying your best to become lovable to them. No matter what you did, their attention and love was not reliable or unconditional. This isn’t your fault.
You find yourself in these same patterns now in your life and relationships. This belief that you are too much or that you are unlovable causes you a lot of pain. Therapy can help you find new ways of feeling and being.
What To Expect In Therapy for Childhood Emotional Neglect
Survivors of childhood emotional neglect deserve specialized attachment-focused healing
Successful therapy for survivors of childhood emotional neglect shouldn’t look like a therapist just giving advice or teaching you skills. True healing comes through deep relational trauma therapy.
We are hurt in relationships and we heal in relationships; your relationship with your therapist at Love Heal Grow will be attachment informed. This means your therapist will be working to be a secure attachment figure for you while they support you in therapy. You’ll be able to explore your relationship experiences from the past, the present and even within your own relationship with your therapist. Our goal is to help you integrate painful parts of yourself so that you can feel more secure now and in the future. This replicates what children should experience in secure relationships with their parents.
But Maybe You’re Not Sure If CSA Therapy Is Right For You…
Your Title Goes Here
Your content goes here. Edit or remove this text inline or in the module Content settings. You can also style every aspect of this content in the module Design settings and even apply custom CSS to this text in the module Advanced settings.
Will you therapy make me hate my parents, cut my parents off, or force me to forgive them?
No. Good therapy doesn’t make you do anything or manipulate you to do something you don’t want to do. We support people to take steps in their lives that are most aligned with their needs and values. While some people may decide to set new boundaries with parents or may discover that they have difficult feelings of anger and grief to explore, we don’t believe you MUST cut off OR forgive your parents in order to heal.
If I share about childhood abuse, do you have to report this to CPS or law enforcement?
Sometimes people are afraid to start therapy because they don’t want anyone to know about what happened. If you are an adult, we do not report the abuse you experienced to law enforcement or CPS. If you want to report your abuse, we can help you discuss your options here, but mandated reporters aren’t required to report past child abuse if the victim is now an adult.
If however the person who abused you has access to children and there are signs that abuse happened to anyone who is currently a child, your therapist is required to report this to CPS. They would discuss this with you and they can only share the details that they know about the abuse of the current child. They are happy to answer any questions you have about this.
My partner does not understand my attachment trauma or childhood emotional neglect. Should I do couples therapy?
Couples therapy with an attachment therapist can definitely be helpful for you and your relationship. Usually we find that couples therapy can be even more effective than individual therapy for survivors of childhood emotional neglect because they can find deep relationship healing.
Couples therapy will be effective if you also have had or currently have a place to process your individual experiences and find some healing–if your couples therapist thinks you will do better if you also have individual support they will let you know and they can connect you to another therapist at Love Heal Grow.
If you or your partner has too hard of a time building empathy for the other’s experience and you/they are not showing interest growing, your couples therapist may connect you with individual therapists or recommend pausing couples therapy so there can be room for individual healing.
You’re not too much!
Childhood emotional neglect had made you feel like a burden to others. You’ve felt like you couldn’t trust that others would be there for you, you question yourself or judge your own emotions, no matter how hard you try you just can’t relax in relationships.
This isn’t your fault, but therapy for your childhood emotional neglect can help you heal your anxious relationship attachment so you can finally have the life and relationships you crave.
Love Heal Grow Therapists:
Emma Derstine, APCC (she/her)
Megan Negendank, LMFT, CST Founder (she/her)
Liza Haroldson, LCSW (she/her)
Justine Marine, AMFT (she/her)
Melanie Rivera, AMFT (she/her)
Jamie Silva, AMFT (she/her)
Hannah Slicton-Williams, LMFT (she/her)
Madison Hamzy, LMFT (she/her)
CEN Blogs
Childhood Emotional Neglect Therapy In Sacramento
2430 K St, Sacramento, CA 95816