“To move on, you must understand why you felt what you did and why you no longer need to feel it." - Mitch Albom
Validation is an essential need for every individual, irrespective of them being adults or children. It implies the acknowledgment of a person’s thoughts, emotions, values, beliefs, and experiences. Every one of us tends to seek validation from a second person. Every individual deserves to be seen and heard and most importantly, be accepted. Be it a child or an adult, Emotional Validation is needed for everyone in a healthy manner. At the same time, excessive or insufficient validation has its consequences.
For instance, an urge to seek excessive validation makes a person doubt their worth when they feel they haven't received the validation they require. They assume that they aren’t perfect or up to the mark. This can cause psychological illnesses like anxiety, depression, and self-esteem issues in the long run.
On the other hand, those who do not receive the minimum validation feel like their thoughts, emotions, and feelings are not heard or seen. Emotional Invalidation stems from being ignored, unseen, or judged. This would lead to them feeling unsupported and isolated from others. A very common consequence of emotional invalidation is the onset of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). This applies to anyone irrespective of age, gender, and community.
Children and Emotional Invalidation
Most importantly, children are heavily impacted due to the lack of emotional validation. When children feel invalidated, they believe that their feelings and emotions are not reasonable, insignificant, and unacceptable. As children still develop their understanding regarding the world, invalidation of their feelings would repress them and make them grow insecure about their thoughts and may fail to follow a healthy pattern of emotional expression.
Emotional Negligence plays a prominent role in a child feeling invalidated. For instance, a child complains about their friend bothering them at school to their parents. Instead of acknowledging how the child feels, if the parents respond by asking the child to brush it off and become inconsiderate about how the child feels, they would learn that their emotions are not valid and would stop seeking support sooner or later.
Effects of Emotional Neglect in children
Invalidation can have adverse effects on children as one’s self-worth and sense of existence are put at stake. Although, negligence isn’t necessarily intentional always, those parents who provide the best care and necessities for their children may fail to cater to the emotional needs of their children. They tend to overlook the key areas of support and may remain unknown about what the child goes through.
This in turn can heavily impact how the child feels about themself. The child may develop feelings of anger, guilt, or be shameful for feeling a certain emotion or being emotional. This may cause a serious effect in the long run if not rectified sooner.
The effects of emotional neglect can range from subtle to obvious. The aftermath can hardly be detected at the initial stages until it develops into a serious issue and starts consuming the person’s mental space and energy. Some of them include:
Mental Health Issues: Children who have faced emotional invalidation are prone to suffer mental health issues in their adulthood. This may include illnesses like Depression and Anxiety.
Issues dealing with their emotions: Children whose emotions were repressed tend to have lower self-esteem and often hide their emotions.
Aggression: Children tend to develop issues relating to controlling anger and trusting others in their adulthood due to emotional negligence.
Substance misuse: As a result of childhood emotional neglect, kids tend to misuse or indulge in excessive drugs or alcohol usage in their later years to cope with the trauma faced by them.
Appearing uncaring or indifferent: Kids who were asked to repress their emotions fear intimacy and restrain from depicting emotions.
Feeling shameful around emotions: Kids who were taught to not show emotions tend to feel shameful or feel guilty when they tend to open up about how they feel.
Lack of language for describing emotions: Children tend to show the inability to express how they feel as they were made to believe that they were not allowed to feel in a particular way. Thus, they find it difficult to express things around their emotions.
Inability to ask for help: Emotionally neglected kids tend to be extremely independent and refuse to ask for help even if they need it as their emotional needs were not catered to earlier when they wanted help.
How to overcome Emotional Negligence faced in Childhood?
Emotional Negligence can be difficult to detect in children as they aren’t as evident as physical ailments. A child could be going through emotional turmoil while they look healthy. A method to identify if a child is being emotionally neglected is to focus on an interaction between a child and their parent. Children being less thriving, not asking for help when needed, and acting withdrawn from others are symptoms of emotional negligence.
Some of the methods that can be practised to overcome emotional negligence include:
Building healthier relationships: Surrounding yourself with those who truly want the best out of you and those who inspire you to strive better helps you look forward in your life.
Developing Emotional Intelligence(EQ): Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize your emotions, understand what they indicate, and realise how they have an effect on others. EQ can be developed by acknowledging your feelings, Practising mindfulness, having confidence, being a good listener, and so on.
Seeking therapy: Therapy can be a good way to lessen the trauma faced in your childhood. It helps them see what they have overcome and gain confidence to look forward to their future.
Developing Regulation skills: Self-regulation refers to controlling one's emotions and behaviour. Skills like managing stress, remaining calm, and controlling disruptive emotions helps soothe your emotions.
Conclusion
Parents need to acknowledge and cater to the emotional needs of their children as equally as the material needs provided to them. They must be present for their child when they need help rather than tell their kids to not act sensitive.
It is also essential for the parents to impart to their children how their feelings do play a crucial role and how they should never allow themselves or another person to validate their feelings. This would help both the parent and the child to develop a healthier relationship with others.
References
Childhood Emotional Neglect: How it can impact you now or later?https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/childhood-emotional-neglect
What is Emotional Invalidation? https://psychcentral.com/health/reasons-you-and-others-invalidate-your-emotional-experience
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