Dr. Lindsay Gibson
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A Deeper Look:
Insights for Optimal Living

Emotional Loneliness

10/13/2015

14 Comments

 
Picture
              One look at this little guy and you know what he's feeling: emotional loneliness. It is a familiar experience for children who grow up with emotional deprivation. But most people do not connect their feelings of emotional isolation and loneliness with a childhood of emotional neglect.
             Most people are much more familiar with the definition of abuse than they are of deprivation. It is always easier to identify errors of commission rather than errors of omission. It is harder to tell when we have not gotten enough of something. We might not recognize our own emotional deprivation because we grew up in it.
            Emotional deprivation means that we missed important bonding experiences essential for our security. Our parents did not supply these reassuring experiences, nor did they think it was important to give them to a child. In the old days, many parents believed that feeding and sheltering their children fulfilled their parental responsibilities, a belief still supported by our culture. In the past, providing material things was seen as the hallmark of good parenting, probably because our society was not as affluent as it is today. A child's feelings were not valued and were often suppressed. Actions, not empathy, were what it meant to be a good parent.
            Now, however, we are beginning to realize it is no longer enough for a parent just to be physically present or technically available. It takes more than that to raise a secure human being. It is not enough for a parent passively to allow children to cling or make sure they get their shots.
            Children crave active, interested engagement by the adults in their lives. When a parent takes the time to get into a back-and-forth engagement with their child, the child feels worthy and lovable. When parents reach out for their children, and honestly enjoy their company, a powerful message is sent to that child that he or she matters. As children, we all want to feel as essential to our parents as they are to us. Without this reassurance, we are left adrift in emotional loneliness.
            Children also need to feel that the parent is keeping a protective eye on them. A parent who will step in when a child is feeling overwhelmed makes the world a safer place to explore. Parents who defend a child from bad experiences teach the child that help is available. 
            Emotional loneliness in adult life is a tipoff that one's relationships in childhood were not nurturing or supportive enough. If we have suffered emotional deprivation, we will be familiar with feeling unseen. A lack of social confidence is another cardinal signs of growing up in an emotionally depriving environment. If you grew up with emotional neglect within your family, in adulthood you might find yourself attracted to people who avoid emotional intimacy and who are inconsistent in their lovingness.
            If you often feel emotional lonely, the first thing is to understand is that your feelings have good reason, that it was never about you being deficient or unlovable. It was about you being emotionally deprived. The next step is to find chances to interact with other people under conditions that feel safe to you, preferably through mutual tasks or activities rather than social chitchat. Finding comfortable opportunities to interact with kind, interested people can reverse the effects of earlier deprivation. People can heal each other. Volunteer activities or educational classes are great opportunities to meet people interested in the same things. Another good idea is to sincerely ask receptive, friendly people for advice on straightforward decisions.
            Reaching out to others may feel a little uncomfortable when you are emotionally lonely, but it is the way to change the direction of your life. If all of this seems too daunting, psychotherapy or other kinds of support groups can be enormously helpful. The important thing is to do the very thing for yourself that your parents may not have been able to do: cherish yourself as an adorable being and find interesting ways to be engaged with others.
 
 
           
            
14 Comments
Janine
10/20/2015 05:26:42 pm

Helpful and comforting, as usual. Thank you :)

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John Pollard link
4/6/2016 11:14:45 am

Hi. I'm reading your book and find it truly relevant to my work, which I wonder if you've ever heard of, Self-Parenting? This is a direct path to repairing the "emotional loneliness" experienced by your clients. Not only does this help them personally it sometimes even gives them the wherewithal to reestablish some kind of emotional connection with their Aging Parents. I've only read the first chapter but look forward to experiencing more of your insights.

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Lindsay Gibson
4/8/2016 09:35:20 am

Hello, John. Thanks to the link for your work. Sounds like they would be very compatible! Hope you enjoy the rest of the book.

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S.S.
6/19/2016 02:13:43 pm


As an example of this frustrating contradiction, you say in your book that blaming others for your unhappiness is a problem. However... Isn't that the entire premise of your book?? That those with emotionally unfit parents will grow up unhappy? You also say, "Externalizers...tend to believe that good things have come to other people rather unfairly." Well, yes, this is true. Some people get very healthy parents and some get very unhealthy and damaging parents, and this is very unfair. Some people live in relatively prosperous and peace-loving societies, and some live in severely dysfunctional groups that make survival and thrival that much harder. All of this is unfair. That's just reality. It seems to me that these sort of very general, imprecise statements have a harmful impact in that they convince not-very-alert people that emotional and social problems are a lot more simplistic than they are and that people can automatically be blamed for their circumstances, when the truth is much more nuanced & differentiated.

I hope this all makes sense, it is a problem I keep coming across and I wish it would be addressed more often. I believe that those who are prone to say that emotional health is an "inside job" may not realize how many external supports & opportunities for connection they may actually have, and so they reinforce a harmful belief that people don't need others for emotional security - when the direct opposite is true, as mammals we have a strong need to be attuned & connected with our own kind, and severe dysfunction results when we do not have such opportunities. This reinforces isolation and neglect in our society, which causes bad problems to spiral into worse and worse ones.

"Given that emotional connection is powerful enough to support people through catastrophic events, think what it can do for ordinary daily coping. Everyone needs a deep sense of connection in order to feel fully secure." This emotional connection by definition involves forces outside the individual, the self. By definition. I believe that those in our society who have been severely shortchanged in this arena, through failed attachments with unavailable/non-nurturing/abusive etc. parents, are being done a severe disservice by our culture's exaggerated believe in rugged individualism. Those who have or have had adequate external connection may be able to weather it, but those who haven't will just suffer and struggle in more and more intensified ways and perhaps this is contributing to the epidemic of dysfunction we are seeing with people killing their entire families and themselves, etc. While we become panicked and alarmed about these examples of total breakdown and continually scratch our heads over what is causing it, we continue to tell people that they could solve all their emotional problems by themselves if they were really trying, and not to look to people or forces outside themselves for solutions. (yet, we also urge them to "get help"?) It is very contradictory, confusing, and, speaking as someone who has been severely emotionally neglected to the point of it being life-threatening and who has found an ocean of misunderstanding around the problem, very frustrating and seems harmful.

I'm sorry this turned out to be so long!

These are my thoughts, I hope they have some merit although I feel as if I've been pressured over and over again to believe they do not.

I do want to thank you again for your work. I have found your tone warm and encouraging, which I really appreciate.

Best,
S.S.

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Stephannie
5/4/2018 04:51:47 pm

That was incredibly thoughtful beautiful and very true. I’ve often felt incredibly frustrated by our culture of rugged individualism - mostly that feeling and thoughts - that if only I tried harder. While “I know” trying harder doesn’t work it doesn’t stop me from it:-). Thank you for writing that.

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Hollie
7/12/2016 12:48:45 pm

Thank you so much for writing the book, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. Reading this piece of work has been very therapeutic for me. I can finally put words and explanations to my feelings in a way that I could not do prior. I also appreciate your writings on this website. They are all so relatable and healing. I hope to read more of your work in the future.

Thanks again,
Hollie

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Hollie link
7/12/2016 12:50:20 pm

Thank you so much for writing the book, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. Reading this piece of work has been very therapeutic for me. I can finally put words and explanations to my feelings in a way that I could not do prior. I also appreciate your writings on this website. They are all so relatable and healing. I hope to read more of your work in the future.
Thanks again,
Hollie

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Nick
7/16/2016 12:21:30 pm

Dr. Lindsay,
I've been trying to find a way to write a letter and this is all I found. i don't really mean for this to go on as a comment to the article you posted but as a private correspondence so no need to approve it.

Thanks so much for writing Adult Children of EI Parents. It is incredibly insightful and so spot-on with So Much of my childhood experience. My wife has said the same with what she has read so far. You are able to very clearly articulate the patterned behaviors of emotional immaturity and break them down in terms of how they affect children in a way that is helping to me to make critical healing connections of my neglect and trauma. Thank you!

There are a couple points in the book where I'm finding some distortions/contradictions in thinking I wanted to bring up. They are sort of classic examples of blaming something in the child as a way of subtly letting the parents off the hook. in general this would be any time you suggest that a child behaves in a certain way (ie externalizing) because of personality or disposition, and that parent behavior would actually come about as a Reaction to their child's behavior, rather than the other way around. in other words you are suggesting that some children come into the world already set up with desirable tools and a level of maturity that would make a functional relationship with their parents more likely to occur. This is a classic but subtle narrative used by abusive/neglectful parents that lets them "off the hook" by letting them believe that their child's "bad behavior" was because of some personality defect, rather than the truth, which is that the behavior of acting out was a desperate trying to get Something. There are a few points in the book where this message comes through. If you are curious Id be willing to go back through and help find them. Right now I am on the Externalizers/Internalizers section where it is coming through strongly. In this example in particular there are some contradictions inherent to the model. You begin by describing Ext/Int as two different sorts of fundamental personality types that will try to cope in fudamentally different ways with an emotional neglectful environment. Also the way you describe them leaves little doubt as to which is preferable, as Internalizing actually reads like Emotional Maturity, and Externalizing like Immaturity. Right away this leaves someone suspecting they exhibit more Ext with feelings of shame and "something is wrong with me." But, in truth, neither of these states are fundamental to a person at birth. They exist as a spectrum relative to how integrated and funtional and Emotionally Mature they are. interestingly, that is how you actually go on to describe the ideas of Int/Ext ... indeed you mention several examples of people who "seemed" to be Int and "wanted" to be int, but were really "mild Ext." From a standpoint of how the book reads this is confusing, but I think it's just because the idea is not fully formed yet, largely because it's still coming from this distortion narrative that the children might have some part to play or blame to take for their own neglect and abuse. For example I can best use myself. My M.O. is Internalizing, Big Time. I was inclined to puff myself up a bit initially at the thought that this strategy was internal to me via "personality and composition" and that it inherently had a lot of traits of Maturity. But as I read on I realized I had a lot of externalizing too, and that my internalizing was not all it was cracked up to be. See my internalizing largely developed cause it Had To. My parents only praised and rewarded me when I showed self-reliance, and they punished me directly and indirectly when I showed "neediness." Every kid is needy. I was needy of a lot of things for them. They made me feel proud for stuffing those needs and acting as though I was independent. Why did they do this? Because it was expedient for them. Because believing I was born "able to entertain myself" let them off the hook of having to care for me. At least in their mind. So now, as an adult, I have a very hard time reaching out for help, and I tend to be extremely self-reflective and sensitive and all that. But, i also tend to blame a Lot of external things for my troubles. Especially my wife. but my tendency to externalize has nothing to do with an in-born disposition towards being an "Externalizer." It has to do with the degree to which I am still not healed and integrated as a functional and mature adult. The more I heal and integrate, the less I compulsively externalize my stress and problems in order to cope. Even as an adult, and thus Certainly as a child, any tendency to externalize is not something of personality or composition (no offense, but what does composition even mean?), it is the continued use of a strategy meant to get needs met. My conclusion to all this is the actual labeling of Int/Ext needs to be abandoned and fully reworked into two new and diffe

Reply
Lindsay Gibson
7/21/2016 09:32:46 am

Response to Nick: Thanks so much for your interesting and closely reasoned comment about Internalizers and Externalizer. Unfortunately, due to space limits, we could only post part of your comment. You make an important point about early parental conditioning and how that affects a child's Int/Ext style of coping. Yet there is also significant research on early infant differences in sensitivity and perceptiveness which suggests some children pick up on environmental cues much more alertly than others. Thanks for taking the time to give your comment.

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Lindsay Gibson
7/20/2016 09:05:31 am

Response to SS: Thanks so much for your careful reading of the book, and your excellent commentary. Please go to the blog section and read the July blog. I felt your comments were so important I addressed them there. Hope it helps.

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Lise
10/24/2017 03:00:29 am

Dear Lindsay,
Congratulations for your book, it is a bell ringer! I identified my mother, my mother-in-law, my father-in-law and my husband in it, unfortunately. And - of course - me, as an internalizer.
My question is, that what do you suggest me, if I have an emotionally immature husband and 3 little children? I can not outpace him. I am absolutely baffled. I need his love but he is hard-shell.
Thankfully,
Lise (38)

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Kitty
8/31/2018 07:15:11 pm

I'm 56 years old with 90-year-old parents who are still 14 years-old, emotionally. Thank you for validating that the hole in my soul wasn't caused by something I did/didn't do. I remember sitting in the crib crying so hard I was choking, finally giving up hope that someone would come, and flopping over to sleep..being hot and wet with tears with a headache...by the time I was 3 years old, I was suicidal. Life has been really, really difficult.

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Chera
9/24/2020 12:56:45 pm

Thank you so much for writing this book. It's been a lifesaver for me, since both of my parents are emotionally immature. My mom is sweet and kind, my dad cold and unemotional, but both were never physically abusive. They work together to enable each other's EM tendencies, so it's doubly frustrating. I grew up feeling lonely and confused and still do when dealing with them. Luckily, I moved away and was able to establish a normal life with normal relationships, except when dealing with them. Almost all interactions if I didn't and don't agree with them, were/are puzzling and unexplainable. I never really knew what was happening; I felt as if I were attacked all of a sudden by a rabid dog. It's hard to explain, but I think those who've had EM parents will understand what I mean. When I first read your book several years ago, it was if a weight was removed from my head and blinders removed from my eyes. My problem is that whenever there is an incident when I'm not being the person they want me to be, I get sucked in too quickly to use the methods you so brilliantly laid out in Chapter 8. It's only after the chaos stops, that I remember to reread your book. Lately, my parents are elderly and have medical issues to deal with. They are so afraid of showing weakness, that they won't seek medical assistance until they are forced to. When it almost gets to that point, they call me up to tell me that something is wrong physically. When I urge them to call their doctor or an ambulance, they yell at me telling me to stop being so mean and unfeeling. I know they are scared. I usually back down, but this makes me feel guilty because I know it's not safe. Thankfully, they've eventually gotten treatment which usually ends up in the hospital and have recovered. When they get home and are feeling better, they keep calling me to assure me that everything is just fine! I'm expected to join in with their deception. This happened just last week, so I reread your book this week and feel so much better! I guess I'm going to have to remind myself to revisit your book as soon as this happens again. I told my husband this time, to remind me to do so! I appreciate the chance to get this off my chest and will be forever grateful for your book. I know I'm a good person and that it is my parent's issue. I'm able to love them for who they are and realize that they can't help the way they behave. I wish my two brothers would read your book. I've suggested it, but they're not ready to accept the reality yet.

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Steve Ross link
10/14/2020 08:52:33 pm

Whether it may be bad or good childhood upbringing, it will always affect adult life as a whole. It will affect how one thinks, how one behaves, how one sees things, and how one expresses him or herself. The impact of childhood upbringing covers almost everything. The aforementioned are only the three major aspects that will be affected by childhood upbringing. People who experienced traumatic events tend to have a distorted comprehension of what right and wrong is and even in reality.

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    Lindsay Gibson, Psy.D.

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