If You Grew Up With Emotionally Unavailable Parents, These 15 Traits Probably Feel Uncomfortably Familiar
LOOK | Canva Emotionally unavailable parents often struggle to understand or meet their children's needs, which can often create a tense home life. Research has found that when parents avoid emotional connection and rarely reflect on their behavior, parent-child interactions become mostly one-sided. Some parents might be caught in anxiety and need total control over their children's lives. More passively unavailable parents are disengaged and tend to avoid their children to focus on themselves.
Devon Caley is a Ph.D. candidate in Clinical Psychology and a mental health influencer focusing on self-love and relationships, who understands the long-lasting result of growing up with emotionally unavailable parents. Much of her content is rooted in attachment theory and its connection to different relational systems.
In a recent TikTok series, she used humor to highlight how emotional childhood neglect can produce traits of an insecure attachment style in adulthood, and some of them might hit close to home if you were raised by emotionally unavailable parents.
If you grew up with emotionally unavailable parents, these 15 traits probably feel uncomfortably familiar:
1. Trying to manage other people’s moods
Constantly monitoring other people’s feelings and taking their emotional temperature can be a sign that you grew up with emotionally unavailable parents.
“I grew up with emotionally unavailable parents. I’m gonna try to continuously try to manage your mood and check in to see how you’re doing, because if you get upset, and I didn’t foresee that, I’m gonna worry that none of my basic needs are gonna be met,” Caley pointedly remarked.
Any emotional dysregulation that your caretakers experienced could have been blamed on you, which is why you now try to manage people’s moods and make everything okay.
2. Feeling like affection needs to be earned
Caley also noted that people who were raised by emotionally unavailable parents have a hard time trusting “unearned” affection. When parents are emotionally available, research has shown that it helps the child learn to manage emotions for future relationships. A parent who can show up emotionally helps their children develop good relationships and better emotional stability.
3. Isolating yourself when you feel difficult emotions
People with emotionally unavailable parents never learned to properly navigate big feelings, so they enter adulthood not knowing how to manage difficult emotions. They tend to socially separate themselves when times are hard, so as not to feel like a burden on others.
Dr. Jonice Webb, Ph.D., elaborated, "For a child to grow up with a complete and solid sense of themselves, who they are, and what they're capable of, they must receive enough awareness, understanding, and acceptance of their emotions from their parents. If there is a shortage of parenting in any of these areas, the child will grow up feeling incomplete and lacking some of the skills of self-knowledge and self-care necessary to thrive in this world."
4. Not knowing how to ask for help
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Asking for help when you need it is a learned skill. It’s not an easy one to master, as asking for help can leave you feeling vulnerable, which is a feeling people who were emotionally neglected as children tend to avoid.
"Because you're so self-confident, you might not like to ask for help, even if it's necessary," explained personal development coach Moira Hutchison. "Whether we like it or not, all of us could benefit from time to time by accepting a hand from another human being, especially from the smiling faces of close friends and family. Not only that, but when you ask for help, other people also stand to benefit in ways you might not have considered."
5. Performing at a high level, even when things aren’t okay
“I’ve learned how to over-function and put on a really good mask that everything is okay, even when everything is spiraling, and it feels like it’s falling apart,” Caley shared as another trait.
6. Feeling like no one knows the real you
Growing up with emotionally unavailable parents might have meant masking how you really feel or not showing the full range of your emotions. Because being vulnerable wasn’t entirely allowed when you were growing up, as an adult, you might feel like nobody really knows you, including yourself.
7. Being a perfectionist
If you had emotionally unavailable parents, you might have been judged on what you were able to accomplish, which means you tie being perfect to being validated as a person. Caley explains, “I have mastered perfectionism, so you don’t need to worry about any of my needs or me, really, at all.”
Life coach Ellen Nyland dove deeper, "Perfectionism is the relentless pursuit of flawlessness and the setting of unattainably high standards, often accompanied by self-criticism and fear of failure. Being a pathologically driven perfectionist can negatively affect you in numerous ways, including increased stress and anxiety, procrastination, low self-esteem, relationship difficulties, and burnout."
8. Being called an old soul
Getting told that “you’re so mature for your age” is another sign that you grew up with emotionally unavailable parents. Because they couldn’t access their own emotions, you ended up doing a lot of the emotional heavy lifting, which made you grow up faster than you should have
9. Over-apologizing
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Caley explained the reason behind saying “sorry” so often, sharing that “I apologize unnecessarily for anything that could be a bother or a burden to you.”
Social worker Nadia Addesi helped explain that when no one in the family takes responsibility or apologizes, you learn conflicts aren't resolved with conversation. Instead, you overexplain to avoid further tension. As adults, you may tend to offer too much detail when discussing problems.
10. Interpreting kindness as transactional
“Kindness feels transactional,” she stated. “If you do a kindness for me, I have to do something comparable or better for you.”
11. Basing your sense of self-worth on your achievements
If the idea of being loved just for being you and existing as you are feels outlandish, you might have had emotionally unavailable parents. Caley revealed that someone raised in an emotionally neglectful household might feel as though “I’m loved for my productivity and accomplishments,” instead of by virtue of being enough, as you are, without having to prove yourself.
12. Having a hard time trusting your own intuition
Trusting your intuition is a muscle that can be made stronger with practice, yet people who have emotionally unavailable parents might have a hard time trusting themselves, so they look to outside factors to make decisions.
To develop your intuition, life coach Jean Walters suggested feeling more. "Many people ignore their feelings, and that's a bad mistake. Your feeling sense is to be trusted, but it must be in the moment. It may take time to sort out memories versus a true gut feeling. With practice, this can be done. Practice feeling and be willing to be wrong, because your intellect will try to interfere for sure."
13. Having a deeply critical inner voice
Caley shared that hearing a lot of criticism while growing up can lead to the creation of a very critical internal voice. She notes that the criticism doesn’t have to have been aimed at you for you to internalize it; hearing it directed at the people around you is enough for it to take hold in your psyche and become how you speak to yourself.
14. Being a people-pleaser
Trying to make people feel satisfied at all times is another way of trying to manage their emotions, and it often comes at the expense of setting clear boundaries to help you care for yourself.
"Fear of rejection often lies at the root of a person's tendency to bend over backward to please others, sometimes at the expense of their happiness," advised couples counselor Terry Gaspard. "While it's admirable to be a caring person, learning to love and respect myself has helped me to set healthy boundaries and to say no without feeling guilty."
15. Being competitive
“If I win, that means I’m the best,” Caley said simply. While Caley presented these traits in a joking manner, many of her followers resonated with them. In recognizing how our childhoods affect us, especially those in which emotionally unavailable parents were present, we’re able to change how we see ourselves and create the future lives we want to inhabit.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers mental health, pop culture, and all things to do with the entertainment industry.
