People Who Felt Loved As A Kid But Not Very Understood Usually Have 6 Habits As Adults
New Africa | Shutterstock Feeling loved as a kid doesn't always mean feeling understood. Children need to feel like their words and their feelings matter, but when parents don't take the time to really listen, their kids can grow up feeling misunderstood even when they know they are cared for.
A 2023 study published in JAMA Network Open that followed more than 15,000 teenagers into adulthood found that teens who were more satisfied with communication with their mothers felt less stress and showed fewer symptoms of depression years later. Those feelings can often carry on into adulthood and be revealed through their everyday habits later on in life.
These 6 adult habits are common in people who felt misunderstood growing up:
1. They don't really ask for help
They don't ask for help anymore because they don't feel as if anyone will hear them. Asking for help is incredibly vulnerable. As a child, no one really realizes how vulnerable it is to ask for help, but as we grow older, how comfortable we feel asking can depend on whether our parents listened and tried to understand us.
In a 2024 study, researchers found that negative interactions with adults negatively affect a person's future help-seeking, which could exacerbate any mental health or emotional difficulties.
2. They can be their own harshest critics
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Without being understood by others, it's harder for a person to understand themselves. As a result, they may conclude that they are just not good enough. Without a healthy understanding of oneself, healthy self-talk is impossible.
Studies show that childhood emotional neglect can be closely connected to lower self-compassion later in life. People who grew up without enough emotional support may struggle to give themselves the kindness and understanding they needed as kids. Their self-talk often sounds negative because they never felt good enough or understood by others, or understood by themselves.
3. They get easily overwhelmed by their feelings
Feeling misunderstood can leave anyone frustrated and overwhelmed. A 2022 University of Oregon study found that mothers who remembered their parents dismissing their feelings during childhood had more trouble managing their emotions as adults.
They want the people around them to understand how much those feelings matter, but putting them into words isn't always easy. When feelings are super intense, it can be even harder to explain what's going on inside.
4. They can often struggle to explain how they feel
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It can be difficult to process the emotions you feel when you have felt misunderstood for most of your life. Even relatively small feelings can feel huge inside and impossible to explain to the people around them, deepening the sense of misunderstanding that they grew up with.
Misunderstandings can easily arise when we can't express ourselves properly. However, communication barriers happen when we don't feel understood. That can become a frustrating cycle where the more misunderstood we feel, the harder it gets to explain what we actually mean.
5. They second-guess their decisions
A child can feel deeply loved, but still feel misunderstood and even dismissed. When a child doesn't feel heard, they can internalize that their decisions are wrong, which can lead to indecision in adulthood.
Clinical therapist Dr. Helen McKibben explained to Parade that having your ideas dismissed or ignored as a child can leave you doubting your ability to make good decisions. That lack of self-trust can follow you into adulthood, making even small choices feel difficult and sometimes leading you to avoid deciding altogether.
6. They often keep their thoughts to themselves
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Whether they share their thoughts or feelings with their parents, siblings, or friends, they don't feel safe doing so because, as children, they were always misunderstood. Being misunderstood and having their thoughts and feelings repeatedly misinterpreted is extremely frustrating and makes them not want to open up at all.
Misaki Natsuaki, a psychology researcher at the University of California, Riverside, coauthored a study on how teens perceive their parents' negative reactions. Speaking to TIME, she explained that even when teens seem distant, they can still consider other perspectives.
Encouraging them to share their viewpoints can help build their reasoning skills, which lead to better psychological health and more happiness later in life. They also found that teens showed more aggressive behavior when they viewed their parents' reactions to their anger more negatively than their parents did. The findings suggest that how teens experience those interactions matters.
Lyss Micalizzi is a writer with a master’s in Literature and Culture, a bachelor’s in English Literary and Textual Studies, and over six years of writing and social media experience. Their work is driven by the belief that stories are what make us human.
