Emotional neglect is different from emotional abuse because it is often unintentional. Parents, due to their own misery and preoccupation with unhealed wounds from their childhood, may have emotionally neglected you. This omission played a huge part in shaping you into the adult you are today and may dictate how much emotional regulation and relational intelligence you may or may not have. Children rely on their parents to meet their physical AND emotional needs. Invisible damage is done when parents fail to teach coping strategies and emotional regulation.Your parents may have been emotionally neglected by their own parents, and because they didn’t have good role models, they passed this invisible poison on to you. It is a vicious never ending cycle because no one decides to wake up and break the toxic patterns. Financial challenges, abandonment, addictions, divorce, toxic greed and behavior disorders can all lead to emotional neglect because parents are unable to cope with themselves or life in general and therefore chronically unavailable for their children. My family, going back over 100 years, on both sides, was raised children to believe that their feelings don’t matter, you are all an inconvenience, and even though you are an emotionally starved toddler…you, as a person, don’t matter. Toxic family patterns like mine breed emotional starvation and low self-worth. As a consequence, we desperately search the outside world for an escape from this pain and shame.