From Childhood Emotional Neglect to Codependency: Understanding the Hidden Connection

Jocelyn McTavish
Nov 7
4 min read

Do you feel empty and disconnected?

By Dr. Sharon Martin

Do you sense that you’re different than everyone else, but you can’t put your finger on what’s wrong?

Childhood Emotional Neglect and codependency are a powerful experience, but one that often goes unnoticed and untreated. In fact, many people who experienced

Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN) describe their childhood as “good,” and it’s only on closer examination that they recognize that something important was missing.

In this article, you’ll learn how to identify the signs of Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN) in your own life and understand how these early experiences can shape codependent behaviors in adulthood. You’ll see how CEN influences self-worth, relationships, and the ways you relate to others.

What is Childhood Emotional Neglect?

Your childhood experiences played a big part in shaping you into the adult you are today. Children rely on their parents to meet their physical and emotional needs. And significant, but invisible, damage is done when parents fail to meet their children’s emotional needs.

Childhood Emotional Neglect, a term coined by psychologist Jonice Webb, Ph.D., refers to a parent’s inability to validate and respond adequately to their child’s emotional needs. Childhood emotional neglect can be hard to identify because it’s what didn’t happen in your childhood. It doesn’t leave any visible bruises or scars, but it’s hurtful and confusing for children.

CEN teaches children that their emotions and needs don’t matter. This lesson follows us into adulthood, leaving you disconnected from your feelings and unable to access the valuable information they contain. Left unnoticed, these unmet needs often influence how you relate to others as an adult, sometimes showing up as codependent behaviours.

How to Identify CEN

These are examples of parents not attending to their children’s emotional needs:

A 10-year-old comes home from school visibly upset because she didn’t make the basketball team. She tries to talk to her mother about what happened, but Mom dismisses her, saying she’s busy working.
When James’ grandma died, his father told him, “Boys don’t cry,” and no one helped him process your grief.
A teenager spends hours isolated in his room; no one asks how he’s feeling or shows interest in him or what he’s experiencing.

Experiences like these may not seem like a big deal, but when they happen consistently, children feel unloved and unseen. All parents occasionally fail to notice and attend to their emotional needs. CEN is a pattern of failing to attend to a child’s emotional needs.

CEN can co-occur with physical abuse and neglect and often occurs in families where a parent struggles with addiction or mental illness, or the family is frequently in crisis or experiencing chronic stress.

Many people who experienced Childhood Emotional Neglect grew up in families without obvious dysfunction. They weren’t beaten or belittled. Their parents were well-meaning but lacked the emotional skills themselves to notice and tend to their children’s feelings. Such parents never learned to cope with their feelings or express them in healthy ways, and don’t know how to deal with their children’s feelings either.

CEN can also be hard to identify because adults who experienced emotional neglect often look like they’ve got it all together. They’re successful and have happy families, but there’s a nagging sense of emptiness, not fitting in, and being different. However, there isn’t anything obviously wrong.

Symptoms of Childhood Emotional Neglect include:

Emptiness or loneliness
Feeling something’s fundamentally wrong with you
Feeling unfulfilled even when you’re successful
Difficulty connecting with most of your feelings
Burying, avoiding, or numbing your feelings
Feeling unimportant, inadequate, or like you don’t fit in
Difficulty asking for help and not wanting to depend on others
Depression and anxiety
High levels of guilt, shame, and/or anger
Lack of deep connection with your friends and spouse
Difficult with self-management, such as overeating or drinking, or difficulty limiting time online
People-pleasing and focusing on other people’s needs
Not having a good sense of who you are, your likes and dislikes, your strengths and weaknesses
Over-accommodating or avoiding conflict
Seeking external validation
Difficulty saying no or asserting boundaries

The Effects of Childhood Emotional Neglect

Your feelings are a core part of who you are, so when they aren’t noticed or validated, you come to believe that you aren’t important because you aren’t “seen” and known. In emotionally neglectful families, the message is that feelings don’t matter, they’re an inconvenience, or they’re wrong. Naturally, you learn not to value your feelings; you push your feelings away or numb them with food, alcohol, drugs, or sex.

When your emotional needs aren’t met and your internal state isn’t acknowledged, you’ll be disconnected from yourself. You will constantly seek attention and try to prove your worth through clingy or needy behaviors, perfectionism, overworking, and achievements. But these external validations never fix the problem; they never leave you feeling good enough or truly seen, which is why codependent patterns often persist.

Feelings serve to let us know what we need. For example, if you don’t notice when you’re getting frustrated, you won’t be able to find a healthy resolution or outlet for your anger and you’re likely to let it fester until you explode.

A lack of emotional attunement also makes it difficult for you to form deep connections with others and understand your partner’s and children’s feelings.

The Connection Between Childhood Emotional Neglect and Codependency

In my work with Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOAs) and people struggling with codependency, I often see a direct connection between CEN and adult relational patterns. It makes sense that if you grew up with a dysfunctional or overwhelmed parent or caregiver, your emotional needs weren’t noticed and met.

Individuals with CEN and codependency may both struggle with: