Emotionally Unavailable Parents, What Are They Like?

Emotionally unavailable mothers and fathers make a mark on child development. Neglect is not easy for a child’s mind to process; they, after all, do not understand why their parents do not respond to their needs. So much so that the feeling of guilt is usually added to the experience of loneliness and helplessness.

As striking as it may seem, there are many adults who come to a psychologist’s office showing discomfort without knowing how to identify its source. They talk about their feeling of emptiness, their inability to build stable and happy relationships. They also comment on how difficult it is for them to manage their emotions, their anger, their frustration, their bad mood …

When we delve a little deeper into their personal realities, we see that in most of these patients there is no obvious trauma. Neither does any disorder or psychological condition that we can diagnose. So what happens? What exists in many cases is an emotional void, the mark of an emotional abandonment originated by parents who did not attend (or did not know how to attend) those needs of their children in childhood.

Often in the field of psychology we overlook this very important dimension. In some ways, we focus more on such harsh events as physical or emotional abuse. However, something as basic as parents not being emotionally accessible creates deep wounds.

Emotionally unavailable parents, cold parenting

Parents are present, but absent. There are cold mothers. There are families negligent in matters of emotions, in the ability to build a safe and healthy attachment relationship with their children. All these dynamics define small universes capable of marking the destiny of a person.

Furthermore, Alice Miller, a renowned psychoanalyst expert in child abuse, left us words for reflection. We have no idea what our world would be like if all children were lucky enough to grow up in a family environment based on affection, on absolute appreciation. There where humiliation did not exist and every need was attended to.

Would we thereby create a much better world, more respectful for each other? Possibly. What is clear is that not everyone comes out unscathed from negligent parenting. Sometimes, it is not even necessary that there is physical abuse for the suffering to be carried inside in the same way as a scar on the skin. Factors such as abandonment, an authoritarian education or the figure of emotionally unavailable parents, leave evident consequences on the psychological development of the child.

But what are those emotionally unavailable parents really like? These would be the basic characteristics that would define them.

Emotional instability

A more than common trait in this type of parents is emotional instability. In many cases, more than coldness or rejection, what the child faces is uncertainty. Sometimes these fathers and mothers are affectionate and cordial, but after a while, their mood changes and they may show rejection and inaccessibility.

Something like this causes a child a high degree of suffering and anxiety.

Low stress tolerance

This maternity or paternity profile characterized by emotional inaccessibility, is defined in turn by low tolerance to stress. Something like this implies that any task with their children exhausts them. Investing time, effort and attention in raising their children is an effort that they cannot always fulfill. They lack patience, do not see needs and tend to seek strategies so that their children bother them as little as possible.

Poor limits

Emotionally unavailable parents often act more as acquaintances or friends of their children than as parents. They shape that light education where there are usually no clear limits, where they never end up being that firm support, that figure of reference capable of guiding, of setting rules so that the child knows what to expect at all times, knowing what is expected of he.

Narcissistic personality

Constant selfishness, not seeing more needs than their own, superficiality, falsehood, making promises that they do not fulfill, giving compliments and instantly projecting their own frustration or apathy on the children. .. All these behaviors define without a doubt, a narcissistic personality that causes serious ravages children’s psychological development.

The impact of emotionally neglectful parenting

The consequences of a parenting with emotionally unavailable parents are often diverse within the same trauma space. Thus, it is common to have some difficulty when building happy affective relationships, self-esteem is very damaged and problems with identity, emotional management and a clear lack of purpose are evident.

The most striking thing is that many of these adults lose confidence in the human being. Hope, optimism and that security with which to relate, with which to feel worthy and capable of building a happy life fails them.

Now, it is clear that not all people live this reality in the same way. There will be those who have a more resilient approach and are able to face their life to rebuild it. Be that as it may, there is an idea that floats: what we experienced in childhood does not have to determine the quality of our present. We can and must rebuild ourselves.

Validating ourselves as people, attending to our needs, placing new projects on the horizon and clarifying our vital purposes can help us in these cases. Either way, there is always the possibility of requesting professional help to overcome these harsh realities with better resources, with better approaches. It is a complex journey, but at times it is also necessary to reach new and bright destinations.