😶🌫️ What it means to have grown up with emotionally unavailable parents
Growing up with emotionally unavailable parents meant living in an emotional desert where your feelings and needs were treated like inconvenient weather—something to be ignored until it passed.
You may have learned early that your inner world didn't matter to the adults who were supposed to care most about it. When you were hurt, scared, or angry, you were often met with silence, dismissal, or the clear message that your emotions were too much, too dramatic, or simply wrong. This wasn't neglect in the traditional sense—you may have had your physical needs met—but your emotional self was left to figure things out alone. You became fluent in reading everyone else's moods while remaining disconnected from your own.
You may have developed incredible self-reliance and the ability to handle crises without falling apart, but this came at the cost of learning to trust your own emotional experiences. Now, when someone asks "How are you feeling?" there might be static where your feelings should be. You've become so skilled at managing without emotional support that you've forgotten how to recognize when you need it, leaving you feeling like a stranger in your own inner world.