How Your Christian Faith Can Be Used to Treat Emotional Neglect

Emotional neglect can leave you feeling incompetent and unworthy. Still, there are promises in your Christian Faith that can heal the wounds of emotional neglect. You may struggle to feel the blessings in God’s promises, and some tools can help you overcome that barrier. Your Christian Faith can become an important aspect of healing the wounds of emotional neglect.

What is Emotional Neglect?

Emotional neglect occurs when a person’s emotional or attentional needs are disregarded, ignored, minimized, invalidated, or unappreciated. When it happens in childhood, it can have devastating consequences. Emotional neglect can be intentional, unintentional, or unconscious. Often, it is due to parents who never learned to deal with emotions themselves and are unequipped to deal with their children’s emotions. Emotional neglect can be seen as a lack of affection, physical touch, or positive attention, leaving an individual feeling unloved or unwanted.

What Aspects of Emotional Neglect More Benefit from the Incorporation of Your Christian Faith Into Therapy?

Feelings of Emptiness

One of the most uncomfortable symptoms of childhood emotional neglect is emptiness. It’s the feeling of being incomplete, like something is missing inside you. Emptiness comes from emotional unmet needs in childhood. Acceptance, nurturing, and love, which are so important to our development as emotionally healthy human beings, are missing. It becomes a void that aches inside of you as you go through life.

People-Pleasing Tendencies

Often, people who were emotionally neglected as children turn to people-pleasing tendencies to find their worth or acceptance. However, this pattern can be detrimental as they focus on pleasing others and often fail to prioritize themselves. This also can appear as someone who focuses so much on their faith work that they burn out and lose track of their personal relationship with God.

Trouble Trusting Other People

If you were emotionally neglected, it may feel safer to put up walls than to connect with others who could hurt you like you’ve been hurt before. This can limit your ability to connect with others and your Father in Heaven because, unconsciously, you are focused on protecting yourself.

Self-Neglect

You may neglect your feelings and needs because you never learned they are important. You may be trying to prove your worth or be good enough to be accepted. In these efforts, you may neglect yourself and be harsh with yourself.

Problems with Self-Esteem

You may struggle with low self-esteem and self-worth, which can cause you to feel incompetent, unloved, or inadequate. You may also be concerned about making mistakes or letting others down.

Feeling Flawed, Disconnected

You may feel chronically disconnected and misunderstood. This is because you received messages while you were growing up that either confused you or implied that your concerns weren’t important. Often, this can leave you feeling flawed and that you don’t deserve the things that other people have. It can also leave you prone to feelings of guilt and shame.

Distorted Sense of Self

Due to the emotional neglect and lack of acceptance by caregivers, people who endured childhood emotional neglect may experience a distorted sense of self. Whether it is due to manipulations by a caregiver who is supposed to love them or from things the child interpreted due to emotional neglect, it is very damaging. It distorts the sense of self the child should develop as they grow into adulthood.

What Aspects of Your Christian Faith Can Help Heal the Wounds of Emotional Neglect?

Your Christian faith has many promises that can help heal the wounds of emotional neglect.

Your Place As a Child of God

God rescued you (Galatians 3:13) and has adopted you as His child (Ephesians 1:15). He treasured you (Exodus 19:5) and gave you the right to become His child due to your belief in Him (John 1:12). Christ has accepted you into God’s glory (Romans 15:7). These are promises about your significance to God and how important you are to Him.

God’s Love for You

God loves you so much that He sent His Son to die so you could be free (John 3:16-17). You are precious to God (Isaiah 43:4), and he cares for you (Psalm 23:1-3). When He died, He sent the Holy Spirit to live in you (1 Corinthians 6:19) because He is with you (Zephaniah 3:17) and will protect you (1 Peter 1:5). He has promised that you will be able to find grace and mercy in your time of need (Hebrews 4:16) and that in Him you have been given a spirit of power, love, and self-control (2 Timothy 1:7). These of the gifts you have because He loves you so much.

You Are Made Clean By Christ

Jesus’s death on the cross has washed away all your sins (Colossians 1:14) so you could be saved (John 3:17). He has taken your sin and shame away, and you are free from condemnation (Romans 8:1-2). Jesus offers you a new life in Him (Romans 6:4), and His death allows you to find peace within.

God’s Faithfulness

God is faithful and has a plan for you (Jeremiah 29:11). He will ensure that all things work together for good (Romans 8:28) and that His work in you will be perfected (Philippians 1:6). His love, grace, and strength will be with you as you endure the struggles you’re facing. Still, you can be assured that He will use them for good.

Treat Your Neighbor As Yourself

Jesus says that the second most important commandment after “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” is to “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Mark 12: 30-31). It doesn’t say to put yourself last. It mentions loving your neighbour as yourself, indicating that you are supported to love and care for yourself like you would a neighbour.

You Have Significance in the Body of Christ

You are significant and vital to the body of Christ. Here is a list of some of your roles and gifts in Christ:

• A new person in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17)
• A member of Christ’s body (1 Corinthians 12:27)
• Complete in Christ (Colossians 2:10)
• Belong to Jesus (1 Corinthians 3:23)
• A citizen of heaven (Philippians 3:20)
• An heir of God (Romans 8:17)
• One with God (1 Corinthians 6:17)
• Reconciled with Christ (2 Corinthians 5:18-19)
• The salt of the Earth and the light of the world (Matthew 5:13-14)
• A branch of the true vine, Jesus, a channel of His life (John 15:1-5)

Most importantly, know that you have been chosen and appointed by God to bear fruit (John 15:16). He has moulded you as a purpose in His kingdom (Ephesians 2:10) and will give you strength to do the good work He has planned for you (Philippians 4:13).

Summary

All of this indicates God’s love and nurturing for you and how much he cares for you. You are not insignificant, and Jesus’ death on the cross has made you worthy. God’s promises can lift you up and counter the wounds of emotional neglect.

Why the Wounds of Emotional Neglect Can Prevent You from Feeling the Blessings God Has Given You

Many sufferers of childhood trauma and emotional neglect have the knowledge that they are blessed, loved, and accepted but can’t feel it. This is because a core belief was established when they were younger that they are unlovable and flawed, held in a fragmented, maladaptive form in their information processing system. This means that the “new” information that God loves them, significant to His plan, and worthy of love is not integrated with the false belief that they are not worthy. These core beliefs need to be adjusted so they can feel the love and grace of God.

Unfortunately, because these beliefs are held in fragmented forms, they can be difficult to change by changing your thoughts or other cognitive approaches. Often, these cognitive approaches can make you feel like you are lying to yourself because the belief that you are unlovable or flawed is ingrained in your brain.

You May Need Help to Integrate Your Christian Faith with Your Wounds of Emotional Neglect

To overcome the core beliefs impacting your faith experience, you may need help integrating those beliefs with those from your Christian faith. One way of doing that is with EMDR.

EMDR

Through the EMDR process, the core belief holding you back can be integrated with other information in your information processing system, including God’s promises to you through your Christian faith. By integrating your core beliefs, you can overcome the barriers that prevent you from feeling God’s love and grace.

Conclusion

Emotional neglect can leave you with many wounds to your identity and self-worth. Still, there are promises in your Christian Faith that can heal the wounds of emotional neglect. You may struggle to feel the blessings in God’s promises, and some tools can help you overcome that barrier. Your Christian Faith can become an important aspect of healing the wounds of emotional neglect.