Emotional Self: Can Someone Be Out Of Touch With Their Emotional Self If Their Parents Were Emotionally Shut Down?

Now that someone is an adult, what they might notice is that they don’t have a strong connection with their feelings. In general, they might not know how they feel and be in a disconnected state.

But, even if they do experience a feeling or a number of feelings, it doesn’t mean that they will pay attention to what is going on inside them. They could typically ignore how they feel and just carry on with what they are doing or going in the direction that they are going, for instance.

The Outcome

Being this way may mean that they often end up being deprived of what they need and spend a lot of time feeling exhausted. Ultimately, their feelings will be there to provide them with guidance.
​
So, if they have the inclination to be out of touch with how they feel and to ignore how they feel, it is to be expected that they would suffer. To use an analogy: it will be as though the dashboard of a car is sending messages that need to be heeded, for the right steps to be taken but these signs are simply overlooked.

Two Parts

For their life to change, it will be essential for them to start paying attention to how they feel and to no longer deny this part of their being. By doing this, they will be able to see what their feelings are trying to tell them and to utilise the information that is being provided by them.

However, although this will be an important first step, they may find that it is hard for them to be with how they feel. They could find that a big part of them sees their feelings as having no importance and even looks down on them.

A Waste of Time

To this part of them, connecting to and being with how they feel is going to be seen as being indulgent. They are then going to soon feel the need to go back to how they were and to ignore this part of them.

Along with this, this part of them could believe that they are wasting time by connecting to how they feel and just need to ‘get things done.’ In other words, their feelings will stop them from being productive.

Lopsided

Still, while being this way may allow them to be productive, it is highly unlikely that it will allow them to form deeper connections with others. When it comes to their relationships, this could be an area of their life that lacks depth and fulfilment.

Yet, as they spend a lot of time being out of touch with how they feel, they are likely to spend a lot of time estranged from their need for deeper connections with others. If they were to start paying attention to how they feel, they might soon feel the need to experience more depth in this area of their life.

Stepping Back

If they were to reflect on how they experience life, they could wonder why they don’t have a strong connection with their feelings. Furthermore, they could struggle to understand why they rarely listen to their feelings and don’t value them.

They might see that they have been this way for as long as they can remember and thus, they might believe that they were just born this way. What this may show is that they were brought up in an environment where their feelings were largely overlooked.

A Closer Look

Throughout their formative years, their parent or parents might have seldom acknowledged how they felt. This would have stopped them from receiving the attunement that they needed to form a healthy relationship with their emotional self.

What this comes down to is that just as they needed food and water for their physical self to grow; they also need the right emotional nutrients for their emotional self to grow. Without this, this part of them would have stayed in an underdeveloped state.

Another Part

Moreover, they may have been moments when they were put down, rejected and abandoned for expressing how they felt. The message would have been clear: hide how you feel and you will be accepted and survive.

This would have meant that they had to lose touch with a big part of themselves and to play a role; to go from a real person to an unreal person. The pain that they experienced through not receiving the attunement that they needed would have also played a part in them becoming emotionally shut down.

A Continuation

How their parent or parents responded to their emotional self at this stage of their life is then going to be how they will respond to this part of themselves now that they are an adult. This stage of their life will be over, of course, but a big part of them will still believe that they need to hide how they feel in order to be able to be accepted and survive.

In all likelihood, their parent or parents were also brought up in an environment where their feelings were not acknowledged and seen as being important. This would have caused them to go from a feeling human being to human being that had more in common with a robot.

Awareness
​
If someone can relate to this and they are ready to change their life, they may need to reach out for external support. This is something that can be provided with the assistance of a therapist or healer.