A lot of people around the world are struggling with certain character traits and feelings as a result of not receiving enough love as they were growing up. Today, we’re going to be looking at 18 of those potential outcomes.
Difficulty Expressing Emotions
Verywell Mind talks about how emotional neglect in childhood can lead people to avoid emotions into their adult years. This means that they’ll struggle to show how they feel in adult relationships, which can be problematic for the persons involved and the relationship as a whole.
Overly Affectionate Behavior
Many people who experienced a lack of love at home as they grew up will overcompensate for this by showing too much affection in their romantic relationships later in life, or with their own children. This can lead to them disregarding personal boundaries in relationships.
Feeling Unworthy of Love
Growing up without love may lead people to live their whole lives believing that they’re not actually worthy of it at all. As a result, they might not even bother pursuing much of a romantic life, and this can lead them to become alienated and isolated.
Perfectionism
Showing affection and pride in children will prevent them from the negative aspects of perfectionism, as told by A Fine Parent. Without this, they’re more likely to set unrealistically high expectations for themselves and become frustrated when they’re inevitably unable to meet them.
Constant Self-Doubt
If you didn’t receive much love as you grew up, then you may find yourself constantly questioning your own decisions and capabilities throughout your life. This is a common result of a lack of validation leading to low self-confidence, as you’d rely too heavily on external approval.
Attraction to Destructive Relationships
People are more likely to be drawn to potential partners who reflect the neglect they experienced in their childhood if they struggled to find love as they grew up. They may find themselves in a cyclical situation where they move into the relationships, end them, and then pursue another.
Tendency to Isolate
It’s pretty easy for people to step back into isolation if they felt that they did not receive enough love when they grew up. Solitude is likely to be easier than social interaction for these people as they are likely to experience discomfort and anxiety in social settings.
People-Pleasing Behavior
The Huffington Post discusses how kids make an extra effort to try to impress their parents if they’re longing for love from them as a result of not receiving enough. This behavior can, in turn, move onto other relationships in their life, and the final product may be general people-pleasing.
Difficulty in Setting Boundaries
It’s hard for people to say no if they did not receive enough love as they grew up. This stems from a fear of disappointing people as a result of a childhood of feeling like they have been constantly letting their parents down.
Oversensitivity to Criticism
Taking feedback and criticism extremely personally is a common byproduct of a lack of affection in children. This comes from a fear of rejection, and that rejection can manifest itself in a number of different ways for these people and appear even where it was not intended.
Defensive Attitude
Children who grew up without as much love as they needed can be quick to feel threatened or attacked, even in the most neutral of settings. A lack of ability to communicate clearly and to give or receive feedback will certainly add to this, as it adds to the feeling of constantly being under attack.
Craving Affection Desperately
According to Pivot, people are more likely to crave attention throughout their lives if they did not receive enough of it while they were growing up. This intense longing for love can cause them to become clingy in their romantic relationships later in life, and to react highly negatively to any withdrawal.
Emotional Disconnect
It’s hard for people to feel connected with their own emotions if they had to spend their childhood detaching themselves from them if they weren’t getting enough love. Emotional detachment during development years is hard to reattach without a lot of work with professional therapists.
Avoidance of Self-Reflection
Thinking deeply about their own personal life leads to pain and anguish for people who lacked love in their childhood, so many of them have learned to block this out altogether. They may even turn to drugs or alcohol in a desperate bid to keep these thoughts out of their minds.
Uncomfortable with Emotional Expression
Coming across emotions is hard enough for people who weren’t loved enough as children, but actually being able to express any emotions that they do feel is even harder still. Emotional suppression is very common for people who have undergone these types of childhood.
Drawn to Caregiving Roles
The idea of neglecting your own emotions if you didn’t receive enough love growing up can manifest itself as over-focusing on caring for others. The validation you might receive from this is almost a distraction from your own personal needs as you seek fulfillment through what you lacked in childhood.
Extremely Self-Reliant in Emotional Situations
Another symptom of a lack of love in childhood is to rely on oneself too much. People who have experienced this are likely to avoid asking for help when they undergo any emotional challenges, preferring instead to try to deal with things by themselves.
Insecurity and Attachment Issues
Finally, when children aren’t loved enough as they grow up, they’re more likely to struggle with forming secure and trusting relationships when they grow up. Their attachment style is likely to either be anxious or avoidant, which can be hard for more securely attached people to deal with.
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