7 Childhood Absences That Still Shape Us Today
Not what happened, but what didn’t.
Dear Friend,
Most people think childhood trauma comes from something bad that happened. But often, it’s about what you didn’t experience. What you didn’t get and should have been, but never was.
Like someone looking you in the eyes and seeing you, hearing, “I’m sorry I hurt you. I’ll do better next time,” and being allowed to make mistakes without feeling like one. The small, invisible absences shape our adult perceptions and behavioral patterns. And for many of us, they left us longing for something we couldn’t name.
You don’t have to remember exactly what happened to know something was off.
Here are a few that took me decades to understand:
Emotional neglect occurs when a parent isn’t emotionally attuned or connected to us. We struggle to understand our emotions because no one ever mirrored them. We learn to suppress our feelings and become the “easy” kid who asks for little because it doesn’t feel safe to need anything. We learn our needs don't matter and that our role is to tend to other people's emotions. Over time, we lose contact with our emotions and end up confused by our moods and disconnected from our needs.
No repair leaves an invisible wound. Conflict is normal, but healing requires ongoing repair: accountability, apology and a direct acknowledgement of what will be different. Without repair, we start believing our feelings don’t matter. We might become hyper-independent or hyper-forgiving, tolerating mistreatment because we’ve never known what healthy resolution feels like.
Learned helplessness comes from never seeing how to solve problems, find solutions, or leave unsafe situations. We internalize powerlessness and freeze in the face of decisions, still waiting for permission to act. As adults, we might stay in abusive situations, not because we want to, but because we don’t believe we have a choice. It’s not a lack of willpower but a lack of learned resilience.
So many patterns we think are personal failings are survival adaptations.
No joy or play is a kind of deprivation. A key characteristic of dysfunctional families is being overly serious, often from living in survival mode long-term. Joy can feel unsafe without space for silliness or spontaneous fun. We struggle to relax, let loose and be lighthearted.
Parentification is when we’re made responsible for a parent’s emotional needs, which leaves us emotionally stunted. We don’t get to be children because we’re too busy fixing what isn’t ours to fix. Adulthood feels exhausting because we’ve been holding it all together since we were seven. We may feel guilty resting or receiving, even when we need it most.
Perfectionism results when mistakes aren’t tolerated. But mistakes are essential for growth and learning logic. In dysfunctional families, perfection is required, and mistakes are deemed a weakness. We can’t take risks or try new things because we’ve been conditioned to believe mistakes equal failure and rejection. We struggle with procrastination and chronic fear of criticism, but we’re not lazy or disorganized. We’re terrified that being imperfect will make us unlovable.
This kind of fear can masquerade as ambition.
No accountability in childhood teaches us to blame others or ourselves for everything. Blaming others for issues and problems is a core trait of dysfunctional families. If no adult ever owned their mistakes, we may have learned to avoid responsibility or carry too much of it. It becomes hard to trust relationships, because no one ever showed us how to stay in integrity. We either repeat the chaos or try to clean it all up ourselves.
For most of my life, I thought I was the problem.
I didn’t know about trauma, conditioning, or domestication as Don Miguel Ruiz calls it. I just thought something was wrong with me. I turned my anger and confusion inward and punished myself mercilessly. I was scared, but called it laziness. I hated myself for not being more disciplined, more successful, more together. I berated, shamed, and guilted myself in silence.
My inner dictator never rested. No matter what I did, it was never enough. I was never enough. I’d rehearse conversations in my head before they happened and replay them for hours after, ashamed of what I did or didn’t say, trying to perfect every word. I second-guessed myself constantly and didn’t trust myself. Even small slights sent me into spirals of self-doubt and shame. I took everything deeply personally.
It’s a lonely thing to be your own worst enemy.
My divorce cracked everything open.
By then, I had been doing inner spiritual work for nearly a decade. I’d tasted deep peace, glimpsed stillness, freedom from judgment and something greater than myself. But when the marriage ended, the pain was too great to ignore.
I hadn’t yet explored the roots of my patterns, and I began asking questions. Why did I pick someone who didn’t see their worth? Why did I stay when there was so much conflict and loneliness? Why wasn't I more successful in my career, and why was money so hard to hold onto?
I didn’t blame my parents, but I wanted to understand how I ended up here. Looking back at my childhood, it all began to make sense. I was the product of unconscious conditioning and saw how the patterns weren't personal but inherited from my family of origin through generational trauma.
Thankfully, what’s inherited can be healed.
Once I saw that, I could finally stop fighting myself. I stopped calling it my fault, but instead of pointing fingers, I took full responsibility for my life. But that doesn’t mean I take all the blame. There’s a difference between owning your life and thinking everything is your fault.
Understanding where you came from allows you to grow without shame. I used my new understanding to address my core wounding through therapy. I shared my childhood sorrows and cried while the therapist listened.
There’s nothing wrong with you. You just grew up in an environment that didn’t know how to meet your needs. And now, as an adult, you get to learn how.
Not overnight, not all at once and not through perfection, self-flagellation, or turning yourself into an endless self-improvement project. But through care, compassion, and a deep knowing that you were never broken.
You’re not too sensitive or too much. You’re finally noticing what hurts and are getting to know yourself. And now, finally, you can begin to wake up from the dream and heal.
Keep healing,
Ryan
My childhood was overly serious. It's just how we were. And of all the kids, I embraced that lifestyle the most. (my brothers escaped it by dancing with psychedelics). My first husband was even more serious than me. And wow, was that a disaster.
Thank goodness I met a Hobbit whose life purpose is to bring joy and spontaneous play everywhere he goes. It has taken me almost a decade to exercise those muscles into some level of functional.
who knew that play is a practice too?
You described me and my life in this article.