Childhood emotional neglect and attachment therapy, SydneyTherapy for adults: patterns from childhood

That's usually the first thing people say.

No violence. No neglect a school would have noticed. Parents who did the school run and paid for things and were, by any external measure, adequate. And yet: a persistent sense of being unloved, of not quite mattering, of having to earn a place you were supposed to have been given.

Childhood emotional neglect is defined by an absence, not an event. Which is exactly why it's so difficult to name, and why so many people conclude the problem must simply be them.

• Doing well on the outside, and feeling empty on the inside
• Difficulty knowing what you feel, or what you want, when asked directly
• Deep discomfort with needing anything from anyone
• Self-worth entirely contingent on output: you are only as good as your last result
• A private conviction that if people knew you properly, they would leave
• Chronic guilt without a clear source
• Relationships where you are the capable one, always, and nobody asks how you are
• A sharp, hard-to-explain reaction to books like Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents or Running on Empty

For adults who grew up with emotionally immature parents and became the steady one:

• Looking after everyone else by reflex, and not always knowing what you want
• Guilt whenever you disappoint anyone
• Attraction to relationships that repeat the arrangement

The aim is not estrangement. It's choosing your level of contact deliberately rather than by reflex, and no longer needing them to change first.

None of this means your parents were bad people. Most parents who struggled with this were doing what was done to them, with whatever they had. Understanding this is often part of the work. It doesn't make what you missed out on any less real.

Understanding a pattern helps, but on its own it rarely changes it. It changes through repeated experience of a relationship in which the old prediction doesn't come true, which is why the therapeutic relationship itself is part of the treatment, including what happens when I get something wrong and we repair it.

This work usually takes months rather than weeks. That's the time it takes to change patterns this old.

Many of the people I see for this work are very successful in their careers. Athletes, executives, clinicians, senior professionals.

It makes sense. If affection was contingent on performance, you learn to perform. It works. It produces genuinely impressive lives. But the achievement never lands, because it was never really about the achievement. You hit the target and the relief lasts about four days.

That intersection (performance psychology and family of origin) is central to my therapy work, not a sideline.

Your first appointment is 60 minutes and later sessions are 50 minutes; current fees are on the Fees page. With a Mental Health Treatment Plan from your GP, a Medicare rebate applies to up to 10 sessions per calendar year. You don't need a referral to start.

Available in person in Five Dock, or by video anywhere in NSW.

Information for your GP