EMOTIONAL NEGLECT SHAPES OUR EMOTIONAL RESPONSIVENESS

How we relate to others emotionally often depends on how well others have previously mirrored our internal emotional states with attuned recognition. So if someone is having an emotional experience and you don’t know how to emotionally respond, it’s likely because it touches an area where you have once experienced emotional neglect.

Feeling critical towards someone’s curiosity stems from the times your curiosity was criticized.
Feeling distant from someone’s excitement stems from the times your excitement was dismissed.
Feeling isolated around someone’s sadness stems from the times your sadness was invalidated.

Instead of emotionally attuning to others, we subconsciously reduce our ability to feel those emotions to protect us from repeated relational disappointment. People aren’t always going to attune to our emotions when we need them to. But if we can attune ourselves to recognize those feelings within us without judging them, the less threatening those emotions feel when someone else expresses them.