For many adult survivors of childhood emotional neglect, living with the assumption that something bad is about to happen can feel like a reality of life. Studies suggest that children who experience neglect often have difficulty distinguishing between anger and other negative emotional expressions (Jin & Chen, 2023).
As adults, these survivors may perceive that others are upset with them, which can cause significant emotional distress, uncertainty, and anxiety — even in situations that others might view as relatively minor stressors.
Negative confirmatory bias is one mechanism that helps explain this pattern. It’s a hardwired cognitive shortcut humans developed to enhance survival — making us more attuned to any person, place, or thing that might pose a potential threat.
Early in our development, being highly vigilant to potential threats could literally mean the difference between life and death. The trade-off was living in a heightened state of stress or missing opportunities for joy and exploration, but survival always took priority.
For an adult who has grown up with an untreated, unsupported, and unhealed legacy of childhood emotional neglect, this negative confirmatory bias often made sense. As children, they typically experienced more negative than positive interactions with one or more caregivers. From the unpredictable caregiver who would yell or become physically threatening, to the one who could not offer compassion or age-appropriate guidance, to the caregiver who was emotionally shut down and focused purely on the child’s behavior: the child learns to assume, quite reasonably, that seeking guidance or comfort might be dangerous to their physical or emotional safety.
To prevent upsetting the caregiver — and to reduce anxiety — the child may develop a heightened vigilance to potential threats. They may internalize messages such as: Be perfect. Make no mistakes. And if you do, punish yourself first.
Without support or healing, these patterns often persist into adulthood. Survivors of childhood emotional neglect may show tendencies toward perfectionism and may ignore or reject information that challenges their deep-seated belief that they are unlovable or unworthy.
Negative confirmatory bias, then, becomes not just one aspect of how the brain functions but it can become the primary driving force behind chronic anxiety and depression when left unaddressed.
But hope is not lost. With education, awareness, and a willingness to challenge old embodied beliefs, survivors of childhood emotional neglect can change their brains. They can begin to question the old embodied beliefs that made them think they were at fault, or deficient for needing care, reliability, and guidance.
Through learning physical self-soothing techniques, they can experience a greater sense of safety. Through practicing self-compassion, they can learn to coach themselves kindly through life’s inevitable challenges such making mistakes, failing, losing, without losing their sense of worth.
There is hope, and there is support available.
Reference
Jin, X., & Chen, Y. (2023). The influence of childhood emotional neglect on adult interpersonal communication: Evidence from a large-scale survey. Personality and