When the Inner Orphan Leads the Way

There was a time I didn’t know I had a nervous system. Or an inner child. Or trauma.

I thought I was strong and independent. But the truth was, I had simply learned to survive.

It wasn’t until my 40s when PTSD cracked something open in me that I realized I’d been living as an emotional orphan: functioning, achieving, helping others, but with no connection to myself on the inside.

I’m so grateful I stumbled upon the word “trauma” seven years ago. Something about it made me pause.

I drank in everything I could — books, courses, somatic practices — like someone in a desert who’d finally found water. It became clear that what I had always called “normal” was just what had been familiar. When something is your “normal,” you don’t question it. It’s just life. The only way you’ve ever known. That’s the invisibility of developmental trauma. You don’t always have words for what you lived through. There’s no big event. Just a slow shaping of your inner world.

For the first time, my experience had a name. I wasn't broken like Humpty Dumpty in a million pieces that no one would be able to put together. Healing was possible. There was a way back home. That’s the path I’ve been on since. That’s the path I now walk with others.

Here are five patterns I never recognized as signs of emotional neglect — signs of the inner orphan that had been abandoned.

1. You don't know what you need

   As children, we learn what we need by the way our caregivers respond to us.
   When our needs are met with attunement, we learn that the world is a safe place. But when our cries were ignored, dismissed, or punished, we slowly gave up on our needs.

   We became the ones who comforted others. Who stayed quiet. Who scanned the room and adjusted.

   Eventually, we forgot we had needs at all.

   Now, as adults, the question “What do I need right now?” can feel like a blank screen. But it’s not a flaw. It’s a brilliant adaptation — one that’s ready to be rewired, slowly, with safety.

   Just asking yourself this question as a practice can start building the neural pathway that will eventually lead you to knowing your needs.

2.  You doubt yourself constantly — or cling tightly to being right

    According to Dr. Daniel Siegel, clinical psychiatry professor at UCLA (whose work on Interpersonal Neurobiology was transformative for me), trauma shows up as either chaos or rigidity.

   For me, it was rigidity resulting from parentification and the need to care for others. I was the caregiver and the “fixer’ of all problems for everyone in my family of origin.

   After suffering from PTSD as an adult, it was chaos as my understanding of myself and my relationships dissolved after my divorce. I didn’t feel safe in myself or able to trust myself.

   If you can relate to either of these, know that it’s not your fault and there is a way forward for you, too.

3.  You bypass your emotions — or feel nothing at all

    There was no space for feelings in my childhood. So I adapted by numbing them.

   I could analyze, explain, or reason about anything — but feelings were foreign to me. I did not know my inner landscape until the numbness cracked and all the buried feelings began to rise. Anger. Grief. Shame. Fear. Self-doubt.

   I learned that emotions live in the body. Their language is sensations, and when those sensations become too much for us, our body’s way of coping is by numbing (or what we call dissociation in the trauma field).

   Through the Somatic tools I have been practicing, I have learned to connect with my body.

   I often ask my clients to check in gently and ask themselves:

   What’s the sensation I am feeling in my body? Where am I feeling it? What’s the emotion that goes with the sensation.

   Tiny moments of attunement can help you tend to and come home to yourself.

4.  You long to be seen, but it feels terrifying when you are

    As children, being visible could mean danger. So we learned to be invisible — or to show only the parts of us that were acceptable. We masked the rest.

   Now, as adults, we crave being seen for who we truly are… but when it starts to happen, the nervous system goes into high alert.

   That used to be me, too. Even praise felt uncomfortable.

   Wanting to be seen and fearing it are both valid. They’re just different parts of you.. The work isn’t to push past fear. It’s to sit beside it; to embrace your inner children and say:
    "I know why you’re here. Thank you for keeping me safe for all those years. We’re okay now."

5.  You don’t know how to receive even that which you want

    This one was the hardest one for me. Getting to know my needs and desires was hard enough; learning to receive required breaking free from relational patterns and creating better boundaries.

   There were times I longed for deeper connections, to be valued for who I was and not what I did, but I was connecting to others as a giver, the empath, the one always there for others. Since I didn’t know I needed it, I was okay when there was no reciprocity. I chose people who centered themselves. I supported them being in the spotlight while I did all the work in the background. I stayed in relationships where I was taken for granted.

   Giving to others was safe. Receiving, taking up space, and owning my light? That felt like danger.

   But I’ve learned that what feels threatening is often what’s most healing and that which helps us own our light.

   I’ve shared my own experience of both neglect and healing so that you, too, know that you aren’t broken. You were brilliantly adaptive, just like I was.

   Healing from emotional neglect is about reconnection with and coming home to your Self; reclaiming the parts of you that were exiled, not because they were wrong — but because no one knew how to hold them.

    You were born whole, and as you heal, you can come back home to yourself.

   If this resonates with you and you know someone who might benefit from it, please share this post with them. Thanks!