Understanding How Being Highly Sensitive Impacts Childhood and Mental Health

As highly sensitive people (HSPs), our childhood experiences can have a significant impact on our mental health in adulthood. Even if we did not experience major trauma, our highly sensitive nature can make us more susceptible to mental health issues such as high levels of stress, health issues, anxiety and depression.

It's not uncommon for HSPs to feel like their childhoods were challenging, even if they can't point to any specific traumatic events. We may have been more affected by everyday stressors and negative experiences than others, and those experiences can accumulate over time and contribute to our mental health struggles later in life.

Unfortunately, this can also lead to feelings of guilt or shame for HSPs who feel like they don't have a "good enough" reason to struggle with their mental health. We may compare ourselves to others who have gone through more severe hardships and feel like we don't have the right to feel the way we do.

In this article, I will outline some factors that make highly sensitive people more vulnerable to mental health issues, with a particular focus on the effects of emotional neglect in childhood.

The Vulnerability of Highly Sensitive Children to Trauma and Emotional Neglect

Highly sensitive people are at a higher risk of experiencing something that feels traumatic. A recent research paper identified two different facets to being highly sensitive that explain why HSP children struggle more with daily life.

Depth of Processing: Sensitive children process information deeply. This is linked to aspects like empathy, conscientiousness, having intensive feelings for others and a rich imagination.

Over-reaction to Stimuli: This refers to the presence of more frequent and stronger physical reactions towards situations that the child perceives as stressful.

Due to these two factors, highly sensitive individuals process events and emotions on a deeper level, making them more vulnerable to emotional upheavals. Events that may not leave a lasting effect on a non-sensitive person can deeply affect a highly sensitive child.

This can include a single or a series of traumatic events, as well as emotional neglect, which is another type of trauma that is often harder to spot.

How Emotional Neglect Affects Sensitive Children

Emotional neglect occurs when parents repeatedly and over a long period of time fail to meet a child's emotional needs and are unable to provide the level of connection and understanding the child requires.

Well-meaning parents may unintentionally neglect their child's emotional needs, for example by dismissing their anxiety or encouraging them to be overly independent instead of asking for support.

One of the challenges of emotional neglect is that it can be difficult to identify, as it does not always involve obvious trauma. The child's parents may have been present in the home and their childhood may have seemed stable. However, the lack of emotional validation and support can leave a lasting impact.

As children, we don’t consciously realise that we need emotional validation and support, but we start adjusting our behaviour based on how our parents respond to our emotions. Without the support of parents who can validate our feelings and help us process them, parts of us may take on the belief that our emotions are wrong or shameful, and start showing up in a way that earns us our parents’ attention and approval.

The Importance of Emotional Support for Highly Sensitive Children

Sensitive children, in particular, require emotional support from caregivers who are in tune with their own emotions. When highly sensitive children don't receive enough emotional support, they may struggle with processing and expressing their feelings, leading to a range of mental health issues later in life, such as as anxiety and depression.

However, this kind of support may not have been available or recognised by parents or other adults in our lives. A few decades ago, the concept of being highly sensitive was not well-known, and there was less awareness of mental health issues and neurodivergence.

Today, we know that highly sensitive children immensely benefit from caretakers who can provide emotional validation and support. Having an understanding and supportive adult who validates their feelings helps sensitive children build the ability to regulate their own emotions later on in life.

Interestingly, parenting style can have a significant impact on highly sensitive children, more so than on non-sensitive children. Two recent studies have shown that highly sensitive children with permissive parents, where there is a lack of boundaries and emotional support, are at greater risk of experiencing anxious or depressive symptoms or aggressive behaviours later on in childhood.

The same is true for sensitive children with harsh parents. This was less so for children with a low degree of sensitivity.

How IFS Therapy Can Help HSPs Heal from Childhood Trauma

If a sensitive child does not receive enough emotional support to process their emotions, it can lead to difficulties in dealing with emotions later in life. They may struggle to understand, accept, process, or express their feelings, which can result in feelings of being unsafe or alone in adulthood.

Protective parts may take on roles such as suppressing strong emotions, avoiding vulnerability, feeling anxious for no clear reason, and obsessing over romantic relationships.

IFS therapy can be a valuable tool in working through childhood trauma, whether it be distinct events or something more over-arching such as emotional neglect.

With IFS, individuals can learn to understand and connect with the parts of themselves that have taken on protective roles in response to unmet needs or lack of support from caregivers. These parts may manifest as hyper-independence, the need to hide one's needs, or an intense desire for connection that can lead to anxiety in relationships.

By healing the young parts of ourselves that have experienced disconnection and a lack of support, we can help our protective parts let go of their roles of worry, obsession, and emotional distancing.

This can lead to a greater sense of calm and relaxation within ourselves, and a deeper ability to connect with both ourselves and others.