Why Connection Feels Unsafe—Even When You Want It
Why do I shut down when someone gets close?
Why do I feel anxious when my partner needs space?
Why do I struggle to trust, even when I know someone cares?
If you've ever asked yourself these questions, you're not alone—and you're not broken.
Sometimes what hurts the most isn't what happened to us, but what never happened at all.
In her book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, Lindsay Gibson describes a kind of invisible pain many of us carry: emotional loneliness. It's not about being physically alone. It’s about the lack of deep emotional connection—growing up in a space where our feelings weren't noticed, validated, or welcomed. It is the deep, invisible ache of not being seen or emotionally understood as a child. This experience is often the result of growing up with emotionally immature parents.
Emotionally immature parents, as defined by Gibson, are caregivers who struggle to respond to their child’s emotional needs in a consistent, attuned, and supportive way. They often lack emotional self-awareness and have difficulty tolerating emotional vulnerability or intimacy. These parents may be reactive, self-centered, dismissive, or rigid—not out of malice, but often because they never developed the emotional maturity needed for healthy relational connection.
This kind of emotional immaturity is often intergenerational. Many emotionally immature parents were themselves raised by caregivers who discouraged emotional expression, shamed vulnerability, or prioritized survival over connection. Without models for healthy emotional development, they pass down patterns of emotional disconnection, leaving their children to feel unseen, emotionally alone, or responsible for maintaining the relationship.
Even if your parents provided food, shelter, and said they loved you, the emotional environment may have lacked the safety and attunement your nervous system needed to feel secure. When caregivers are emotionally disconnected, critical, distracted, or reactive, children don’t stop needing connection—we adapt in order to survive the absence of it.
In the face of emotional loneliness, many children blame themselves. It’s easier for a young nervous system to believe “something is wrong with me” than to accept that a parent can’t or won’t meet their emotional needs. We internalize the disconnection as personal failure and begin to shape ourselves around the hope of closeness. We may become hyper-independent, perfectionistic, or people-pleasing—learning that in order to stay connected or avoid rejection, we have to perform, appease, or never need too much. We might shut down entirely, turning inward and learning that reaching out isn’t safe—or won’t lead to care.
Over time, these adaptations become habitual—not just patterns of behavior, but deeply embedded survival responses in the body. This is no longer just about personality or choices—it’s about a nervous system doing its best to protect you.
And this is where the body comes in.
In moments of relational stress—when someone pulls away, when there’s tension in the room, when you sense even the slightest rupture—your body isn’t just reacting to the present. It’s reliving something old. It’s remembering what it felt like to be small, unseen, and emotionally alone.
That’s why a delayed text, a partner’s bad mood, or a hint of disapproval at work can flood your body with panic, dread, or shame. Your logical brain may say, "This isn't a big deal." But your body says, "This feels familiar and dangerous."
Connection, the very thing you long for, may simultaneously feel threatening. Vulnerability might activate the same alarm bells as abandonment once did. Intimacy can feel like exposure. Needing someone can feel like a liability.
It’s like flooring the gas pedal while yanking the emergency brake. The charge builds up, but there’s nowhere to go. That tension gets stored in your jaw, your chest, your gut, your breath. This is the body remembering how unsafe it once was to need, to feel, to reach.
Early attachment wounds don’t just shape our thoughts; they shape how we feel, how we react, and how much of ourselves we allow to show up in connection.
Healing begins when we stop asking, “What’s wrong with me?”
And start asking, “What did I learn to do to stay safe—and is it still serving me?”
In these moments, I invite you to listen to the wisdom of your body:
Noticing: Where do I brace or collapse?
Asking: What is this feeling trying to protect me from?
Affirming: My nervous system is trying to protect me.
This work is tender. It’s layered. But over time, you begin to feel the difference between surviving and truly living. You start recognizing when your nervous system is bracing—and gently offer it something new: safety, presence, choice.
You deserve to feel safe in your own skin. You deserve relationships where you can breathe, rest, and be met. And you don’t have to get there alone.
