It often begins quietly. A child is scolded for crying. Another is ignored when they’re clearly upset. A third is told to “stop being dramatic.”
Moments like these don’t look like much. They aren’t loud. They don’t leave bruises or visible wounds.
But they settle into the heart like dust—layering, layering, layering—until one day, the child grows up and wonders why sadness sits so close to the surface, so ready to spill over.
In early childhood, emotions come raw and loud, unfiltered by social norms or inner restraint.
But if these feelings aren’t named, heard, or held—they don’t go away. They go inwards. The body remembers what the mind was taught to forget.
Maybe you’re thirty, sitting in a meeting, and someone disagrees with you. It feels like an attack. Your chest tightens. You go quiet—or maybe you flare up.
Either way, your response seems outsized, even to you. But if you look back, it makes sense.
Maybe no one ever taught you what to do with disagreement, how to sit with rejection, or how to navigate being misunderstood.
So your body does what it learned to do years ago: survive the moment.
Take Aneesa, a schoolteacher from Pulwama. She was always the quiet one. Shy, observant, her inner world rich but unspoken.
Every time she made a mistake growing up, she was compared to her cousin—sharper, louder, more outgoing.
“Why can’t you be more like her?” was the refrain.
At thirty-five, Aneesa still rehearses casual conversations in her head before she makes them. “Even when I’m ordering tea, I feel like I might mess it up,” she says.
“It’s not fear of judgment. It’s just…a feeling I can’t shake.”
That’s what unprocessed emotions do. They don’t disappear. They take new shapes.
They show up in how we parent, how we love, how we handle failure, and even how we look at ourselves in the mirror.
A childhood devoid of emotional validation doesn’t just create pain—it creates confusion. You don’t know why you’re triggered. You don’t know why you’re scared. But your inner child does.
Modern psychology confirms what many of us already know in our bones: childhood emotional neglect is not an abstract concept. It’s a lived reality for millions—and it quietly influences adult life.
In 2022, AIIMS Delhi published a study showing that 60% of emotionally dysregulated young adults had histories of unresolved emotional pain from childhood.
Psychologist Dr. Niyati Joshi, who works with children and adolescents in Mumbai, puts it simply: “Children internalize what’s not spoken. Silence around emotional pain can be more damaging than overt harm. We must equip families with emotional literacy—not just love.”
In many Kashmiri households, like much of the subcontinent, there is a gentle hush around emotions.
Love is present—abundant even—but emotional vocabulary is sparse.
Tears are wiped off quickly. Anger is scolded. Boys are told to be brave. Girls are told not to raise their voice. Sensitivity is often mistaken for weakness.
It’s not that parents don’t care. It’s that they were never taught how to speak this language themselves.
An elderly woman in Shivpora, a grandmother of five, once told a counselor during a community outreach program: “We never said ‘I love you.’ We just worked hard, fed our kids, and kept them warm. That was love. But now, I wonder—maybe we should have said it too?”
Her doubt echoes across generations. Emotional suppression doesn’t make us stronger—it makes us lonelier.
It disconnects us from ourselves and from those around us. What we bottle up, we carry forward—often unconsciously. Suppressed fear becomes chronic anxiety. Unvalidated sadness grows into quiet depression.
Repressed anger either explodes outwards or turns inward into self-criticism. Emotional neglect becomes a quiet background noise in our lives, shaping how we handle relationships, work, self-worth.
Many adults find themselves in relationships where they can’t express needs.
Or they find themselves parenting their children the same way they were raised—telling them to “be strong” when all the child wants is a hug. Emotional awareness isn’t about becoming soft—it’s about becoming whole.
Dr. Dan Siegel, professor of psychiatry at UCLA and author of The Whole-Brain Child, writes: “When parents help children name and understand their feelings, they are shaping the brain. They’re literally building the child’s capacity for empathy, regulation, and resilience.”
Closer to home, one of the practicing psychologists in Srinagar, says, “You don’t need to be a therapist for your child. Just be emotionally available. That one shift—presence—can shape their emotional future.”
The good news is: this cycle can be broken. We can heal ourselves—and raise emotionally healthier children too.
Start small. Start early. Let children say, “I feel sad” or “I’m angry.” Don’t rush to fix it. Let the emotion be seen. Hold space. Create safe conversations. Even ten minutes of undistracted attention each day can send a powerful message: “You matter. Your emotions are welcome here.”
Model emotional honesty. Children mimic what they see. If a parent says, “I’m feeling tired today,” or “I had a hard time at work,” it teaches children that emotions are normal and not shameful.
Seek support when needed. Therapy is not a luxury. It’s a necessity, especially for those carrying years of unresolved pain. In Kashmir, access is growing. Community centers, university departments, and NGOs now offer affordable mental health care. Even a few sessions with a trained counselor can create deep shifts.
Reconnect with your inner child. This might sound poetic, but it’s very real. Journaling, meditating, looking through old childhood photos, writing a letter to your younger self—these are all gentle practices to remind yourself: You deserved to be heard. You still do.
The language of emotions is soft. It’s in the pauses. It’s in how you don’t interrupt a crying child. It’s in how you sit with someone’s silence.
In Kashmiri culture, kindness already runs deep—in the way kehwa is offered, in how mothers tuck shawls around their children, in the hush of twilight when everyone gathers for tea.
Adding emotional vocabulary to that kindness doesn’t replace culture—it completes it.
We don’t need to become experts. We just need to become a little more human. A little more curious. A little more present. At the end of the day, every adult is still carrying a child inside them—a child who wants to be heard, understood, held.
And the beauty is—it’s never too late to listen.
