One of the most common issues that emerge during my family constellations workshops or 1:1 sessions is the profound wound of not being seen by our parents. In this post, I want to dive a little deeper into this dynamic, explore how it might be affecting your everyday life, and look at how you can process it so it stops holding you back.
In my own journey, I discovered first-hand how many of my life’s challenges were rooted in not feeling seen and safe. I’ve learned that to truly change this dynamic, you have to find your own way to name this inner experience. You have to really feel it, and see its ins and outs, before you can truly let it go.
So, while this article might give you a better intellectual understanding, I invite you to reflect on your own experience. How was this dynamic playing out when you were a child? How might it still be manifesting in your life today?
For a long time, this topic felt very abstract to me. Not because I felt seen—quite the opposite—but because it was so difficult to see the reasons behind it and to acknowledge it in myself. Coming from a joyful, loving family, when I first heard from my teacher that despite many other issues I was experiencing, my core wound was “not being seen,” I shed many tears. As my heart immediately opened, I got a taste of what it’s like to be seen. While this was a truly touching experience, my mind was simultaneously screaming: Well, that’s bullshit. I am making things up again, not being grateful for what I had, and just feeling sorry for myself.
But after many years of inner work, I’ve learned that what we see on the surface in family systems—our moods, our relationships, our lifestyles—often has very little to do with what is happening on an inner, energetic level. That’s why we sometimes hear about a certain emotional wound and instantly resonate with it, even if we can’t quite grasp why. It isn’t always obvious. The happiest, most “healthy” family may be struggling with hidden, difficult, abusive dynamics. Meanwhile, in family systems with the most obvious, clearly abusive dynamics, underneath the painful surface, there can be a deep well of love and care that simply couldn’t find a way to be expressed.
When does a child not feel seen by their parents, and why?
When a parent carries an unfulfilled emotional void—a persistent sense of inner emptiness or numbness that often acts as a shield masking deeper, unresolved pain—they cannot see their child. Their constant, unconscious search to fulfil that empty space in their heart occupies them to the extent that there is not much surplus energy left to independently see their little one, who desperately craves it and needs it to survive.
Here is how this gets complicated.
A parent who cannot “take” from their own parents to fulfil this void, or who is unable to grieve what they did not receive from them, unconsciously and naturally turns towards their children to take from them. In Family Constellations and psychology, we call this parentification. As a response, a child will do anything to meet their parents’ needs because their survival depends on it. Systemically, this reverses the natural Order of Love and forces the child into a role where they cannot simply be a child. Sadly, although very commonly experienced in family systems, this mechanism serves no one. The child can never fulfil the needs of their parents, and the parents will never fill their void by taking from their children.
In this context, a parent usually develops many different, skilful ways to mask their emotional pain and their inner void. Their behaviour may seem completely ‘normal’ because we don’t recognise these coping mechanisms—especially if we grew up observing them. Sometimes, behaviours such as excessive talking, controlling everything, not taking anything seriously, or taking medications like antidepressants can serve as an expensive, full-coverage foundation makeup to mask deep, unresolved pain.
That’s why for an adult child, it might not be obvious to see the extent to which they picked up on their parents’ emotional pain that they have been carrying for them from a very young age. As children, and later as grown adults, we might not even be aware of the difficult stories and traumatic experiences that our parents and ancestors went through. In many cases, these stories are never talked about, making the roots of this issue even less obvious.
Why is being seen so vital to a child?
Because our very survival depends on it. In a child’s primitive mind, if a parent doesn’t see them, they are exposed to danger. If a predator comes, the child thinks, ‘They don’t see me, they won’t save me’. Beyond survival, being seen is a core human need, just like love and connection. We naturally long for it, especially from our parents.
So, a child will attempt to be seen at all costs. Their first-hand strategy is to give the parent whatever they need in the hope of having their own basic needs fulfilled in return. But in the long run, this teaches the child to tune into others instead of themselves. They learn to feel what others feel instead of what their own little body feels, eventually disconnecting from themselves, losing self-trust, and tuning out their gut completely.
This leaves a heavy consequence for us as adults. Instead of having a strong inner core—knowing who we are, what we want, and what we feel—we constantly run after external impulses to see where we can get what we need, looking for people who can make us feel safe and sound within ourselves. Here, we could dive much deeper into intimate relationships, but I guess you can already tell what type of issues this causes there.
The Wound of Not Feeling Safe
Closely connected to all of this—one could even say it’s the same thing called by a different name—is another profound wound: not feeling safe.
This happens when we grow up in an unstable, unpredictable environment. The child’s nervous system becomes hyper-vigilant, constantly scanning everything around them, trying to figure out how to serve others just to survive.
But what do I mean by “unsafe” or “unpredictable”? You might think, “My parents always gave me a roof over my head, regular meals, and the basic love and care I needed, so where is the issue?”
Well… imagine everyone around you is acting in a “normal” way, and might even be telling you how great things are, approaching you, when you were a child, with the authority of parents and adults. Yet, your body is telling you the exact opposite. You are feeling terror, pain, anxiety, fear, and sadness. All the adults are functioning ‘well’ on the outside, getting on with their lives, while you as a child deep down feel misery, absorbing all the unprocessed sadness, fear, grief, and pain that no one wants to see or acknowledge. If that’s not a major fiasco, tell me what is.
In a scenario like this, a child cannot trust their environment, their feelings, or their own body. They cannot predict what will happen because there is zero harmony between the energy in the room and the scenarios being played out on the surface. Nothing is aligned, and nothing can be predicted. And predictability is exactly what creates safety for a child.
This unpredictability, which majorly contributes to the feeling that “the world is not safe,” is often observed in families with substance abuse. However, a similar cloud of uncertainty can be created by an emotionally unstable or unavailable parent. A child never knows if the parent coming home from work will be angry, happy, raging, or calm. They don’t know what will be expected this time, or what the consequences will be for minor things left undone in the house. This, again, creates a deeply unpredictable, unsafe environment.
How This Manifests in Adulthood
First of all, we try to compensate and fulfil these unmet needs somewhere else—usually in the external world. We might demand it from our partner, husband, or wife, constantly feeling like they never quite meet our expectations. Or, we become chronic over-givers and over-deliverers at work, burning ourselves out just to finally be recognised and seen for who we are.
We can also go the other way: becoming completely disconnected from others on an emotional level, feeling frozen, and falling onto the opposite side of the empath’s scale by behaving in a way that appears narcissistic. Both of these extreme behavioural tendencies are developed in the hope of finally being seen.
The Path to Healing
True healing happens when we are finally able to see this dynamic with our parents for what it is.
When we allow ourselves to put our armour down, lay down our weapons, and stop fighting for what we didn’t get, the shift begins. We have to just allow ourselves to feel the clean sadness of not receiving it. Once we stop fighting for it and trying to force it from the world, we can truly start to individuate, feeling more complete, and grounded within ourselves. We begin to step into the best, most authentic version of our adult selves, and from that place, we can serve others.
From this grounded place, we can start to observe the other areas of our lives where we’ve been playing out the same old patterns. We can take a step back, ground ourselves, feel our own bodies, and stop trying so hard to get something that the external world was never meant to give us.
This isn’t about criticising our parents or claiming they did a shit job. Not at all. It is simply about acknowledging the dynamics and their effect on ourselves. Understanding that our parents could not give us what they did not receive themselves is a key element of our healing. From that place, gratefulness arises, which is a driving force for experiencing happiness in our lives. We all have our own journeys, and we get the parents that are just right for us. Healing doesn’t mean changing them; it means learning and taking from the dynamics we have so we can expand, grow, heal, and live more freely.
Reading and hearing about these dynamics can spark deep movements in our hearts. If you would like to continue these movements and experience them through your body in a workshop setting, join us on the 6th of September in Central London.
Warmly,
Martyna