Many things shape the way that adolescents think, feel, and behave. Some of these things are genetic and biological, such as certain personality traits or vulnerabilities. Other things are environmental: past and present experiences that influence a young person’s development and their life right now.
Among all of these factors, a young person’s family may be one of the most important. Parents or other caregivers play a huge role in a child’s development, especially in their early years. They continue to influence their emotions and behaviours during adolescence and into young adulthood.
It’s well established that stable and secure relationships with caregivers are important for a child’s development. Without these relationships, children may not learn critical emotional and social skills, such as mentalisation, emotional regulation, self-worth, and trust in others. For relationships to be secure, physical responsiveness (e.g. listening to and meeting a child’s physical needs) is essential, but so is emotional responsiveness. This involves fulfilling a child’s emotional needs by providing comfort, affection, appreciation, attention, and other forms of emotional care.
So, we might expect that emotionally unavailable parenting can impact a young person’s mental health and well-being. In the blog, we explore two examples from research about the effect of emotional unavailability on a child’s stress response system and a teenager’s experience of romantic relationships.
Emotional Unavailability, Stress Responses, and Young People’s Mental Health
One of the most significant determinants of our mental health is the way that we respond to stressful events. When our stress response systems are working well, we experience a physical and emotional reaction to a stressful situation. Still, after the event has passed, we return to a calm state.
However, sometimes parts of our stress response system can be overactive or underactive. This might mean that we experience some of the physical aspects of a stress response all the time or that we have a very strong response to a very small stimulus. Or it might mean that the body doesn’t return to a normal state after a stressful event. When our stress response system is active too much of the time, it causes long-term harm to our minds and bodies.
One crucial part of our stress response system is known as the HPA axis. When the HPA axis is activated, it releases stress hormones like cortisol. Cortisol puts our bodies on alert by increasing heart rate, blood flow, and mobilising energy resources. But, outside of the stress response system, cortisol has other functions too. It helps to regulate our immune systems, sleep-wake cycles, and metabolism.
Different aspects of the family environment may affect the way a child’s stress response system develops, including the emotional availability of parents. Experts think that when parents are emotionally unavailable, children will experience events are more stressful, lacking the sense of comfort, security, and safety that emotional support can provide. Their stress response system will be activated much more often than it would be in a context of healthy development.
A 2011 study found that young children with emotionally unavailable parents experienced lower cortisol reactions (stress response reactions) to stressful stimuli than other children. They suggest that this may be a form of protective adaptation to chronic exposure to stress, providing a temporary way to access a sense of safety and security.
However, in the long term, lower cortisol responses may make young people more vulnerable to mental health disorders. Blunted cortisol responses have been linked to PTSD, panic disorders, and depression. This means that emotionally unavailable parenting may have long-term consequences for a young person’s mental health and well-being.
Emotionally Unavailable Parents, Depression, and Romantic Functioning in Teens
During adolescence, many young people start to develop romantic interests and relationships. Sometimes, romantic experiences can be positive, bringing companionship, self-development, and mutual support. In other cases, however, romantic relationships can have negative mental health consequences, such as sustained emotional distress and low self-esteem.
During adolescence, these negative consequences may be especially likely. This might be because teenagers haven’t yet developed the emotional and social skills needed to navigate romantic relationships, or that they’re more likely to engage in impulsive, high-risk sexual behaviours. Among teenage girls, romantic relationships are associated with increased depression symptoms in both early and later adolescence.
We might expect that the characteristics of a young person’s romantic relationships and their emotional capabilities will influence the way they impact their mental health. Young people with better interpersonal skills, emotional awareness, and emotional resilience may be less likely to experience negative mental health consequences from their relationships. Notably, parents’ emotional availability can play an essential role in the development of these skills and capacities.
Attachment theory tells us that our early relationships with caregivers shape the way we form other relationships, at least until adolescence. So, if our early attachments are insecure, our relationships may be more likely to be insecure too. Insecure early attachments may also prevent us from developing coping mechanisms for the stressful emotional events that often arise in romantic relationships.
A 2008 study found that among adolescent girls, there was a stronger association between romantic experiences and depression in those with emotionally unavailable parents.
Enhancing Emotional Availability in the Family System
There are many different reasons why a family system may lack emotional availability. Stressful life events can take parents’ emotional energy and make it harder to be emotionally available to one another or their children. Socio-cultural norms around masculinity may also contribute to emotional unavailability in fathers.
However, emotionally available parenting is something that can be learned and developed. Parenting interventions can support parents to develop and maintain strong emotional connections with their children, finding ways to manage stress and other limiting factors.
For example, mindful parenting interventions can improve parent-child relationships through skills training that promotes awareness, acceptance, and emotional regulation in parents and children. They may use strategies like active listening, emotional awareness, and non-judgmental acceptance to nurture emotionally supportive parent-child relationships. Research has found that families with higher levels of mindful parenting also have more emotional availability.
The Wave Clinic: Specialist Mental Health Support for Young People, Parents, and Families
The Wave Clinic offers specialist mental health support for young people and families. We understand that young people’s behaviours don’t exist in isolation: instead, they’re influenced by their past experiences and present surroundings. Within this context, we recognise that the family can play a huge role in young people’s mental health recovery.
We offer family therapy intensives and parenting intensives that support families to create new dynamics and connections while developing valuable skills. Our family intensives emphasise experiential therapy, helping families to find alternative ways of relating, and they form new memories together. Our parenting intensives focus on helping parents regain their role, which can often be lost during a crisis situation.
If you’d like to enquire about any of our programs, you can contact us via phone, email, or our website.
