Intro / Q&A
Q: How are loneliness, childhood emotional neglect, and emotional eating connected?
A: Loneliness often stems from childhood emotional neglect and early trauma, where our feelings and needs were not consistently met. Adults with this history may struggle to self-soothe and turn to food for comfort, using it as a source of emotional support and companionship. Therapy can help by recreating attuned, supportive relationships that teach us to be with ourselves and our emotions without relying on food.
Many people who emotionally eat describe experiences like “food is my best friend” or “food keeps me company.” These coping strategies often trace back to early relational wounds, where emotional needs were unmet or overlooked. In the longform blog below, we explore how childhood emotional neglect shapes loneliness, emotional patterns, and the way we relate to food, and how psychotherapy can help heal these core experiences.
Loneliness, Childhood Emotional Neglect, and Emotional Eating: Understanding the Hidden Connection
For many of us, loneliness isn’t simply about being alone. It’s tied to growing up without consistently being seen, understood, or emotionally supported by our caregivers. When our inner worlds weren’t noticed or responded to, we quietly learned early on that we had to rely on ourselves.
This kind of loneliness can be hard to explain, because it often develops in families that appeared fine from the outside. This type of trauma (CEN: Childhood emotional neglect), isn’t just about what happened, but what was absent: emotional presence, responsiveness, and the comfort of knowing someone was truly with us.
That early sense of isolation shapes how we relate to ourselves, to others, and often, to food or other coping mechanisms.
When Childhood Emotional Neglect Shapes the Inner World
Children need attunement. We need caregivers who notice our cues, respond to our emotions, and adapt to what’s happening inside us. This is the foundation of secure attachment and of the Circle of Security principle of “being with” – staying emotionally present with a child’s experience, even when it’s intense.
When attunement is absent – when caregivers are emotionally unavailable, inconsistent, overwhelmed, or preoccupied – children adapt. Many children cope by minimising their feelings and needs, becoming hyper – aware of others, or learning to manage distress alone. They disconnect from themselves to stay connected to the relationship – or to survive without it. Loneliness becomes the hidden cost of that adaptation.
How Early Loneliness Shows Up in Adult Life
When attunement is missing early in life, we often carry the expectation that comfort won’t come. We learn to handle emotions privately, to keep needs small, to stay guarded. That blueprint can sit underneath low self – worth (feeling not good enough), chronic self – doubt, and a persistent feeling of being “on our own” emotionally.
As adults, we may feel lonely even in relationships. We can be surrounded by people and still feel unknown. Closeness can expose a deep sense of shame about our beliefs about who we are at the core. Trust can feel risky. Some keep their distance; others stay connected but still feel unseen.
Loneliness isn’t simply about social contact; it’s about felt connection. It’s rooted in our nervous system and body – often long before we had words for it.
When Food Becomes the Answer to Loneliness
For many people shaped by childhood emotional neglect, food does more than soothe hunger. It becomes an antidote to loneliness.
When there was no reliable emotional presence to turn toward, food often became the most consistent source of comfort, predictability, and relief. Over time, emotional eating can take on a (faux) relational role – not just something we do, but somewhere we go.
Many people say it plainly: “Food is my best friend.” “Food keeps me company.”
And for some, that’s not just a figure of speech. In the absence of attuned human connection, food can become the primary love object – the “relationship” we turn to when we feel overwhelmed, unseen, or alone.
When Emotional Eating Becomes the Primary Relationship
When food becomes the primary relationship, connecting with others can start to feel harder. Human relationships involve uncertainty and vulnerability. They can disappoint us. They require repair. Food doesn’t. It doesn’t misunderstand, withdraw, or ask us to risk ourselves. It’s available, predictable, and immediately regulating.
So, the nervous system learns something simple: food is safer than people.
This isn’t a lack of desire for connection. Often there is deep longing. But when food has been the most reliable source of comfort, reaching outward can feel unfamiliar, effortful, or even threatening – like giving up the one thing that never abandoned.
And it’s not only food. Another addiction can take on the same role: becoming the primary place we go for soothing, companionship, and relief.
Why “Just Be More Social” Often Doesn’t Fix This
Social contact can help loneliness. Community helps. Friendship helps. But when loneliness is rooted in early childhood emotional neglect, “more people” doesn’t automatically create felt safety.
A large APA review in 2025 found that many types of interventions reduce loneliness, but that psychological interventions (counselling and psychotherapy) tend to show stronger effects than social strategies alone. In other words: loneliness is not one – size – fits – all, and the deeper, longstanding forms often need more than increased contact.
That fits with what many people already know in their bodies: if your nervous system expects misattunement, simply being around others doesn’t land as connection.
How Therapy Helps Heal Relational Loneliness
Psychotherapy and counselling for emotional eating and early childhood trauma offers something many of us did not consistently receive: a relationship where we do not have to abandon ourselves to stay connected.
Within the therapeutic relationship, we experience attunement, emotional presence, and co – regulation. In Circle of Security terms, the therapist offers the experience of being with – staying emotionally present with whatever arises, rather than fixing, dismissing, or turning away.
Because the relationship matters, early attachment patterns often show up in the room: longing, fear of abandonment, the urge to please, shutting down, or the familiar pull to soothe with food. These are not disruptions – they are the work of therapy.
Instead of responding to loneliness alone – or soothing it primarily through emotional eating – we begin to experience what it is like to have our inner world noticed and held by another person.
From Emotional Eating to Being Here When I needed Me
Over time, this experience is internalised. We begin to develop an inner presence that can sit with the lonely parts of us, the distress, and unmet needs rather than immediately reaching for food to fill the gap.
This does not mean emotional eating disappears overnight. But food no longer has to be the primary way we cope with loneliness or soothe ourselves when we feel unseen or alone. As our capacity to be with ourselves grows, the urge to use food as emotional companionship often softens.
Instead of food being the main relationship we turn to, we slowly develop alternatives – an inner sense of support or an inner nourishing mother, more tolerance for closeness, and the ability to reach toward others without abandoning ourselves.
What was once an isolated inner landscape shaped by childhood emotional neglect can gradually become a place of connection. Loneliness becomes more bearable. Emotional eating becomes less necessary. And we begin to experience ourselves as accompanied – within ourselves and, increasingly, in our relationships with others.
