How Childhood “Not Enoughness” Shapes Adult Relationships and Self-Worth
There’s a quiet way unmet emotional needs in childhood follow Black women into adulthood, shaping fears of abandonment, self-silencing, and the belief that needing too much means being left! We discuss it here!
You Are Enough
Photo Credit: Vladimir Vladimirov via iStockPhoto.com
By: Jamila Gomez
There’s a kind of wound that doesn’t come from the big, dramatic moments everyone recognizes. It comes from the quiet spaces — the pauses, the missed cues, the moments you needed something soft and steady and didn’t get it. A lot of Black women grow up believing they had a “normal” childhood because nothing catastrophic happened. But the truth is, you can be deeply shaped by what you didn’t receive, not just by what you survived.
When you grow up without emotional holding — without someone consistently tending to your worries, your tender spots, your questions — you learn to manage yourself. You learn to tuck your reactions in your pocket. You learn to smile so no one worries. You learn to soothe yourself before anyone notices you’re shaken. And over time, that looks like strength. It gets praised. People call you mature for your age, responsible, dependable, “such a good girl.”
But underneath all that “strength” is a young version of you who learned early that her needs were negotiable.
That’s where the fear of abandonment starts. Not always from someone walking out — but from the sense that no one was really walking in with you in the first place. The absence becomes normal. The self-silencing becomes instinct. And without realizing it, you spend your adult life navigating relationships through the lens of “I shouldn’t need too much,” because needing too much feels like asking to be left.
This is how “not enoughness” follows us into adulthood. It shows up when you mute your feelings because you don’t want to be dramatic. It shows up when you stay quiet about your boundaries because you don’t want to make things awkward. It shows up when you feel small next to your own accomplishments because you’re still waiting for someone to tell you you’ve done well enough. And it definitely shows up when someone pulls away — even slightly — and your chest tightens as if you’ve already been abandoned.
You’re not reacting to the moment in front of you. You’re reacting to the childhood version of you who learned to equate closeness with caution.
For many Black women, that conditioning gets reinforced by culture. We’re taught to be resilient before we’re ever taught to be held. We’re taught to handle heartbreak quietly. We’re taught to carry burdens with grace. And without naming it, we internalize the lie that our need for comfort makes us weak, or worse, a burden. So when people show us inconsistency or emotional distance, it hits deeper than it should. It feels familiar. It feels earned. It feels like proof of something we’ve feared all along: that we are too much or not enough.
But here’s the shift — and this is where the healing starts.
There is nothing wrong with needing what you never got. In fact, the moment you stop judging your desire for connection, softness, and reassurance is the moment you start breaking the cycle. You’re not fragile for wanting to be chosen consistently. You’re not needy for wanting emotional safety. You’re not unreasonable for asking to be loved in ways that don’t make you feel disposable.
The truth is, you’ve been carrying the expectation that you should know how to navigate adulthood without ever having been taught how to be emotionally supported. That’s a heavy ask. But once you see it, you can call it what it is: an old story, not a permanent identity.
Healing the “not enoughness” isn’t about pretending the past didn’t shape you. It’s about recognizing that you’re no longer that child who had to shrink herself to stay steady. You’re a grown woman now, with the authority to name what you need and the courage to stop apologizing for needing it.
And once you embrace that truth, you stop moving through relationships afraid of abandonment. You start choosing connections where presence is mutual, where you don’t have to audition for belonging, and where the fullness of you is not only welcome but expected.
That’s when the story finally shifts — not because someone showed up for you, but because you did.
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