Emotional neglect is hard to identify precisely because it is an absence. There is no event to recount. Material needs may have been met, parents may have been physically present, and from outside nothing was visible.
What was missing was the response to inner states: emotions were not noticed, named or received. A child told repeatedly that “it's nothing” when frightened learns two things at once — that their state does not count, and that their own perception is not to be trusted.
The adult consequences are recognisable: difficulty identifying what you feel, a persistent sense that something is missing without being able to say what, discomfort at asking for help, a feeling of being fundamentally different from other people. Jonice Webb described the picture, and the overlap with alexithymia is considerable.
A specific difficulty in therapy: many people with this history invalidate their own experience — “my parents did the best they could, I have no right to complain”. Both can be true at once. Acknowledging a deficit is not an accusation; it is a precondition for repairing it.