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Grieve the Childhood You Needed

Therapy for adults carrying the invisible wounds of childhood: emotional neglect, growing up too fast, and the parent who was there but never really there.


Welcome to True Other Wellness

A “True Other” is someone who offers presence, validation, and safety. Many of the people I work with didn’t have one growing up. Nothing dramatic may have happened. There may be no single event you can point to. But you learned early that your feelings were too much, your needs were inconvenient, or it was your job to take care of everyone else.

Those lessons don’t stay in childhood. They show up in how you love, how you work, how you rest, and how you feel when you’re alone.

Does any of this sound familiar?

  • You’re the capable one. You take care of everyone, but it’s hard to let anyone take care of you.
  • You can’t always name what you feel, or what you need.
  • Your childhood “wasn’t that bad,” yet you feel lonely, numb, anxious, or quietly exhausted.
  • You grew up as the family’s peacemaker, caretaker, or confidant.
  • Closeness feels risky, or you work hard to keep people from leaving.
  • You feel guilty setting boundaries with the people who raised you.

What’s underneath?

Underneath these patterns is often grief. It’s the grief of the attention you didn’t receive, the childhood you didn’t get to have, and the parent you needed and never had. This kind of loss rarely gets acknowledged, so many people carry it alone for years. Often, the grief goes back further than your own childhood.

Therapy is a place to name it, feel it in your body, and begin to offer yourself what was missing.

How we’ll work together

I draw on AEDP, EMDR, parts work, and somatic therapy, within a relationship where you don’t have to perform, caretake, or shrink. We go at a pace your nervous system can handle, with stability and resourcing first.

Ways to work with me

  • 1:1 Therapy: Individual sessions for adults healing the impact of childhood emotional neglect and parentification on their relationships and mental health.
  • Group Therapy: Process groups where you can practice, in real time, what it’s like to be seen. Many people have never had that.

You don’t have to keep doing this alone. 

Let's connect online and get started!

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About Jihan Eley, LCSW-C, Grief & Trauma Therapist

Therapist for Childhood Emotional Neglect, Parentification & Grief

I’m a Southern California native with ties to the South, now settled in the DMV. I’m a Howard University alum with a Master’s in Social Work, and I’ve been in private practice for more than ten years.

My work is with adults who grew up in homes where something essential was missing: attunement, emotional safety, or permission to be a child. Often the wound isn’t what happened. It’s what never did.

As a child, like so many of the people I see, I learned to go along to get along and not to make waves. I carried that into adulthood, unable to untangle who I was from who I’d needed to be. What shifted for me were experiences and relationships that allowed me to feel my feelings, have a voice and take up space.  That experience is why I believe so strongly in the power of a relationship that feels safe, honest, and real.

How I work

I believe healing happens in connection. I use AEDP, EMDR, parts work, and somatic approaches to help you:

- Name and grieve what you didn’t receive

- Understand how early survival strategies show up in your relationships today

- Regulate your nervous system, so old patterns don’t take over

- Create the missing experience you longed for “back there, back then”

This work isn’t linear. It can bring up painful emotions, so I make sure you’re resourced and stable before we go deeper. Therapy is a partnership. I’m human too and don’t present as a blank slate. I bring my full self and share personal details only when it helps your healing. If a rupture happens between us, as it does in any relationship, we work through it together, and that can be a safe way to practice repair outside of therapy.

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