Abstract This article explores the emotional experiences of drug- and/or alcohol-using parents who have child protective Social Services involvement. Research suggests that protective processes can reduce children’s experience of poor outcomes whilst parents undergo treatment for substance misuse. Semi-structured interviews combined with photovoice and journal writing were used to generate data. Eight UK-based parents participated. Each was accessing drug or alcohol treatment and had a child who was the subject of a child protection intervention. The resulting data from the seventeen interviews were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Key findings are presented within four themes. The first two outline parents’ perceptions of themselves and how they felt they were viewed by others. Themes 3 and 4 focus on specific emotions: anger and frustration; fear and guilt. The research identifies the complex nature of parental emotions surrounding drug/alcohol misuse when social care services are involved. Parents conceptualised their experience as psychological trauma. They discussed the emotional roller-coaster of the effects of having combined interventions. The research provides insights into how drug/alcohol use can influence parenting. It also highlights issues for professional practice, including developing successful treatment models for substance-using parents. In this article, we demonstrate how the parents included in this research, who were all subject to child protection interventions, experienced a range of conflicting emotions in negotiating these interventions. We present a novel methodological approach, where including a variety of methods of data generation over an extended period enhanced understanding of the longer-term emotional effects of child protection interventions on the experience of parenting. These parents’ views of themselves, and their perception of others’ assessments of them, are often related to self-blame and feelings of worthlessness. They conceptualised their experience of the involvement of child protection services as psychological trauma. We argue that there is a need for more appropriate treatment models, including further exploration of family interventions, for drug/alcohol-using parents.