Jonice Webb's Blog, page 16
August 19, 2015
Validation Validation Validation
August 13, 2015
Emotionally Neglected in a Highly Emotional Family
August 5, 2015
Invalidated Child, Invisible Adult
July 25, 2015
Raised By Parents With Low Emotional Intelligence
February 7, 2015
How to Take Control of Your Fatal Flaw
January 1, 2015
Emotional Neglect: What We Accomplished in 2014
Today is the first day of 2015. This morning I started thinking about this past year, taking stock of the progress we’ve made in getting more people to know and think and talk about Emotional Neglect.
Throughout 2014 I have been amazed and honored by the support that you have all offered. Without your Tweets and Retweets, comments and questions, posts and Likes and shares, the concept of CEN would have reverted right back to where it came from: the white space.
Here are some of our accomplishments from 2014:
Hundreds of new subscribers have signed up to follow the Emotional Neglect Newsletter.
Webb Connection has grown to over 1,000 followers who are engaged and active on the Page.
The Emotional Neglect YouTube channel has had almost 25,000 views.
The book Running on Empty has grown in popularity, selling 100-200 copies per week.**please note that “sales” are not about money since the book is not a money-making venture; the number of books sold are simply a reflection of growth and interest in the topic.
The new Ask Dr. Webb Page has received over 70 questions and comments about CEN since it was launched in Sept., 2014.
Running on Empty now has 60 reviews on Amazon, and a rating of 4.72 stars. Each review helps more people find the concept, and offers them a path to healing and stopping the CEN cycle.
Even though we may never have met in person, we form a community of our own. We are linked by a common interest and a common purpose. Healing and moving forward, stopping the cycle. Your help means a lot to me. Let’s keep working together through 2015 to educate and understand and overcome CEN.
Happy New Year from me to you. Wishing you the best in 2015!
December 8, 2014
The Faces of Emptiness: The Paths to Healing
The Fuel of life is feeling. If we are not filled up in childhood, we must fill ourselves as adults. Otherwise we will find ourselves running on empty.
From Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect
In my last blog post, The Different Faces of Emptiness: Part 1, I outlined three different types of childhood experience which can cause three different types/levels of Empty feelings in adults. Before reading this post on healing, I suggest that you take a moment to re-read Part 1.
Welcome back! Now that you’ve refreshed on what causes emptiness, let’s talk about how to heal.
Healing from Empty is not simple, but definitely possible. The healing process takes place in the three different areas, outlined in the Table below. If you have Empty Type 1 or 2, your primary focus will be on the first two columns, with a sprinkling of the third. If you have Type 3, you will want to work on all three areas. The third area, Inner Life, will likely be the hardest for you, but also the most valuable.
Thoughts/Behavior
Relationships
Your Inner Life
Recognize what you didn’t get in childhood
Increase emotional connections
Grieve what you didn’t get
Emotional awareness & management
Boundaries (distance?) with parents as needed
Develop compassion for yourself
Self-care
Work on trusting others
Decrease self-directed anger
Decrease self-blame
Therapy relationship
Self-acceptance & self-love
Increase self-knowledge
Share your pain with another
Value your emotions
If you have depression or anxiety, let medication help
Let down your walls
Reclaim the parts of yourself that your parents rejected or ignored
If you find this Table overwhelming, please don’t be alarmed. All of these items can be done. I know this because I have been through them with many people in therapy, and have witnessed amazing progress.
However, please take note of two things: It takes commitment, conscious effort, and time; and it often helps tremendously to work with a skilled therapist who you feel very comfortable with.
Here are the Steps to Healing from Empty:
Step 1: Recognition and Grieving: The first and most vital step for everyone who feels Empty is to recognize that your empty space represents something that you didn’t get in childhood. Identify what is missing (emotional validation, connection and perhaps rejected parts of yourself), and grieve it all. This may involve feeling sad and/or angry. It’s okay. You have to feel it to move forward.
Step 2: Start to Fill the Holes: Befriend your emotions; start noticing when you have them; learn to name them and to manage them. Listen to what they are telling you.
Step 3: Work on Self-Care: Put yourself first, learn to say no. Pay attention to your own needs and recognize that your needs matter. Stop blaming yourself.
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Steps 1, 2 and 3 can all be worked on by making conscious effort, paying attention, and self-monitoring on Tracking Sheets. The book Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect is designed to work on all of these pieces. In addition, it will be helpful to work with a therapist.
If you have Empty Type 3, please pay special attention to Steps 4 and 5 below. Here, working with a therapist becomes more vital.
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Step 4: Let Down Your Walls: Share with a trusted person that you are working on getting closer to people, and to accept and feel more connection and love. Try to express your feelings more and to be more assertive (not passive or aggressive). If you have Type 3 Empty, Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is most helpful with this. It is designed to help you manage your feelings and impulses.
You may make more progress here by getting some emotional or physical distance from your neglectful or abusive parents. The distance can be temporary, while you work on this.
Step 5: Learn to Love Yourself: Yes, it is easier said than done. This process involves seeing yourself as the child you were, growing up as you did. What parts of you did your parents ignore or reject? Know that they did so because of who they were, not because of who you were.
Have compassion for that little child, and for yourself as an adult. Your struggle is real, and you deserve more and better. You must reclaim, and learn to love, all of the different parts of who you are: your emotions, your needs, your inner you.
Above all, as you do this work, please carry these words with you:
Your Empty is an important part of you. It represents the old and the past, but also the future and the new.
It is not an absence but a space, filled not with pain, but with possibility. It is room for your new story, the one you will write yourself. It is room for your life, your feelings, and the people who you choose.
Fill it with self-knowledge, self-care, self-compassion, self-love, and your people.
Then you will no longer find yourself running on empty.
To read more about emptiness and Childhood Emotional Neglect, visit EmotionalNeglect.com.
If you have Type 3 Empty, here are two resources that you may find helpful:
Image Courtesy: Nina`H (www.flickr.com/photos/ninahiironniemi/1118863010/), Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic | Flickr
November 3, 2014
The Different Faces of Emptiness: Part 1
Since the release of Running on Empty in 2012, many people have identified with the feeling of Empty. People who don’t have it don’t understand. But people who feel it know:
In many ways, emptiness or numbness is worse than pain. Many people have told me that they would far prefer feeling anything to nothing. It is very difficult to acknowledge, make sense of, or put words to something that is absent. Emptiness seems like nothing to most people. And nothing is nothing, neither bad nor good. But in the case of a human being’s internal functioning, nothing is definitely something. Empty is actually a feeling in and of itself. And I have discovered that it is a feeling that can be very intense and powerful. In fact, it has the power to drive people to do extreme things to escape it.
(From Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect)
Empty is the” unfeeling” feeling. It’s the painful sense that some vital ingredient is missing from inside. Does it feel the same for everyone who has it? For example, does it feel different if you have depression, a personality disorder, or just straight Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN)? The answer is yes. It all depends on one factor: how extreme were its causes?
Causes of Emptiness:
Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN): This is the type of Empty that I address in my book, Running on Empty . It is caused by growing up in a household that is blind to emotion. Children who grow up this way sense that their emotions are invisible and irrelevant. So they push their feelings down, so as to not burden themselves or their parents. These children grow into adults who are out of touch with their own feelings. The emptiness that results is literally a deep sense that something is missing inside; some essential ingredient that is a deeply personal and vital part of who you are. That essential ingredient is, of course, your feelings.
Active Invalidation in Childhood: This is a more extreme version of the CEN described above. It happens when your parents are not just blind to your emotions; they actively reject your emotions. Examples are rejection (ex: “Go to your room”) or punishment for simply being sad, angry, or hurt. If you grow up this way, you learn to not just push your emotions away; but to actively reject and punish yourself for having feelings. In adulthood, your empty space will be filled with self-directed anger and self-blame. On top of feeling empty, you may feel uncomfortable in your own skin, and you may not like yourself very much overall. You may be more vulnerable to depression.
Shallow, Harsh, Unpredictable Parenting: This is the type of childhood experience which causes significant disruption in the child’s personality that can lead to the development of a personality disorder (such as Narcissistic or Borderline). These parents respond to the child on the surface, while selectively, unpredictably rejecting and punishing his emotional responses. In addition, they greatly reward the child for being how they want him to be, and harshly reject or punish him for simply being, or feeling, himself. When you grow up this way, since you are not permitted to “be” who you are, you develop a fragmented version of who you should be. You reject parts of yourself that your parents find unacceptable, and may experience yourself as perfect one day, and horrible or worthless the next. The missing piece for this child, once grown up, is more than emotion; it’s a cohesive sense of self. This is the deepest, most painful form of Empty. This is the emptiness that is felt by people with personality disorders.
So if you have Empty Type 1 or 2, you have a cohesive “self,” but you lack access to your emotions. With Type 3, you have a fragmented “self” and little access to your emotions. But the anger and pain caused by the unpredictable, shallow and harsh treatment throughout childhood runs deep. Those emotions may erupt unpredictably and intensely, outside your control. You feel empty because you sense, deep down, that your true “self” is fragmented or missing. Sadly, you were not able to develop it while you were growing up.
Here’s the good news. All three forms of emptiness, once understood and acknowledged, can be overcome. Watch for my next post, The Different Forms of Emptiness Part II, which will be about the paths to healing when you have Emptiness Type 1, 2 or 3.
Yes, they are different.
September 7, 2014
How to Reach Your CEN Spouse
What’s it like to be married to someone who grew up with Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN)?
He says he loves me, but I don’t feel it.
She is so hard on herself. It’s hard to watch.
It’s impossible to talk to him about anything emotional or difficult.
She’ll do anything for anyone, but she doesn’t take good care of herself.
I have no way to tell how he feels about anything. He never shares it.
I wish she would tell me what she wants. I have to guess.
Each of these comments could, of course be caused by a number of different issues. But there is something qualitatively different about being married to a person with CEN.
CEN folks are often described by others as good-hearted. People sense a depth in them and an honest caring. They are also typically quite generous and thoughtful of others in some very important ways.
As a spouse, the CEN person is good at taking care of business. Working hard or caring for the children, no problem.
But being married to someone with CEN can actually be a very frustrating experience. CEN people learned early and well that their emotional needs are burdensome and negative. So they have pushed them underground. Although they have depth, they cannot access it. Unfortunately, neither can their spouses.
People with CEN often lack the essentials of self-care. They can set impossibly high standards for themselves, and act as if they have few personal feelings or needs of their own. At the same time, they are often very understanding and compassionate with others.
Since they have spent their lives out of touch with their emotions, they did not have an opportunity to learn how to share or express them. In marriage, this can play out several ways. Sometimes CEN spouses can seem too even-keel, almost as if they have no emotion. Other times, they can deny having feelings when they clearly do. They may experience the natural process of arguing through a problem as destructive and unbearable. Many avoid conflict at all costs.
If you are reading this and thinking, “Gee, that sounds like my husband/wife,” here are some suggestions for you:
Do not blame yourself or your spouse. In fact, this is not a “blame” issue; it’s a matter of understanding. Once you understand what’s wrong for your spouse, you have already taken a giant step.
Recognize that your spouse has lots of feelings, but simply does not have access to them. He is not purposely shutting you out; he has unintentionally shut himself off. His distance is probably not a reaction to you. It’s a coping mechanism that he brought from his childhood.
Use feeling words, and ask self-reflective questions as much as your spouse will tolerate. Examples:
“That really makes me angry. Are you angry about it too?
“You look sad.”
“How do you feel about this?”
“What do you want?”
“Why did you do that?”
Tell your spouse, in a loving and non-accusatory way, that you feel distant from him and that you would like to be closer. He will probably not know what you mean by this. Don’t be discouraged if he seems mystified or defensive.
Make sure your partner understands that you are not criticizing her; that you are bringing up this problem as an act of love and caring and for the good of your relationship.
If your spouse is open to hearing your concerns about this (even if he doesn’t understand it), tell him that you think he may have CEN.
If you can get her to read anything about CEN, it may offer you, and her, a door to progress through. Ask her to take the Emotional Neglect Questionnaire . Have her read my website, EmotionalNeglect.com , my Emotional Neglect Page on PsychCentral , and or my book, Running on Empty. Many people, once they understand CEN, have an “aha” experience. Then, if they are motivated, they can get in touch with their own feelings, and connect with their husbands or wives.
Just as a person with CEN feels empty, his spouse feels alone. But actually, neither is true. In reality, he is full of feelings. And you are married to a person who has much to offer you.
Your partner struggles to express her needs, so you must now express yours. You cannot fix her CEN but you can help her see it.
Even if it takes many attempts and is frustrating at times, you are giving your partner something vital that he did not get as a child:
The message that you see him
The message that you care
The message that you want to see more of who he is, and what he feels and why
For a person with CEN, there is no richer, stronger, more meaningful expression of love.
July 7, 2014
What Do You Wish Your Parents Had Said To You?
“CEN is, by definition, nothing. How can nothing be something? How can nothing be a source of enduring pain and struggle? It seems unfathomable… until you see it day after day, in your office, as I have.”
Answers to the Title Question on Facebook:
Anything much. I don’t remember being talked to at all.
You have a right to your feelings, & the right to be heard & have them considered.
We believe in you.
How do you feel? What do you want? I will help you figure life out.
I love you. You are enough. I am proud of you.
There is nothing wrong with who you are.
Are you okay?
Do you want to talk about it? You look upset.
My love for you is unconditional.
There’s nothing in this world you cannot do. So stand up, shoulders back and go out there.
I’m sorry…
I wish they meant what they said.
That I was beautiful.
You can make mistakes and I won’t think any less of you. You don’t have to be perfect.
Don’t be scared. It will be alright. Things will go wrong but it doesn’t matter. We’re all the same .
It’s OK to get angry / sad / mad.
Anything that wasn’t emotional abuse ……anything that didn’t leave me feeling worthless or that I had to please them for their attention.
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Recently I posted this blog’s title question on two Facebook Pages: my own, Webb Connection; and PDAN’s. Between the two pages I got over 160 candid, thoughtful and heartfelt responses. The quotes above are a direct sampling of them.
Why did I ask this particular question? Because in my experience as a psychologist, I have found that people are naturally far more able to describe what they wish their parents hadn’t done or said to them than what they wish their parents had done or said to them. This distinction is also a fair description of the difference between abuse and neglect. Abuse is an action, whereas neglect is a lack of action. Our brains record and remember things that happened (like abuse), whereas our brains do not notice things that don’t happen (neglect).
Which seems worse: a parent who screams and yells at a child and calls him names? Or a parent who simply does not talk to or engage the child at all?
I have seen that failure to engage, notice and affirm a child does just as much damage to him or her as abuse, but the effects are different. An abused child will feel “hit,” verbally, physically or emotionally; whereas a neglected child will feel simply “at sea,” invalid and alone. I see Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN) as one of the greatest potential threats to future generations. It is difficult to stop something that is invisible, intangible, unnoticeable and unmemorable.
The subtlety of CEN gives it extra power. Many adults who grew up with an absence of emotionally attentive observations and questions like those listed above do not recognize the damage that this absence has done them. And even when they recognize it, they can’t quite believe or grasp it. People with CEN vastly underestimate its effects upon them. CEN is, by definition, nothing. How can nothing be something? How can nothing be a source of enduring pain and struggle? It seems unfathomable… until you see it day after day, in your office, as I have.
A couple of the reviewers of my book, Running on Empty, have said that the recovery chapters are unrealistic because they suggest that people can give themselves what they never got. I could not disagree more.
All of the emotionally neglected people who offered those many requests in response to my question hold a secret key. A key to fulfilling their own needs; a key that offers healing, solace and fuel.
If your parents didn’t talk to you, then talk more to yourself. Put yourself in situations where you will be required to talk.
If your parents never told you that you were good enough, then you must resolve this question for yourself. Are you good enough? Listen to your answer, and trust it.
If your parents never meant what they said, then you must pledge to yourself to always mean what you say. Always speak the truth, no matter how difficult it may be.
If your parents never asked you if you were okay, then you must ask yourself this often, and listen carefully to your answer.
If your parents didn’t notice when you were upset, then you must try to always notice what you are feeling and why.
And so on and so on, the answer lies within you.
It is not easy. Healing requires hard work, attention and persistence. But the key is self-awareness. Because once you know what you didn’t get, you know what you need. And when you know what you need, you can figure out how to get it. And then you will have it to give to your own children.
