Dear Bev, I’m so sorry you are experiencing this. It’s not at all uncommon for siblings in a family to experience CEN completely differently, so it may not be helpful at all to share this with your siblings and may be hurtful instead. I encourage you to talk with a therapist instead who can help you deal with it. And consider the possibility that your brain chemicals may be out of balance due to your experiences of childhood. Suicidal thoughts are very painful and harmful to you, and so talking with a psychopharmacologist (psychiatrist) about whether a brief trial of anti-depressants might help along with the therapy could be very helpful. Please take this as a general comment, not professional advice since I’m not able to know enough about you in this setting. Sending you all my best wishes.

Dear Kate, thank you for your helpful words for Matti. I’m so glad you have found your people! It’s so important.

Matti,
Your story rings true to me. I was raised by a single mother who was also a narcissist and an alcoholic. I always had to stuff my feelings. My mother had money, so I had my physical needs met; good schools, clothes etc. But emotionally I was “bad”, “wrong”, and ignored when I had any feelings of anger, upset or sadness. I was a quiet child, a loner,and introspective. I ended up internalizing the message fed to me of “you are the problem, you are wrong and you don’t know what you are talking about”. I don’t think I ever really knew what I felt, except bad. I spent most of my youth and early adulthood depressed. I am just starting to recognize my feelings in my late 50’s. I have struggled in both my jobs and in friendships. I often feel misunderstood. I’ve ended most of my friendships in the past few years because I finally recognize them to be one sided, codependent and not what I thought they were. My marriage is over, same story. Because my mother is a narcissist I have fallen into the same “comfortable” types of relationship that shaped me in my childhood, until they weren’t. (Comfortable anymore) I am solely working on myself, giving myself time and understanding, something that my mother never gave me. I am looking for mutually caring and supportive friendships. If it somehow feels bad, I’m out. I no longer have time for giving endlessly. Because of this CEN site and some that concern introversion I now feel that I belong to a group of other either misunderstood or healing people (or both). I have hope that I can shed the pain and emerge from the cave and learn to recognize my feelings and be whole. (however slowly) Thank you Jonice, thank you Matti. 😉

Hi Infran, that is a very important topic! And I do talk a lot about that in multiple articles. It starts with accepting the child’s feelings without judgment of right or wrong.

Dear Keith, it’s amazing that you and your wife have been able to figure things out together. Keep up the good work!

Dear Nan, thank you so much for sharing your experiences and your wisdom with us. I am so glad to be of help to you!

My wife and I have been raised in EN homes, mine fitting 3 of the descriptions and she at least 2 of the scenarios described in your amazing book.

We laughed at how two majorly neglected people were able to find each other and maintain a reletively decent relationship for 15 yrs so far with 4 children without professional help. The oldest of which is entering double digits in age, so your book couldn’t have come at a better time.

We are both highly functioning broken folks, good external bells and whistles going on… with that darkest of clouds always waiting to show up when we let our guards down.

Thank you for your book and this newsletter.. I feel for the first time I have the info to not repeat history…

That said, do you think you can do an article on how to validate your child’s emotions if they’re different from yours? I think it could be very helpful.