Even the best and most loving parents can fail their children in this way. Many are simply raising their children the way they were raised themselves, unaware that they are failing to provide a crucial ingredient to their growing child. This is part of what makes CEN so invisible.

But the message that you get as a child is: Your Feelings Don't Matter.

And since our emotions are the most deeply personal, biological part of who we are, we hear this message as, “You don’t matter.” 

So, you adapt to keep your parents happy, and you push your feelings down and away, so that they won’t bother anyone.

That strategy works well for you as a child, but as an adult, you start to notice that you feel numb or empty. You have a hard time relating to other people and expressing yourself. You may have difficulty knowing what you want or what you need or what you feel. You may even feel ashamed for having feelings and needs, and get angry at your own mistakes, or for simply being human.

Over recent years, as I have been writing, speaking and teaching therapists and laypeople about Childhood Emotional Neglect, I have realized that many therapists are struggling with CEN in their own lives. In fact, CEN is at the heart of many therapists’ career decisions.

When you grow up with your emotions un-validated, especially of you are a sensitive type of child, you naturally are confused about what’s wrong. You want answers. Becoming a mental health professional, for many of us, is an attempt to make sense of our own walled-off emotions, and a way to try to understand, through training and research, an answer to the question, “Why do I feel this way?”

We start here because it’s important for you to know exactly how your CEN developed, how YOU feel about it, and how it’s affecting you personally as an adult.

I always receive a lot of questions about how not being emotionally validated in childhood can lead to the emptiness, disconnection, and lack of fulfillment that you’ve been experiencing all these years. I understand how hard it is to realize and accept the connection between such a seemingly innocuous childhood experience, and such a powerful, damaging effect in adulthood.

In this module, I’ll walk you through exactly how the cause and effect are linked, specifically what went on inside of you as a child, and what’s happening for you now as an adult.

I’ll help you see how your CEN is the root cause of other issues in your life, such as perhaps lack of confidence, low self-esteem, social anxiety, self-directed anger, or depression.

We’ll get you started on learning and thinking about your feelings, increasing your feelings vocabulary, and tuning into your emotions.

By the end of this module, you’ll be more in touch with your CEN, and you’ll understand that what you’re struggling with is not your fault. This will free you up to stop blaming yourself and start attacking the problem.

If you answer yes to some of these statements, then you may have CEN.

If you have CEN, I want you to know that there is good news.

CEN is not a disease or a mental illness.

It’s really only a natural response to something vital that was missing in your childhood.

CEN doesn’t have to hang, like a dark cloud, over life any more. CEN is very treatable and you can overcome it yourself.

Once you understand what has really been happening inside of you and why you feel so different from everyone else, you will gain the ability to work through those issues and heal.

First comes awareness. Then you can heal. And I’ll show you how.

Now that you own and see your wall, I’ll teach you a new skill that you should use as often as you can. It takes a chip out of that wall every time you do it, whether you succeed or not.

I’ll get you started with focusing inward more, paying attention to your feelings and monitoring your emotions as you go through your day.

I’ll tell you about the possible pitfalls that can come up when you start to break your wall down, and I’ll tell you about how that worked for one of my patients.

I’ll teach you a special skill for sitting with and riding out a difficult emotion. It’s a formula for processing an emotion that really works, and I’ll give you an example of a real person using it.

I’ll give you an Emotion Cheat Sheet to keep on your phone so you can use it any time that you have a feeling that is painful or difficult.

We’ll start applying your new access to emotion and your new skills to your everyday life.

Two things will begin to happen here when you are practicing these skills regularly and persistently over time: the people in your life will start to notice a difference in you. You’ll seem more responsive, connected, and warm to them, and they may even be a little surprised by it. You’ll also notice that you’ll feel different.

You’ll be able to start using your new emotion processing skills to manage the natural feelings that will be popping up for you in your real life.

First, I’ll teach you some very important general rules about how emotions work. These are facts about emotions that you missed learning in your CEN childhood home. Knowing these facts will make your emotions less scary, and this process less daunting.

We’ll talk about what validity and validation mean to you, and how you can go through your entire life not feeling valid, without ever realizing it.

I’ll give you an example of someone who was afraid that valid = selfish, a common fear for CEN folks.

I’ll explain three ways for you to build your validity: by treating your needs and emotions as valid; by knowing yourself better; and by self-care.

We’ll talk about the important relationship between validation and self-care.  I’ll help you identify which areas of self-care are your biggest blind spots. Then I’ll give you the tools and the process to fix those blind spots.

This module is designed to drive home your realization that you are valid, and you matter. Our goal is that you genuinely feel and believe that your needs and feelings matter, and that you are worth the effort of care.

First we’ll talk about how CEN has affected your relationships with the people in your life, and prevented you from forming new, healthy ones.

I’ll help you choose one person to start taking risks with, and set you up with a structure to do it.

I know you’ll be afraid to change. You’ll be worried that you’ll receive negative reactions when you start to assert yourself and show your feelings more. I’ll give you some stock phrases to use to help the people around you react less, and understand what’s going on when you behave differently.

I’ll tell you about a patient who started saying “no” to her family, who always KNEW that she’d say “yes,” and how that worked out for her.

I’ll explain that there is a way to ease the process of becoming more assertive with people who don’t expect it, and how to do it.

We’ll talk about applying all of your new skills and new motivation to take risks to your current relationships, and how to move forward with it.

I’ll give you some simple phrases to make a conscious effort to use more often. These phrases will help you take up more space, assert yourself, and get your needs met a lot more often.

As you continue to work on this module, you’ll notice your relationships becoming more balanced. You’ll start to feel closer to people. You may weed out some people who are bad for you, and you’ll begin to feel more grounded, more supported, and more connected in your life.

You’ll also be sent an invitation to join me live for a bi-weekly Q&A support call where you can ask me questions about how to apply all of this to your personal situation.

The call will not be psychotherapy, however.

I won’t be able to give you personal advice, but I can answer your questions about CEN and how to apply the program in your situation.

The Q&A Support Calls are scheduled for Wednesday evenings, at 5:30 p.m. EST.

And, if you can’t make the Q&A Support calls, don’t worry. You can send me questions and I’ll bring them up during the call. A recording of each call will be available on the member’s area for you to listen to whenever it’s convenient for you.

And you will get access to my Fuel Up for Life Online Support Community. In my opinion, it is this community that really makes this program work. It’s powerful because the people are really engaged, really supportive. This community isn’t just where you will find me and other fellow participants going through the program with you, there will also be people who have graduated from the program and are there to help and support you as you go through it as well.

In this community you are going to post your celebrations, you are going to post your challenges, your struggles and your questions about working with CEN. I promise you, you will meet life-long friends in this community. It is the most valuable online experience I have ever been a part of.

In addition to this online support community, I will also offer a way for those who want to go deeper with support to connect with 3 other members of the community to create what I call a mastermind. The 4 of you will have the opportunity to meet once a week or every other week to help each other through the CEN related situations you are facing and give each other support and a sense of validation for the changes you are making in your life. This is a very powerful experience that can become a game changer for you.

So now you’re probably wondering,
“What’s this going to cost me?”

I have taken years of clinical practice and experience to put this program together. It’s based on what has worked for my patients in the past. I have taken all of that knowledge and I have created an online CEN recovery program specifically for the public that can be done on your own, or with the help of a therapist.

In the best of all worlds, I would have each and every one of you come to my office so that I could go on this journey with you in person. But of course that’s not a realistic possibility. I’ve also considered offering Skype consultations, and I’ve received many requests for it from people who live far away and can’t get to my office in Boston. But unfortunately I don’t feel comfortable doing that because of recommendations and professional guidelines of the Massachusetts Board of Psychology.

Hundreds of folks have contacted me for advice about how they can work directly on CEN with their current therapist. All of these things together made me realize that I need to make CEN recovery more accessible to people who don’t live in New England, or who want to keep their current therapist.

I developed this program so that I can offer everything I’ve learned to all of the people who can benefit from it. I want to make this help available to all of the CEN folks out there who are quietly confused, and wondering what’s wrong with them.

No, it’s not the same as one-on-one therapy. Nothing really compares to that. But I’ve put so much into this program that, together with the calls and the online support community and small group masterminds, I feel it offers a high quality alternative when in-person therapy isn’t an option, or as a CEN adjunct to your current therapy.