Dear Shirly, the good news is that you are on the right road now. You can start healing yourself and, in the process, reach out to your son (my second book, Running On Empty No More), has lots of help for how to to do that. All my best to you!

Watch for a deep, negative feeling inside that holds you back from taking advantage of possibilities or from connecting with people. Many folks have more than one Fatal Flaw.

Dear Nima, you have done some good work already. Next, I would suggest you either see a therapist on the Find A CEN Therapist list on this site. Or you could take the Fuel UP For Life online CEN recovery course which will walk you through the steps of recovery. All my best to you!

That’s awesome. Way to go, Catherine, keep up the good work!

Good friends are valuable indeed and surely can make up for a lot of the empty space left by parents. Thanks for sharing that!

You are welcome, Shannon! Thanks for your comment.

For the last year or so after finding your work and going through your first book, I now realize what was wrong with me. I had always though that the low mood/depression was my diagnosis, but now I understand that it is just a symptom among the myriad of symptoms I show. Feeling lonely, lack of confidence despite being successful, inability to tolerate critics, feeling abandoned, and list goes on. Now I understand these all come from the fact that I have never been in touch with my feelings. I have never been able to recognize my feelings and still struggle even naming them. For me all the negative feelings I felt have always been a spectrum of sadness. Even when I feel down, I am still not able to identify exactly what makes me sad. Anyways, that’s the first part that I recognized the problem through your work and book. But, going through solving the problem is also difficult as in my opinion the science of psychology has advance in terms of finding the flaws, but we are still struggling with addressing the issues. I am still struggling on my day to day life. I would die to feel loved!