Childhood Emotional Neglect: The Voices of Experience

Neglecting children has far-reaching consequences, making it imperative for parents to prioritize their well-being. First and foremost, emotional neglect can lead to lasting psychological scars, affecting self-esteem and interpersonal relationships. A lack of attention and guidance can hinder cognitive development, resulting in poor academic performance and limited opportunities in adulthood. Moreover, neglected children are more vulnerable to engage in risky behaviors, including substance abuse. Neglect also perpetuates a cycle of emotional detachment, as neglected children often struggle to provide proper care to their own offspring in the future. Thus, parental presence and nurturing support are vital for a child’s healthy development and a brighter, more promising future.

I have a father who is a good man but he has faced a lot of trauma growing up and as a result has locked his emotions. Example he doesn’t understand why people get upset. We were watching a movie where this man went through a severe betrayal and breakup and he falls to the ground in tears. My father’s response “what is he doing?”. I’m like um he’s crying and breaking down because he’s heart broken? It literally didn’t register w my dad.

Years of growing up with various traumas and having a father who ignored them as he lives by the “keep calm carry on” motto (he does come from a military family where no one smiles or laughs or cries), has really done a number on me. I don’t know how to react properly to anything. I feel guilty when I am upset. I can’t keep a relationship as for some reason I have become uber sensitive and perceive almost everything as neglect :/

It has also damaged my relationship with my father who still can’t communicate feelings and doesn’t get upset nor understand why others do. My mother died 20 years ago and we can’t even talk about it.

So yes I believe emotional neglect is an abuse that parents should recognize as it can also have long lasting negative impact on children.

I never felt there was any reason to be unhappy as a child growing up in a well-faring middle class family and doing very well in school. I however did suffer from an eating disorder in my teens, trying to get control over myself and my surrounding, hoping to become more succesfull and by that, more likable. Things started emotionally to detoriate as a student at university, sleeping with guys I did not even like, just to get some kind of attention. In the mean time, I did not feel as if an intimate partner would like me, if they would really get close to me. I did however find some trusting and loyal friendships, that last until this day.
At that time, the family started to crumble, as stories about severe domestic violence in my mothers family came out. My mother suffered from severe depressions, while one of her brothers got more suicidal every day, the other more narcissistic. In her depressed phase, however, my mother showed a lot of built-up anger, and her core family suffered from that immensely, as she would start to show immense passive-aggressiveness and self-centeredness. Especially my father took the blame in most situations, even when evidently not justified. I still hurts me to see, how my mother mocks my father passive-aggressively on a regular basis, instead of talking it out.
In my late twenties and thirties, I was getting from one destructive relationship to the next. My last partner, and father of my sweet child, turned out to be an classic narcissist (diagnosed during the separation by a psychologist appointed by the court). I fled due to domestic violence and moved abroad to escape him, living my life now in a foreign country, having to speak a foreign language on a daily basis.
Recovering from the abuse, I was inevitably confronted with my codependence, my anxiety, my intense shame, my feelings of being a failure deep down. Confronted with the intense sense of disgust towards my very own being.
Reading about abuse and neglect, it is really, really hard to acknowledge it might in fact happened to me already in my childhood. And that this neglect or even abuse, might have ‘primed’ me towards destructive relationships. Which would of course be no wonder, as my father has been raised by a classical narcissistic mother, my mother by a narcissistic father. They knew no better than teaching me to not ‘be in the way’, to be overly sensitive to someone else’s needs, to be forcefully happy (and congruent, thereby severly trying to suppress one’s true feelings), to ‘be reasonable’, explicitly telling me by phrases like ‘that’s no reason to be upset’, ‘you’re overly serious’, ‘can you imagine what it was like for me when I moved away from all my friends – you at least have got your job’ (or redirecting the discussion away from me towards her in any other way) or simply telling about other peoples kindnesses, talents, and successfully besieged struggles – leaving the comparison and conclusion to me. The tragedy is, that when my mother emrases me, and tells me how much she loves me, it does not feel real – which means she doesn’t mean it, or I am numbed, or both. I know it all was by no means with bad intent, or at least I would like to believe so. But it does explain how come I feel not worthy of being heard, in fact, feel repellant underneath.
I do have troubles accepting that I may be a victim of CEN, as if then I would be blaming my parents. I cannot confront them, as this would trigger furiousness and denial, leading to me taking the blame to great extent to be able to end the discussion. I simply do not know where to go from here. I however recently did purchase your book, and, God, I hope this will guide me a way out of the guilt, shame and pain.

I am now 60 years old and feel massively impacted by the triple whammy of CEN, emotional sensitivity and trauma. As a shy and sensitive child my father was mentally unwell and emotionally absent, my mother also unable to offer me the emotional warmth I needed. Then I experienced major trauma in my teens and 20’s including the loss of my father and brother and major sexual and psychological abuse, however I think I was unable to process what happened emotionally due to the CEN.

Now through learning about CEN I can see that my whole adult life has felt incredibly emotionally grim and barren because I’ve been unable to connect naturally with others since childhood, so there has been a dearth of people in my life.

For the first time in 20 years I recently got into a relationship with someone also affected by CEN but despite our best intentions we were unable to make it work and split after 4 months. I’ve also battled severe insomnia for 25 years and my theory is that it is because I’m emotionally unfulfilled. Functioning professionally is also very difficult because I suffer from huge performance anxiety. Since the loss of experiencing closeness with others I also developed a spending addiction which has left me financially vulnerable as well as being alone, aging and unsupported.

Life is tough and learning about CEN has been a very sobering experience for me. As I’ve put the pieces together its helped me understand why I feel so damaged as a person, but I understand its vital in order for me to to start the healing process. So I feel very grateful to have this knowledge thank you x

I’m a 45 year old single woman. My mother was a covert narcissistic and my much older father (he was 59 when I was born) did everything to please her and make her happy. I was very much ‘seen but not heard’. Emotions were not discussed and my mother’s interest in me was limited to making sure I was healthy. My father was kind but emotionally absent and left my upbringing mostly to my mother. Reading Running on Empty and discovering the far reaching consequences of CEN has been life-changing for me and has explained so many aspects of why I am the way I am. I have a good circle of friends but I have never managed to sustain a romantic relationship, something which has hugely distressed me (having seen all my friends get married and have children). However, I am working hard to change what I now realise were very wrong and unhealthy thinking patterns and trying to be hopeful and optimistic about the future.

Since first reading this blog, I have come to realize that we have generational codependency and CEN in my family. This has made it much easier to reconcile my feelings of anger, resentment and hurt that I have felt towards my mother. I have come to realize that both my parents grew up with codependency and CEN. My mother now has dementia and is in a nursing home, and I am pretty much totally in charge of her care. What I feel most guilty about is unknowingly perpetuating CEN onto my children. I have both of your books and have read the first one and part of the second one but had to stop, because I was overloaded…I think it’s time to pick it up again, so that I can continue towards better relationships with my children. Learning about CEN has changed my life and how I relate to people. ( I am a work in progress) Thank you!

I was wondering if “in locus parentis” [in the place of a parent] should be added to CEN. Specifically thinking of [Irish] nuns who taught me at primary school level. Author Julia Cameron described them as “whacking little kids was their idea of aerobic exercise”. Teachers had full legal rights to be as parents. {The law has substantially changed in my country New Zealand. It is illegal for parents and by extension teachers to physically punish children}

Hello this is Randy I am 56 years old in on the brink of my second divorce with my wife to say I’m just getting cold I’ve read both of the books running on empty and running on empty no more and cried through both of them I had very sick and absent parents my when I was younger from the age 8 to 12 or 13 CEN is given me understanding of my blankness or my placid emotions emotions are never really discussed in my family I’ve talked over with some of my siblings and some are more receptive and some don’t agree. I too have a lot of guilt and resentment against my parents. That I struggle with forgiving them. Healing is possible, and worth it, I hope!

What’s the solution for a person who was raised by one autistic parent and one bitter and angry parent?

This quote is what I believe and try to do:

“It’s time to end this cycle and hand me down of pain and neglect. I’m stopping it on my branch of the family tree, no more.”

I grew up having my emotions suppressed, disbelieved, mocked, believing I was too weak, sensitive, easily hurt. Emotions were not to be talked about or even acknowledged. With my own children, and my husband, we talk about emotions, feelings, problems and successes. If anyone needs help, they get it, either from us or professionals.

As Jean Luc Picard said, the line must be drawn here!

I’m struggling with the way I seemed to be singled out for CEN. My 4 siblings didn’t have the same upbringing as me. I was singled out as an ‘ugly baby’ and sent to live 100 miles away for at least the first 2 years of my life. Although I expect i was loved by my paternal grandma, my Mum never bonded with me. All my attempts to be a dutiful daughter didn’t help. I grew up very capable and left home early. I still have problems with abusive partners. The last one took his own life recently and I’m very anxious about starting out again. Any advice greatly recieved

As a father, I have brought up, with my wife, two beautiful children. But I am worried that the mental difficulties my son is experiencing are due to me suffering depression and an inability to properly father him during his formative years, I really feel I have let him down due to my own unresolved CEN. I want to help him, and am searching for ways to do this, to explain it to him to allow him to understand both his and my situation, so that he and I can address it as fully as possible. I am, i must admit, suffering from a lot of guilt and hurt over this, blaming MY parents for what they brought on me – witnessing regular domestic abuse, etc. I really want to educate both my children as to good parenting…my son is now 27, and is intelligent, but i need to approach this sensitively. Any help would be gratefully accepted!

Many thanks.

Hi
Ive only just seen the article on CEN today and I answered yes to 18 of the questions on the questionnaire.

currently on the verge of separating with my husband, have 2 boys 9 and 12 and im feeling very drained with all this. Im hoping I can change as not been able to so far and its been making our lives a misery throughout our 25 years together.

I wont type much now but will be coming back to this when I have more time later on. My husband is very supportive of me and has kindly ordered the book for me when I showed an interest in it. Running on Empty. I am hoping that I will finally get help with this as I owe it to myself and my lovely family to be a happy and normal person.

Neglect of the really rather clearly expressed attentional, emotional, social needs of children may not be the only factor with which we must come to terms and overcome when we approach adulthood.
I think you all will notice how much resentment is expressed within the comments.

In a couple previous comments I’ve alluded to such resentment.
Here, I hope to make the problem yet more plain:

Our parents grandparents, and others involved in family interactions in which CEN may arise, were, as Dr. Webb indicated, THEMSELVES very likely or certainly exposed to this familial failure.
Blame, it MUST be emphasized, is INAPPROPRIATE, lest you merely continue the failure of loving communication, replacing it with mere violent resentment, forever modeling it to children for as long as YOU live.

Culture, after all, occurs not at some erudite formal educational level, but right HERE, right NOW, in modeling behaviors. Having long been involved in the study of the culture of mammals – even the most seeming asocial species still transmit culture to offspring in this way, if only through the mothers in some cases.

I cannot emphasize this enough: For so long as you model blame, and resentment, you can NEVER model the necessary love and validity so obligate, so required, by ALL who are exposed to you.

My own family remains fractured, avoidant, cold due to continued expression of blame and resentment, due to the failure and “neglect” modeled to us within our extended family by elders largely gone.
Blame and resentment are the OPPOSITE of asserting the natural love one feels in life.
I have placed neglect in quotes because the word itself may have made you quite automatically attribute blame and resentment, to exteriorize all attribution of responsibility outside yourself.
For more than two years, I’ve attempted to ease siblings away from this response, so far failing utterly.. Courage, exposing oneself, is so easily replaced by this exteriorization of adult responsibility, of acting in a profoundly miserly manner in one’s life.

The wreckage goes on, compounding into THEIR children.

Daniel Kahneman and Abel Tversky conducted experiments in which they found that people made a common cognitive error – they allowed themselves to replace actual questions, their minds eliding smoothly into framing a different question entirely, to which they could more easily attach an answer. This is essentially what we’re seeing in many comments. they did not use the word dogmatism, but hard, simplistic, frozen dogmatism it is.

Dogmatism, that most common method of avoidance of a question, replacing it with some other construct in one’s own mind, is the solipsistic refuge that many of us enter, denying the possibility of change, which is the essence of life, of attention and care and functional expression of love itself.
Please do NOT sink into blame and dogmatic denial of the most important capacity you have – attention, awareness, inclusion, love.
The young really immediately know: “You cannot hear us. You are unwilling to see us. We are unimportant to you, because you have no ‘time’.”

I think it was Paul Simon, who sang, long ago, “Silence, like a cancer, grows.” The breaking down of a family, of sensitivity to the life and lives around us through this avoidant silence and creation of eternal, fictional resentment instead, is the curable cancer of which Dr. Webb speaks.

Comments have the capacity to help others. They also allow the commenter to gain insight and to less precariously begin to approach the seemingly impossible barriers that may appear to exist between each of us and those we love.

I have so far failed; my own mother retreated into simple puzzle-solving, emotionally exhausted from the severity of multigenerational modeling of that Neglect. I signal normal feelings toward siblings, and try to trace for her why brothers and sister fell into such dogmatism and blame.. I certainly do not feel that i should aggressively approach them,, even as she reports to me their continuing assertion of bias, blame, resentment to THEIR children.

But the spreading of blame and resentment into scapegoats (please look that word up – it involves “magically” placing all negative emotions or “sins” into an innocent, who is then cruelly sacrificed. While it does periodically relieve those who participate, its final result is cultural cruelty of immense scale), merely perpetuates.

Do not blame, and realize that the resentment you may express in commenting, is the real, deadly, problem, perpetuating.

I am really happy to say I am learning from your CEN information and advice.
Last week my daughter came home from school looking a bit odd, so I immediately said ‘you look a bit shellshocked, what’s wrong?’ She said ‘why didn’t you tell me I had an injection at school today?’ I said ‘oh darling I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. I must have signed the form and forgotten. I’m sorry, I’ve had a lot on my mind over the last week.’ (health problems but she didn’t need to know what.)
I’m very proud that I noticed she looked odd, and I was able to identify her expression immediately and we talked about it.
If I’d come home from school like that, my mum would have shouted at me and stormed out of the room without trying to find out what was wrong. I know better thanks to your posts.

Ok so yes, I am definitely a product of CEN. That’s been established by every post I have read of yours. It’s kinda sad to know. But also could be empowering. Like, here’s the problem and u even have lots of ideas for solutions. And that’s great. But there’s one thing, the most important thing, that I haven’t seen u touch on (perhaps u have and I missed that one, if so sorry. Please direct me to it?), and that is, what about the fact that that is my learned behavior, and now every time I read ur blog, I get a sick guilty feeling in the pit of my soul because I believe I am now doing (or rather, did do) the same thing to my daughter. She is 17. You have a lot of advice for the victims of CEN. What about the accidental perpetrators? Please help me. The guilt is so bad I almost wish I never found ur blog. I feel like a terrible person. And I’m not gonna use this CEN diagnosis as an excuse., but how do I help my daughter. I have to tell her I did this to her? She has major emotional issues. Anxiety, depression, etc. And “sorry baby it’s mommy’s fault”? I can barely handle it. Please. Help.

After 60 years of failed marriages, a floundering relationship with my daughter, a lifelong series of dead-end and unsatisfying jobs, and desperately wondering “What is wrong with me?!”, my search led me to discover an article on CEN…WOW! Suddenly it all made sense. I cannot begin to thank you enough for what you have done for me. I began to feel the self-confidence and empowerment to refuse to accept being treated with verbal abuse by my husband, and at 70 have begun to have a much better relationship with my daughter.
My 95 year old mother recently passed away, for whom I had been caring. I continue to feel a LACK of feeling. I miss her presence, but all I really feel is emptiness. And guilt for that lack of feeling. I know that is understandable, given that I never learned how to identify and respect my feelings, but I am sad for what should have been.

Great blog post, again. Thank you.

I had a great childhood and great parents….or so I thought. I had always felt there was something missing. Through Dr. Webb’s writings I found that I have CEN. When I look back over my entire life I was never once hugged or comforted. Anything negative was swept under the carpet and I was left to myself to reconcile whatever happened. Even though I love both my parents, I do not feel that closeness. It was easy to detach emotionally from my mother when she was passing. Now my father is elderly and I am partly responsible for his care. Honestly, it’s a job and not a labor of love. It’s an awful thing but I couldn’t care less if I ever saw him again. He was never mean but the emotional closeness just isn’t there. CEN has caused me to be counter-dependent and avoidant. It has built a wall in my marriage that I just can’t fix despite what I read. Closeness just makes me too uncomfortable! I understand what has happened but I can’t fix it. CEN is a terrible thing and I am grateful for Dr. Webb for putting light on it.