For Jay: Sadly, I can relate. My Italian-American family could so callous. It used to feel like a punch to the gut the way they treated me — like I was a pain in the ass. No one ever asked me what was wrong or if I was ok. Not even as a small child. If I got upset, I’d be told, “Hey, kid, you’re driving me fucking nuts. Give it a rest,” if not much worse. The alienation and hurt was tremendous. I wanted to die by the time I was seven. They blamed me for everything. Like you, I started developing a mean streak. It wasn’t my nature, but they rubbed off on me. I have so much hatred towards them today. It’s so deep within my body, I don’t know how to let it go.

Dear Amy, yes, no doubt your daughter is benefiting from your ability to give her what you didn’t get yourself. Thank you for sharing your story of CEN.

My parents were both emotionally unavailable when I was a kid, with my mom was more obvious and harsh in that way. But from both I learned early on that my feelings didn’t count, and I grew up thinking my mom especially despised me because I was “too sensitive” (I didn’t get that sense from my dad, because his temperament was closer to mine). Yet when I got older two of my older siblings said our mom never should have become a mother, and the other older sibling said we kids didn’t get enough attention from our parents while growing up. I wasn’t surprised that the one older sister was so critical of my mom, but it was a shock that the other two found fault with our parent(s). But it meant I didn’t feel quite as alone.

However, I think we kids grew up a little more understanding of our parents (or at least excused their parenting behavior more) since they’d had so many of us in a short period of time (the old-fashioned Catholic way), and thus had very little time and money to give to us. They did try their best, at least, to give us the vacations and special-occasion celebrations that they could afford.

As adults, we kids had the “buying power” to pool our money to give our parents big-ticket gifts like a new TV, a weekend away, things like that. It may seem that we were trying to buy the love they couldn’t show us when we were kids, but I do feel we really did have the sense that they had had so little when we were kids, and so were trying to make their fixed-income years easier.

Were we kidding ourselves about the impact of CEN in our lives and making excuses for our parents? Or did our folks actually have just enough compassion that some of it rubbed off on us?

In her defense, my mom did mellow out a lot when she got older, to the point that I could gently tease her and she could laugh back. She approved of my mothering skills by then too, which also helped relieve a lot of tension (she was critical of my parenting when my daughter was a baby; fortunately I lived far enough away then that I rarely had to deal with her critiques).

I have always tried to be emotionally present for my daughter. I have been honest about my upbringing and how it affected my own sense of self-worth and any parenting issues I may have. I am far from perfect and have told her that, but in general we get along very well and I treasure her. She’s turned out to be a lovely person as a young adult. I know I’m giving her the love I never felt as a kid, but at least she’s the better for it.

Dear K, thank you so much for sharing your story. I’m so sorry for everything you’ve been through. And I want you to know that having helped you means a lot to me!

Great article! I have also just recently finished reading ‘Running on Empty No More’ and I can not tell you how validating a read that was! So thank you.
My journey has felt painfully long and slow. After what I thought was a normal, happy childhood and upbringing, in a happy and loving family, and while I wouldn’t have said I was excelling in life, I had always been a positive, ‘glass half full’ kind of person. But at the age of 36, all of a sudden in what seemed like over night, my whole life totally fell apart, I felt like a spectator that could only watch from the side line as it all blew up in front of me.
I found myself at 36, unmarried with no children (actually it had been over 5 years since I had even been in a long term relationship), diagnosed with Server Chronic Depression, which later became a diagnosis of an extremely rare (like so rare your GP has to Goggle it) condition called Sneddon’s Syndrome. I lost my job that I loved, then my house that I loved, and then quite rapidly all my so called friends that I had always given too much to, now it seemed. I had to move to the Peninsula, which while therapeutic, was also extremely isolating. My family, while never really asking me much, as not to ‘invade my privacy’ apparently, was financially supportive but never emotionally supportive.
I went to see many specialists/therapists and doctors, but never found anyone I clicked with or that seemed helpful to me. Many told me that I seemed quite angry, and that maybe there wasn’t a reason that could pin point as the cause of all my “issues”. One therapist even told me that she could not continue seeing me, and terminated our sessions because she felt that there was nothing more she could do for me, and that she was unable to help me any further (even though I clearly did not feel like I’d found any kind and understanding or answers).
I was left with no words.
Then finally the Universe… and Goggle, through what seemed to be no more than a series of lucky clicks, revealed to me an article about CEN, which in-turn lead me to more articles, and ultimately to your book.
The Penny dropped hard, and multiple Ah-Ha moments ensued! I’d finally found my answer!!
I was, and never had been wrong! I have never felt so validated!! How not one of the many therapists I saw, never once even mentioned CEN to me, when they had clearly identified so many of the signs, I will never understand.
I now know that I am a HSP, the eldest of three children (who’s siblings lives I apparently selfishly ruined with my over-sensitive behaviour), I was raised by loving and extremely well meaning parents who themselves, separately both also suffer from CEN…although unaware.
At a glance we portray a happy, well adjusted, middle class family, but scratch only a little beneath the surface, and it’s easy to see how fractured and seemingly apart we all are.
Being the only HSP with CEN, in a whole family that (apart from me at this point) is blindly suffering multi-generational effects of CEN, has been extremely invalidating and isolating.
Despite having an extremely loud voice, many times I’ve felt invisible, like someone hit mute on my life. Being a HSP in a family that frowns upon ever openly speaking about or sharing any kind of feeling or emotion, whose relationships are physically unable to ever be anything more than surface deep has been lonely. While they remain blissfully unaware, they also don’t ever experience a want, or a need for anything more, or feel that they’re missing out on anything, consequently only ever seeing my want of closer relationships to be overly needy. All of this goes a long way in explaining why I have always felt like I am different, like the black sheep, like I didn’t belong and was from a different planet, or like I had to of been adopted.

Although my healing journey has really only just started, the fact that my long time search for the why and the how has now been answered, I feel like I can finally breath, and like a massive weight has been lifted. I has taken me five years, but now I no longer feel alone, I feel stronger and more validated than I have ever felt in my whole life, and as you say it’s never to late to heal.
Thank you for reading my story, I did not know I was going to say so much when I started typing.. I really only meant to send my eternal gratitude. xx

Right, my mother always said, “Tomorrow is another day” and whenever I wanted to talk about emotions she just told me “That’s enough”.. She’s even managed to take my son away using my emotions (normal highly sensitive emotions!) to accuse me of being a bad mother, and he believes that.

It is not uncommon. Parents can have an easier time meeting the emotional needs of the child they have the most in common with, that is a certain gender or temperament. Parenting is so very complicated.