Overcoming Childhood Emotional Neglect (or the Real Hope Jamie Could’ve Had)
As I mentioned in my review of the movie , when I explored the character Jamie’s experience of his parents’ divorce, I suspect that a lot of us adult children of divorce likely experienced what is known in psychology as “childhood emotional neglect” (CEN). Most of us are probably familiar with other kinds of neglect children might experience, such as physical neglect, when parents or other caregivers fail to provide sufficiently for the child’s material needs. In her book Running on Empty, psychologist Dr. Jonice Webb explains another kind of neglect that children also often experience: emotional neglect. It is much less commonly recognized and can happen even in families where everything else seems okay, but it can have as profound an impact as other kinds of neglect. Because CEN is less obvious than, say, a kid going without shoes or food, its effects may not show up until adulthood. It often, as Dr. Webb says, appears as the sense in adulthood of having lacked something that didn’t happen but should have been there.
Another important concept in psychology is “attachment theory.” In a nutshell, attachment theory says that, as children, we need to have our emotional needs met by our parents or caregivers in order to feel safe, connected, and like we belong. If our primary caretakers respond to us fully, our attachment is secure, and our parents are something of a home base from which we can safely explore the world and other relationships. Though we eventually move away from our parents in various ways (geographically, emotionally, etc.), the kind of attachment we had as children generally follows us into adulthood. If our childhood attachment was secure, we tend to find friendships, romantic relationships, and commitments in general easier. We also tend to understand others’ emotions better, trust others more easily, make deeper connections, and know our own feelings better. For those of us who experienced secure attachment as children, it is easier for us to feel that we belong and are loved.
If, on the other hand, our parents did not respond, or responded insufficiently, to our emotional needs, we probably developed insecure attachment. It is also possible to have had secure attachment early on but then, through adverse events or trauma later in childhood, to have ended up with weakened attachment. In either case, insecure attachment presents challenges in adulthood. Romantic relationships and friendships are harder, we do not trust as easily, we might not even know we have emotions or we do not manage them well, we tend to have more anxiety, and we might have trouble feeling loved. Emotional neglect is often tied to insecure attachment. Our parents did not provide what we needed emotionally, leaving us with insecure attachment. It is also highly likely that they themselves were emotionally neglected and had insecure attachment because this is often a problem that gets “inherited” through generations.
In a good-enough family, the parents are at least minimally connected to their children emotionally, and the children are securely attached. The parents empathize with their children, are aware of their kids’ emotional highs and lows, and give them sufficient attention. The parents are themselves emotionally healthy enough to model for their kids how to recognize emotions, self-regulate emotional responses, and connect with others. What happens in situations of CEN, in contrast, is that the parents aren’t sufficiently emotionally present and either can’t or fail to do this modeling for their kids, which stunts the kids’ emotional development and leaves them feeling empty, anxious, numb, or disconnected from others.
There are a number of reasons parents might neglect their children emotionally. In most cases, it is not the parents’ fault per se, but rather the unfortunate result of a lack of their own emotional health or of the emotional fluency they need in order to fill their kids’ needs. After all, how can one model or teach what one does not know? It might also be that the parents themselves had emotionally unavailable or distant parents, or maybe that discussion of emotions was taboo in their family or in their dominant culture. It might also be that one or both parents were overly taxed by life circumstances and simply don’t have the emotional bandwidth to be present for their children in that way.
In her book, Dr. Webb describes twelve different types of parents who tend to neglect their children emotionally, from narcissistic parents to overly permissive ones to depressed ones. She specifically names the divorced or widowed parent as one of these types, and I have a hunch that many of us adult children of divorce experienced CEN. I also believe that many of the other types can overlap with divorced parents. Divorce does not exist in a vacuum, so it may be that many of our parents had insecure attachment and could not give us the emotional presence and modeling we needed from them, even long before the divorce. Then, as their marriages became rocky, their stress and needs may have taken precedence over our own. It may even have been that their insecure attachment and emotional disconnect were what led to the divorce in the first place. And if your parents then dated and remarried, it is quite possible that they gave you even less emotional connection because their attention and energy were spent on the new partner. If you did not even begin to process your parents’ divorce until you were well into your adulthood (for example, when you found Life-Giving Wounds), if no one even acknowledged that the divorce wounded you, or helped you to cope with the wounds, this may be a sign that your emotional needs were indeed unmet.
Some of the common effects that CEN has on adults who experienced it as children include having feelings of emptiness, self-blame, difficulty with self-appraisal, feeling like they are fatally flawed, and others. If any of this sounds familiar to you, I would recommend reading Dr. Webb’s book, as she’s the expert and goes into more details than I can here. (Another possibly helpful book, related to CEN even though it doesn’t mention it specifically, is Lindsay Gibson’s Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, which was reviewed on the blog here). CEN and its effects may explain why we children of divorce often have a harder time with self-esteem and trusting others than do our peers from intact families. It might also explain why we often have trouble with commitment or repeat the poor relationship patterns our parents had.
To give you a picture of what CEN might look like in real life, here’s my own CEN story: My mom (your mother is usually your primary attachment figure) has had schizoaffective disorder since I was about six years old. She was too deep in her own mental and emotional roller-coaster to be a stable presence. She was interested in me emotionally, but she was so needy that she almost used me to fill her needs and overidentified with me, which is an inappropriate mother-daughter relationship. My father was very emotionally distant, often putting down my sensitivity and need for affection and quality time. My mother’s family was highly dysfunctional, and my father’s parents were distant and highly critical, so my parents probably didn’t know any better. I developed insecure attachment because I had no one secure to attach to, to teach me how to manage my emotions, or to let me feel loved. Somehow I instinctively felt the distance and tried to close the gap myself, so even as a small child I was always anxious about everything, felt incredibly alone, and was needy for attention.
As my parents’ marriage began to flounder, their needs and issues entirely overshadowed my own. Before the divorce, my dad escaped the hard emotions and stress about my mom by taking multi-month out-of-town consulting jobs, and my mom became increasingly unstable and dangerous. When my dad was around, there was a lot of chaos, yelling, and fighting. After the divorce, when my dad had full custody, things got worse. Mix together his emotional unavailability, his inability to process the divorce emotionally himself, his being emotionally tied up in the women he dated after the divorce and then marrying my stepmother, and you end up with my having had CEN. My heart and emotions were off his radar screen entirely. He meant well but wasn’t there in the way I needed him to be. No one helped me navigate emotions about normal kids things like making friends and passing math tests, let alone process all the wounds that the divorce caused.
As a result, I “learned” to cope by shoving my feelings deep inside because I simply didn’t know how to handle the overwhelming pain and anger. Several years of stuffing intense emotions left me depressed later as a teenager. Fast forward to adulthood, and I have gotten through the depression but still have a harder time than peers without CEN in feeling like I belong. I have zero romantic history, and I often struggle with emotional neediness and loneliness. That said, being able to name CEN and work through it has been enormously helpful, and I have found a lot of healing already.
So here’s the good news for those of us who did experience CEN: It’s possible to work through our CEN to heal and find healthy connection. One very common effect of CEN is what’s known in psychology as “alexithymia,” which is when we are unaware of our emotions or have trouble expressing them. In my own experience with alexithymia, I never realized how incredibly angry I was because I’d been taught that kids weren’t allowed to be angry. The result of not seeing my anger meant that I would let things stew until they couldn’t stay in anymore, and I’d explode at people. Nor could I recognize when I was sad, happy, or any other emotion. One really helpful way I have found for overcoming CEN is working with a therapist who specializes in Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT). One of the main goals of EFT is to help you identify your emotions and pull them out from the dark corners of your psyche so you can learn what to do with them and how to self-regulate them. In a sense, this means learning how to parent yourself emotionally. And it’s not just about the hard emotions. Alexithymia also keeps us from fully experiencing and enjoying the positive emotions, so overcoming CEN and alexithymia has not only helped me handle the hard ones, but now I am much more able to experience and enjoy the good ones. Until I went through EFT, I’d pretty much forgotten what happiness felt like. Now, I am blessed to know what happiness is and can express joy when I feel it.
Dr. Webb offers a number of other ways to address CEN. If you can do them in therapy, so much the better, but it’s possible to work on these things even outside therapy. They include learning to self-soothe, having compassion for yourself instead of just for others, and working on self-acceptance, among other things. Also, for those who now have kids of their own, she discusses ways that we can give them what we didn’t get ourselves—how to end the generational cycle of CEN. While I’m not the expert that she is, I might suggest reading through that same chapter through the lens of “giving yourself what you never got” and learning, essentially, how to be a loving parent to your inner child.
I would encourage you, if you sense any of the effects of CEN, to look into it. Besides the mentioned above, there are now a number of online articles and videos you might find helpful (for example, here, here, and here). If you believe you did experience CEN, you have my sympathy and prayers. It was not easy to go through, nor is it easy to heal from. But I would also like to offer my encouragement. Unlike the fake hope in Hope Gap, where Jamie never really got to acknowledge his own pain, there is hope, real hope, of healing, connection with others, and getting what we never got.
About the author:
Cafea Fruor (author’s pseudonym) is a woman whose parents divorced when she was ten. The wounds from the divorce changed her from a happy, sweet girl into a snarky, sarcastic, defensive, hurting, emotionally reserved curmudgeon. Having learned to be vulnerable through years of therapy, she has softened into the much more loving, joyful, happy woman she was made to be.
Reflection Questions for Small Groups or Individuals
Do you have experience with Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN)? Have you been able to name it in your own life experience? If so, how have you worked through it?
Do you think your parent’s experienced CEN?
Did either of your parents model good emotional behavior in your home(s) growing up? If not, were there others in your life that modeled good emotional behavior for you?