Childhood Emotional Neglect

We tend to think of trauma as obvious, with visible symptoms that our clients can readily trace back to specific, painful occurrences. But what about the clients who can’t make that connection? The ones who say, “I feel empty, but I can’t put my finger on why”? The ones who clearly carry some deep wound, but insist they were never traumatized?

Not all clients wear their trauma on their sleeve. Under the surface of a seemingly full and fulfilling life, they may be quietly dogged by a persistent sense of detachment, emptiness, or lack of feeling at all—and when you begin to explore that void, asking careful questions and using your most trusted-evidence based tools, you may come up short again and again.

“What do you feel?” you might ask. “Where do you feel it?” But the answer is always the same: “I don’t know.” It’s not coming from a place of resistance or evasion, but genuine bewilderment. Now, you’re stuck. How do you work with something your client can’t even name? How do you treat a problem with no discernable origin?

According to psychologist Jonice Webb, author of the bestselling books Running on Empty and Running on Empty No More, this is a sign of an especially stealthy, insidious form of trauma known as childhood emotional neglect (CEN). With more than 30 years of clinical experience, Webb is nothing short of an expert when it comes to CEN. Her work has been featured in The Washington Post, Buzzfeed, NPR, and CBS News, to name a few, and she’s been interviewed on more than 30 different podcasts and radio shows. She also created the first and only online CEN Recovery Program, as well as the CEN Questionnaire, which clinicians can use to identify it.

Identifying and treating CEN requires we think differently about trauma, Webb argues. To find out how, I recently reached out to Webb for an interview.

Ryan Howes: How did you come to focus on childhood emotional neglect in your work?

Jonice Webb: In 2008, I started to notice a pattern of struggles in some of my clients that I couldn’t find a description or explanation for. I suspected it might have to do with some kind of trauma from childhood, but looking closely, I realized it wasn’t anything that happened to these people, it was something that failed to happen to them. Their parents ignored their feelings, and no matter what their diagnosis, they shared a common lack of connection with their own emotions that held them back. Eventually, I understood that the reason I could see this so clearly was because it’s the way I’d grown up myself.

At the time, the term childhood emotional neglect wasn’t common. Emotional neglect was mentioned in research, but it was always paired with abuse that felt real because you could see and remember it. Neglect just feels like nothing. When it happens to kids, they don’t remember it, they’re not aware of it.

RH: It’s hard to point to an absence, right?

Webb: Yeah, our brains aren’t set up to register things that don’t happen; we notice and register things that do. It leaves a lot of people wondering, Why am I different than other people? What is wrong with me?

RH: You mentioned that some of this was personal.

Webb: It was, and that’s probably what made me so curious about it. Although I thought I was researching my clients, I was really researching myself. In processing it for myself, I’ve been able to outline what people need to get past this.

RH: Let’s talk about how this presents first. What do you actually see when a CEN client is sitting across from you?

Webb: The clients who stand out seem disconnected from themselves, aren’t advocating for themselves, don’t protect themselves. If you ask them, “How do you feel about this?” or “What did you feel when you did that?” they’ll answer with a thought, not a feeling. That’s a sign of emotional neglect. Often, people who are disconnected from their emotions aren’t even aware that a “feeling world” exists. Even though they’re living in a world of feelings, they’re not present in it within themselves. It leaves them feeling different, like something’s missing inside them.

They don’t usually have a vocabulary to say, “I feel empty.” Instead, they’ll say, “I feel like I’m living in a black-and-white world, and everyone else is living in color,” or “I feel like I’m watching myself in a movie of my life, but I’m not really living it.” One guy said, “I went through my wedding, and I knew I was happy, but I couldn’t feel happy, and it was horrible.”

In fact, a lot of CEN clients with marriage problems report a lack of intimacy because they’re not able to connect to their partner.

RH: Are they blaming themselves for the deficits?

Webb: That happens a lot. It goes back to not having any explanation for what’s wrong with them. A lot of people with emotional neglect feel like their childhoods were pretty good, or they simply can’t see what their parents were not doing for them.

RH: They say, “I wasn’t abused, and we always had food on the table.” They can point to the big hallmarks of a decent childhood, but they can’t point out what was missing.

Webb: When there’s no explanation, you feel like you’re inherently damaged. That’s a recipe for self-blame and guilt. You think, “Other people are healthier than me. I’m not as likable as they are.” It’s a setup for a lot of self-doubt. CEN clients often question whether they’re even allowed to have feelings and needs. They have the least amount of self-compassion of anyone I’ve worked with.

RH: I would imagine that many CEN clients resist throwing their parents under the bus.

Webb: Yes, so many CEN people defend their parents because they feel like their parents did a good enough job, and they’re in the habit of blaming themselves. Then, when they eventually come to see the bigger picture of their childhood, I go back to their childhood and walk them through what defines emotional neglect, and they feel immense relief.

I had one client who had lost two friends to suicide when he was an adolescent, and he had to go to the funerals by himself. His parents didn’t go with him, and when I pointed out, “That’s not okay, that’s not what a parent should do,” he was surprised.

RH: How is working with CEN different from working with someone who reports abuse?

Webb: With abuse, we usually know what happened. But if losses occurred and the client wasn’t receiving compassion or support in experiencing their emotions, that’s harder to tease out. People who don’t believe they deserve more find it hard to accept that emotional validation and education in childhood matters.

RH: You talk about filling the emotional tank. How does one go about doing that?

Webb: Therapists get caught up in treating clients’ emotions as something to learn to tolerate and manage, but in this case, you can shift to a different paradigm where you teach clients to view their feelings as a resource. Every feeling you have is a message from your body telling you something important, and you can pay attention to it and understand what those messages are. This gives your cerebral cortex a chance to process the valuable information your limbic system sends you. It’s a gateway to your true inner self. If a client’s awareness of what they’re feeling grows, and they start to understand and use those feelings, their lives begin unfolding differently.

A lot of CEN people say, “I don’t have feelings,” because they really believe they don’t, I usually start by having my clients keep a running log through the day of their feelings as they come. I’ll ask some people to write down a feeling that they’ve had that day, and then bring it in, and talk about it. Some may need to sit down, close their eyes, and ask themselves what they’re feeling for something to surface.

RH: Therapy is a place that welcomes emotions, which may be markedly different from the childhood environments CEN clients grew up in. Does therapy itself become a “corrective emotional experience?”

Webb: Yes. Instead of ignoring their feelings, you’re asking for and honoring them. “Are you having a feeling now? Let’s talk about it. I see you having a feeling. Let’s deal with it. Let’s make room for it.”

You help them understand what the feeling means, which is the corrective part. And you preempt any tendency for them to become too dependent on you by teaching them how to process feelings themselves. You also teach them feeling management, which involves expressing feelings to other people.

Sometimes they have to learn the principles of assertiveness, and how to speak up for and express themselves, and then how to put all that together in being with people.

RH: Do you find that CEN clients get excited about this process and the growth that comes with it, or is it scary for them?

Webb: That’s a great question. My book has been out for nearly 15 years, so a lot of people come to me saying, “I read your book already, and I know I want help with this.” But if you’re seeing this pattern in your clients, and you try to bring it up, it’s often much more difficult.

Some people are relieved when you give them an explanation of CEN and will immediately start talking with you about it. Others might resist it, leave treatment, come back after it percolates, do a little bit of work, then reach a point where they can’t do it anymore and leave treatment again. But because this work helps people come alive, and is so transfomative, they often come back even after all that.

RH: When you see someone who has successfully navigated much of their CEN and they’re coming alive, what do you notice that’s different in them?

Webb: They might sit differently in my office. Instead of taking up a little bit of room, and hiding themselves, they’ll be more sprawled out, talk more loudly, make better eye contact, be more assertive. There’s a feeling of authenticity about them that was missing before. You see more of who they are, and you feel more who they are.

RH: They’re present, maybe for the first time.

Webb: Exactly, because their emotional self that was buried all that time has started emerging. I don’t want to make it seem like it’s a seamless process, or an easy process. It’s not. It’s work, and people can do it at different speeds. Often, you see the change happen gradually over time.

RH: What message would you like to share with clinicians about CEN?

Webb: Think of your clients’ feelings as beneficial, valuable, and important, and teach your clients to pay attention to what they’re feeling. Watch for people who seem unaware of their feelings, and when you see that, consider calling it out, and helping them name it.

CEN clients may have gone through their lives feeling defective or damaged. When they can name what’s been happening, they realize, “Wait, I’m not damaged. There’s something I didn’t get in childhood, and I can get it now.”