Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect

The reason they had failed to notice Stuart struggling was that he’d given them no trouble growing up.

healthy AP parent is supporting her child to achieve what the child wants. An unhealthy AP parent is pressuring her child to achieve what the parent wants.

important thing to keep in mind is that while adolescents crave freedom, it is not healthy for them to get too much of it. Adolescents need a strong parent against whom they can rebel. They learn how to make good decisions and manage their impulses by bumping up against a parent’s rules and consequences.

But if there is an absence of such validation of a child’s importance to the parent, if a child is made to feel shame for wanting or needing attention from one parent or the other often enough, she will grow up being blind to many of her own emotional needs.

These emotionally neglected people most often know how to give others what they want or need

emotionally neglected people see themselves as the problem, rather than seeing their parents as having failed them.

We all have examples of how our parents have failed us here and there. No parent is perfect, and no childhood is perfect.

Self-Esteem by McKay & Fanning.

www.drjonicewebb.com

I can’t tell you how many emotionally neglected adults, when asked if they grew up feeling loved, will answer, “I always knew my parents loved me.” Knowing is not feeling, and feeling is the key here.