9 Facts You Need To Know About Childhood Emotional Neglect
This blog covers:
9 important facts about CEN
Resources to heal from CEN
Even though Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN) leaves no visible wounds, the IMPACT it has is still felt well beyond childhood.
And the impact can be debilitating, affecting all aspects of your life.
In other words: It’s a BIG DEAL!
It’s also something that many people experience…without even knowing it!
Here are 9 Facts about CEN to help you recognize and understand the experience - and yourself - better.
After all, the more you understand yourself the more you can help yourself.
9 Facts about Childhood Emotional Neglect
Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN) is caused by a parent consistently failing to meet their child’s emotional needs.
It’s not about being a perfect parent and always meeting your child’s emotional needs (which - FYI - is downright impossible to do). It’s about meeting their needs some of the time (research shows that 30% is “good enough” to foster secure attachment!) throughout their childhood. So that moment yesterday when you lost your cool with your toddler, or the rough week you had with your teen? It’s OK - really. You didn’t mess up your child for life because CEN isn’t caused by a single difficult parenting moment, or even a rough patch. Rather it’s the chronic experience of not meeting their needs that can cause lasting harm.
CEN is caused by the absence of critical life experiences during childhood that are fundamental for healthy development.
Even though every child is different, every child has the same core emotional needs that must be sufficiently met in order to be securely attached to their parent and mature emotionally. Without these critical experiences, attachment is compromised and emotionally maturity is limited, which can lead to lifelong struggles personally, professionally, and relationally.
CEN often happens unintentionally, even in the most loving homes.
This is a BIG reason why CEN goes undetected by both the parent and the child, generation after generation! There are many reasons why this occurs, one being that our society still primarily operates on outdated information about child and brain development. Another reason is because we often parent our child the same way we were parented since it’s what we know; it’s familiar territory. Plus, it can be incredibly difficult to go against the (family) grain, especially if we rely on our family system for support in raising our child. Parenting is already a hard job, and it’s even harder if you’re doing it all alone. So many people choose to remain connected to family members, and subsequently unhealthy generational patterns, to avoid feeling even more alone.
Regardless of how CEN shows up in a particular family, the impact remains the same: self-abandonment.
CEN robs us of emotional safety, which is equally important as physical safety when it comes to survival. Feeling physically safe but emotionally unsafe is a threat that activates our automatic survival response, which steps in and creates safety by distancing us from the unresolved, painful emotions and emotional experiences caused by CEN. Disconnecting from the self, or self-abandonment, is the only viable option for a child because disconnecting from a parent at this time is detrimental to their survival. While self-abandonment “works” in the short term, it has long term implications.
Most people do not realize that they experienced CEN until after they reach adulthood.
Adaptation is a child’s greatest survival strategy as it allows them to normalize unhealthy patterns they experience in childhood to the point where they stop trying to protest and change it. Even though children often have a sense that things at home are “off” or “not right”, they’re typically unaware of just how abnormal or dysfunctional their experience is until they grow older and observe differences in how others operate. This awareness can be further delayed if they are surrounded by relationships that function in similarly dysfunctional ways, which - unfortunately - is very common in our society.
Most people who experienced CEN tend to blame themselves for their struggles and shortcomings.
Because CEN is the result of an absence of critical life experiences growing up, there are no concrete memories formed to look back on and pinpoint as a source to present day struggles. Who else, then, is there to blame…but themself? For example, many of the clients I work with were never taught how to set boundaries growing up or create structure in their day, yet they blame themself for not being able to do this as an adult.
The impact of CEN is a big contributor to other struggles that can then become the primary focus of treatment.
Experiencing CEN growing up often leads to other struggles, such as anxiety, depression, alexithymia, post-traumatic stress disorder, low self-confidence, emotional dysregulation, eating disorders, relationship difficulties - the list goes on! As a result, we tend to spend all our energy addressing these concerns only. This makes it more likely that CEN - the root cause of these struggles - continues to go undetected…and untreated.
The symptoms of CEN are NOT YOUR FAULT; there is nothing wrong with you.
The symptoms you now struggle with are the byproduct of not getting your emotional needs met in childhood. In other words, your brain and nervous system did exactly what it was supposed to do to help you survive. For example, being a people-pleaser likely helped you survive by decreasing rejection by a parent, which would have been intolerable to cope with. The key is understanding that these symptoms, such as people-pleasing, are learned coping strategies born out of necessity, not choice.
CEN is both treatable AND preventable.
Because CEN is the result of not having certain life experiences that are necessary for healthy attachment and development, you can learn to provide these experiences for yourself as an adult through reparenting your inner child. Plus, if you’re a parent, or thinking of becoming one, you can take these same lessons and skills to stop the cycle of CEN in your own family. Most importantly, it’s NEVER TOO LATE to heal and do this work.
Conclusion
CEN is one of the most common but undetected forms of trauma that exists in our society. Knowing more about what it is and how it can impact people’s lives - perhaps your own life - is necessary in order to recognize it, heal from it, and prevent it. If you’re wanting to learn more about CEN, check out this blog where I cover everything you need to know about it, and you can download a FREE QUESTIONNAIRE to help you figure out if you experienced this yourself.
Healing from CEN is a process, but it’s 100% doable. AND you don’t have to go through it alone! I provide individual, couple, parent, and family therapy & coaching + an online support group to help you get the support, info and tools you need to heal and live with intention and authenticity. Contact me at katie@connecttherapymn.com or schedule a free consult with me to get your healing started on the right track.
Hi! I’m so glad you’re here!
I’m Katie Egge, a Minnesota-based therapist and coach who’s passionate about providing the support, resources, and tools that people need to heal from and prevent Childhood Emotional Neglect.
*Want to feel less alone and have the support of others who just “get it” and are motivated to learn and heal after experiencing CEN? The next 8-week CEN Support Group starts October 1st!
Schedule a free consult with me to learn more and register now as spaces are limited!