Childhood Emotional Neglect

In my experience, having helped many clients through many losses, one of the greatest prolongers of each of the 5 Stages is having grown up without enough emotional attention, validation and response from one’s parents: Childhood Emotional Neglect, or CEN.When your parents do not respond enough to your emotions as a child, you learn very early and well that your emotions and emotional needs are irrelevant (or even bad) and should be avoided. To adapt, you wall off your feelings and needs so that they will not burden your parents. Not surprisingly, when you are living with your feelings blocked off, it throws major obstacles into your path through the 5 Stages.How Childhood Emotional Neglect Blocks the 5 Stages of Grief
Makes it Hard to Move Past Denial: It’s only a short jump from denying one’s feelings to using denial as a general coping mechanism. It’s easy for a CEN person who has lost a loved one to end up prolonging his grief by refusing to feel the painful feelings that need to be accepted and processed. Alex, who stays busy to avoid his sadness and loss is a perfect example of that. Over time, avoiding your feelings of loss does nothing to process them. The result: you are stuck.
You Can’t Accept or Work With Your Anger: In phase 2, your anger is there to protect you. But if anger wasn’t allowed from you in your childhood home, you may have great difficulty allowing yourself to be angry as a grieving adult. You may be at risk of instead turn your anger inward at yourself, compounding your feeling of loss with even more pain.
Difficulty Accepting Help and Support: CEN makes you feel guilty or weak for having normal emotional needs. It’s hard for you to ask for help or accept comfort from others even in the best of times. When you’re grieving, there are few things that can help more than the love and support of someone who cares about you.
Depression Phase is Prolonged: With your emotions walled off, your anger directed at yourself, and the people most able to support you kept at bay, you are at great risk for getting stuck in a depression that won’t let go. How can Joanne move forward to the next phase, accept the painful reality of her loss and heal from it when her brain chemicals are thrown out of balance by depression?
Open up and talk to someone who can give you comfort. Ask for support and accept it. It will help.
Make a point to feel your feelings of grief, even if only for a brief period every day. Think about the one you’ve lost, and cry if you need to.
Pay attention to whether you are stuck in anger or depression. Might an anti-depressant give you a kick-start to deal with the genuine sad feelings that are waiting to be processed? Consult a professional, if needed.
Start addressing your Childhood Emotional Neglect. It’s important to begin to feel all of your feelings, not just your grief. Just as your grief is blocked in some way, so also is your joy. You need to feel all of your emotions in order to heal and move forward.

The whole point of the 5 Stages is to move through them. Experiencing one phase, allowing yourself to be in it and face it prepares you to move to the next phase. Moving through the phases allows your brain to process the reality, preparing you for acceptance. Acceptance must happen before you can turn your attention forward to rebuilding yourself and your life.If this is you, it’s important to re-direct and focus yourself.4 Ways to Manage Your CEN Through GriefWhen you are grieving something, it’s crucial to acknowledge that you only feel grief when you had something great to begin with. So a part of your grief must be appreciation and gratefulness for what you had.

Relief and Resolve

There is always something on TV to scare us. Hysterical articles in the media sell papers and attract eyeballs to websites, but usually exaggerate facts. If you listen without evaluating what you’re being told, it’s easy to become frightened. There’s a reason why I don’t usually waste time and energy on panic and drama.
I see the negative results of panic every day. People get upset, they’re afraid of emotional consequences and they overreact, which can actually create the consequences they fear.
Panic is an overreaction to a real (or even imagined) problem. Frightening yourself beyond the real need to deal with a problem puts your body into fight or flight mode as though your life were immediately threatened.

Emotional panic can create a shutdown of feelings, so you’re in a state of shock. You cannot think clearly, make good responses or decisions. In panic, we do not retain information, absorb what we hear or accurately assess the situation. Panic is the worst thing you can do in a real emergency, and if the situation is not dire, panic will make it worse.
Panic is a natural startle reaction that gets exaggerated and becomes prolonged. People often learn to panic because, in early childhood, panic can get us out of responsibilities. Freaking out, crying, throwing temper tantrums, or shutting down are all panic responses small children use which cause some competent adult to take over and become the hero.
This can be okay once in a while, but as this pattern repeats, it becomes rescuing and codependency. Panic creates drama, unnecessary and damaging exaggeration of the problem, which leads to dysfunctional responses and overblown family drama.

Resolve Your Anxiety Today
To learn to let go, you may find these few steps can help resolve your fear and anxiety.


1. Learn to recognize the signs of your own panic.
If you feel the telltale signs of panic, which include a racing or pounding heartbeat, flushing of the face or body and mental confusion, you are in a state of panic. If you are shouting, saying unreasonable things, or just saying whatever comes out of your mouth, without thinking about consequences, you are also in a state of panic.


2. Take some deep breaths.
Deep breathing will calm your body and burn off the adrenaline that’s been released in the panic. Slow down, count to ten and focus on thinking clearly and factually rather than reacting emotionally.
If you don’t understand how to do deep breathing, you can learn how to do a deep breathing exercise here.


3. Take responsibility to figure out what you’re afraid of.
Unless you’re in immediate, direct danger, what’s scaring or upsetting you is probably not as urgent as you think. Make a list of what you’re afraid of that help you move beyond free-floating anxiety and you will begin to think more clearly.


4. Check the facts.
Is what’s on the news really true? Do we have an epidemic, or only 11 confirmed cases in Calfornia? Does the source you’re listening to have something to gain by putting you in a panic? Are they trying to sell you something, get federal funding, or get elected? Are you reacting to someone else’s panic? Get some facts about whatever is frightening you. Is there a real, immediate threat or is it just wise to be cautious? Is your partner actually going to abandon you, or is he or she just angry about something?


5. Make a decision and take some action tackling each fear.
If it’s a health fear, perhaps better hygiene or a talk with your doctor will resolve it. If it’s a relationship fear, finding out what your partner is really thinking, instead of guessing, will probably make more sense.


Get a flu shot, go for relationship therapy or have a good talk with your partner or family member.


6. Sell yourself on a positive outcome.
Think of all the possible great outcomes of the changes you’re making. Consider what you will learn, and how much better your life and relationships will be without the panic.
With a calmer outlook, you’ll be able to make better decisions and create a more successful outcome. I wish you peace, within yourself, within your family, within the world.