I wonder how many caregivers are victims of childhood emotional neglect from one or both parents?

Unlike some mothers, my mother actually told me that she knew that she did not meet my emotional needs as a child when I was almost 30 and claimed she would do better with future grandchildren which she didn't.

To help me deal with all of this, I'm reading the book, Running on Empty Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect.

I just finished reading chapter two which describes 12 different types of parents. The last one is a parent who was a CEN themselves. The author says many parents are a combination of a few with one being dominate.

What I see in my mom is traits of a Narcissistic Parent for she did not see my as a separate person with my own emotions and ideas. I lost my dad through her abandoning him and divorcing him. She did not handle things well, ran him down constantly and was not in tune with my grief over the divorce which led me to stop eating at age 4. I was put in a hospital to get me to eat once again. I really wished the author had written more about how the children of divorce sometimes become CENs.

Yep, my mom became an addicted to alcohol parent when she got married again 8 years later. I'll leave that to your imagination of how that was like. The last type that I see some of my mother in is the child as parent type mother. I would include in that section, the parent who makes their child their emotional partner which was true of me particularly when she was single and that continued on after she got married again. It was so bad that in my senior year of high school I got very angry and told her to let go of me for she was married now. Mom always called me her little man.

Also, I am not sure that her parents met her emotional needs, but that is not her overall category that I see her in. I see her in the Narcissistic category.

Like my mom told me when I was almost 30, she knew that she raised me in a way that would cause me a lot of pain but she could not help it. I was in too much pain at the time to really hear her.

Not meeting one's emotional needs. Like invalidating one's emotions and ideas. Being treated as an extension of your parents and not as an individual. Being forced into some rigid mold that fit their rigid rules. Or like not providing any structure to one's life by being entirely permissive.

This often produces in a child.

Feelings of emptiness.

Fear of being dependent.

Unrealistic self-appraisal.

No compassion for yourself, plenty for others.

Guilt, shame, self-directed anger, and blame.

Feeling fatally flawed.

Difficulty feeling, identifying, managing and/or expressing emotions.

There is a free online emotional neglect questionnaire that can help you see if you are such a person.

drjonicewebb dot com / cen qustionnaire

13/22 I guess that puts me in the “CEN” category.

Interesting. I’ve never really looked at it - my relationship with my mother - from this perspective.

Emotional neglect and abuse, some of the abuse sexual, all from the parent I now take care of. Long-term fallout for me; impunity for her. She no longer remembers any of it, which is just as well.

Neglect, specifically?

I did not know that exist. I guess I fall on that category CNE. mentally and physically..