September 27, 2024 • 50 mins
In this episode, Jonice Webb defines and discusses how to overcome childhood emotional neglect (CEN). She brings a wealth of knowledge and insight into the complexities of emotional neglect, offering practical strategies for healing and growth. Her work provides valuable guidance for individuals navigating their healing journey and empowers them to cultivate greater emotional awareness and healthier connections with people in their lives.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Understand emotional neglect and notice the subtle signs of it in your life
- Discover how to heal childhood emotional neglect and nurture your inner child for a happier, more fulfilling life
- Enhance your emotional intelligence for more meaningful connections with others
- Explore effective self-soothing techniques to bring about calm and comfort in times of emotional distress
- Learn actionable steps to strengthen the emotional bonds for more nurturing and supportive relationships
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's that attacking voice that can really get you into
trouble and stap your energy. But when you talk to
yourself with encouragement and compassion instead, it really can turn
things around.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
(00:39):
have instead of what we do. We think things that
hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
(01:13):
for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Janice Webb,
the pioneer of childhood emotional neglect awareness. She's a licensed
psychologist and has enriched and kindled discussion of this overlooked
and under addressed topic by writing the first self help
book dedicated to cean recovery entitled Running on Empty Overcome
(01:33):
Your Childhood Emotional Neglect. Janis also continues to inspire thousands
of people on her weekly blog on Psychicentral dot com
and her work as an expert partner on your Tango
dot com. She's been interviewed about childhood emotional neglect on
NPR at over thirty radio shows across the US and Canada.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Hijanie, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Hi, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
I am happy to have you on. We're going to
be discussing your book, Running on Empty Overcome Your Childhood
Emotional Neglect. And this is a topic. I'm going to
take a wager that nearly everybody who likes the One
You Feed podcast has some degree of this, that's my guess.
But you're going to talk to us about a question
era where people can learn that. But I think a
(02:19):
lot of our listeners are going to resonate with this.
But before we get into that, let's start like we
always do with the parable. In the Parable, there's a
grandparent who says to their grandchild, there's two wolves inside
of us that are always at battle. One is a
good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love,
and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things
like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops
(02:42):
and thinks about it for a second and looks up
at their grandparent and says, well, which one wins, And
the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like
to start off by asking you what that parable means
to you and your life and in the work that
you do.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yeah. Well, I really like this parable, partly because it
conveys a really really important thing, which is that it
basically suggests that we all choose who we are and
we choose who we become. And I think that's something
It's impossible to live your entire life and never really
feel that power that you have to shape yourself. Because
(03:16):
the world throws things at us and we have to
deal with them. We don't have control over what the
world throws at us, but what we do have control
over is our internal world, and how we respond to
those things is what really determines who we are as
a person. And in terms of the bad wolf, through
the lens of psychology and I work in childhood emotional neglect,
(03:40):
I would say the bad wolf is just a natural
human part of us all because there's not a human
alive who hasn't felt all of those things and much
more that they're not proud of. Since we can't choose
our feelings, we're not at fault for feeling that way,
but we are responsible for what we do with those feelings,
and we run from them, that wolf will keep chasing us.
(04:02):
But if we turn around and face it and let
ourselves consider the fact that we're feeling greed, we're hatred,
and kind of process with our brains what our body
is sending us, that's our best chance to become the
best person.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
There's a lot of things you said in there that
I could run with, but I'm going to run with
what you said near the end, which is it's not
our fault how we feel, but we are responsible for it.
And I think that's a great way for us to
lead into talking about childhood emotional neglect. And I wanted
to find what that is a little bit more deeply
(04:38):
in a moment. But that's kind of the premise of
your book, is Hey, a lot of things happened or
didn't happen often would be the case as you were
growing up that have influenced the way you react to
the world, so you're not at fault for what happened
to you when you were a child and how you
were parented, but you are responsible for healing any of
(05:02):
that that needs healed. Do you want to elaborate on
that a little bit.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yes, Absolutely, A lot of children grow up in households
that really don't teach them that it's okay to have
the bad wolf, or that it's human or even either wolf.
You know, there are a lot of families that discourage
positive feelings and have low tolerance or pretend negative feelings
don't exist, and I call that childhood emotional neglect. It's
(05:30):
basically just if your parents don't respond enough to your
feelings as they reas you, and if you grow up
in a household that's not really attentive or responsive to
your feelings, you basically learn that your feelings are something
to be ashamed of or to hide org nor because
at best they're useless.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Right.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
But it's when we don't pay attention and we try
not to have feelings or we feel ashamed of our
feelings that really can interfere with your adult life, and
you know, you end up running from your actual internal
self instead of owning who you are, owning those feelings
and dealing with them.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
So we've become a lot more trauma informed as a
culture these days. Right, we talk more about trauma. We
recognize that trauma is very destructive. We've always known and
most people have known, like, if you're abused as a child,
you're going to have some impact from that. But I
think what a lot of people do, and I was
in this boat for a long time, is we sort
(06:33):
of look at our childhood and go, well, I don't
think I was abused, like nobody was beating me, or
you know, I wasn't sexually abused, and so thus we
conclude that, hey, you know, my childhood was fine, happy childhood,
good childhood. Move on. And what you're talking about is
that there are much more subtle layers of neglect that
(06:57):
often happen, and not even like you know, when we
say neglect, we don't mean like you were left on
your own defend for your own food, right, We're talking
about emotional neglect, but that it's often a lot more subtle,
and that people who may look back and go, I
had a good, happy childhood, everything was provided for, may
still have had some developmental needs that simply weren't met.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah, and that's not something that you're going to remember,
because our brains are geared to notice and record things
that happen, and our brains are not geared to notice
what doesn't happen, especially when we're kids, and to notice
what's invisible. Basically, I always say childhood emotional neglect is
(07:40):
it's not what your first did to you. It's what
they fail to do for you. And what they failed
to do was to notice when you were sad, hurt, angry, upset, confused, nervous, afraid,
or any other feeling and respond to that enough and
name it for you and help you understand it. And
if you grew up without having enough of that emotional
(08:01):
instruction and education and response, then you end up being
confused about feelings and they're such a major part of
who you are, but you won't remember what didn't happen.
So I can't tell you how many people have said
to me, I had a really great childhood, I had
good education. I was driven to every soccer game I
wanted to go to, but I feel so empty inside.
(08:23):
I don't understand.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Yeah, you say, this is the danger of emotional neglect.
Perfectly good people, loving their child, doing their best, while
passing on accidental and visible, potentially damaging patterns to their children.
In this book, the goal is not to blame the parents.
It is only to understand our parents and how they
have affected us. And I think anybody reading this book
who is both a child, which would be everyone because
(08:47):
we've all been children, and is also a parent is
going to have a couple of kind of interesting reactions
to this. If you're both those things. You know, if
you're a child again, which we all are, and you're
a parent, which I am, you're reading this almost through
two lenses, one of like what was my childhood like?
And then the other inevitable lens for me was like, oh, okay,
(09:09):
well my child's twenty three. What things did I do there?
Or not do there? And you know, do you think
anybody gets out of childhood without some degree of not
having emotions modeled perfectly well or some degree of this?
Speaker 1 (09:25):
I think some people do. You know, There's been research
and all kinds of writing about the good enough parent,
and really you don't need to have perfect parents to
turn out really well. You just need to have parents
who are good enough. And I think This only becomes
a problem if your parents weren't good enough at this,
(09:46):
if your parents had a blind spot in general when
it comes to emotions, then they weren't able to respond
enough and give you enough education, validation of your feelings,
And that is all it takes, even if they do
with everything else. But I think there are a lot
of parents who are good enough, and a lot of
people walking around who don't identify with this at all.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
It's interesting. We interviewed a couple times a gentleman by
the name of Rick Hanson who's written a bunch of
books about neuroscience and the brain and Buddhism, and he's
got a podcast now with his son, and it's funny
to hear his son say, like, I think my dad
did everything right. You know, he knows all this stuff,
and you know, it doesn't mean my life is easy, right.
You know, he's still a human being. And so I
(10:28):
think that what we're saying here, and I love that phrase,
the good enough parent, is that everybody's going to have
some degree of difficulty and difficult emotions in life. That's
being human. But when there's emotional neglect, there are some
particular things that show up and I don't want to
go into all the different types of parents who cause emotionalglect.
(10:51):
You've got twelve of them. It's a really great read.
I just don't think we can hit all twelve of them.
But I'd love to talk about what are some of
the symptoms of emotional neglect, What sort of things might
we notice if this has affected us.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
So, one of the biggest signs of having childhood emotional
neglect is having a lot of discomfort with feelings and
emotions in general, and confusion. And for some people this
doesn't show up until it's time to find a mate
or get married, or once you're a parent. Then you
realize you can just feel like, what is this torrent
(11:28):
that's been released on me? I don't understand what I'm
supposed to do with all these feelings. So I call
it alexithymia. It's also another word for it is low
emotional intelligence, which has nothing to do with regular intelligence.
It's really just how well you understand the world of
emotion and can deal with it in a confident, reasonably
capable way. So that's one way that plays out over
(11:51):
your adulthood. Another is quite a bit of self blame.
Self doubt, getting angry at yourself versus other people when
it's even if it's someone else's fault. So self directed anger,
self blame, self doubt is rampant, and I think that's
because if your parents aren't coaching you through mistakes enough
(12:12):
and helping you understand your feelings enough, then a lot
of kids develop this sort of harsh parental voice for
themselves and that just stays with you as you're coping technique,
but in the end it ends up doing a lot
of damage. A lot of people with childhood emotional neglect
or CN end up feeling kind of empty inside, and
(12:32):
that's because their feelings are kind of walled off, and
because your feelings are such a deeply personal, biologically built
in part of who you are, if your feelings are
walled off, you notice it. There's something missing, and that
gives people that grow up this way the sense of
being different from other people. I call it the fatal flaw,
(12:54):
where you feel like you're just kind of different and
there's something other people have that you don't have. Some
people call it emptiness, but different people have different words
for it, So those are probably the main ones.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Yeah, there's another one you listed poor self discipline.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Yes, it's kind of like a correlation between not paying
attention to children's feelings. You kind of miss when your
child needs structure or consequences or limits. So certain kinds
of emotionally neglectful parents don't really end up teaching their
children how to talk themselves through difficult situations and force
(13:31):
themselves to do things they don't want to do and
stop themselves from doing things they shouldn't do. And if
you don't learn those basic skills, they're not really basic
if you don't learn them as a child. They're only
basic if you learn them. If you don't, then you
just have to teach them to yourself as an adult.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
And this poor self discipline. You might have discipline when
it's coming from outside structure, it's just when it's sort
of you on your own, that's where it manifests. Is
that kind of the gist of it.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Yes? Absolutely. Most people with childhood emotional neglect are very functional.
A lot of them do great in life in many ways,
but they have this internal struggle where they feel like
other people can't see who I really am because I
am not what I appear to be. I'm struggling all
the time with self discipline.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
For example, Well, I am someone who definitely, I think,
suffered from emotional neglect as a child. Mom, if you're listening,
and I love you, but many listeners know this story.
I got sober at twenty four. I was a heroin addict,
so clearly I had some difficulties and it was interesting
though at that time when I got sober, it was
nineteen ninety five in Columbus, Ohio. The world was a
(14:38):
very different place, and the general theme in AA was
don't worry about why, don't blame your parents, just take
responsibility for your actions. And that actually was sufficient to
get me sober and actually kind of saved my life.
But a few years down the line, like you said,
when I realized, like, oh, I've got a marriage, it's crumbled,
(15:00):
I've got all these other things that are happening, I
sort of went, oh, all right, I need to look
into this. And that's when I sort of got exposed
to a lot of these ideas and sort of recognized,
you know, despite my parents' wonderful best efforts and their love,
there was a lot of things that didn't go well
for me, particularly when it came to emotion as a child,
(15:21):
and so I've been circling these topics for a long
long time, So I've got a lot of personal experience.
So some of my questions are going to come from
that place, and some of them are going to come
more from, you know, somebody who's maybe newer and exposed
to these ideas. But I wanted to talk a little
bit more about Did you say it's alexithenia thymia. I'm
(15:43):
terrible pronouncing things. Alexithymia, alexithymia. I've heard that described as
the inability to feel, but you're describing in a much
more broad and nuanced way than that. Can you say
a little bit more about that term, because you do
say that this might be the common denominator of people
(16:05):
who have suffered emotional neglect. So you describe some of
it as like, well, you don't really know what to
do with your emotions, But in my case, it seems
to be more not an inability to feel, but oftentimes
not a lot of it.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Not a lot of feelings. Yeah, that's one of the
primary symptoms of childhood emotional neglect. It's part of what
I call emptiness. Some people feel it as emptiness. Some
people feel it as numbness. Basically, it is because when
you're growing up receiving all kinds of subtle, usually unspoken
messages from your parents that your feelings don't matter, or
(16:43):
are unacceptable or our burden, your child brain knows just
what to do and basically walls off yep, puts all
your feelings over there so they won't bother you, they
won't bother anybody, which can get you through your childhood.
But then when you grow up, you really need to
have access to your emotions because they are really what
(17:04):
connects you to other people, tells you what things you're
passionate about, what to pursue, what to avoid, who you
enjoy being with, who you should avoid, making choices, and
if you don't have access to that really rich resource,
you're gonna notice it. You're gonna feel it, or maybe
your spouse is gonna say something's wrong here, you say
(17:26):
you love me, I don't feel it, or those kinds
of things.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
Do you notice people who have this. I'm going to
try and say the word again because alexithymia alexithymia more
than two syllables. In my old age, I've given up
on three syllable and beyond words. I get it. I
understand emotions coming out in weird places. So like, for example,
any emotional scene in like a movie or a TV
show will choke me up. And yet when it comes
(17:51):
to my own life again, I've done a lot of healing,
I'm not the person I was, but I still notice
lack of emotion in some ways. Is it common for
people who have this for those emotions to sort of
leak out in other places in different ways?
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Anytime you have emotions that have been walled off or repressed,
they will at times leak through, attach themselves to other
things and give you emotional reactions that are out of
control when you least expect it. And so a lot
of people who have wald off emotions, the times that
they do feel something is either indirectly when it's not
(18:27):
about themselves, like watching a movie or something, or when
some feeling gets so strong that it breaks through the
wall and then it's big. Usually, so you might only
have feelings about really big things. Part of my online
recovery program and what I do with people in my
office has to do with trying to reconnect with your feelings,
(18:53):
with your physical emotional feelings, and that can be done purposely.
If you choose to, you can recapture those feelings and
start processing them and using them at any time in
your life.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
One of the things that I found challenging having alexithymia
is and again I'm better than I used to be,
and I've talked about this with my depression also, which
is it's hard to work sometimes with what feels like nothing.
Like when there's strong emotion. For me, it's fairly easy
to learn to process that, to use that to understand it.
(19:49):
I feel like I'm pretty emotionally literate in that way.
What I found more challenging is working with what feels
like nothing. So some of your work talks about identifying
feelings and becoming more broadly speaking, emotionally literate, learning to
know what you're feeling, learning to express what you're feeling
all that, what's the path forward when what you're noticing
(20:13):
is a bunch of nothing.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
There's an exercise that is in my first book, Running
on Empty, which it really just like walks you through
the process of sitting down every day, focusing your attention
inward and asking yourself, what am I feeling right now,
and then really trying to tune in too, because feelings
are physical, you field them in your body, tune into
(20:35):
your body and try to identify some feeling because you're
always having feelings, it's just that you're disconnected from them
so that you're not aware of what they even are,
and you don't notice them. They're just basically non existent
for you, even though they are happening in your body.
So a lot of people will try that and they'll say,
(20:57):
I come up with nothing right, And that's fine, and
it's normal. You know when you start, you're gonna get
nothing if you keep doing it. Every time you do it,
it takes a little chip out of that wall between
yourself and your feelings because you're reaching out. You're trying
to reach through the wall and get those feelings. And
the more you reach, the more little glimmers will start
(21:18):
coming through. So it does take some work and dedication.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
I love that, and that aligns with a lot of
the things we talk about here in our Spiritual Habits
program and different things, which is this idea of little
by little, a little becomes a lot.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Right.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
So if you just keep showing up to your feelings,
even if when you show up you're like there's nothing there,
I remember when I started doing like body scan meditations
years ago. I'd be like, I got nothing here. You
tell me to feel my foot, and they're not much
happening down there. You know, the person leading the meditations
going on and on about the personality of his big toe,
(21:52):
and I'm like, what is he talking about? I still
don't know what he's talking about, to be honest with you.
That said, though, the more I did it, the more
I became aware of sensations that were in my body
that I just had not been in the habit of
paying attention to. And the more I paid attention to them,
the more they developed. So I think you're saying something
(22:13):
very similar there. Let's talk about IAAA, which is not
a retirement fund. Listeners may have heard a recent spot
we did for aa ARP. I cannot believe I'm old
enough that AARP wants to advertise on my show. We
could talk about all kinds of emotions around that, but
(22:34):
we'll stay on topic here and talk about IAAA, which
is not a retirement fund. What is it?
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Yeah, AARP sends me letters all the time, and I
really don't like that at all. Just a little comment there,
Welcome to the Yeah, so at the suggestion of one
of my readers, instead of calling the IAAA, which is
very hard to say, I call it the I triple A.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
So anyway, now I think it's about getting my car fixed,
but we're better.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
No, there's no answer. So it's basically a way to
process a feeling. It walks you through dealing with a feeling,
and the letters stand for the steps. Identify the feeling
that you're having. Accept that feeling, fully, accept it, even
if it's hatred, even if it's greed, whatever it is,
(23:24):
however ugly it is, accept it. This is how I feel.
Attribute that feeling. That's the second a. Attribute it to
a cause. So is this something from my childhood? Is
this something going on now? Is this something going on
now that's touching off some old feelings from childhood? What
is happening in my life right now that I would
be feeling this hatred? And where is it directed? Who's
(23:47):
this hatred at or what is this hatred about? That's
the attribution. And then the last step is act and
that is basically it doesn't mean you're supposed to always
act on your feelings. It just means what can I
do or what should I do with this feeling or
for this feeling. Every emotion that you get is a
message from your body. It's your body talking to you.
(24:08):
Doesn't mean your body is always right. So there are
feelings that come up that are way out of whack
because they're from the past, or they're just not telling
you something good or healthy to do. But then if
you connect with it with your brain and think about
it and consider, what is this hatred telling me to do?
Is it telling me that I need to go strike
(24:29):
out at this person and call them a name? Is
it telling me, well, no, I don't think I should
do that. Maybe it's telling me that I need to
talk to this person or write a letter or connect
it to what happened to me as a kid that
has nothing to do with this person. And maybe I'm
putting all that old stuff on them. Or do I
need to self soothe.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
Whatever it is, well, let's hang on to self soothe
because I want to get there in a minute, because
I think that's a particularly important area to talk about.
I want to talk though about attribution for a minute.
Attribution is another one of those things that can be
sort of difficult, particularly if you don't remember a lot
from your Childhood's a part of my challenge is with
(25:08):
my childhood, there's just not much back there to go like,
this is a feeling from my childhood, because I'm like, well,
I don't remember much of anything from back there. So
how much time do you spend on attribution? And at
what point to you sometimes just go I'm not quite
sure why, but it's okay, I feel this way.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
I think you should only do that if you really
just absolutely cannot figure it out. But even then, I
think you should file it away and watch for that
feeling in the future and see if you can start
to figure out you have this feeling often, For example,
why do I have this feeling so often? Because every
feeling has a reason and figuring out that reason. I mean,
(25:48):
I'm not suggesting people get obsessed with this, because of
course we're going to have feelings that come and go
that we're not able to process this way. But if
it's a strong feeling and it's bothersome, I think it
makes sense to try to figure that out as best
as you can.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
I wanted to pause for a quick good Wolf reminder.
This one's about a habit change and a mistake I
see people making and that's really that we don't think
about these new habits that we want to add in
the context of our entire life. Right, habits don't happen
in a vacuum. They have to fit in the life
that we have. So when we just keep adding I
(26:21):
should do this, I should do that, I should do this,
we get discouraged because we haven't really thought about what
we're not going to do in order to make that happen.
So it's really helpful for you to think about where
is this going to fit and what in my life
might I need to remove. If you want to step
by step guide for how you can easily build new
habits that feed your good Wolf, go to good Wolf
(26:42):
dot me, slash change and join the free masterclass. Before
we move away from Alexithemia, I wanted to hit one
other thing because you said I've observed that many people
with alexithymia have a tendency to be irritable, and ability
is one. It's probably the tendency in me I most
(27:05):
wish I didn't have. I've gotten pretty good at managing it,
but you know, my partner Ginny knows when I'm irritable.
I mean, you know, it's not like it's hidden. She
also is emotionally astute enough to know it has nothing
to do with her, and she can set it aside.
But it's still something I would love to have less of.
And I've looked around a lot for like, well, what
(27:25):
causes irritability? And so my ears kind of perked up
when I read that. And irritability is a strong family trait.
It is a very strong family trait. What do you
do with irritability? Because that's the one that when I
try and get to attribution, I just kind of go,
I got nothing here. I got nothing for why all
(27:49):
of a sudden, you making a noise, filing your fingernails
makes me want to claw my eyes out today whereas
yesterday Matt didn't really bother me. It's not constant. And
I go go back and I'm like, well, if somebody's coughing,
am I getting upset? Because my brother had asthma and
it used to scare me. And I mean, there may
be some of that, but the irritability is the one
(28:09):
that feels very difficult to attribute anywhere and feels very
difficult to work with.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yeah, So the reason I think that people with childhood
emotional neglect to end up with irritability. Some people more
on the ECTA side have more anxiety and others have
more irritability, and either way, the answer is to not
stop with naming your feeling irritability because if irritability is
a catch all trash can, it's like all of your
(28:38):
feelings have pulled together on the other side of the wall.
When they all mix together, that's what they come out as.
So if you don't let yourself use that term irritability
and instead you say, no, what are you really feeling,
because it's probably you're upset about something that day in
your current life that you're not dealing or aware of
(29:00):
the feelings that you're having, and that's what's making you irritable.
If you go beyond the word irritability, you might be
able to name well, I'm feeling frustrated that this podcast
guest canceled at the last minute picking this up, obviously,
I'm feeling worried about how I'm going to fill in
that slot in the future when that slot comes up.
(29:21):
And now I'm angry because that puts me in a
spot where I have to like, really, you know, buggle
and find somebody else so then you'll get a lot
further with it. And once you figure out what you're
actually feeling, then you can go through the action part,
like and just going through that fribeaning. Figuring out what
you're feeling and why is a really important part of
(29:44):
how to take away a feeling's power. It could make
you stop being irritable.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
I love that idea of it. You know, think you
know it is a trash can. I think the other
trash can feeling for me is tired. Sometimes it is tired, right,
I mean, sometimes it's legitimate, that's a zeological thing. But
I think sometimes there's maybe more under there. I want
to dig a little deeper into this. Feelings always have
a cause. Thing I've read about and talked about people
(30:11):
who are considered like highly sensitive, like their nervous system
is tuned in such a way that sound it is
hard for them to tune out and can cause irritability.
And you know, I've often sort of thought of myself
as that's one of the things that defines me, is
that I'll be in a room and there'll be background
noise and other people will just be carrying on and
(30:31):
I'm like, there's a buzzing up there that is difficult
to tune out. So those things seem neurological almost or
physiological more than emotional. Do you think that there are
emotions that are driven from neurological or physiological or physical
causes that are not necessarily attributed to events in your
(30:52):
life and things that are happening or happened.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
I wouldn't really go about thinking about it quite in
that way. Okay, So let's take the ausing microphone as
an example. I wouldn't call that irritability. If you are
in a room full of people and people are talking
and everyone seems fine, but you are really bothered by
that microphone. That is a physiological response that you have
(31:15):
because of the way you're wired, way your nervous system
is wired, and it's perfectly legitimate. It's how you're built.
And I don't think there's anything you can really do
about that. It's not a matter of processing a feeling.
You can't do anything except act, which is what do
I do about this? I can't focus on anything. Instead
of letting yourself get irritated about it, you could say,
(31:40):
what am I going to do to cope with this?
Is there something I can do? Maybe I can ask
them to turn that microphone down, maybe I can unplug something.
Maybe I'm just not going to be able to stay
in this room. But it doesn't have to become irritability
if you understand what's going on and just deal with
it in the best way you can.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
And so if what comes out of that is irritability
or frustration, then it is attributable in that case, right,
I can say, there's this thing happening, it's grading on me.
I don't have the ability to turn it off, so
I'm feeling frustrated. Yes, and now I can attribute it
is what you're basically saying. I think that's helpful. All right,
(32:19):
So let's move to self soothing. I've interviewed a lot
of people for this show. When I look at psychological responses,
the literature out there, the different approaches that are out there,
and I see this in both psychology and spirituality, I
see a cognitive approach and I see an emotional approach.
I see on one hand, people saying, hey, look you've
(32:42):
got these feelings. Those are coming from thoughts, and if
you change your thoughts, you'll change your feelings. And then
there's another approach more bottom up. Start with what your
feelings are, allow those feelings to be there, and oftentimes
the emotion is causing the thought. How do you think
about that?
Speaker 1 (33:00):
I don't think it can be nailed down to an
either or thing because I see it going both ways.
I think you can get yourself very upset about something
by continually cranking on it in your head. You know,
you can increase your feelings that way. You can also
manage your feelings by involving your head. It can go
(33:21):
both ways, and I don't think it makes sense to
address it from just one direction for most people. I
think most people need to deal with the emotional part
and the cognitive part together.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
And which of those you do first might just depend
on the situation and what works for you.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
I really believe in starting with the feelings because we're
much more comfortable with our thoughts in general, because we
can control them much better. They're more understandable, we can
put our thoughts into words much better. Feelings are a
lot more mysterious, and we get the sense that they
just come, and so we feel like we have no
power over them. But that's what makes some so powerful.
(34:01):
We've got the cart before the horse. I think when
we start from the cognitive so much. And so that's
why I really encourage people to start with the feeling
part and start working out your feelings. Pay attention to
your feelings, apply your brain to your feelings, and that's
what's going to make the biggest impact on your life
and who you are.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
And so as I look at the I triple A process, right,
I think the second A attribute is when I start
to bring in at least some degree of cognitive because
I'm trying to figure out where is this coming from,
what caused it? Right at that point, I am slightly
cognitive because I'm trying to make a connection. I know
what the feeling is. It's anger. I've identified it, I've
(34:42):
accepted it. Maybe I'm even feeling it in my body
and becoming more familiar with it. Now I'm moving into
something more cognitive. Would you agree with that?
Speaker 1 (34:51):
I would call it engaging your brain.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Yes, okay, okay, say so yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Even this first step of identifying what you're feeling requires
your as well, because you're putting words to what you're feeling.
And if you cannot stop at the big words like
I'm angry, I'm sad, I'm anxious, I'm irritable. If you
cannot stop at those big umbrella words and instead try
to drill down and name it more specifically, anger can
(35:18):
become helplessness and hurt and all kinds of things.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
So let's talk about self soothing because one of the
things I've noticed for sure in myself and others is
that if the emotional stole is really strong, you're not
going to be able to cognitively work with anything right.
You're overwhelmed by it. So I assume self soothing is
the ability to at least turn that down enough that
(36:12):
you can work with your emotions more skillfully. How would
you describe what self soothing is?
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Self soothing to me is having a series of things
that you can choose to do that will basically what
you said, start giving you more control over what you're feeling,
a series of healthy things. So different things might work
in different situations, but the whole I TRIPLEA is part
of self soothing because it requires you to actually sit
(36:41):
with your feeling and process it. And that's the single
most powerful thing you can do to take control of
the feeling. But sometimes even that doesn't do the trick,
and you need more, And so I really encourage every
human being to have a list of things that they
know helps them feel better. It could be laying down
with your pet and petting your pet. It could be
(37:04):
taking a walk outside, looking up at the sky, you know,
calling a friend, or going to visit your favorite store,
as long as you don't overspend while you're there for example, cooking, cleaning.
You know, it's different for everybody.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
I love that idea, and I've talked about it before,
having this sense of like knowing what things have worked
for me in the past and having them written down
because the problem that I've experienced is in the moment,
if I look at any of those things, I go,
that's not going to help, are you kidding?
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Me?
Speaker 3 (37:38):
Like a walk, so I just need sort of like
just do it. You know. The other example I make
is I know, for me, music is very helpful in
those moments.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
That's a great one, yep.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
And yet what I also know is that, particularly if
what I'm dealing with is sort of a really low
mood or depression, if I go to my music, I'll
be like, none of it'll look like it sounds going
to be like nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, And so
what I've got is a pre made playlist of things
that I know help and so I don't have to
figure it out. I just go, all right, just turn
on the playlist, hit shuffle. One of these songs should
(38:11):
do it, you know. So I love that idea of
having sort of written down as a recovering person. I
certainly talk about this with other recovering people, and certainly
early in my recovery, which is, what are you going
to do when a craving hits? Yes, because in the moment,
the emotion, as you're saying, is so strong. Do you
have any other sort of go to self soothing tools
(38:31):
that people might consider beyond naming your emotions? And you
listed a couple other really good ones, but to any
others come to mind, I feel like giving people a
good menu is really helpful.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
Yeah. One of my favorites that I forgot to mention
is sitting down and writing. And I think you can
use your computer or your phone or whatever in type,
but I think it's best to have paper and pen
because there's something about your brain to your heart to
your hand to the paper, and then it's visually there
in your own writing. You can write a letter to
the person that you're upset with that you'll never send,
(39:02):
or you can just write down. It's called automatic writing,
when you just write right, right, right, right, right right,
everything that comes to your head. I think that's a
great coping technique.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
I got a ton of mileage out of that one
at different points in my life when I had a
lot of anger. My first marriage ended in a very
hurtful way to me. I'm not saying I didn't have
a role in why the marriage wasn't good, but I
mean I just wrote the most hateful letters. I mean,
you know, things that I'd be ashamed to say out loud,
(39:31):
but that's what was coming up. And I just would
write and write and write, and then I would just
destroy it.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
You know.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
It was so helpful to me as a way, particularly
if processing anger. That is a great one. As we're
talking about attribution, I'm going back to that for a second.
You say one way to get to the real heart
of a matter is to practice vertical questioning in addition
to horizontal questioning. Could you explain what vertical versus horizontal
(39:58):
questioning is?
Speaker 1 (40:00):
Yeah, this is a communication technique. Usually when I talk
about it, it's talking to someone else. Okay, So it's
really a good way to form or deepen a friendship
or a relationship or even with someone you just met.
So horizontal questions are about facts and details like the weather,
the traffic, things that you've done, activities you've done, and
(40:22):
vertical questions are more thought provoking questions that require a
person to focus internally a little bit and consider themselves
and maybe even consult their feelings. So instead of what
did you major in high school or college, it would
be how did you choose that for yourself? And what
is it about that that captured your passion?
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Like that?
Speaker 1 (40:45):
So really the whys that helps someone think more deeply
and that enable you to connect with them more.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
It strikes me that that's also a horizontal question in
like a conflict with someone else, and I'm just more
or less thinking out loud now. Horizontal question could be
kind of about what are the facts of what actually
happened here? And then the vertical question is how do
we both feel about it? But I often feel like
conversations with people, particularly conflict are almost diagonal, right, Those
(41:13):
two questions get mixed into the same thing, and it
can be very helpful if you can tweeze them apart
and be like, well, hang on a second, here's what
actually happened. Can we agree on that? Like, I did
not take out the trash? Okay, agreed, we both did. Like, now,
how does that make you know? How do we feel
about that? Versus combining them into the same sort of conversation.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Oh? Absolutely, especially couples do that. It just it all
gets mixed together. And consider it. Every two people has
a different perception of everything. It's really important to keep
your perceptions of the facts separate from your feelings about it.
Usually the solution lies in the feelings part.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
Yeah, we've sort of talked about healing this, and you've
said that the primary thing is to get more comfortable
and literate with my emotions, to go seek them out
and inquire more deeply into them and learn more about
them and welcome them. What else is there that we
haven't talked about that you feel like would be important
(42:13):
for healing this emotional neglect.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Well, the first step is figuring out whether this really
applies to you or not. And I think for most
people that have a significant case of emotional neglect, Like
if someone's listening to this podcast, then they feel like,
oh my gosh, this sounds like me. I think that
is a really good indicator, and that's the first step
in healing, is really owning and understanding Okay, this is
(42:39):
how I grew up, this is how it affected me.
And a great place to start that because most people
can't remember emotional neglect, so a good way to find
out whether you have it is to go to my
website and take the Emotional Neglect Questionnaire, which is just
a series of yes or no questions about your current life. Now,
So take that test and start learning everything you can
(43:02):
learn about emotional neglect. There are lots of free resources
available on my website, and you know, I think the
biggest part of heeling is about just changing your own
relationship with your own emotions and starting to view the
measure friends instead of just irrelevant or enemies, and starting
to just treat them differently and live differently with them.
(43:23):
And then once you're doing that, you start getting more
glimmers of emotions and more and more feelings, and then
you can start learning what to do with those feelings.
And that's the emotion skills that you didn't learn in childhood.
We kind of have to be having enough feelings to
apply the emotional skills to and then the final stage
is applying all of that. You have more depth, you
(43:44):
have more feelings, you have more skills, and you can
start putting all that into your relationships. When you get
to that point, people in your life start to notice
that you're actually kind of different and it's pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
Yeah, and we'll have links in the show notes to
your website and to that quiz, so listeners, you can
just click right through the show notes and get right there.
We're back on self soothing here. But you said self
talk is probably the most useful and versatile of all
self soothing strategies. So talk to me about what good
self talk looks like.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Good self talk is compassionate, but it also holds you
accountable for how you act. But basically it's encouraging and helpful,
so it can be all the way from you know,
you can do this, You absolutely can do this talking
yourself through something that you're worried or afraid of to
(44:40):
You didn't do that on purpose, you know that you didn't,
but you still have to take accountability for it and
deal with it. You know. Now you just have to
deal with the fallout of that mistake, but you didn't
choose it. It's not your fault. You know things that
are reasonable and compassionate. I think that's one of the
(45:00):
traits of CN people that I didn't mention is low
self compassion. And it's that attacking voice that can really
get you into trouble and sap your energy. But when
you talk to yourself with encouragement and compassion instead, it
really can turn things around.
Speaker 3 (45:16):
What's the difference or how do you tell when you
are giving yourself encouraging and helpful self talk and when
you're trying to sort of minimize an emotion internally. So,
for example, let's say I'm feeling afraid, I might do
some self talk about like, hey, you don't need to
(45:36):
be that frightened of this. You've handled this before. So
is it really as you said? I start with the
recognition I'm afraid. It's okay that I'm afraid. The reason
I'm afraid is this situation, and then the self talk
sort of falls into that act the final a a
little bit, which is like okay, Eric, you got this,
You're okay. You know you've been through this before. If
(45:57):
it goes that way, you can handle it. That sort
of thing. Is that where it would slot into that.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Yes, And I wouldn't call that minimizing a feeling. I
would call it managing a feeling. And there is a
big difference.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
Ah, yeah, there is. How do you know the difference?
I love the distinction. What are some ways of knowing
the difference?
Speaker 1 (46:14):
Minimizing is basically when you're trying to escape or deny
that you have a feeling. One of the factors that
plays in is whether the feeling is useful or not.
So if it's a feeling that's telling you not to
jump off a clip.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
Then pretty useful.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
Pay attention to listen to that feeling because it's if
you use your brain to process it, then you certainly
don't want to minimize that or manage it because it's
a healthy feeling, yep. But if it's an unhealthy feeling
telling you to do something that could be bad for you,
then use your brain to process it. But instead of
trying to tell yourself that that feeling isn't important or
(46:52):
you don't have it, actually take it on and say
what do I do with this feeling? What does it mean?
What should I do with it?
Speaker 3 (46:58):
How do I manage it? Sounds to me like if
I'm talking about being afraid. The difference is not you
shouldn't be afraid of that, you know, don't be scared.
It's more I'm afraid. Here's why I'm afraid, and I
can handle it. It's subtle, but it is a definite
difference in I'm allowing the feeling instead of saying you
shouldn't have that feeling and there's no reason to feel that.
(47:21):
It's I do feel it. That's okay. Here's how I'm
going to respond.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
Yes, you just said that way better than I did.
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (47:30):
Well. We're going to end with something that you said,
really really well though, and then I'll let you respond
to it. Which, when you're talking about self talk, you said,
and I love this line, remind yourself of simple honest truths,
which will help you keep things in perspective. That is
so well said, simple honest truths. So give me an
(47:50):
example of a simple honest truth or two.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Well, some we've already given. It would be you've done
this before, you can do it again, or you know
you have the skills for this, or you know you
didn't do that on purpose. Every human being makes mistakes.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
It's a good one.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
You're just a human being trying to think of different
examples for situations. You deserve this, You're worth it. Trust
yourself on this.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (48:16):
One I love also is some version of like, well,
whatever happens here, you'll be able to handle it. If
I'm fearing an outcome, I can even go well, even
if that outcome comes, okay, I can handle it. That's
one that helps me a lot, is sort of reminding
myself of my ability to cope.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
Yeah, some of those things, if they're ones that you
need to hear a lot from yourself, just turn it
into a mantra and have it right there in your
metaphorical back pocket, ready to grab out and use whenever
you need it.
Speaker 2 (48:43):
Awesome.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
I think most people need to have a mantra or two.
Speaker 3 (48:46):
They are very helpful. All right, Well, Denise, thank you
so much for coming on the show. I've really enjoyed
this conversation. I really enjoyed the book. There'll be links,
as I said in the show, notes to your website
where people can find the questionnaire or find your book
and all your other work. So thank you so much.
It's really been enjoyable.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
For me too. Thanks for having me on I've really
enjoyed it.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
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(49:43):
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Speaker 3 (50:00):
No
It's that attacking voice that can really get you into
trouble and stap your energy. But when you talk to
yourself with encouragement and compassion instead, it really can turn
things around.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
(00:39):
have instead of what we do. We think things that
hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
(01:13):
for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Janice Webb,
the pioneer of childhood emotional neglect awareness. She's a licensed
psychologist and has enriched and kindled discussion of this overlooked
and under addressed topic by writing the first self help
book dedicated to cean recovery entitled Running on Empty Overcome
(01:33):
Your Childhood Emotional Neglect. Janis also continues to inspire thousands
of people on her weekly blog on Psychicentral dot com
and her work as an expert partner on your Tango
dot com. She's been interviewed about childhood emotional neglect on
NPR at over thirty radio shows across the US and Canada.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Hijanie, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Hi, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
I am happy to have you on. We're going to
be discussing your book, Running on Empty Overcome Your Childhood
Emotional Neglect. And this is a topic. I'm going to
take a wager that nearly everybody who likes the One
You Feed podcast has some degree of this, that's my guess.
But you're going to talk to us about a question
era where people can learn that. But I think a
(02:19):
lot of our listeners are going to resonate with this.
But before we get into that, let's start like we
always do with the parable. In the Parable, there's a
grandparent who says to their grandchild, there's two wolves inside
of us that are always at battle. One is a
good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love,
and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things
like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops
(02:42):
and thinks about it for a second and looks up
at their grandparent and says, well, which one wins, And
the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like
to start off by asking you what that parable means
to you and your life and in the work that
you do.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yeah. Well, I really like this parable, partly because it
conveys a really really important thing, which is that it
basically suggests that we all choose who we are and
we choose who we become. And I think that's something
It's impossible to live your entire life and never really
feel that power that you have to shape yourself. Because
(03:16):
the world throws things at us and we have to
deal with them. We don't have control over what the
world throws at us, but what we do have control
over is our internal world, and how we respond to
those things is what really determines who we are as
a person. And in terms of the bad wolf, through
the lens of psychology and I work in childhood emotional neglect,
(03:40):
I would say the bad wolf is just a natural
human part of us all because there's not a human
alive who hasn't felt all of those things and much
more that they're not proud of. Since we can't choose
our feelings, we're not at fault for feeling that way,
but we are responsible for what we do with those feelings,
and we run from them, that wolf will keep chasing us.
(04:02):
But if we turn around and face it and let
ourselves consider the fact that we're feeling greed, we're hatred,
and kind of process with our brains what our body
is sending us, that's our best chance to become the
best person.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
There's a lot of things you said in there that
I could run with, but I'm going to run with
what you said near the end, which is it's not
our fault how we feel, but we are responsible for it.
And I think that's a great way for us to
lead into talking about childhood emotional neglect. And I wanted
to find what that is a little bit more deeply
(04:38):
in a moment. But that's kind of the premise of
your book, is Hey, a lot of things happened or
didn't happen often would be the case as you were
growing up that have influenced the way you react to
the world, so you're not at fault for what happened
to you when you were a child and how you
were parented, but you are responsible for healing any of
(05:02):
that that needs healed. Do you want to elaborate on
that a little bit.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yes, Absolutely, A lot of children grow up in households
that really don't teach them that it's okay to have
the bad wolf, or that it's human or even either wolf.
You know, there are a lot of families that discourage
positive feelings and have low tolerance or pretend negative feelings
don't exist, and I call that childhood emotional neglect. It's
(05:30):
basically just if your parents don't respond enough to your
feelings as they reas you, and if you grow up
in a household that's not really attentive or responsive to
your feelings, you basically learn that your feelings are something
to be ashamed of or to hide org nor because
at best they're useless.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Right.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
But it's when we don't pay attention and we try
not to have feelings or we feel ashamed of our
feelings that really can interfere with your adult life, and
you know, you end up running from your actual internal
self instead of owning who you are, owning those feelings
and dealing with them.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
So we've become a lot more trauma informed as a
culture these days. Right, we talk more about trauma. We
recognize that trauma is very destructive. We've always known and
most people have known, like, if you're abused as a child,
you're going to have some impact from that. But I
think what a lot of people do, and I was
in this boat for a long time, is we sort
(06:33):
of look at our childhood and go, well, I don't
think I was abused, like nobody was beating me, or
you know, I wasn't sexually abused, and so thus we
conclude that, hey, you know, my childhood was fine, happy childhood,
good childhood. Move on. And what you're talking about is
that there are much more subtle layers of neglect that
(06:57):
often happen, and not even like you know, when we
say neglect, we don't mean like you were left on
your own defend for your own food, right, We're talking
about emotional neglect, but that it's often a lot more subtle,
and that people who may look back and go, I
had a good, happy childhood, everything was provided for, may
still have had some developmental needs that simply weren't met.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah, and that's not something that you're going to remember,
because our brains are geared to notice and record things
that happen, and our brains are not geared to notice
what doesn't happen, especially when we're kids, and to notice
what's invisible. Basically, I always say childhood emotional neglect is
(07:40):
it's not what your first did to you. It's what
they fail to do for you. And what they failed
to do was to notice when you were sad, hurt, angry, upset, confused, nervous, afraid,
or any other feeling and respond to that enough and
name it for you and help you understand it. And
if you grew up without having enough of that emotional
(08:01):
instruction and education and response, then you end up being
confused about feelings and they're such a major part of
who you are, but you won't remember what didn't happen.
So I can't tell you how many people have said
to me, I had a really great childhood, I had
good education. I was driven to every soccer game I
wanted to go to, but I feel so empty inside.
(08:23):
I don't understand.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Yeah, you say, this is the danger of emotional neglect.
Perfectly good people, loving their child, doing their best, while
passing on accidental and visible, potentially damaging patterns to their children.
In this book, the goal is not to blame the parents.
It is only to understand our parents and how they
have affected us. And I think anybody reading this book
who is both a child, which would be everyone because
(08:47):
we've all been children, and is also a parent is
going to have a couple of kind of interesting reactions
to this. If you're both those things. You know, if
you're a child again, which we all are, and you're
a parent, which I am, you're reading this almost through
two lenses, one of like what was my childhood like?
And then the other inevitable lens for me was like, oh, okay,
(09:09):
well my child's twenty three. What things did I do there?
Or not do there? And you know, do you think
anybody gets out of childhood without some degree of not
having emotions modeled perfectly well or some degree of this?
Speaker 1 (09:25):
I think some people do. You know, There's been research
and all kinds of writing about the good enough parent,
and really you don't need to have perfect parents to
turn out really well. You just need to have parents
who are good enough. And I think This only becomes
a problem if your parents weren't good enough at this,
(09:46):
if your parents had a blind spot in general when
it comes to emotions, then they weren't able to respond
enough and give you enough education, validation of your feelings,
And that is all it takes, even if they do
with everything else. But I think there are a lot
of parents who are good enough, and a lot of
people walking around who don't identify with this at all.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
It's interesting. We interviewed a couple times a gentleman by
the name of Rick Hanson who's written a bunch of
books about neuroscience and the brain and Buddhism, and he's
got a podcast now with his son, and it's funny
to hear his son say, like, I think my dad
did everything right. You know, he knows all this stuff,
and you know, it doesn't mean my life is easy, right.
You know, he's still a human being. And so I
(10:28):
think that what we're saying here, and I love that phrase,
the good enough parent, is that everybody's going to have
some degree of difficulty and difficult emotions in life. That's
being human. But when there's emotional neglect, there are some
particular things that show up and I don't want to
go into all the different types of parents who cause emotionalglect.
(10:51):
You've got twelve of them. It's a really great read.
I just don't think we can hit all twelve of them.
But I'd love to talk about what are some of
the symptoms of emotional neglect, What sort of things might
we notice if this has affected us.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
So, one of the biggest signs of having childhood emotional
neglect is having a lot of discomfort with feelings and
emotions in general, and confusion. And for some people this
doesn't show up until it's time to find a mate
or get married, or once you're a parent. Then you
realize you can just feel like, what is this torrent
(11:28):
that's been released on me? I don't understand what I'm
supposed to do with all these feelings. So I call
it alexithymia. It's also another word for it is low
emotional intelligence, which has nothing to do with regular intelligence.
It's really just how well you understand the world of
emotion and can deal with it in a confident, reasonably
capable way. So that's one way that plays out over
(11:51):
your adulthood. Another is quite a bit of self blame.
Self doubt, getting angry at yourself versus other people when
it's even if it's someone else's fault. So self directed anger,
self blame, self doubt is rampant, and I think that's
because if your parents aren't coaching you through mistakes enough
(12:12):
and helping you understand your feelings enough, then a lot
of kids develop this sort of harsh parental voice for
themselves and that just stays with you as you're coping technique,
but in the end it ends up doing a lot
of damage. A lot of people with childhood emotional neglect
or CN end up feeling kind of empty inside, and
(12:32):
that's because their feelings are kind of walled off, and
because your feelings are such a deeply personal, biologically built
in part of who you are, if your feelings are
walled off, you notice it. There's something missing, and that
gives people that grow up this way the sense of
being different from other people. I call it the fatal flaw,
(12:54):
where you feel like you're just kind of different and
there's something other people have that you don't have. Some
people call it emptiness, but different people have different words
for it, So those are probably the main ones.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Yeah, there's another one you listed poor self discipline.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Yes, it's kind of like a correlation between not paying
attention to children's feelings. You kind of miss when your
child needs structure or consequences or limits. So certain kinds
of emotionally neglectful parents don't really end up teaching their
children how to talk themselves through difficult situations and force
(13:31):
themselves to do things they don't want to do and
stop themselves from doing things they shouldn't do. And if
you don't learn those basic skills, they're not really basic
if you don't learn them as a child. They're only
basic if you learn them. If you don't, then you
just have to teach them to yourself as an adult.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
And this poor self discipline. You might have discipline when
it's coming from outside structure, it's just when it's sort
of you on your own, that's where it manifests. Is
that kind of the gist of it.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Yes? Absolutely. Most people with childhood emotional neglect are very functional.
A lot of them do great in life in many ways,
but they have this internal struggle where they feel like
other people can't see who I really am because I
am not what I appear to be. I'm struggling all
the time with self discipline.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
For example, Well, I am someone who definitely, I think,
suffered from emotional neglect as a child. Mom, if you're listening,
and I love you, but many listeners know this story.
I got sober at twenty four. I was a heroin addict,
so clearly I had some difficulties and it was interesting
though at that time when I got sober, it was
nineteen ninety five in Columbus, Ohio. The world was a
(14:38):
very different place, and the general theme in AA was
don't worry about why, don't blame your parents, just take
responsibility for your actions. And that actually was sufficient to
get me sober and actually kind of saved my life.
But a few years down the line, like you said,
when I realized, like, oh, I've got a marriage, it's crumbled,
(15:00):
I've got all these other things that are happening, I
sort of went, oh, all right, I need to look
into this. And that's when I sort of got exposed
to a lot of these ideas and sort of recognized,
you know, despite my parents' wonderful best efforts and their love,
there was a lot of things that didn't go well
for me, particularly when it came to emotion as a child,
(15:21):
and so I've been circling these topics for a long
long time, So I've got a lot of personal experience.
So some of my questions are going to come from
that place, and some of them are going to come
more from, you know, somebody who's maybe newer and exposed
to these ideas. But I wanted to talk a little
bit more about Did you say it's alexithenia thymia. I'm
(15:43):
terrible pronouncing things. Alexithymia, alexithymia. I've heard that described as
the inability to feel, but you're describing in a much
more broad and nuanced way than that. Can you say
a little bit more about that term, because you do
say that this might be the common denominator of people
(16:05):
who have suffered emotional neglect. So you describe some of
it as like, well, you don't really know what to
do with your emotions, But in my case, it seems
to be more not an inability to feel, but oftentimes
not a lot of it.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Not a lot of feelings. Yeah, that's one of the
primary symptoms of childhood emotional neglect. It's part of what
I call emptiness. Some people feel it as emptiness. Some
people feel it as numbness. Basically, it is because when
you're growing up receiving all kinds of subtle, usually unspoken
messages from your parents that your feelings don't matter, or
(16:43):
are unacceptable or our burden, your child brain knows just
what to do and basically walls off yep, puts all
your feelings over there so they won't bother you, they
won't bother anybody, which can get you through your childhood.
But then when you grow up, you really need to
have access to your emotions because they are really what
(17:04):
connects you to other people, tells you what things you're
passionate about, what to pursue, what to avoid, who you
enjoy being with, who you should avoid, making choices, and
if you don't have access to that really rich resource,
you're gonna notice it. You're gonna feel it, or maybe
your spouse is gonna say something's wrong here, you say
(17:26):
you love me, I don't feel it, or those kinds
of things.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
Do you notice people who have this. I'm going to
try and say the word again because alexithymia alexithymia more
than two syllables. In my old age, I've given up
on three syllable and beyond words. I get it. I
understand emotions coming out in weird places. So like, for example,
any emotional scene in like a movie or a TV
show will choke me up. And yet when it comes
(17:51):
to my own life again, I've done a lot of healing,
I'm not the person I was, but I still notice
lack of emotion in some ways. Is it common for
people who have this for those emotions to sort of
leak out in other places in different ways?
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Anytime you have emotions that have been walled off or repressed,
they will at times leak through, attach themselves to other
things and give you emotional reactions that are out of
control when you least expect it. And so a lot
of people who have wald off emotions, the times that
they do feel something is either indirectly when it's not
(18:27):
about themselves, like watching a movie or something, or when
some feeling gets so strong that it breaks through the
wall and then it's big. Usually, so you might only
have feelings about really big things. Part of my online
recovery program and what I do with people in my
office has to do with trying to reconnect with your feelings,
(18:53):
with your physical emotional feelings, and that can be done purposely.
If you choose to, you can recapture those feelings and
start processing them and using them at any time in
your life.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
One of the things that I found challenging having alexithymia
is and again I'm better than I used to be,
and I've talked about this with my depression also, which
is it's hard to work sometimes with what feels like nothing.
Like when there's strong emotion. For me, it's fairly easy
to learn to process that, to use that to understand it.
(19:49):
I feel like I'm pretty emotionally literate in that way.
What I found more challenging is working with what feels
like nothing. So some of your work talks about identifying
feelings and becoming more broadly speaking, emotionally literate, learning to
know what you're feeling, learning to express what you're feeling
all that, what's the path forward when what you're noticing
(20:13):
is a bunch of nothing.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
There's an exercise that is in my first book, Running
on Empty, which it really just like walks you through
the process of sitting down every day, focusing your attention
inward and asking yourself, what am I feeling right now,
and then really trying to tune in too, because feelings
are physical, you field them in your body, tune into
(20:35):
your body and try to identify some feeling because you're
always having feelings, it's just that you're disconnected from them
so that you're not aware of what they even are,
and you don't notice them. They're just basically non existent
for you, even though they are happening in your body.
So a lot of people will try that and they'll say,
(20:57):
I come up with nothing right, And that's fine, and
it's normal. You know when you start, you're gonna get
nothing if you keep doing it. Every time you do it,
it takes a little chip out of that wall between
yourself and your feelings because you're reaching out. You're trying
to reach through the wall and get those feelings. And
the more you reach, the more little glimmers will start
(21:18):
coming through. So it does take some work and dedication.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
I love that, and that aligns with a lot of
the things we talk about here in our Spiritual Habits
program and different things, which is this idea of little
by little, a little becomes a lot.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Right.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
So if you just keep showing up to your feelings,
even if when you show up you're like there's nothing there,
I remember when I started doing like body scan meditations
years ago. I'd be like, I got nothing here. You
tell me to feel my foot, and they're not much
happening down there. You know, the person leading the meditations
going on and on about the personality of his big toe,
(21:52):
and I'm like, what is he talking about? I still
don't know what he's talking about, to be honest with you.
That said, though, the more I did it, the more
I became aware of sensations that were in my body
that I just had not been in the habit of
paying attention to. And the more I paid attention to them,
the more they developed. So I think you're saying something
(22:13):
very similar there. Let's talk about IAAA, which is not
a retirement fund. Listeners may have heard a recent spot
we did for aa ARP. I cannot believe I'm old
enough that AARP wants to advertise on my show. We
could talk about all kinds of emotions around that, but
(22:34):
we'll stay on topic here and talk about IAAA, which
is not a retirement fund. What is it?
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Yeah, AARP sends me letters all the time, and I
really don't like that at all. Just a little comment there,
Welcome to the Yeah, so at the suggestion of one
of my readers, instead of calling the IAAA, which is
very hard to say, I call it the I triple A.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
So anyway, now I think it's about getting my car fixed,
but we're better.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
No, there's no answer. So it's basically a way to
process a feeling. It walks you through dealing with a feeling,
and the letters stand for the steps. Identify the feeling
that you're having. Accept that feeling, fully, accept it, even
if it's hatred, even if it's greed, whatever it is,
(23:24):
however ugly it is, accept it. This is how I feel.
Attribute that feeling. That's the second a. Attribute it to
a cause. So is this something from my childhood? Is
this something going on now? Is this something going on
now that's touching off some old feelings from childhood? What
is happening in my life right now that I would
be feeling this hatred? And where is it directed? Who's
(23:47):
this hatred at or what is this hatred about? That's
the attribution. And then the last step is act and
that is basically it doesn't mean you're supposed to always
act on your feelings. It just means what can I
do or what should I do with this feeling or
for this feeling. Every emotion that you get is a
message from your body. It's your body talking to you.
(24:08):
Doesn't mean your body is always right. So there are
feelings that come up that are way out of whack
because they're from the past, or they're just not telling
you something good or healthy to do. But then if
you connect with it with your brain and think about
it and consider, what is this hatred telling me to do?
Is it telling me that I need to go strike
(24:29):
out at this person and call them a name? Is
it telling me, well, no, I don't think I should
do that. Maybe it's telling me that I need to
talk to this person or write a letter or connect
it to what happened to me as a kid that
has nothing to do with this person. And maybe I'm
putting all that old stuff on them. Or do I
need to self soothe.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
Whatever it is, well, let's hang on to self soothe
because I want to get there in a minute, because
I think that's a particularly important area to talk about.
I want to talk though about attribution for a minute.
Attribution is another one of those things that can be
sort of difficult, particularly if you don't remember a lot
from your Childhood's a part of my challenge is with
(25:08):
my childhood, there's just not much back there to go like,
this is a feeling from my childhood, because I'm like, well,
I don't remember much of anything from back there. So
how much time do you spend on attribution? And at
what point to you sometimes just go I'm not quite
sure why, but it's okay, I feel this way.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
I think you should only do that if you really
just absolutely cannot figure it out. But even then, I
think you should file it away and watch for that
feeling in the future and see if you can start
to figure out you have this feeling often, For example,
why do I have this feeling so often? Because every
feeling has a reason and figuring out that reason. I mean,
(25:48):
I'm not suggesting people get obsessed with this, because of
course we're going to have feelings that come and go
that we're not able to process this way. But if
it's a strong feeling and it's bothersome, I think it
makes sense to try to figure that out as best
as you can.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
I wanted to pause for a quick good Wolf reminder.
This one's about a habit change and a mistake I
see people making and that's really that we don't think
about these new habits that we want to add in
the context of our entire life. Right, habits don't happen
in a vacuum. They have to fit in the life
that we have. So when we just keep adding I
(26:21):
should do this, I should do that, I should do this,
we get discouraged because we haven't really thought about what
we're not going to do in order to make that happen.
So it's really helpful for you to think about where
is this going to fit and what in my life
might I need to remove. If you want to step
by step guide for how you can easily build new
habits that feed your good Wolf, go to good Wolf
(26:42):
dot me, slash change and join the free masterclass. Before
we move away from Alexithemia, I wanted to hit one
other thing because you said I've observed that many people
with alexithymia have a tendency to be irritable, and ability
is one. It's probably the tendency in me I most
(27:05):
wish I didn't have. I've gotten pretty good at managing it,
but you know, my partner Ginny knows when I'm irritable.
I mean, you know, it's not like it's hidden. She
also is emotionally astute enough to know it has nothing
to do with her, and she can set it aside.
But it's still something I would love to have less of.
And I've looked around a lot for like, well, what
(27:25):
causes irritability? And so my ears kind of perked up
when I read that. And irritability is a strong family trait.
It is a very strong family trait. What do you
do with irritability? Because that's the one that when I
try and get to attribution, I just kind of go,
I got nothing here. I got nothing for why all
(27:49):
of a sudden, you making a noise, filing your fingernails
makes me want to claw my eyes out today whereas
yesterday Matt didn't really bother me. It's not constant. And
I go go back and I'm like, well, if somebody's coughing,
am I getting upset? Because my brother had asthma and
it used to scare me. And I mean, there may
be some of that, but the irritability is the one
(28:09):
that feels very difficult to attribute anywhere and feels very
difficult to work with.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yeah, So the reason I think that people with childhood
emotional neglect to end up with irritability. Some people more
on the ECTA side have more anxiety and others have
more irritability, and either way, the answer is to not
stop with naming your feeling irritability because if irritability is
a catch all trash can, it's like all of your
(28:38):
feelings have pulled together on the other side of the wall.
When they all mix together, that's what they come out as.
So if you don't let yourself use that term irritability
and instead you say, no, what are you really feeling,
because it's probably you're upset about something that day in
your current life that you're not dealing or aware of
(29:00):
the feelings that you're having, and that's what's making you irritable.
If you go beyond the word irritability, you might be
able to name well, I'm feeling frustrated that this podcast
guest canceled at the last minute picking this up, obviously,
I'm feeling worried about how I'm going to fill in
that slot in the future when that slot comes up.
(29:21):
And now I'm angry because that puts me in a
spot where I have to like, really, you know, buggle
and find somebody else so then you'll get a lot
further with it. And once you figure out what you're
actually feeling, then you can go through the action part,
like and just going through that fribeaning. Figuring out what
you're feeling and why is a really important part of
(29:44):
how to take away a feeling's power. It could make
you stop being irritable.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
I love that idea of it. You know, think you
know it is a trash can. I think the other
trash can feeling for me is tired. Sometimes it is tired, right,
I mean, sometimes it's legitimate, that's a zeological thing. But
I think sometimes there's maybe more under there. I want
to dig a little deeper into this. Feelings always have
a cause. Thing I've read about and talked about people
(30:11):
who are considered like highly sensitive, like their nervous system
is tuned in such a way that sound it is
hard for them to tune out and can cause irritability.
And you know, I've often sort of thought of myself
as that's one of the things that defines me, is
that I'll be in a room and there'll be background
noise and other people will just be carrying on and
(30:31):
I'm like, there's a buzzing up there that is difficult
to tune out. So those things seem neurological almost or
physiological more than emotional. Do you think that there are
emotions that are driven from neurological or physiological or physical
causes that are not necessarily attributed to events in your
(30:52):
life and things that are happening or happened.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
I wouldn't really go about thinking about it quite in
that way. Okay, So let's take the ausing microphone as
an example. I wouldn't call that irritability. If you are
in a room full of people and people are talking
and everyone seems fine, but you are really bothered by
that microphone. That is a physiological response that you have
(31:15):
because of the way you're wired, way your nervous system
is wired, and it's perfectly legitimate. It's how you're built.
And I don't think there's anything you can really do
about that. It's not a matter of processing a feeling.
You can't do anything except act, which is what do
I do about this? I can't focus on anything. Instead
of letting yourself get irritated about it, you could say,
(31:40):
what am I going to do to cope with this?
Is there something I can do? Maybe I can ask
them to turn that microphone down, maybe I can unplug something.
Maybe I'm just not going to be able to stay
in this room. But it doesn't have to become irritability
if you understand what's going on and just deal with
it in the best way you can.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
And so if what comes out of that is irritability
or frustration, then it is attributable in that case, right,
I can say, there's this thing happening, it's grading on me.
I don't have the ability to turn it off, so
I'm feeling frustrated. Yes, and now I can attribute it
is what you're basically saying. I think that's helpful. All right,
(32:19):
So let's move to self soothing. I've interviewed a lot
of people for this show. When I look at psychological responses,
the literature out there, the different approaches that are out there,
and I see this in both psychology and spirituality, I
see a cognitive approach and I see an emotional approach.
I see on one hand, people saying, hey, look you've
(32:42):
got these feelings. Those are coming from thoughts, and if
you change your thoughts, you'll change your feelings. And then
there's another approach more bottom up. Start with what your
feelings are, allow those feelings to be there, and oftentimes
the emotion is causing the thought. How do you think
about that?
Speaker 1 (33:00):
I don't think it can be nailed down to an
either or thing because I see it going both ways.
I think you can get yourself very upset about something
by continually cranking on it in your head. You know,
you can increase your feelings that way. You can also
manage your feelings by involving your head. It can go
(33:21):
both ways, and I don't think it makes sense to
address it from just one direction for most people. I
think most people need to deal with the emotional part
and the cognitive part together.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
And which of those you do first might just depend
on the situation and what works for you.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
I really believe in starting with the feelings because we're
much more comfortable with our thoughts in general, because we
can control them much better. They're more understandable, we can
put our thoughts into words much better. Feelings are a
lot more mysterious, and we get the sense that they
just come, and so we feel like we have no
power over them. But that's what makes some so powerful.
(34:01):
We've got the cart before the horse. I think when
we start from the cognitive so much. And so that's
why I really encourage people to start with the feeling
part and start working out your feelings. Pay attention to
your feelings, apply your brain to your feelings, and that's
what's going to make the biggest impact on your life
and who you are.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
And so as I look at the I triple A process, right,
I think the second A attribute is when I start
to bring in at least some degree of cognitive because
I'm trying to figure out where is this coming from,
what caused it? Right at that point, I am slightly
cognitive because I'm trying to make a connection. I know
what the feeling is. It's anger. I've identified it, I've
(34:42):
accepted it. Maybe I'm even feeling it in my body
and becoming more familiar with it. Now I'm moving into
something more cognitive. Would you agree with that?
Speaker 1 (34:51):
I would call it engaging your brain.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Yes, okay, okay, say so yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Even this first step of identifying what you're feeling requires
your as well, because you're putting words to what you're feeling.
And if you cannot stop at the big words like
I'm angry, I'm sad, I'm anxious, I'm irritable. If you
cannot stop at those big umbrella words and instead try
to drill down and name it more specifically, anger can
(35:18):
become helplessness and hurt and all kinds of things.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
So let's talk about self soothing because one of the
things I've noticed for sure in myself and others is
that if the emotional stole is really strong, you're not
going to be able to cognitively work with anything right.
You're overwhelmed by it. So I assume self soothing is
the ability to at least turn that down enough that
(36:12):
you can work with your emotions more skillfully. How would
you describe what self soothing is?
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Self soothing to me is having a series of things
that you can choose to do that will basically what
you said, start giving you more control over what you're feeling,
a series of healthy things. So different things might work
in different situations, but the whole I TRIPLEA is part
of self soothing because it requires you to actually sit
(36:41):
with your feeling and process it. And that's the single
most powerful thing you can do to take control of
the feeling. But sometimes even that doesn't do the trick,
and you need more, And so I really encourage every
human being to have a list of things that they
know helps them feel better. It could be laying down
with your pet and petting your pet. It could be
(37:04):
taking a walk outside, looking up at the sky, you know,
calling a friend, or going to visit your favorite store,
as long as you don't overspend while you're there for example, cooking, cleaning.
You know, it's different for everybody.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
I love that idea, and I've talked about it before,
having this sense of like knowing what things have worked
for me in the past and having them written down
because the problem that I've experienced is in the moment,
if I look at any of those things, I go,
that's not going to help, are you kidding?
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Me?
Speaker 3 (37:38):
Like a walk, so I just need sort of like
just do it. You know. The other example I make
is I know, for me, music is very helpful in
those moments.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
That's a great one, yep.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
And yet what I also know is that, particularly if
what I'm dealing with is sort of a really low
mood or depression, if I go to my music, I'll
be like, none of it'll look like it sounds going
to be like nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, And so
what I've got is a pre made playlist of things
that I know help and so I don't have to
figure it out. I just go, all right, just turn
on the playlist, hit shuffle. One of these songs should
(38:11):
do it, you know. So I love that idea of
having sort of written down as a recovering person. I
certainly talk about this with other recovering people, and certainly
early in my recovery, which is, what are you going
to do when a craving hits? Yes, because in the moment,
the emotion, as you're saying, is so strong. Do you
have any other sort of go to self soothing tools
(38:31):
that people might consider beyond naming your emotions? And you
listed a couple other really good ones, but to any
others come to mind, I feel like giving people a
good menu is really helpful.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
Yeah. One of my favorites that I forgot to mention
is sitting down and writing. And I think you can
use your computer or your phone or whatever in type,
but I think it's best to have paper and pen
because there's something about your brain to your heart to
your hand to the paper, and then it's visually there
in your own writing. You can write a letter to
the person that you're upset with that you'll never send,
(39:02):
or you can just write down. It's called automatic writing,
when you just write right, right, right, right, right right,
everything that comes to your head. I think that's a
great coping technique.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
I got a ton of mileage out of that one
at different points in my life when I had a
lot of anger. My first marriage ended in a very
hurtful way to me. I'm not saying I didn't have
a role in why the marriage wasn't good, but I
mean I just wrote the most hateful letters. I mean,
you know, things that I'd be ashamed to say out loud,
(39:31):
but that's what was coming up. And I just would
write and write and write, and then I would just
destroy it.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
You know.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
It was so helpful to me as a way, particularly
if processing anger. That is a great one. As we're
talking about attribution, I'm going back to that for a second.
You say one way to get to the real heart
of a matter is to practice vertical questioning in addition
to horizontal questioning. Could you explain what vertical versus horizontal
(39:58):
questioning is?
Speaker 1 (40:00):
Yeah, this is a communication technique. Usually when I talk
about it, it's talking to someone else. Okay, So it's
really a good way to form or deepen a friendship
or a relationship or even with someone you just met.
So horizontal questions are about facts and details like the weather,
the traffic, things that you've done, activities you've done, and
(40:22):
vertical questions are more thought provoking questions that require a
person to focus internally a little bit and consider themselves
and maybe even consult their feelings. So instead of what
did you major in high school or college, it would
be how did you choose that for yourself? And what
is it about that that captured your passion?
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Like that?
Speaker 1 (40:45):
So really the whys that helps someone think more deeply
and that enable you to connect with them more.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
It strikes me that that's also a horizontal question in
like a conflict with someone else, and I'm just more
or less thinking out loud now. Horizontal question could be
kind of about what are the facts of what actually
happened here? And then the vertical question is how do
we both feel about it? But I often feel like
conversations with people, particularly conflict are almost diagonal, right, Those
(41:13):
two questions get mixed into the same thing, and it
can be very helpful if you can tweeze them apart
and be like, well, hang on a second, here's what
actually happened. Can we agree on that? Like, I did
not take out the trash? Okay, agreed, we both did. Like, now,
how does that make you know? How do we feel
about that? Versus combining them into the same sort of conversation.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Oh? Absolutely, especially couples do that. It just it all
gets mixed together. And consider it. Every two people has
a different perception of everything. It's really important to keep
your perceptions of the facts separate from your feelings about it.
Usually the solution lies in the feelings part.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
Yeah, we've sort of talked about healing this, and you've
said that the primary thing is to get more comfortable
and literate with my emotions, to go seek them out
and inquire more deeply into them and learn more about
them and welcome them. What else is there that we
haven't talked about that you feel like would be important
(42:13):
for healing this emotional neglect.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Well, the first step is figuring out whether this really
applies to you or not. And I think for most
people that have a significant case of emotional neglect, Like
if someone's listening to this podcast, then they feel like,
oh my gosh, this sounds like me. I think that
is a really good indicator, and that's the first step
in healing, is really owning and understanding Okay, this is
(42:39):
how I grew up, this is how it affected me.
And a great place to start that because most people
can't remember emotional neglect, so a good way to find
out whether you have it is to go to my
website and take the Emotional Neglect Questionnaire, which is just
a series of yes or no questions about your current life. Now,
So take that test and start learning everything you can
(43:02):
learn about emotional neglect. There are lots of free resources
available on my website, and you know, I think the
biggest part of heeling is about just changing your own
relationship with your own emotions and starting to view the
measure friends instead of just irrelevant or enemies, and starting
to just treat them differently and live differently with them.
(43:23):
And then once you're doing that, you start getting more
glimmers of emotions and more and more feelings, and then
you can start learning what to do with those feelings.
And that's the emotion skills that you didn't learn in childhood.
We kind of have to be having enough feelings to
apply the emotional skills to and then the final stage
is applying all of that. You have more depth, you
(43:44):
have more feelings, you have more skills, and you can
start putting all that into your relationships. When you get
to that point, people in your life start to notice
that you're actually kind of different and it's pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
Yeah, and we'll have links in the show notes to
your website and to that quiz, so listeners, you can
just click right through the show notes and get right there.
We're back on self soothing here. But you said self
talk is probably the most useful and versatile of all
self soothing strategies. So talk to me about what good
self talk looks like.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Good self talk is compassionate, but it also holds you
accountable for how you act. But basically it's encouraging and helpful,
so it can be all the way from you know,
you can do this, You absolutely can do this talking
yourself through something that you're worried or afraid of to
(44:40):
You didn't do that on purpose, you know that you didn't,
but you still have to take accountability for it and
deal with it. You know. Now you just have to
deal with the fallout of that mistake, but you didn't
choose it. It's not your fault. You know things that
are reasonable and compassionate. I think that's one of the
(45:00):
traits of CN people that I didn't mention is low
self compassion. And it's that attacking voice that can really
get you into trouble and sap your energy. But when
you talk to yourself with encouragement and compassion instead, it
really can turn things around.
Speaker 3 (45:16):
What's the difference or how do you tell when you
are giving yourself encouraging and helpful self talk and when
you're trying to sort of minimize an emotion internally. So,
for example, let's say I'm feeling afraid, I might do
some self talk about like, hey, you don't need to
(45:36):
be that frightened of this. You've handled this before. So
is it really as you said? I start with the
recognition I'm afraid. It's okay that I'm afraid. The reason
I'm afraid is this situation, and then the self talk
sort of falls into that act the final a a
little bit, which is like okay, Eric, you got this,
You're okay. You know you've been through this before. If
(45:57):
it goes that way, you can handle it. That sort
of thing. Is that where it would slot into that.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Yes, And I wouldn't call that minimizing a feeling. I
would call it managing a feeling. And there is a
big difference.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
Ah, yeah, there is. How do you know the difference?
I love the distinction. What are some ways of knowing
the difference?
Speaker 1 (46:14):
Minimizing is basically when you're trying to escape or deny
that you have a feeling. One of the factors that
plays in is whether the feeling is useful or not.
So if it's a feeling that's telling you not to
jump off a clip.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
Then pretty useful.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
Pay attention to listen to that feeling because it's if
you use your brain to process it, then you certainly
don't want to minimize that or manage it because it's
a healthy feeling, yep. But if it's an unhealthy feeling
telling you to do something that could be bad for you,
then use your brain to process it. But instead of
trying to tell yourself that that feeling isn't important or
(46:52):
you don't have it, actually take it on and say
what do I do with this feeling? What does it mean?
What should I do with it?
Speaker 3 (46:58):
How do I manage it? Sounds to me like if
I'm talking about being afraid. The difference is not you
shouldn't be afraid of that, you know, don't be scared.
It's more I'm afraid. Here's why I'm afraid, and I
can handle it. It's subtle, but it is a definite
difference in I'm allowing the feeling instead of saying you
shouldn't have that feeling and there's no reason to feel that.
(47:21):
It's I do feel it. That's okay. Here's how I'm
going to respond.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
Yes, you just said that way better than I did.
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (47:30):
Well. We're going to end with something that you said,
really really well though, and then I'll let you respond
to it. Which, when you're talking about self talk, you said,
and I love this line, remind yourself of simple honest truths,
which will help you keep things in perspective. That is
so well said, simple honest truths. So give me an
(47:50):
example of a simple honest truth or two.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Well, some we've already given. It would be you've done
this before, you can do it again, or you know
you have the skills for this, or you know you
didn't do that on purpose. Every human being makes mistakes.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
It's a good one.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
You're just a human being trying to think of different
examples for situations. You deserve this, You're worth it. Trust
yourself on this.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (48:16):
One I love also is some version of like, well,
whatever happens here, you'll be able to handle it. If
I'm fearing an outcome, I can even go well, even
if that outcome comes, okay, I can handle it. That's
one that helps me a lot, is sort of reminding
myself of my ability to cope.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
Yeah, some of those things, if they're ones that you
need to hear a lot from yourself, just turn it
into a mantra and have it right there in your
metaphorical back pocket, ready to grab out and use whenever
you need it.
Speaker 2 (48:43):
Awesome.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
I think most people need to have a mantra or two.
Speaker 3 (48:46):
They are very helpful. All right, Well, Denise, thank you
so much for coming on the show. I've really enjoyed
this conversation. I really enjoyed the book. There'll be links,
as I said in the show, notes to your website
where people can find the questionnaire or find your book
and all your other work. So thank you so much.
It's really been enjoyable.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
For me too. Thanks for having me on I've really
enjoyed it.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
If what you just heard was helpful to you, please
consider making a monthly donation to support the One You
Feed podcast. When you join our membership community. With this
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It's our way of saying thank you for your support now.
We are so grateful for the members of our community.
We wouldn't be able to do what we do without
(49:43):
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Speaker 3 (50:00):
No
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Eric Zimmer
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