Emotional deprivation/ childhood emotional neglect

[CatLadyInTraining]

Hello, this is my first post but I’ve been reading the forum for a while.

as background, I am in ongoing therapy for my anorexia, and associated depression and anxiety. I’m working with my therapist to uncover the underlying issues to my AN.

we have uncovered a history of emotional deprivation / childhood emotional neglect - as my parents in turn did not receive emotional support from their parents and never learned these things themselves. It was a huge shock to me to realise this in my past as I had been completely unaware of it at the time, thinking I’d had a ‘perfect’ childhood and ‘perfect’ parents who gave me everything I needed.

so to the point:

when i am feeling emotional pain or distress, I find that it is NOT helpful for others (friends, therapist, GP etc) to offer reassurance or to remind me that I’m doing well or that it will get better soon. This makes me feel so invalidated and I’ve had to train my support people not to use those more common techniques.

I am learning to identify and validate my own emotions as true and real. So I need them to exist, as they are, as difficult as they may be. It’s been very difficult for my support people to learn this.

is there anyone else here who has suffered similar CEN experiences have a similar response to people trying to make you feel better?

Since CEN is invisible/ defined by what DIDN’T happen I can’t find others to share my experience with so thought I’d try here.

thank you. I look forward to posting more in the community and supporting others if I can.

[Samkuta]

Hi

Thanks for your post.

I am currently working through my emotional deprivation "lifetrap" or "schema". I am using the book " Reinventing Your Life by Jeffrey E. Young and Janet Klosko (Ph.D's). I got onto this through the book Breaking the Patterns of Depression by Michael Yapko. It is really hard work, as emotional deprivation runs so deep and can be hard to pinpoint. I found this post and forum by searching under "what does emotional deprivation feel like". Often I don't know my triggers and exist in a deprived state with the assumption that it's normal (ie. not deprived) then I start feeling pain (usually in the form of anger and sadness). I need to connect to my feelings quicker, and I now find having people around me who accept, allow and validate my feelings is a big help with this process and increasing self-knowledge. In my experience, finding people who are able to do this (even therapists) can take some trial and error, and even those who have the maturity and self-acceptance to be able to offer it can also have off days.