CEN

In this post, Penni Osborn takes a look at three defined parenting styles and how they may impact the child.

Background

In the 1960’s, the research of clinical and developmental psychologist Dr Diana Baumrind led her to define three types of parenting styles; authoritative, authoritarian and permissive. Below we take a look at Dr Baumrind’s three styles and their possible impact on the child:

Authoritative

Considered the best of all the parenting styles, the authoritative approach combines nurture and validation with rules and discipline. The authoritative parent is considerate of the child’s feelings and opinions and allows them to make their own decisions, but within firm, defined limits. They explain consequences and set strong boundaries. This type of parent typically uses positive discipline – rather than harsh punishments – through rewarding and reinforcing positive behaviour. [Read more…]

In this, her latest post, Penni Osborn shares with us some thoughts about where denied emotional needs may reside and how we can reconnect – and respond effectively – to them.

Unconscious Self-Sabotage

Many are familiar with the term “self-sabotage” – meaning to get in our own way and prevent ourselves from achieving our goals and fulfilling our hopes and dreams. Not always a conscious choice, self-sabotage is often driven instead by the unconscious – the part of our psyche that operates outside of conscious awareness – that can leave us confused as to why we have said or done something that is completely opposed to our conscious choices, wishes and perhaps, our best interests. [Read more…]

Counselling is a talking therapy that can help people to deal with a wide range of problems, including anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, relationship issues, and trauma. It can also help people to improve their communication and interpersonal skills, develop coping mechanisms, and make positive changes in their life. Engaging a fee-for-a-service private counsellor means access in the shortest time to high-quality services that are unique and bespoke to you and yours. [Read more…]

In this post, Penni takes a look at how healing from Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN) can begin by reconnecting to emotions with compassionate curiosity, uncovering the cause of those feelings and deciding thoughtfully how to act upon them.

If emotions aren’t validated in childhood, the result is a walling off of our emotional world that continues into adulthood. Being disconnected from our emotions due to CEN (Childhood Emotional Neglect) means being unable to access a wealth of information – messages – that guide and inform us and help us to lead the life that is best for our own, unique needs. If we have become walled off from our feelings, it can be hard to know just how we feel, or what exactly to do with those feelings. [Read more…]

Suppressed emotions can have a significant impact on both the mind and the body. When we suppress our emotions, we are effectively bottling them up inside us, preventing them from being expressed in a healthy and natural way. This can lead to a range of negative consequences such as: [Read more…]

A short guide to understanding some causes and solutions for emotional eating, which refers to the habit of consuming food in response to emotional states, such as stress, boredom, sadness, or happiness, rather than hunger.

It is a common behaviour that many people struggle with, but it can have negative effects on both physical and mental health. It has recently been cited that as many as 75 % of the population may exhibit behaviours associated with emotional eating. [1] [Read more…]

Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN) is evident in most clients I work with at Anglia Counselling, who present themselves for counselling and therapy.

There remains for others a misconception that CEN must be that the experience of obvious and overt abuse and trauma has occurred, and while these do fall into ‘neglect’ or abuse category, there are many more subtle examples, the symptoms of which can remain hidden from our conscious awareness for decades.

It is common for symptoms to only become more obvious once we embark on deep relationships – and then if we ourselves become parents.

So, who does not have any symptoms of neglect from childhood?

Very, very few humans have no symptoms at all.

So, what can be classed as childhood developmental neglect that leads to at least some level of psychological injury? Here are a few:

• Failing to attend to the infant and toddler when crying or otherwise distressed.
• Abandonment, temporary or permanent (attachment issues in later life, such as infidelity or difficulty committing).
• Not being ‘seen’, heard, or believed (Healthy attunement may be missing from ruptures with caregivers, especially when the child is shamed by unrealistic expectations, and most commonly today, with the newly acquired digital ‘soother’ that keeps the child occupied but without eye-to-eye contact that is crucial for healthy esteem and connection to others and oneself.)
• Uncertainty in the environment due to hostile relationships, anger, or inconsistent caregiver behaviours as seen in domestic abuse and violence.
• Parents and caregivers who put their own needs before the children.
• Parents and caregivers who are too busy.
• When a family member needs more care and attention than others, such as with long term illness or disability of a sibling.
• Poverty may or may not impact depending on whether love, attention and connection remain available.
• Overly protective parenting (Helicopter Parenting).
• Narcissistic parent or caregiver.
• Alcoholism and substance abuse, other addictions such as gambling and porn.
• When the child is bought-off with material possessions.

And there are many more developmental stage experiences that will ultimately shape the adult that the child becomes – and the relationships, including parenting styles, they have.

Who is to Blame?

It’s usually unhelpful to blame our parents and caregivers. They did the best with what they had in their awareness, usually repeating a transference via a culture of parenting that may well have been passed down the ancestral line for countless generations, until a ‘chain-breaker’ intervenes and with awareness and counsel, passes on to their own offspring a new, more mindful, less emotionally neglectful experience from which to enter adulthood, relationships, and parenting with.

*We always welcome working with clients who are planning to become parents and who have become aware that they themselves would rather avoid passing on negative approaches, including ‘over-parenting’.  

The roots of anxiety and depression in adulthood are often to be found in the child’s formative years while the nervous system was still being developed.

The natural way a child’s underdeveloped nervous system regulates is through relationships. The unnatural way is to regulate on its own which is the source of trauma.

When a parent or caregiver is unavailable for regulation and emotional support or when the parent or caregiver is the primary source of physical or emotional distress, the nervous system of the child is “pushed” to find strategies to regulate on its own and make the pain less painful.

Without emotional and biological support (co-regulation), the child’s brain learns: “I have to do it on my own“

The way to regulate on its own is via survival adaptations, responses and mechanisms that substitute for the co-regulation. It will become hyper-aroused, hyper-alert, disconnect, tense, freeze or shut down.

Walls Built That Can’t be Seen

Protective emotional barriers, or ‘walls’ are unconsciously created to try and protect the individual from further emotional pain. But these ‘walls’ also fail to allow us in adulthood to ‘feel’ the love of another.

The adult will also have learned through life to move pain into a problem-solving intellectual brain to solve, practically, an emotional problem. The result of this is a disconnection between the mind and body, leaving emotions to become subconsciously stored in the body while ‘we live in the brain’. Not only is this a safety behaviour, but it also has the effect of emotions with nowhere to go; no completion or catharsis, then we as adults become more and more distressed, affecting behaviourally our relationships with ourselves and others, our social and professional performance, our familial and domestic relationships.

We turn to numbing behaviours associated with alcohol or other substances, or allow anger and coercion, manipulation, and distrust, to affect many facets of our lived experience.

The Child Needs to Have Been Seen, Heard, and Believed!

Put simply, the child that learns there is value, and it is safe to express herself will continue to do so in adulthood. In this expressiveness she will be more able to set healthy boundaries, will have raised self-esteem, and be able to regulate her emotions so they do not lead to ill health and the assortment of other turbulence mentioned above.

Resources

Jonice Webb, PhD, author of “Running on Empty” and her website which contains a ‘self-assessment questionnaire’ for Childhood Emotional Neglect.

“The book I wish my parents had read” – Philippa Perry

Penni Osborn looks into childhood emotional neglect (CEN) and the experiences we may have and how to identify if it’s time to reclaim ourselves.

Receiving the message, in childhood, that your feelings don’t matter (in whichever way this message was relayed), can lead to an adulthood of being unable to connect with your ‘self’, others and the world around you. When our emotional experiences are dismissed, ignored or simply not encouraged during childhood, we intuitively shelve this important part of ourselves. We wall off our feelings, stop believing in them, stop listening to them and, in losing our connection with them, we lose belief in ourselves. [Read more…]

At the time of writing, much of the planet is facing a ‘second-wave’ of COVID-19. The global economy is being challenged, the poor are getting poorer, the sick, sicker, and all our perceptions of thinking we have any level of ‘control’ are being fractured. But, is the outlook really all doom and gloom?

[Read more…]

As another year ends, we can be grateful.

Some, however, will not be feeling a desire to express gratitude as 2018 was yet another year of psychological pain and turbulence. They wonder if these symptoms will ever leave – and peace and non-suffering will ever come to them.

We know there will always be suffering but to what extent, is in our own hands. The world may often be chaotic, but we can remain separate from that chaos if we elect to skilfully and mindfully observe more, and judge less.