Coming to Terms with My CEN
Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN) is more damaging than it sounds.
Ever since I came across the words Childhood Emotional Neglect on a reddit thread, I finally had a term for all of the emptiness and numbness I felt.
According to Dr. Jonice Webb, CEN is invisible. It’s not what you remember, it’s what you can’t remember. It is a condition where your emotional needs were not met by your caretakers.
Like a lot of people with CEN, I grew up comfortably: I didn’t go hungry; I had a roof over my head; and my material needs were met. When I think back on my childhood, there aren’t a lot of instances where my parents were there. I remember being at babysitters more than being with my own parents. Both my mom and dad worked almost all the time and even when they were home, my dad hated being disturbed and my mom watching TV.
I remember watching a lot of cartoons, reading, and playing video games to keep myself occupied. When the Internet became more popular, I spent my time reading manga or drawing.
My memories are pretty faded. I don’t remember a lot about my childhood. There are flashes of me spending time alone on the playground. Flashes of being excluded. Flashes of doing anything I could to stay inside with the teacher so that I didn’t have to go outside and be alone.
One distinct memory stays with me.
When I was in high school, I told my mom that I was depressed and wanted to kill myself. I had written notes and wills that gave my stuff away to the few friends that I had.
She told me not to joke about that.
Now that I am an adult, there has always been a sense of emptiness and numbness that I don’t know how to get rid of. I’m in a loving relationship with an amazing husband.
I only found the name for what I wasn’t feeling last year. While browsing Reddit, I found a subreddit by the name of r/emotionalneglect. They are the ones who directed me to Dr. Webb’s site and to her book Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect.
Reading Running on Empty brought a whole new perspective to my life.
That I could get in touch with my own feelings, the feelings I had pushed down and ignored for over 20 years of my life. It’s still a work in progress, but I believe life involves constant change even if you can’t feel it.
The two exercises that I took away from the first book was just stopping and thinking about how I feel at any point during the day, three time every day. I help document these moods and feelings with the Bearable app. It helps me track various symptoms and daily activities or events. It hasn’t even been a week, but this app is now one of my most used apps.
The other exercise I do every day is keeping note of 3 things that I Didn’t Want to Do But I Did OR things that I Shouldn’t Do and I Didn’t. Keeping track of all the things I did in a day that I didn’t really want to do has made me feel a little bit better one days where I don’t do a whole lot. One day I did 15 things, but another day I barely did 4 things.
Keeping track of these things has helped me keep my mood up.
Getting dressed is something that I count as a thing I Didn’t Want to Do But I Did because who hasn’t wanted to stay in their pajamas all day every day for the entirety of the current situation? I chalk that up to the hypothymia, but getting dressed feels like a chore most days. And I can confidently say that I’ve only stayed in my pajamas all day for a few days these past 4 months.
CEN crippled my emotions for long enough. I have a name for why my mental health may not be as good as others’. I have the tools to manage the symptoms. I have the belief that these tools will help me. I don’t believe that I’ll ever truly be totally “cured” of CEN, but I know that I can change to the point where it doesn’t hinder me.
