Childhood Emotional Neglect Inventory - Self-development, Society

2023 Author: Oswald Adamson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-21 20:18

Childhood Emotional Neglect (EPD) is often subtle and difficult to remember. How do you know that you are suffering from it? Below is a questionnaire on emotional neglect. Answer these questions, and it will become clear to you … Notice which questions you answer YES, and at the end, count their number

• 1. Sometimes, when you are with family or friends, do you feel that they are strangers to you?
• 2. Are you proud to rely only on yourself?
• 3. Is it difficult for you to ask for help?
• 4. Do any of your friends and family complain that you are indifferent or distant?
• 5. Do you feel that you have not realized your life potential?
• 6. Often you would like to be just left alone?
• 7. Do you secretly feel like a fraud?
• 8. Do you have a tendency to feel uncomfortable in communication?
• 9. Are you often frustrated with yourself or angry with yourself?
• 10. Do you judge yourself more severely than others?
• 11. Do you compare yourself with others and often turn out to be worse than them?
• 12. Is it easier for you to love animals than people?
• 13. Do you often feel irritable or sad for no apparent reason?
• 14. Do you find it difficult to understand how you are feeling?
• 15. Is it difficult for you to determine what your strengths and weaknesses are?
• 16. Sometimes it seems to you that you are looking at everything that happens to you from the outside?
• 17. Do you think you are one of those who would find it easy to live as a hermit?
• 18. Do you find it difficult to calm down?
• 19. Do you feel like something is holding you back from being in the present moment?
• 20. Do you sometimes feel empty inside?
• 21. Do you secretly sense that something is wrong with you?
• 22. Do you have problems with self-discipline?

Look again at those questions to which you answered in the affirmative. These answers give you a glimpse into areas where you may have experienced emotional neglect as a child. The more positive answers you have, the more likely it is that EPD has affected your life.

Read also: 7 Signs of Emotional Insensitivity

The author of the Childhood Emotional Neglect Questionnaire, Dr. Jonis Webb, offers some tips for overcoming EPD.

Why is it so important to free yourself from the effects of EPD?

• How your parents treated your emotional needs as a child determines how you feel about yourself as an adult. This has been proven many times by a variety of studies.
• Emotions are an essential part of your biology. If you ignore your emotions, you will feel like you are being ignored on some level, no matter how much you care for yourself in other relationships.
• Relationships are built on emotions. If you are oblivious to your emotions, you are ignoring life's source of joy and connection with others.
• Emotional intelligence has been shown to be more important to success in life and at work than general intelligence. Learning to name your emotions, use and handle them, and deal with other people's emotions is vital.
• People whose parents valued their emotions during childhood are usually able to naturally appreciate the emotions of their own children. Those who have not received it themselves will likely find it difficult to show the right attitude to their children's emotions. It is very important to understand that you have not received something in order to consciously learn the missing skills, fill in the “blind spots” and give your children what you yourself lacked.

Why is it so hard to live with EPD?

• Emotions are at the core of behavior. They are the engine of behavior. If you compare behavior to a car, then emotions are the motor. It's easy to see the vehicle and its movement. But to see the motor, you need to lift the cover.
• We are not born understanding the language of emotion. Emotions can be intense, complex, and confusing. Many people find it easier to just ignore them.
• If you have emotional blind spots, you will be blind to the emotions of others, including your children.

How to overcome the consequences of EPD

• Be careful. Try to notice your true nature. What do you like, dislike, what makes you angry, what are you afraid of, what are you struggling with in yourself? Observe these aspects of your personality without value judgments to better tune in to who you are, inside and out.
• Strive to get in touch with your true feelings, including painful ones.

• Ask yourself these questions often:

  • What's wrong?
  • Why did I do this?
  • Why am I saying this?
  • What I feel?
  • What do I want?
  • What am I afraid of?
  • What am I worried about?
  • What makes me angry, sad, what hurts me?
• Listen carefully to your answers. These are difficult questions that are sometimes difficult to answer. But the very act of asking a question and tuning in to your feelings begins to break down the wall between you and your emotions.
• Realize that your goal is to feel your emotions and learn how to handle them. This is possibly the most difficult step. Once you learn to discern how you are feeling, it's time to learn to be tolerant of your feelings, control them, and express them in an appropriate way. These skills can change your whole life.
• Never judge yourself for how you feel. What matters is how you handle this or that feeling. You can judge some of your actions, but not emotions.

The path to overcoming the consequences of EPD

These tips and the Emotional Neglect Questionnaire will help you start overcoming the effects of EPD. You will finally begin to see some things that have eluded you all your life. You will be able to value yourself highly for your struggles with tested problems. By learning what really happened to you, you can begin to behave in a new way.

Having worked as a practical psychologist for over 20 years, I have noticed an "invisible factor" - events from childhood that leave their mark on the life of an adult, dulling joy, making you feel detached or unfulfilled, or leading to problems with self-discipline. I called this emotional neglect.

I first discovered this with my clients. Then the circle expanded and I began to see it in the people around me: in the store, in the mall, and even on television shows.

This factor, which comes from childhood, acts so subtly that practically no one notices it, and, meanwhile, it continues its quiet destructive activity in people's lives.

Jonis Webb, Ph. D. is a licensed psychologist recognized all over the world. She is credited with describing and drawing widespread attention to childhood emotional neglect; the author of the book "Running in the Void: How to Overcome Emotional Neglect in Childhood"

• By Jonis Webb, PhD
• Translated by Kiril Melamud