POLL: Childhood Emotional Neglect Assessment

[Skip]

Childhood Emotional Neglect - a condition which is the effect of a parent’s failure to respond enough to a child’s emotional needs. We all have differing levels of emotional needs and sometimes parents don't rise to meet those needs of one or more of their children. Parents who learn about childhood emotional neglect often wonder what they have done to cause it. Nonetheless, the effects can be significant on us as we become adults.

Jonice Webb, PhD., explores this issue in her book, Running on Empty.

What is your total score?  Let us know in the poll above and tell us (post) whether you are showing signs of someone who may not have gotten the emotional support that they needed?

0= Not at all        1=Somewhat        2=Moderately        3=A lot        4=Extremely        

------- 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

------- 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

------- 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

------- 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

------- 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

------------------------------------ Sometimes feel like you didn't belong when with your family or friends? Pride yourself on not relying upon others? Have difficulty asking for help Have friends or family who complained that you were aloof or distant? Feel you had not met your potential in life? Often just want to be left alone? Secretly feel that you may be a fraud? Tend to feel uncomfortable in social situations? Often feel disappointed with, or angry at, yourself? Judge yourself more harshly than you judged others? Compare yourself to others and often find yourself sadly lacking? Find it easier to love animals than people? Often feel irritable or unhappy for no apparent reason? Have trouble knowing what you’re feeling? Have trouble identifying your strengths and weaknesses? Sometimes feel like you’re on the outside looking in? Believe you’re one of those people who could easily live as a hermit? Have trouble calming yourself? Feel there’s something holding you back from being present in the moment? At times feel empty inside? Secretly feel there’s something wrong with you? Struggled with self-discipline? Have trouble identifying your values--the principles that guide your life? Lack confidence in how well you knew yourself?

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[JaneStorm]

I wonder if the nearly normal score (35) for me is due to the work I have done over the years. I know in my 20s, it would be higher.

[Fr4nz]

Score: 34.

I'm 32 years old... .have loving parents, but my mother is, without doubt, hyperprotective, and this, in turn, probably created me problems with abandonment fears. Indeed, few months ago my T told me I have a borderline personality style. I also have some "shy"-narcissistic traits.

[MapleBob]

I wonder if the nearly normal score (35) for me is due to the work I have done over the years. I know in my 20s, it would be higher.

Yeah, same here. I got 27, but I was fairly conservative. I did extensive reparenting work in therapy, and that helped a lot. I'm generally pretty mentally/emotionally healthy. Might be why my uBPD relationship didn't last for years and years, and she left. I've learned to be less codependent.

[joeramabeme]

Interesting Survey.  I kept 2 separate scores; one for today and one for when I was in my 20's with active addiction.  The outcomes were 16 & 70 respectively.  The majority of this shift occurred during my BPD styles marriage.

Here are some of the factors that I believe had an impact in descending importance; EMDR, CBT, 12-step recovery and age. 

I am sure that my score was helped by my r/s with uBPDxw.  All the back and forth she and I did about my traumatic past and insistence that I go to trauma therapy and her willingness to point out all my inconsistencies and things she saw wrong about me that I never saw.  Perhaps a silver lining.

[fromheeltoheal]

I wonder if the nearly normal score (35) for me is due to the work I have done over the years. I know in my 20s, it would be higher.

Totally.  I'm at 40 now and would have been much higher in previous decades.  That's the good news really: all the work I've done on myself, some of it misguided sure, but all of it beneficial in its way, seeing it validated like this is pretty cool.  Guess it takes a lifetime to dig out of a less than ideal upbringing, but I wouldn't be on the planet without those parents, so whaddya gonna do... .

[VitaminC]

Yes, my score shows I'm actually pretty healthy - even 5 years ago my score would have been much higher. Also due to a lot of work. And like a couple of others here, I feel that my relationship with a pwBPD has actually helped me sort some of these things out.

Possibly the first person I've ever met who reacted to me in some of the ways that I think I reacted to others in the past and had some similar expectations in terms of being supported and distracted - childish behaviours of which I too was guilty.

I knew that I was learning something about myself. That's why I stayed. I'm a slow learner, not a masochist (as some of my friends said).

[wishfulthinking]

I scored 45.  I have severe social anxiety and trust issues.  I have a strong desire to be alone often.  I love my daughter with all that I am, but sometimes, just need quiet time for myself or I get overwhelmed.  My mom loved me the same way I love my daughter, 100% and lovingly... .but my dad was psychotic (possibly BPD or ASPD) and we had to run from him for a time to stop him from kidnapping me to retaliate for her leaving him.  3 years of my childhood were spent looking over my shoulder and not talking to anyone I didn't know, etc... .

[GreenEyedMonster]

I scored in the 40s.

I was just remembering something from my own childhood that seems to really have an impact on who I choose as mates.

When I was younger, I was pretty emotional.  I'm talking teenage years here.  I had wicked PMS and would cry openly about things.  I grew up with a Northern European cultural background, and we all know that those people aren't known for wearing their emotions on their sleeves.  I was really close to my grandmother, and she died when I was 12.  I was absolutely inconsolable at her funeral, but no one else shed a tear.  I was a horrible spectacle.

If I cried at home, though, I would sometimes be consoled, but other times, my mother would say, "Look what you are doing to your father!"  The message was pretty clear -- my emotions were annoying, a burden to deal with, but other people's feelings had to be respected.  I was taught that not making other people uncomfortable with my emotions was really important.  I also frequently heard, "You're just having PMS," as if this automatically reassured my parents that they didn't have to deal with whatever I was feeling.  I developed OCD as a teenager, and when I asked my mom to go to a psychologist, she said nothing was wrong with me.  In spite of all this, my parents were very doting and many people would have said I was "spoiled."  I'm still very close to both of my parents.  As an adult, I've come to suspect that my mother has some mild NPD/BPD traits herself.

When I was 17 I began dating a Middle Eastern man.  His culture was much more open about displays of emotion, and he was not scared or put off by seeing me angry or crying.  He was always consoling and never belittled me for having feelings, even when they made him uncomfortable.  We spent 12 years together and almost got married, and I still say that if he proposed to me now, I'd marry him in a heartbeat.  It's pretty clear, though, that he and his culture gave me some of the things I was missing in my own household growing up.  Even at 17, this was a conscious choice on my part.

My exBPD, on the other hand, was not at all accepting of my emotions, and asked me to shut them down just like my parents would when I was a kid.  Maybe that's why the "idealization" phase was less than ideal for me; I didn't have that same sense of acceptance that I had in the previous relationship.

[Is This Normal]

I got a 58, which is a lot higher than I would have expected. I think I was thinking back to my younger years, when all of these feelings were quite inflamed. I've come a long way, but I think I still have a lot of growing to do in terms of "knowing" things at my core and intellectually knowing them. Some of my positive beliefs about myself and my place in the world are still in the intellectual stage rather than the deep-down knowing, feeling stage (emotional brain, perhaps?) And I still struggle with guilt over having the negative feelings. I "shouldn't" have them, I was spoiled growing up, had everything I wanted, etc., etc. I must have been a hypersensitive, demanding brat if I have these feelings after all that was done for me. That's how that line of thinking goes.

That first statement about not feeling like you belonged with family/friends really got me thinking. I knew I was an integral part of my family, that I was wanted and loved. But I had a sense that there was a definite heirarchy in place that could change in a heartbeat (though there was a core heirarchy that was always reverted back to). And I was not where I wanted to be in this heirarchy. I felt powerless on some level. The word I find myself using a lot when thinking about my childhood is impotent. Sometimes it seems like a strange word to use. My mother made me keep my hair short until I was a teenager, and I remember the story of Sampson losing his power when his hair was shorn really resonating with me. I think I was precociously aware of some of the dynamics of our family, though with no words or frame of reference to explain it to myself. I just knew, to borrow another Biblical story, that the emperor wasn't wearing any clothes. But the emperor (my unBPDm) was quite kind and loving to me much of the time, and that I was her special pet, so I figured to be having these bad feelings about her and the rest of my family, I must have been a bad person.

I've been looking at things recently from an inner child perspective, and that's been really helpful. I think it gets me around unconsciously inserting my adult self into the past and thus having unreasonably high expectations for how I handled things back then. When I think about my inner child and what it was like for her, I can feel compassion for her and myself, and strangely enough, be more grounded in my adult self. Rightly or wrongly, my child self perceived her parent's love to be ultimately conditional and she didn't feel seen or accepted for herself, the good, bad and ugly. But I can extend that acceptance to myself now. Not easy, but I think I'm getting the hang of it.

-ITN-

[Learning_curve74]

Three different scores for me based on my evolving life:

28 when I was a teen to young adult

11 during the 2nd round of my BPD relationship

8 for today's me

A lot of my personal issues arose as a result of the lack of emotional nurturing and connection to my father. He just is not a person who has the capability to relate to people socially. He is a mix of aspergers and narcissist. In fact, the whole time I was with my BPD exgf, he never once asked a single thing about her nor offered any advice. But God forbid if I let a single crumb fall on the floor at his place, then I'd never hear the end of it.  

Luckily my mother was a very caring and nurturing parent. So I only had half the job of "re-parenting" myself. 

[fred6]

Took it twice a few hours apart scored 62 the first time and 59 the second time. Most of my higher scores were on the not asking for help, living as a hermit, and not relying on others type questions. Yeah, I guess that I'm a nut or something, haha

[Turkish]

Score: 34.

I'm 32 years old... .have loving parents, but my mother is, without doubt, hyperprotective, and this, in turn, probably created me problems with abandonment fears. Indeed, few months ago my T told me I have a borderline personality style. I also have some "shy"-narcissistic traits.

I see this as a Hermit Mother trait "life is to be feared" according to Lawson in Understanding The Borderline Mother. Not saying your mother is BPD, but hyper-protectiveness could result in anxiety in a child, and it could be said that it is a form of emotional neglect (your identity as a child subsumed by her fears, perhaps?). Maybe you could start a thread on Coping and Healing to talk about it.  

[JaneStorm]

**Side note** I am unhappy that all of the good audiobooks are only available on Audible.com. What a bummer.

[Fr4nz]

Score: 34.

I'm 32 years old... .have loving parents, but my mother is, without doubt, hyperprotective, and this, in turn, probably created me problems with abandonment fears. Indeed, few months ago my T told me I have a borderline personality style. I also have some "shy"-narcissistic traits.

I see this as a Hermit Mother trait "life is to be feared" according to Lawson in Understanding The Borderline Mother. Not saying your mother is BPD, but hyper-protectiveness could result in anxiety in a child, and it could be said that it is a form of emotional neglect (your identity as a child subsumed by her fears, perhaps?). Maybe you could start a thread on Coping and Healing to talk about it.  

So, I talked to my T about my mother's hyper-protectiveness... .she's definitely not disturbed... .however, she had to make an abortion 2 years prior I was born (the baby died when she was 6 months into the pregnancy); as a consequence, this traumatic event very probably induced in her this "instinct" which lasts up to this day.

Once 2010 said that also "helicopter" mothers (like mine) can make damages to their children, even if they are the most possible loving and kind mothers; the reason is that this "hyper-protectiveness" can make the baby's world-exploration experiences unpleasurable (and thus, somehow, cripple the detachment from the mother's self and the formation of an own self).

It would be interesting to listen to what Skip thinks about this

[Turkish]

I'm about 40 (took it twice different days).

This is a fairly Gaussian distribution, centered around "moderate neglect."

The Hermit tendencies I score high upon. Unlike a BPD hermit, who may be afraid of everything (like my Ex's mother, and my Ex to an extent), I'm not I love motorcycles, fast cars, and other similar things. I also walk the streets with no fear. I do, however, often prefer being alone. I also prefer doing things for myself  because other people just let me down. I also have an issue with reaching out for support. I also know that some of this triggered my Ex. I additionally know that while independence can show strength, it an be an indicator of hidden pain when taken to an extreme. Not a good match for a pwBPD tendencies, triggering fears of abandonment.

[fred6]

I got the best score, I win. Or not, hahaha

[Rmbrworst]

I got 21.

However, most of this were due to high marks in the first 5 questions, which all got 3s and 4s

The rest of the test were 0s and 1s

[fromheeltoheal]

So the questions and the way they're phrased suggests that the 'perfect human' or the human living 'perfectly' would have a score of zero.  Well, screw perfection, unobtainable standards are the lowest actually, but I'm curious Skip if you or Dr, Webb have stats on how the 'general population' scores, or subsections of the general population?  Underlying that is the question 'just how fcked up am I?' of course, very disempowering question I realize, but curious what we as a culture are currently considering 'normal'.  Please share if anyone has the goods.

[thisworld]

Yay, I scored a happy 28 and will give myself 27 just for the pleasure of it In my twenties I would have scored much higher. I'm a bit suspicious about this question though: "Have friends or family who complained that you were aloof or distant." Emotionally abusive family members say these kinds of things all the time anyway. I believe it says more about them than about us.