Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect Author: Jonice Webb With Christine Musello | Language: English | ISBN:
B009VJ4B4C | Format: EPUB
Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect Description
A large segment of the population struggles with feelings of being detached from themselves and their loved ones. They feel flawed, and blame themselves. Running on Empty will help them realize that they're suffering not because of something that happened to them in childhood, but because of something that didn't happen. It's the white space in their family picture, the background rather than the foreground. This will be the first self-help book to bring this invisible force to light, educate people about it, and teach them how to overcome it.
- File Size: 1053 KB
- Print Length: 250 pages
- Publisher: Morgan James Publishing (October 1, 2012)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B009VJ4B4C
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #28,357 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
As a therapist, I work with clients who feel inadequate or dissatisfied with their lives and often they are confused about how they got where they are. People frequently have trouble seeing the clues to their current difficulties as they look back through their childhoods. Dr Webb's primary insight helps to explain why it's so hard for many people to understand their own emotions - She talks about the concept of emotional neglect as what didn't take place in the interactions between parents and children and how this in turn leads to specific, predictable challenges as people develop. Because it's common for people to consider their childhoods as `normal' - you don't miss what you didn't have- people don't know that something's amiss until these gaps become visible in adulthood.
One of the many strengths of Dr. Webb's book is how she portrays the various worlds that children grow up in, showing with great immediacy and detail, how various kinds of parents (12 well- drawn types ranging from the authoritarian to the workaholic to the well-meaning- but- emotionally- neglected themselves parent) contribute to missed opportunities for healthy development. Her intelligent, empathic explanations of what is happening in the moment and over time will help people recognize how things may have gotten off track in their own lives. Offering a model of healthy parenting and a quick course on what leads to sound emotional development in children, the lapses become that much easier to recognize and emotions become more understandable.
The next part of the book is devoted to identifying practical ways that people can build or strengthen those undeveloped parts of themselves. These strategies are helpful, but Dr. Webb's conceptualization of emotional neglect and its consequences, explained in non-jargony terms, will be what is most empowering for people as they strive to move ahead in their lives.
By jschaffner
Reading this book has made me think not only about my own parenting skills and struggles, but also got me to reflect on my childhood and the emotional support I did or did not get. I think others who are introspective and reflective about these areas will appreciate the depths of this book. Dr. Webb speaks to parents, adult children and practitioners in this well researched and honestly written guide to overcoming "emotional neglect." I was hesitant to read it, thinking it might be another "parent bashing and blaming" session. But it is not! Dr. Webb has great empathy for adults as parents and adults who think back to the "white spaces" of their childhood. She has a professional, but personable and caring tone of voice in her writing that makes the reader feel that she truly wants to guide parents/adult children along the path to awareness and also healing from "Emotional Neglect." There is nothing bashing or shaming in her message in this book. I can tell that she enjoys her research and work. How honorable that she dedicated the book to her clients. She really sums it up in her introduction when she says that often it's not "what happened to you as a child, but rather what did NOT happen" What was NOT talked about. What guidance and issues were NOT addressed. What feelings were NOT labelled and honored. She gives a refreshing new way to think about our childhood so that we can have a new perspective and approach to our own parenting. A must read for parents and practitioners !!
By cbergh
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