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Why does emotional neglect make you feel like you’re running on empty?
It’s an excellent question.
Not long after my first book, Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect, came out, I was interviewed on NPR. The first thing the interviewer asked me was, “Why the name Running on Empty? Where did that come from?”
To be honest, I was somewhat unprepared for this question, and I stumbled a bit. The only answer I could think of at first was: “Because that’s what childhood emotional neglect makes you feel.” It made such intuitive sense to me that I had never even thought about how to explain it.
Since that day, I have been asked that question many, many more times. And I have put considerably more thought into how to describe the relationship between childhood emotional neglect and emptiness in a way that makes not only intuitive sense but also offers helpful personal understanding to those who grew up emotionally neglected.
First, we’ll define what “empty” actually feels like. Then we’ll talk about what it means to be running on empty.
What “empty” feels like
Here are some of the ways I have heard it described by many different people.
A hollow feeling in my stomach
A lack of feelings, like I have no emotions
A weird feeling in my throat
A sense of being entirely depleted, and having nothing more to give
Going through life on autopilot
Numbness
Unfulfilled and lost
As you can probably see from the different expressions above, “empty” can feel different to different people. Yet, it usually comes down to one common factor: a deep, uncomfortable sense that something important is missing inside of you.
Just as all of our feelings are messages from our bodies, so is emptiness. Emptiness is a real sense of a real thing that really exists.
When you have childhood emotional neglect, you are indeed missing something. Something valuable and dear. Something that’s required for a happy, connected, and fully engaged life.
It’s your emotions.
How childhood emotional neglect creates a feeling of emptiness
Childhood emotional neglect happens when your parents fail to notice, validate, and respond to your emotions enough as they raise you.
When your parents fail to notice your feelings as a child, you grow up having the most powerful expression of your deepest self (your emotions) ignored. What is a child to do?
Fortunately and unfortunately, children’s brains automatically step in to protect them in these situations. When, as a child, you perceive, on some level, that your emotions are not welcome in your family, your brain automatically walls them off for you. This way, those troublesome feelings won’t burden you and your parents. In many ways, this coping technique is brilliantly adaptive.
But it’s also what makes you feel empty as an adult.
Later in life, you are not aware of what your brain has done for you. You are not aware that your feelings are blocked from you. You are not aware that you are living your life without full access to something critical that everyone else has: your emotions.
But while you may not be aware of any of this, your body is. Your body knows that something is missing, and so it sends you signals. It sends you feelings of emptiness in your belly or chest, or throat as a way of saying, “Pay attention! Something is wrong here!”
What it means to live life running on empty
In previous writings, I have likened the experience of running on empty to eating a cake baked without enough sugar, playing the role of “extra” in the movie of your life, and living under cloudy skies.
When you are engaged with your feelings — actively managing them and using them — you gain many important advantages. Your feelings will tell you what to pursue and avoid, what and who to care about, and what you want and need. And they’ll provide you with the motivation and energy for all of those things.
When you are deprived of this natural, rich, and connecting resource, you tend to drift, not quite knowing who you are or what to do. You end up giving without receiving enough back and depleting your own resources to your own detriment.
You may even set up a good life for yourself, but still wonder why you’re not happier.
How to stop running on empty
Surprisingly, there is an answer to running on empty. You do not have to live this way for the rest of your life.
The way you become full is to do the opposite of what you learned in childhood. You grew up with your feelings ignored, so now is the time to change that.
It’s never too late to alter the way you treat your emotions. Even if you feel numb now, your emotions are there. They are waiting for you on the other side of that wall you built in childhood.
To reach them, you must first begin to see their value. When you invite them into your life, they will come. You can chip down the wall that blocks them off, and learn the skills to manage them.
Lastly, you can learn how to use them to enrich, deepen, and strengthen your relationships.
So why does childhood emotional neglect make you feel you are running on empty? As a child, it was because your parents, perhaps unintentionally, discouraged your feelings. Now, it’s because you are continuing to ignore your own feelings.
But you are grown now. You are in charge of your own decisions and your own life. You can make the decision to stop running on empty.
To determine whether you might be living with the effects of childhood emotional neglect, you can take my free Emotional Neglect Questionnaire. You’ll find the link in my bio.
This post also appears on emotionalneglect.com.
© Jonice Webb, Ph.D.
