A clinical examination of the ways in which early neglect can impact adults throughout their lives, and suggestions for therapists on how to help. People who have experienced emotional neglect in the first months and years of life suffer negative consequences into adulthood. As adult psychotherapy clients, they require long-term work and delicate emotional attunement as well as a profound understanding of the experiences that have shaped their inner worlds. This book provides therapists with an in-depth view of the subjective experience of such “ignored children” and a range of possible theoretical models to help understand key features of their psychological functioning. Kathrin A. Stauffer presents do’s and don’t’s of psychotherapy with such clients. She draws on broad clinical experience to help psychotherapeutic professionals deepen their understanding of “ignored children” and outlines available neurobiological and psychological data to assist therapists in designing effective therapeutic interventions.

“Opens doors to richer, more connected relationships by naming the elephant in the room ‘Childhood Emotional Neglect’” (Harville Hendrix, PhD & Helen Lakelly Hunt, PhD, authors of the New York Times bestseller Getting the Love You Want). Since the publication of Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect, many thousands of people have learned that invisible Childhood Emotional Neglect, or CEN, has been weighing on them their entire lives, and are now in the process of recovery. Running on Empty No More: Transform Your Relationships will offer even more solutions for the effects of CEN on people’s lives: how to talk about CEN, and heal it, in relationships with partners, parents, and children. “Filled with examples of well-meaning people struggling in their relationships, Jonice Webb not only illustrates what’s missing between adults and their parents, husbands, and their wives, and parents and their children; she also explains exactly what to do about it.” —Terry Real, internationally recognized family therapist, speaker and author, Good Morning America, The Today Show, 20/20, Oprah, and The New York Times “You will find practical solutions for everyday life to heal yourself and your relationships. This is a terrific new resource that I will be recommending to many clients now and in the future!” —Dr. Karyl McBride, author of Will I Ever Be Good Enough?

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.

When a parent singles out a child for special privileges and attention, that child is often unaware that the relationship is unhealthy—even incestuous. As adults, these children struggle to feel validated, because while they have not been directly abused, they feel a sense of violation and crossed boundaries—usually done in the name of 'love' and 'caring.' The parent's love feels more confining than freeing, more demanding than giving, more intrusive than nurturing. Yet these children suffer from what psychologist Kenneth Adams calls The Silent Seduction—because there is nothing loving or caring about a close parent-child relationship that services the needs of the parent rather than the child. In this revised and updated 20th anniversary edition of his groundbreaking book Silently Seduced, Dr. Adams explains how 'feeling close,' especially with the opposite-sex parent, is not the source of comfort the image suggests, especially when that child is cheated out of a childhood by being a parent's surrogate partner. He offers a framework to understand this covert incest and its effect on sexuality, intimacy, and relationships, and how victims can begin the process of recovery.

This helpful guide reveals how those who have been emotionally abused can overcome the past and rebuild their self-image.