What is Empathic Failure in Psychotherapy?

Most licensed psychotherapists are individuals who are credentialed and skilled in their areas of expertise. I believe the vast majority of psychotherapists are ethical and empathetic individuals who have their clients' best interests at heart and help their clients to overcome their psychological problems. But there can be big differences in terms of skills and experience from one psychotherapist to the next, and I believe that clients should be informed consumers, which is why I'm focusing on this issue.  

Psychotherapists are also human and, like everyone else, they make mistakes in therapy.  In this article, I'm focusing on a particular mistake called "empathic failure" where this is not an occasional problem but a recurrent problem with some psychotherapists (see my article: Why is Empathy Important in Psychotherapy?).

What is Empathic Failure in Psychotherapy?

What is Empathy?
Empathy involves a psychological process where you're able to put yourself in other people's shoes and get a sense of what they're feeling.  For instance, if your friend is upset because her dog died, even if you never had a dog in your life, you can put yourself in your friend's shoes and understand why she's upset about the loss.  You can tap into your friend's feelings and sense what she's feeling and resonate with her sadness about the loss.

What is Empathic Failure in Everyday Relationships?
Empathic failures occur all the time between friends, spouses, family members, students and teachers and so on.  Except when dealing with highly insensitive people, I believe that most instances of empathic failure occur inadvertently.

For instance, a husband might forget that his wife told him that she would like a particular perfume for her birthday. Instead, he buys her a vacuum cleaner and he feels proud of himself because it's energy efficient.

He expects that his wife will be thrilled.  But his wife's reaction is the complete opposite of what he expected--she is upset and angry because she feels he didn't hear her when she told him what she wanted.  She also feels that he sees her only as a "housewife" who cleans the apartment rather than a sensual woman.

While this might be very disappointing for his wife and it's an empathic failure, this isn't a reason to get a divorce if he is usually empathetic and they have a good relationship most of the time.  They can work out this problem and the husband can be more aware next time.

What is Empathic Failure in Psychotherapy?
When clients begin psychotherapy, they usually have a certain degree of trust that the psychotherapist is a credentialed mental health professional who will be attuned to their needs in therapy and help them to overcome the emotional problems.

Aside from all the other clinical skills that psychotherapists learn, one of the most important is how to be empathetic towards clients in therapy.  This is a skill that is honed in graduate school and, if the psychotherapist goes to postgraduate training, this skill usually developed even more.

I believe that most psychotherapists are empathetic individuals and those who go to graduate school who lack this skill are weeded out by supervisors and instructors.  That's not to say that there aren't some people who somehow make it through the screening process at times.

Even the best psychotherapists make mistakes in therapy at times, including empathic failures.  But there's a difference between a therapist who makes occasional mistakes related to empathic failure and those who do it habitually. So, let's start by defining what an empathic failure is in therapy:

An empathic failure occurs in therapy when the psychotherapist isn't attuned to the client.  This can occur in many ways:

• Forgetting important details about the client's life
• Confusing the client's history with another client
• Forgetting what the client and the therapist discussed in the prior session
• Forgetting an appointment with the client
• Focusing on the psychotherapist's life instead of focusing on the client's problems
• Projecting the psychotherapist's needs, wants, and problems onto the client
• Being dismissive of the client's needs
• Failing to be attuned to the client's emotions and mislabeling these emotions
• Failing to take responsibility for the mistakes that the psychotherapist made in therapy

and so on.

As I mentioned, even the best psychotherapists commit empathic failures at times.  For instance, a therapist, who is usually punctual and organized, can confuse his appointment schedule if the therapist is going through a very stressful time in his life.  If things were going smoothly before that, assuming that the therapist takes responsibility for the mistake, most clients would accept an apology and the therapy would continue (see my article: Ruptures and Repairs in Psychotherapy).

The empathic failures that I'm most concerned about are the ones that occur on a regular basis with a client who might have grown up with parents who lacked empathy for him.

Since this client grew up in an environment with chronic empathic failure, he might not recognize that he is in an unhealthy situation with his therapist.  It might seem "normal" to him because this is all that he knows.

The following fictional vignette illustrates how empathic failure can occur between a client and a therapist and steps that the client can take to take care of him or herself.

Fictional Vignette:  Mistakes Psychotherapists Make in Psychotherapy: Empathic Failure

Mike
Mike began therapy after a recent breakup. He told his new therapist that he felt unlovable and not good enough for most of his life.  This began in early childhood when his mother let him know that neither she nor his father wanted to have children, and Mike was "an accident."

He grew up feeling like he was "an inconvenience" to his parents, who paid very little attention to him.  As soon as he was old enough, they sent him to boarding school, which was a lonely experience for Mike.

When Mike looked up, he saw that his therapist had fallen asleep.  He wasn't sure what to do, so he cleared his throat hoping to wake the therapist up.  The therapist was startled by the sound and woke up with a jolt, "Oh, ah...what were you saying?"

Mike wasn't sure how much his therapist missed, so he started again at the beginning to describe his breakup and his family history.

Over the next few weeks, there were several other incidents.   There were a couple of times when Mike's therapist double booked appointments and Mike had to go home instead of seeing the therapist.

There was an incident where the therapist seemed to completely forget what Mike had told him about his family history and about the breakup, so Mike had to tell the therapist about these issues again.  Then, there was one day when Mike showed up for his regularly scheduled appointment and the therapist wasn't there.  Mike checked his voicemail to see if the therapist had left a message, but there were no messages.

Later that evening, when Mike met his close friend, Larry, and told him what had happened when Mike went to his therapist's office and the therapist wasn't there, Larry asked him questions about the therapy and if there were other problems in the therapy before this.

Mike thought about it for a minute and then told Larry about the other incidents.  While Mike spoke, Larry, who had good experiences in therapy before, listened carefully.  After Mike told him about the incidents, Larry told Mike that he needed to find another therapist because his current therapist seemed irresponsible and not attuned to Mike.

Since Larry knew Mike a long time, he also knew about Mike's childhood history and knew that Mike's experiences with his therapist were harmful.  He told Mike that he thought Mike's therapist wasn't treating him well and gave him all the reason why he thought this.  Mike listened, realized that what Larry was telling him resonated with him and that he probably had a blind spot about this.

When he went to his next session, Mike explained to his therapist why he thought the therapy wasn't working out for him and specifically why he felt he wasn't being treated well by the therapist.  His therapist looked uncomfortable, but he acknowledged that he had made mistakes with Mike.

Mike thought about it and decided that he ought to have consultations with other psychotherapists.  After two other consultations, Mike chose to work with another psychotherapist who seemed much more attuned to him.

He had one more session with his current therapist for closure and then began to meet regularly with the new therapist.  During that therapy, Mike began to understand why he had a blind spot in his former therapy.

He was also able to make connections between his history of emotional neglect with his family and the empathic failure that he experienced with his previous therapist.  This work helped Mike to feel that he deserved to be treated better in all areas of his life.

Conclusion
As I mentioned earlier, I believe that most psychotherapists are empathetic individuals who got into the mental health field to help people.

There can be empathic failures in any relationship.  Ideally, they are few and far between and when they occur, the person who made the mistake is able to admit it so there can be emotional repair.

An occasional mistake can occur in therapy, and the therapist should acknowledge the rupture and make an effort to repair the therapeutic relationship.  But when there are consistent empathic failures in psychotherapy with a particular psychotherapist, the client would do well to address these issues in therapy and to make a decision as to whether s/he wants to stay or find a different therapist.

Unfortunately, clients who grew up being emotionally neglected or abuse often have a blind spot for empathic failures because it seems "normal" to them.

Although this is a blog article and of necessity it's short, I hope it will be helpful to clients who might be experiencing consistent empathic failures in their therapy to become more aware of it and to take care of themselves by finding a therapist who can meet their needs.

Getting Help in Therapy
If you are struggling with an emotional problem that you have been unable to resolve, you could benefit from seeing a licensed mental health professional.

A consultation or two with a therapist (or more than one therapist) can help you to decide if you and the therapist are a good match (see my article: How to Choose a Psychotherapist).

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who provides integrative psychotherapy to individual adults and couples (see my article: Integrative Psychotherapy).

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Why Your Child Can't Be Your Best Friend

In my previous article, Caregiving For a Depressed Mother as a Child and a Depressed Spouse as an Adult, I discussed how early dynamics between parent and child often get recreated in adult relationships.  In this article, I'm focusing on a particular dynamic between parent and child where the parent sees the child as his or her "best friend" and the child takes on the parental role (also known as the parentified child) and the parent takes on the child role.

Why Your Child Can't Be Your Best Friend

To explore how this parent-child dynamic develops, it's important to realize that the parent who sees the child as a best friend usually was in that same role with one or both of her parents as a child.  In other words, this is often an unconscious repetition, so it doesn't seem unusual to the parent.  On the contrary, it's very familiar because he or she lived through it as a child and considered it to be "normal."

The parent who treats their child as a best friend often didn't get her emotional needs met as a child because of her own role as a best friend to her parent (I'm saying "her," but this is also true of relationships between a parent and a son).

This dynamic can continue to repeat itself intergenerationally, so there can be three or four generations where the children are expected to focus on the emotional needs of the parent instead of the parent taking care of the emotional needs of the child.

This comes at a tremendous emotional cost to the child because she subordinates her emotional needs to the needs of the parent.  On the face of it, this might seem like an impossible task for a child, but many children learn to sacrifice their emotional needs for  their parent's needs, and they become very good at it--to their own detriment.

So, if this is happening intergenerationally, how can a family break this unhealthy cycle?

Well, it often occurs when the child approaches adulthood and struggles to develop a healthy sense of autonomy.  Although this is a healthy sign for the child, it can wreak havoc between the parent and adult child if the parent isn't willing to allow the child to be more independent.

Let's take a look at a fictionalized vignette which explores these dynamics:

Clarissa and Clara
Clarissa started therapy soon after she began submitting her college applications to out of state colleges.

Why Your Child Can't Be Your Best Friend

Clarissa was an only child who was still living at home.  Her mother, Clara, was a single parent.  At the point when Clarissa came to therapy, they were arguing about the fact that Clarissa wanted to go away to college.  Although Clarissa stood her ground with her mother, inwardly she felt deeply ambivalent about leaving her mother.

Not only did she fear that her mother would be very lonely without her but Clarissa knew that her mother relied on her when Clara felt especially depressed and discouraged.

On the one hand, Clarissa wanted to be away at college to experience more freedom and have the campus experience before she settled down in a career.  On an intuitive level, she knew this was what she needed emotionally and socially.  But, on the other hand, she felt guilty leaving her mother alone.

When they argued, Clarissa tried not to show her ambivalence because she feared that she would cave in to her mother's wishes and sacrifice her own needs.  But, internally, she was struggling with the possibility of letting go of her role as her mother's best friend.

As Clarissa explored her family history with her psychotherapist, she began to realize for the first time that she and her mother had a similar dynamic to her mother and maternal grandmother.

Similar to the maternal grandmother, Clara was in her mid-teens when she had Clarissa.  They both raised their children without the biological father with the help of their mothers. Clara was her mother's best friend and confidant and they usually did everything together.

When Clarissa revealed to Clara that she wanted to go away to college, Clara was stunned.  She couldn't understand why Clarissa would want to leave their town where their family had roots for many generations.

Clara had always hoped that she and Clarissa would have a similar relationship to the one that Clara had with her mother.  She told her that Clarissa that she considered it a form of betrayal that she would want to move away to college for four years.

Clarissa talked to her therapist about how she grew up listening to her mother's problems.  Even as a young child, she tried to help her mother to overcome feelings of helplessness and hopelessness.

Even though she was only a young child, she felt she did a good job of shoring her mother up emotionally.  But now, she wanted something more--something for herself for a change.  She asked her therapist, "Am I being selfish?"

Over time, Clarissa's therapist helped her to work through her ambivalence to see that what she wanted for herself was healthy and necessary for her well-being.

Being able to look at her situation through her therapist's eyes, Clarissa could see, for the first time, that what was expected of her as a child wasn't healthy for her.  At the same time, she had a lot of compassion for her mother.

When Clarissa felt ready, she asked Clara to come to a therapy session with her.  Although Clara said she "didn't believe in therapy," she came to the session with a wary eye on the therapist.

When Clarissa explained to Clara why she wanted to go away to college, Clara burst into tears.  Although they had had this same talk many times before on their own, Clara realized that Clarissa made up her mind and it was final.

Clara explained to Clarissa and the therapist that she wanted what was best for her daughter, but she felt it would be unbearable for her to be home alone, especially since her mother died the year before.  She would have no one.

Clara idealized her relationship with her mother and told them that, from the time Clarissa was born, she wanted the same relationship with Clarissa that she and her mother had.  She was her mother's best friend and she hoped that Clarissa would be her best friend always.

But now that Clarissa wanted to go away, she saw all of this falling apart for her.  She couldn't understand why Clarissa couldn't go to the local college so they could remain together.  The therapist suggested that Clara could benefit from seeing her own therapist, but Clara brushed this off.

When Clarissa came to her next therapy session, she told her therapist that she felt more confident in her decision, even though she still felt guilty about leaving her mother.

Why Your Child Can't Be Your Best Friend

Eventually, Clarissa went off to college.  She continued to work on the emotional separation process from her mother with a therapist at the counseling center.

Her relationship with her mother remained fraught until her mother began developing her own friendships and interests in her church.

Over time, they were able to repair their relationship.  Clarissa enjoyed her new sense of autonomy and she felt that she was finally taking care of her own emotional needs.

Conclusion
When parents have their own unmet emotional needs from childhood, and especially if they were parentified children with one or both parents, they are more likely to try to get their unmet needs through their children.

This is usually an emotional blind spot for the parent.   In most cases the parent is unaware that she is doing harm to the child.  She's just doing what feels right, often based on her own childhood.

Children will often try to extend themselves beyond their emotional maturity and sacrifice their own needs in order to please their parents.

Even when the child attempts to resist being a parentified child, he or she often feels guilty about not being able to meet their parent's needs.

In order for the child to grow emotionally, the child needs to assert his or her own needs by resisting the parent's attempt to make the child their emotional caregiver.  Resisting the parent is usually very difficult and beyond what most children are able to do.

In order for the parent to grow, the parent needs to mourn that s/he didn't get what s/he needed as a child and find other healthy ways of getting emotional needs met instead of depending on the child.

Getting Help in Therapy
It's often difficult for the child to assert his/her needs for fear of losing a parent's love.  Similarly, it's often difficult for a parent to resist depending upon the child emotionally.

For parent and child, psychotherapy is often helpful to overcome these challenges.

If you're struggling with these issues, rather than struggling alone, you could benefit from getting help in therapy.

A skilled psychotherapist can help you to negotiate these emotional challenges so you can change, grow and lead a more fulfilling life.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

I have worked with adult children and parents, both individually and together, to help them overcome these emotional challenges.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Caregiving For a Depressed Mother as a Child and a Depressed Spouse as an Adult

People often unconsciously choose a spouse who has similar characteristics to one or both parents (see my article:  Overcoming the Guilt You Feel For Not Being Able to Heal Your Parent's Emotional Wounds and How to Stop Being the "Rescuer" in Your Family of Origin).

Caregiving For a Depressed Mother as a Child and a Depressed Spouse as an Adult

A child, who was the emotional caregiver for a depressed parent, will often unconsciously choose a spouse who is depressed and recreate a similar caregiving dynamic with the spouse.

The following fictionalized vignette illustrates how these patterns are repeated and how therapy can help:

Emma
Emma grew up in a loving, nurturing home.  She was the youngest of three children in a close-knit extended family.  Both parents were actively involved in the children's lives, although the father was often away on business.

Emma's mother was well liked by her neighbors for her kindness and generosity.  She was very proud of Emma and Emma's sisters, and she instilled confidence in them.  She encouraged their curiosity and creativity, and she taught them that they could be whatever they wanted to be.

As the youngest, Emma was closest to her mother.  By the time Emma was about to start school, her sisters were already involved in high school activities and out of the house most of the time.  As a result, Emma spent a lot of time alone with her mother.

Emma's Mother: Caregiving For a Depressed Mother as a Child and a Depressed Spouse as an Adult

For a young child, Emma was especially perceptive, and she realized that her mother was depressed--even though her mother was loving and active in Emma's life and she tried her best to hide her depression from Emma and the rest of the family.

Emma worried about her mother, and she spent most of her time at home trying to enliven her mother and make her laugh. There were days when Emma's jokes and funny stories seemed to lift her mother's mood.  But there were other days when it seemed that nothing Emma could do would lift her mother's spirits and Emma felt very sad on those days.

As Emma got older and she developed friendships and outside interests, she continued to feel that her primary responsibility was to lift her mother's spirits. Realizing that Emma felt overly responsible for her, her mother would encourage Emma to pursue her friendships and interests.  She didn't want Emma to sacrifice her happiness.

By the time Emma graduated from high school, she felt deeply ambivalent about going away to college, even though her parents and older sisters encouraged her.  She worried that her mother would sink into an even deeper depression if she wasn't around to try to enliven her.

She had a hard time adjusting to being away from home during her first year at college, and she took every opportunity to go home on weekends to spend time with her mother.  She would also often bring home friends that she thought would be entertaining for her mother.

In her junior year, she met Tom.  She liked that Tom was a serious philosophy major, who was intelligent, knowledgeable and curious.  Soon they were spending a lot of time together.

Emma's friends at college teased her about Tom because they thought he was dour.  But Emma brushed off their criticism and told them that they didn't know him, they were judging him only from his outer appearance, and they couldn't appreciate all of the qualities that she saw in him.

Soon after they graduated college, Emma and Tom got married and began working. Emma found her dream job working as a journalist.  But Tom was unable to find the type of job he hoped for after he graduated college.  Part of the problem was that he had definite ideas of what he wanted and refused to compromise.  As a result, he did temp work.

Emma and Tom: Caregiving For a Depressed Mother as a Child and a Depressed Spouse as an Adult

Emma was very aware that Tom felt depressed and discouraged about his work situation, so she refrained from gushing about her work.  Instead, she tried to be emotionally supportive of Tom, but he didn't respond well to her trying to lift his spirits.  He would become annoyed with her and mostly wanted to spend time alone.

This left Emma feeling lonely and helpless, and when she tried to talk to Tom about it, he refused to address the problems between them.  He expressed his resentment that she was so happy with her work, and he felt miserable.

Soon, Emma was spending most of her free time with her friends because Tom refused to go out.  She was deeply concerned about Tom and their marriage, but there was nothing that she could do.

As time went on, Emma was promoted into a more responsible position with a big salary increase. She was also given more interesting assignments.  But Tom continued to stagnate.  Emma encouraged him to get help in therapy, but he refused to go.

Two years later, their marriage was over.  Tom moved out to live with his parents across the country, and Emma was in despair.

Shortly after that, Emma began therapy to try to understand what happened and to pick up the pieces of her life.  Her psychotherapist helped Emma to see how she had been in a similar dynamic with Tom as she had been with her mother.

Although Emma's mother and Tom experienced their depression in different ways and had their own unique responses to Emma's attempts at caregiving, they elicited similar responses in Emma.

While she was in therapy, Emma also saw her blind spots about Tom.  Looking back with the perspective of time, she realized that there were signs before she got married that Tom was depressed and rigid in his thinking, but she didn't want to see these traits.  She also saw her role in the demise of their marriage and how she infantilized Tom.

Emma grieved in therapy for the loss of her marriage as she went through the divorce process.  She also learned in therapy that she had a propensity to be a caregiver in a relationship due to her early relationship with her mother, and she would need to be much more aware of this in the future so she would not repeat the same patterns.

Conclusion
Emotional dynamics between parents and children are developed at an early age.

As in the fictionalized vignette above, these dynamics are often unconscious for both parent and child.

When a child grows up feeling emotionally responsible for a parent, this often sets up the possibility for similar dynamics in adult relationships on an unconscious level, which often leads to problems in the relationship for both individuals.

Getting Help in Therapy
Both people in the relationship need to be willing to change these unhealthy dynamics to make healthy changes.

It can be very challenging to overcome these dynamics on your own, even if one or both people are aware of them and willing to change, which is why working with a skilled psychotherapist can be helpful.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

I have helped many clients to overcome unhealthy emotional patterns in their lives.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Your Emotional Blind Spots Can Have Serious Repercussions For Yourself and Your Children

In a prior article, Overcoming Your Emotional Blind Spots, I discussed how many people are unaware of the emotional blind spots that affect them in their lives.  In today's article, I'll focus on how your emotional blind spots caused by unresolved trauma can have serious repercussions for you as well as your children.

Emotional Blind Spots Can Have Serious Repercussions

According to an article by Kate Murphy of the New York Times, No Time to Think, many people would prefer to keep themselves continuously distracted than spend even a short amount of time on self reflection.  And, of course, with so many electronic gadgets there are more ways for us to distract ourselves these days than ever before.

Emotional Blind Spots Can Have Serious Repercussions

People who avoid self reflection often have emotional blind spots about themselves as well as those closest to them.   This is especially true of people who have unresolved trauma from early childhood.

Let's take a look at an example, which is a composite of many cases with all identifying information changed:

Betty:
Betty moved to NYC when she was in her early 20s to get away from her father, who had sexually abused her for several years after her mother died when Betty was 13.

When Betty came to NY, she had no experience with dating.  She was also passive.  In addition, she had little self awareness so that she married the first man who showed interest in her without being aware, at the time, that she had no feelings for him.

The man she married, Bruce, turned out to be someone with a serious alcohol problem who was only concerned about having his personal needs met.  He cared nothing about what Betty wanted and, Betty, in turn, had no idea what she wanted because she never thought about it.  She felt that her sole duty was to be a good wife and dote on her husband.

No matter what time Bruce got home from drinking with his friends, Betty waited up for him so she could serve him his dinner.  She never complained, nor was she aware, at that time, of being angry or unhappy about his behavior.

As time went on, Betty and Bruce had a son, John, and Betty began to get to know some of the other mothers at John's school.  There was one mother in particular, Lilly, who Betty would invite over for dinner every so often with Lilly's son, Will.

After Lilly saw how Betty waited on Bruce like a servant and how unappreciative he was, Lilly waited until she could talk to Betty alone.  Then, she tried to be as tactful as possible as she broached the topic with Betty.  But Betty, who knew Lilly meant well, dismissed the idea that Bruce took her for granted.  And Lilly could see that this topic was making Betty uncomfortable so she dropped it.

It pained Lilly to see Betty being taken for granted by Bruce, but she felt that Betty was unable and unwilling to see this, so there was nothing that she could do.

Several years later, Lilly's son, Will, told her that Betty's son, John, was drinking.  Lilly was shocked because John was only 12, like Will.  Will told Lilly how John was stealing liquor from Betty's and Bruce's liquor cabinet without them even realizing it.

Lilly thought about how she could approach Betty about this.  She knew that Betty loved her son, but she didn't know how Betty would respond to being told that John was drinking.

One day, while Lilly was visiting Betty and thinking about how to broach the topic, they were both startled to hear a commotion coming from John's room.

When they went to his room, John was standing on the ledge of his window with a bottle of whiskey in his hand, clearly drunk, saying, "Look mom!  I can fly!" and, before Betty or Lilly could reach him, he jumped off the ledge in a drunken stupor and fell into the bushes in the backyard.

John survived the fall with a broken arm.  But this was a big wake up call for Betty, who had no idea that John had been drinking.

The nurse in the hospital ER called the bureau of child welfare, who provided Betty and her family with family services.  Betty and Bruce were mandated to attend parenting skills classes and the whole family attended family counseling.

The family counselor also recommended that Betty seek her own individual counseling, which she did.  He provided John with a referral to a child therapist.  He also recommended that Bruce attend alcohol treatment, which Bruce refused to do.

Betty began to deal with her early history of childhood trauma in her own individual therapy.  She also learned that, at an early age, in order to deal with the trauma, she learned to "zone out" or dissociate to keep herself from feeling the full impact of the trauma.

Dissociation is a common response to overwhelming trauma.  It helped Betty to survive a difficult situation when she was a child, but now, as an adult, she realized that the dissociation was having serious negative consequences for herself and her son.

Betty also realized that, due to her dissociation and her own related emotional blind spots, she was missing important signs that she was in an unhappy marriage, her life was falling apart, and her son wasn't doing well.

Initially, Betty blamed herself for not seeing the problems.  She was filled with guilt and shame for being emotionally numb and in denial.

It took a lot of work in therapy over a period of time for Betty to deal with her own childhood history of trauma as well as her current problems with her son and her husband in a way where she could be compassionate towards herself.

Over time, Betty began to integrate her childhood history and make connections to her current life.  Her son did well in therapy after a rocky start.  But Bruce refused to attend any more family sessions after a few visits.  He blamed Betty for their son's problems and refused to see how he was contributing to the family's problems.

Eventually, Betty got a job to support herself and John, and she asked Bruce to move out.  She also set limits with Bruce, telling him that if he wanted to have visitation with their son, he had to be sober during these visits.  This was reinforced by the bureau of child welfare caseworker.  To Betty's amazement, Bruce complied.  He was also mandated to provide child support.

Gradually, Betty began to put her life together.  After working through her childhood trauma and the end of her marriage, she was no longer in denial or in a dissociative fog.

Betty Became More Emotionally Available

She no longer feared self reflection and she became more emotionally available to herself as well as her son.

Getting Help in Therapy
If the issues in this article resonate with you, you owe it to yourself to get help from a licensed mental health professional who has expertise in this area.

With help in therapy, you can overcome unresolved trauma and any related emotional blind spots so you can lead a more fulfilling and integrated life.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individuals and couples.

I have helped many clients, who were willing to do the work in therapy, to overcome their trauma and emotional blind spots.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

What is the Connection Between Childhood Emotional Neglect and Adult Romantic Relationships?

Early childhood emotional neglect can lead to many problems later on in adulthood with developing and sustaining relationships.   In an earlier article,  What is Childhood Emotional Neglect?  I defined childhood emotional neglect.  In this article, I will discuss the connection between childhood emotional neglect and problems in adult relationships.

Childhood Emotional Neglect and Adult Romantic Relationships

Cycles of Problems From One Generation to the Next
Very often, parents, whose own emotional needs were unmet when they were children, have problems later on as adults being nurturing with their children.

As children, they didn't have parental role models who showed them how to form healthy, nurturing relationships.  This is especially problematic if there wasn't another nurturing adult, like a family friend, teacher or mentor, to mitigate the effects of parental emotional neglect.

Childhood Emotional Neglect and Adult Romantic Relationships

Aside from not having role models, it's usually the case that, since their emotional needs were unmet as children, they continue to have unmet emotional needs as adults, which gets in the way of their dealing with the emotional needs of their own children.

Under these circumstances, it's not unusual to see cycles of one generation after the next of children with unmet emotional needs who grow up to be adults who cannot meet the needs of their children.  This is especially evident when clinicians do intergenerational family genograms with clients where certain behavioral patterns can be traced from one generation to the next.

Potential Problems Related to Early Childhood Emotional Neglect
There are many potential problems that can develop for children who have unmet emotional needs.

The following list includes many of the most common problems:

• problems in school, including problems with focusing in class, following the teacher's directives, completing homework assignments, acting out by fighting with other students or being truant from school, and so on
• problems as a child (and later on as an adult) forming friendships and other relationships
• problems with alcoholism, drug addiction, compulsive gambling or other compulsive behaviors, like overspending or sexual addiction, as a teen or an adult
• problems with eating disorders, including overeating and obesity, anorexia and bulimia
• problems with getting and holding down a steady job
• problems with basic self care, including neglecting one's medical and dental health, getting enough sleep, eating nutritiously and so on
• problems being compassionate towards oneself and others
• problems forming healthy romantic relationships
• problems with loneliness and social isolation
• problems with self centeredness and narcissism

Potential Problems Related to Early Childhood Emotional Neglect 

The list above is by no means exhaustive, but it gives you an idea of all the potential problems that can develop for a child, who has unmet emotional needs.

Despite a History of Emotional Neglect, Some People Are Inherently Resilient
Of course, there are exceptions.  I've met people, both in my personal life and in my professional life as a psychotherapist, who grew up in families where their emotional needs were unmet and, inexplicably, they grew up to be nurturing adults (see my article:  Resilience: Tips on How You Can Learn to Cope With Life's Ups and Downs).

Despite a History of Emotional Neglect, Some People Are Inherently Resilient

In many cases, especially where there weren't other adults outside their families who made up for the emotional neglect, it's hard to see how, against the odds, they were able to grow up with an ability to be loving and nurturing.  One possible explanation is that these people are inherently resilient.  Resilience is a basic part of their makeup, and it helps them to overcome many of the obstacles that most people, under the same circumstances, encounter.  But, as I've mentioned, these people tend to be the exception.

Emotional Blind Spots: Some Parents Are Unable or Unwilling to See How They Continue the Cycle of Emotional Neglect
Then again, unfortunately, as many of my psychotherapy clients tell me, there are many parents who have emotional blind spots (see my article: Overcoming Your Emotional Blind Spots).

Emotional Blind Spots:  Some Parents Are Unable or Unwilling to See How They Continue the Cycle of Emotional Neglect

From their perspective, they weren't nurtured as children but they think they were nurturing parents to their own children.  They're often unable or unwilling to see that, as adults with deep unmet needs, they've continued the cycle with their children.

In future blog articles, I'll delve deeper into the different aspects of this topic.

Getting Help in Therapy
If some of these issues are familiar to you, rather than continuing to be unhappy, you can work through these problems with a licensed psychotherapist so that you can lead a more fulfilling life.

About Me

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and children.  

I have helped many clients to overcome the effects of childhood emotional neglect and abuse so they could lead happier, more meaningful lives.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Overcoming Your Emotional Blind Spots

Emotional blind spots are often aspects of ourselves that we're unable to see, but other people, especially people who are close to us, can see.  The problem with emotional blind spots is that they often keep us making the same mistakes over and over again or they affect our loved ones in ways we never intended.

Overcoming Your Emotional Blind Spots

The following composite scenario is an example of an emotional blind spot.  As a composite of many cases, it preserves confidentiality.

Mary
Mary never knew her father when she was growing up.  It was a family secret.  When other young children talked about their fathers, she felt sad and wished she had a father too.  

It wasn't until she attended the funeral of a family friend, when she was in her mid-20s, that she found out, inadvertently when she overheard people talking, that this "family friend" was actually her biological father.  He was always nice to her, and she was very fond of him.  

Mary was shocked and very sad to discover that she never had a father-daughter relationship with him. When she confronted her mother about it, her mother refused to discuss it, so Mary vowed that she would never do this to her future children.

When she became pregnant from a man that she had only been dating for a few months and had already broken up with because he was unreliable, she decided to have the baby and allow him to be involved in the child's life, just as most fathers would be.  But the child's father continued to be unreliable and continually disappointed their daughter by not showing up.  The child, who looked forward to seeing the father, was always disappointed and hurt.

Mary's mother and sisters tried to talk to her about how damaging this was to Mary's daughter, who was now seven.  But Mary kept insisting that it was important for her daughter to have the father in the picture.  Due to her own unresolved needs, she continued to try to keep the father involved, and he continued to disappoint the daughter.  Mary couldn't see that her emotional blind spot and her own unresolved childhood issues kept her in denial and were emotionally damaging to her daughter.

As a teenager, when Mary's daughter refused to see her father any more, Mary felt very upset.  All of her friends and family told her that her daughter's decision was an emotionally healthy decision because the father always disappointed her.  Mary had a hard time seeing it--until a close friend tactfully suggested that Mary might have an emotional blind spot about this issue and suggested that Mary see a therapist.

Somewhat hesitantly, Mary started therapy and when her therapist also pointed out her emotional blind spot, Mary began to deal with her own loss and realized that it was affecting her ability to see what was best for her daughter.  She grieved for the father she never had and, over time, she freed herself from this emotional burden that was starting to drive a wedge between her and her daughter.

Emotional blind spots are often hard for us to see on our own.  They usually involve aspects of ourselves, our lives or our loved ones that we're in denial about.  One clue that you might have an emotional blind spot, which is unconscious, is when you keep finding yourself in the same situation over and over again.

An example of a possible emotional blind spot is if you keep choosing romantic partners that have problems with alcohol or who are abusive.  If you continually find yourself in these types of situations, it's worth exploring if you have an emotional blind spot.

Getting Help in Therapy
Working through your emotional blind spots with a skilled, objective therapist usually gets you a lot further than trying to deal with emotional blind spots on your own.  Once you're free of the emotional blind spots that cause you to keep making the same mistakes, you have a chance for a much more fulfilling life.

About Me

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist.

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more abut m, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.