Hi,
I'm Dr.
Denise Webb,
Clinical psychologist.
Welcome to my video on emotional neglect.
In this video I'm going to talk about and give you 10 powerful affirmations that you can use to reparent yourself if you grew up with childhood emotional neglect or CEN.
A minute I'm going to give you those 10 affirmations which are very effective,
But first I just want to explain a little bit about what affirmations are and why you need to reparent yourself if you grew up with childhood emotional neglect.
So affirmations are basically just sentences that you say to yourself.
And keeping them a little bit on the short side is helpful.
They are things you say to yourself to either remind yourself of something that you're working on.
They might be at a time when you need to feel empowered.
Or when you need to get courage or when you need to have confidence.
Or when you need to motivate yourself.
Soothe yourself or validate yourself.
Affirmations can do all of these things and if you notice if you know much about childhood emotional neglect you might notice those are all things that you didn't get enough of in childhood.
So we're going to get to that in just a minute.
But basically,
Affirmations can be very powerful.
It's sort of like creating your own internal parent that you didn't have growing up that is there for you as an adult.
And little bit about how reparenting works.
Basically the healing process from childhood emotional neglect is the process of giving yourself what you didn't get as a child.
Emotional validation,
Emotional attention,
Emotional support,
Emotional care,
And emotional attention.
And all of those things you were lacking growing up,
Or at least some of them,
And giving them to yourself now is a powerful way to recover from all those things you didn't get.
It's just basically replacing and replenishing yourself with things that you're lacking.
These affirmations that I'm going to give you now can be very helpful in forming that internal parent who can be extremely,
Extremely helpful.
So the first category of affirmations that I want to talk about I actually have six or seven different categories.
The first one is in the area of feelings.
So you.
We're taught growing up.
Whether your parent,
Even if your parents never said it,
They communicated to you that your feelings don't matter.
So all of these affirmations about feelings are reminders and basically re-educators to help rewire your nervous system to view and treat your feelings in a different way.
The first one is No feeling is bad.
It's what I do with them,
With that feeling that matters.
And this could not be more true.
Because not only does your feeling.
Matter,
It is not inherently bad.
It can't be bad to have a feeling because you didn't choose that feeling.
It was sent to you from your body which is biologically and neurologically wired to send you messages.
So this feeling that you're having is a message.
It doesn't matter what it is or where it comes from.
Well,
It does matter where it comes from,
But that's a whole different story.
What matters is.
Not that you're having the feeling because you couldn't choose it.
Even if it's envy,
If it's rage,
If it's hatred,
If it's anger or hurt.
It's so important that you not judge yourself for having that emotion and instead focus what you're going to do with that emotion.
Because if you take it out on someone then you're going to have to answer for that later.
And if you misuse it in some way.
Or you just push it down so it comes out at somebody the next day,
Maybe who doesn't deserve it.
You're responsible for that.
So again,
This.
.
.
Particular affirmation is one of the most basic and most helpful ones and it's just reminding yourself not to judge yourself for having a feeling but to hold yourself accountable for what you do with it.
So the second one is It's only a feeling.
I can handle this.
The truth is your body will not send you feelings that you cannot handle.
So you are capable of handling whatever feeling you have.
And if you remind yourself of this,
It will be incredibly helpful.
And this reminds me of how I used an affirmation when I first discovered that affirmations actually work.
I had just begun mountain biking.
I was learning how to do it and I would get very nervous.
Afraid when I would start to approach a tree root or a rock that I had to ride over it It just felt like there's no way this bike can do this and I'm on the bike.
So I felt too vulnerable and afraid.
And I discovered that if I just said to myself,
You can handle this.
You can do this.
I would say it with conviction,
Sometimes out loud,
Sometimes in my own head.
It would give me that extra little courage and oomph that I needed to just Go for it.
And I discovered that when I had that courage,
I actually could get over the roots and the rocks.
We're not talking about huge ones here.
I was just learning.
I think it was at that time that I first realized This really works.
I can encourage myself and give myself strength and confidence by what I say to myself.
And since then,
I have used affirmations in other ways.
I had a terrible fear of public speaking when I first started talking about childhood emotional neglect,
But I had a mission and I was on it and I was going to face that fear.
And I used the affirmation,
Calm,
Confident,
And capable.
And I would say those words to myself right before a public speaking engagement.
It settled me and calmed me and got me prepared to go ahead and do it.
Do my best job and be my best self.
So affirmations are very powerful.
And back to It's only a feeling,
I can handle this.
It is incredible how powerful it is to remind yourself that you can handle something.
The third one about feelings is.
.
.
Pay attention to this feeling.
It matters.
This one is self-explanatory.
It's the direct opposite of what you were taught as a child.
And it's a reminder that this is what I'm working on.
This is what I'm trying to do.
And it also,
Because it's the opposite of what you're accustomed to and what you were taught,
It is powerful for rewiring your brain.
The second category is parents.
This one's really important because people who spend time around their emotionally neglectful parents often end up feeling unseen,
Unheard,
And unknown.
And unattended to,
Even as adults.
We all need this from our parents.
This affirmation is They can't give me what they don't have.
This,
I think,
Is very effective because it puts what's missing in your relationship with them into perspective and prevents it from becoming too much of a personalized thing.
It really reminds you,
This is about my parents,
Not about me.
The third category is self-confidence.
The first affirmation in that category is,
You can do this.
Again,
It's back to my mountain biking story.
You can do this.
It's just a reminder and an empowerer and a motivator.
The second one is stop with the self-doubt.
It's ridiculous.
This one is really important.
You don't have to use the word ridiculous.
It might make you feel bad,
And that's okay.
Choose your own words,
But just remind yourself that the self-doubt is not helpful.
The next one is.
.
.
You've proven yourself before and you're about to prove yourself again.
You have definitely proven yourself before and it's a reminder of that.
The next category is.
.
.
Learning how to recognize and handle trauma.
Emotions.
And This affirmation is,
It's just a new skill and you can learn it.
This will encourage you to stay on your journey,
To keep learning and going forward and getting stronger.
The category of asking for and accepting help.
Is to remind yourself with this affirmation.
Asking for help is a sign of strength.
This could not be more true because The people who end up being the weakest are the ones who are not able or willing to ask for or accept help.
And this is a great reminder about that.
And then there's one for.
If you tend to take too much responsibility for things going wrong that you have no control over or that other people are responsible for.
One of my clients told me that he felt like he was responsible for the pandemic,
Which I know sounds crazy.
So far out there,
But it was just a feeling that he had.
He knew he wasn't,
But he felt it.
That's how much excessive responsibility he tended to take in life.
And so the affirmation for this is you're not in charge of the whole world.
Let it go.
So all of these affirmations are very much designed to go directly at the issues that arise for people who grew up with childhood emotional neglect.
I really,
Really hope you found them helpful.
Please let me know in the comments below this video how you feel about them and whether you think that you can use them.
And even more importantly,
Offer some of your own if you found some that are very helpful with childhood emotional neglect challenges.
In my next video I'm going to talk about how childhood emotional neglect sets you up to to neglect yourself and you may have always thought you had self-discipline problems.
But.
.
.
It might just be self-neglect.
Okay,
Thanks for watching.
I'll see you in the next video.
Bye-bye.
