Running on Empty

Two of the ideas you’ll keep

The Clif summary of Running on Empty pulls out 7 insights. Here are the first two.

1. Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN) is a parent's failure to respond enough to a child's emotional needs. Because it's a sin of **omission**, an absence rather than an event, it leaves no bad memory to point to, only a felt void, which is why it stays invisible for decades.
2. CEN is not abuse. Abuse is an act of **commission** you can remember and blame someone for; neglect is the emotional attunement that simply never happened. So its victims don't blame their parents, they conclude something is wrong with *them*.

The other 5 — and the full 11-minute summary — are in the app.

What’s inside: 8 chapters

The whole summary runs about 11 minutes, read or listened to.

1. The Wound You Can't Remember
2. Twelve Ways to End Up Empty
3. How Loving Parents Neglect
4. Emotions Are Fuel, and the Tank Is Empty
5. The Ten Signs of the Empty Tank
6. The Fatal Flaw and the Wall of Self-Blame
7. Alexithymia: Learning the Language of Feelings
8. Filling the Tank: Emotional Self-Care