I first learned about healthy boundaries in my recovery program. Having been raised in a home where such things were never discussed, my first foray into boundary setting came well into my 30s.

In my previous post, I wrote about the link between social isolation and childhood trauma. Now, we’ll look at how to overcome this common consequence of unresolved adverse childhood events.

We’re living in a time when isolation has become more common. Even before the health scare, people reported higher levels of loneliness and less in-person interaction.

Emotional intelligence helps you in all areas of life: relationships, workplace, goal setting, and how you feel about yourself in general. And success in these areas will obviously improve your quality of life.

If our parents were unreliable, abusive, neglectful, or worse, we fail to learn some basic life skills. We need to reparent ourselves to learn things like setting boundaries, healthy habits, emotional regulation, and relationship building.

Many of us had our physical needs met in childhood while suffering with unmet emotional needs. It’s only recently that the epidemic of childhood emotional neglect has been acknowledged, so most of us have suffered in silence.

If you’ve suffered from childhood emotional neglect, you may not be aware of your trauma. You know something was wrong growing up but can’t put your finger on it.

I’ve invested dozens of hours and thousands of dollars into therapy. Since age 19 I’ve sought licensed therapists to help me work through my problems.

For some, childhood evokes images of joy and innocence. For others childhood trauma has created memories of fear and insecurity.

It’s taken me a long time to discover that if I ask for help I’ll probably get it. Sounds simple, but for most of my life I avoided asking for help for a variety of reasons.

Perfectionism has become a buzz word, a humble brag people use to excuse their high standards.

Complex PTSD, first coined in the 90s, generally refers to PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) with additional symptoms.

Have you heard of ACEs? These are adverse childhood experiences that impact the way you function in society.

Have you heard of emotional neglect? You’re probably more familiar with the term emotional abuse, which acknowledges you don’t need to be hit to experience harm.