Jonice Webb opens Running on Empty by introducing childhood emotional neglect (CEN) — a parent's failure to adequately notice, attune to, and respond to a child's emotional needs — as a distinct and often overlooked category of childhood harm, separate from more overt forms of abuse.

Why CEN is so hard to identify:

• Unlike physical or verbal abuse, CEN is defined by absence — what didn't happen — rather than a specific harmful event that can be clearly recalled and named
• Parents causing CEN are often otherwise loving, well-intentioned, and may have provided excellent material care while still failing to attune emotionally
• Adults affected by CEN frequently have few or no specific memories to point to, since the harm consists precisely of emotional needs that were never acknowledged rather than a memorable negative incident

This "invisibility" is central to Webb's argument: CEN can be genuinely damaging while being nearly impossible for the affected adult to identify without a specific framework — which is exactly what the book aims to provide.