> Have you found ways to overcome or manage the effects of that neglect?

No, but I haven't tried professionals or medication. I watched a number of Stanford lectures on psychiatry and while I was rabidly against medications (unless they had a street value because that indicates they do something that people value), I found the lectures pretty convincing and they changed my mind. Sapolsky in particular has some great lectures.

> emotional regulation

That's a fun bit of ambiguity. Am I saying help a [person with emotional regulation] or help a [person] with [emotional regulation]? I meant help a person regulate their emotions.

Running on empty talks about it. I can't say I am sold on her treatment protocol which involves work including writing reflections focused on bringing attention to emotions and being able to better describe them.

But yeah, blunted emotions and dis-regulation inhibit the ability to do work. It creates comfort seeking behavior rather than growth seeking behavior. If you can't imagine emotional payoff, how are you going to motivate work? Not work like a job, but work like learning to read sheet music, or put yourself in social situations where you might face rejection.

I think the authors core idea was that emotional neglect as a child creates a situation were you de-value your emotions (because you don't want to burden a parent with them, for example), which creates suppression and blunting of emotions, which then manifests in all types of mal-adaptions which ultimately creates a situation where the fuel for life, emotions, isn't there and then you feel like you are "running on empty."

The author explicitly states that emotions are that fuel. Emotions are what prevents a person from feeling like they are out of fuel.

I think there is a class of people for which they are looking for "fuel" to their life, and I think that is the same thing as looking for "meaning."

> Are you suggesting the lack of emotional regulation is what prevents people from finding meaning (whatever that means)?

So taking the idea that meaning is emotions, lack of emotional regulation makes it hard to feel the feelings you want, which is nearly tautological.

So the question becomes "Do I have trouble finding meaning because I have suppressed my emotions?" I certainly figured out quite young that it's easier to stop wanting something than to seek it out and struggle or fail, particularly without help. Do I really not want the thing, or was my desire suppressed? Would there be meaning in me getting it? Would there be meaning in seeking it out? Even if I suppressed my desires, is that desire still there? Have I suppressed my desire for meaning because the work is onerous?

I am not sure if those are the right questions or what the answers are but I think they poke in the emotional regulation/work/meaning/emotions direction and start sketching a framework upon which to think about the problem.

I recommend her book. I thought it was going to be a slog, but 1-2 chapters in and I felt like I was reading my own biography, I read it in a day. It's pretty mechanical rather than wishy-washy. Most concepts are well defined and technical in nature. She doesn't make many appeals to intuition and everything is pretty "cause and effect".