Developmental Trauma: Can Developmental Trauma Cause Someone To Believe That There is Not Enough?

If someone was able to step back and reflect on how they experience life, what may soon stand out is that they often struggle when it comes to having enough. What could enter their mind is that they rarely have enough money.

After taking a closer look, though, they may find that there is far more to it than this. They might see that it is a challenge for them to experience enough attention, affection, encouragement and support.

A Different World

If they were to think about some of the people in their life or perhaps those that they come into contact with, it could be clear that this is not a problem for everyone. Still, they might not need to think about the people they know to realise this as they may see that there are plenty of people in the public eye that don’t have this problem.

They could believe that these people are lucky and/or have something that they themselves don’t have. Either way, it will be as though there is very little that they can do to change their life.

Emotional Experience

If they were to think about the impact that this has on how they feel, they could find that they find it hard to feel good, strong and energised. In general, they could feel low and hopeless and helpless and flat.

But, as it is largely a struggle for them to meet a number of their needs, it would be a surprise if this wasn’t the case. If their inner experience was largely the opposite, it could be said that they would be in denial.

The Sensible Way to Be

How they are experiencing life is making their life far harder than it needs to be and so it will be perfectly normal for them to feel this way. Along with this, they could often feel frustrated, angry and enraged.

The key will be for them to not only reflect on how they experience life but to also look for a way to change what is going on. However, for this to happen, at least part of them will need to accept that their life can be different.

The Next Step

All the while they are aware of what is going on but are unable to accept that there is another way for them to experience life, it won’t be possible for them to do anything about it. Being aware of a challenge but not seeing a way through is not going to be very pleasant.

At this point, they might wish that their life could go back to how it was before. They would still suffer, of course, but at least they wouldn’t be fully aware of what was going on and unable to see a way forward.

A Continuation

If how they experience life is just seen as how their life is and it doesn’t occur to them that there is a way forward, it could show that their life has more or less always been this way. Their adult life is then likely to have a lot in common with what it was like for them during their formative years.

Throughout this stage of their life, there is a strong chance that their developmental needs were rarely if ever met. Their basic needs might have been met such as their need for food, clothing and somewhere to live but that could have typically been about it.

Deeply Deprived

One or both of their parents may have largely been emotionally if not physically unavailable. This would have caused them to miss out on the emotional nutrients that they needed to be able to grow and develop in the right way.

So, they wouldn’t have felt supported for who they were or received a great deal of attention, affection or encouragement. They probably would have sensed that there wasn’t enough for them and their needs might have been seen as a burden.

One Option

As they were powerless and totally dependent, they wouldn’t have been able to do anything about what was going on. Their only option was to tolerate what was going on and lose touch with their emotional needs.

This would have stopped them from being in touch with the pain of not having certain needs met and being rejected or abandoned for expressing them. Most of the pain of not having them met, along with their unmet developmental needs would have stayed inside them.

Recycling The Past

Many, many years will have passed since they were a child but they will continue to live in an emotional desert. But, as their brain will have blocked out most if not all of the pain and the memories that related to what took place, they won’t have been able to see the connection.

Now that they have started to connect to this information, they will be able to see that how they have felt as an adult is how they felt as a child and perhaps before. Due to their level of development, what they experienced in one environment ended up being seen as what every environment is like – the particular became the general.

Drawing the Line

For them to truly put emotional and not just chronological distance between them and their past, they will probably need to face the pain that they experienced all those years ago and work through it. Another part of this will be for them to embrace and express their unmet developmental needs.

This is something that will take courage and patience and persistence.

Awareness

If someone can relate to this and they are ready to change their life, they may need to reach out for external support. This is something that can be provided with the assistance of a therapist or healer.

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Oliver JR Cooper
http://www.oliverjrcooper.co.uk