Early Deprivation: Can A Parents Inability To Love Go Back Many Generations?

At the beginning of someone’s life, they need love in order to grow and develop in the right way. This, of course, is something that they will need for many, many years after this stage for their development to continue to go in the right direction.

When it comes to what is meant by ‘love’, it will involve having a parent who is able to attune to their infants needs and is typically able to provide them with what they need. This will mean being present around them and involve feeding and holding them at the right times.

 A Key Part

By expressing their love for their baby in this way, they will be providing them with the nutrients that their brain needs to develop. Also, by acknowledging their existence and holding them, they will be helping them to develop a sense of self.

One of looking at this stage would be to say that this is a time when they will be experiencing an emotional birth. So, while their physical birth will have given them a body or an outer body, their emotional birth will give them a sense of self or an inner body.

The Next Part

As the years go by and they feel the need to and are capable of exploring their environment, they will need their parent to support their growing independence. This will involve allowing them to go off and being there when they feel the need to come back and ‘refuel’.

By doing this, they will be giving them what they need to start the individuation process and to become an autonomous human being. It is clear to see that if a parent isn’t very present, is low on empathy, unfeeling and finds it hard to love, that each of these stages is unlikely to go very well.
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Greatly Undermined

Therefore, before they were to even become a child, they would end up being in a very bad way. They wouldn’t have strong foundations and whatever happens to them at this stage, would compound what has already happened to them.

Sadly, not everyone has a parent who is able to love them during their developmental years and their childhood years are not much better either. As a result of this, practically from the moment they are born and for many years after, they will be deprived of what they need to grow and develop in the right way.

A Very Different Scenario

What this will mean is that their primary caregiver is incapable of proving them with the nutrients that they need to grow and develop in the right way. Due to this, they will experience a physical birth but they won’t experience an emotional birth.

This is likely to damage their brain and prevent them from being able to develop a sense of self. Instead of staying connected to their needs and feelings, they are likely to lose touch with them and go into a disconnected, shut down state.

Missing out

What is likely to be normal is being left when they need attention and receiving attention when they want to be left. By not having a parent who is able to attune to their needs, it is to be expected that they will be wounded.

This stage of their life will cause them to routinely feel abandoned and as though their life is going to come to an end. Fortunately, they will have a brain that represses pain and will allow them to survive, albeit at a great cost.

Split Off

Once the stage arrives for them to start exploring their environment, they might not feel the urge to do so. As they will have lost touch with their needs and feelings and gone into a shut down state, their need for individuate and to gradually become an autonomous human being is likely to have been submerged.

What took place at a previous stage of their development will then have affected the next stage and they will be developmentally stunted. Naturally, if they are harmed and neglected as a child, this will wound them even more.

A Challenging Time

Fast forward to when they are an adult and it can take many, many years for them to see that they are wounded and for them to do something about it. But, as how they experience life will just be how it is, this is not going to be much of a surprise.

Upon realising what is going on, they can feel that how they were treated was a reflection of how bad and worthless they are. This will be a natural outcome of the fact that during their formative years, they were egocentric and would have personalised what took place.

The Truth

What they will need to think about is that how they were treated wasn’t their fault or a reflection of their worth or how lovable they are and was simply a sign that they were brought up by at least one parent who was unable to love. This parent was probably in a shut down, disconnected state and was this way thanks to what took place during their formative years.

In fact, this could be something that goes back for many generations, and this will show that how they and all their other ancestors were treated wasn’t personal. What this comes down to is that wounded people wound others.

Blocked Off

Taking this into account, not only was the love and support that they needed unable to come through to them; it would have been unable to come through to many of their ancestors. Like a blocked pipe, the sustenance that was needed wouldn’t have gotten through.

As to what caused this blockage, to begin with, one could look through what has happened throughout history to get a rough idea. Now, though, they have the chance to remove this block and allow the love and support that they need to flow through to them.               
   
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