Early Deprivation: Can Early Deprivation Cause Someone To Live In Hope?

If someone were to take a step back and reflect on their life, what might soon stand out is that, when it comes to the areas of their life that are not going well, they hope that things will change. This could be how they have been for as long as they can remember.

Therefore, they are not going to be living a life that is very fulfilling but they won’t believe that it will change. If they believed that their life would change, they wouldn’t live in hope; they would know that it would change and do what they can to make sure it does.

A Place of Despair

If they were to connect to how they feel about what is going on, they could find that they feel totally powerless. What could play a part in this is that they may have done a lot over the years to change their life and not been able to make much progress.

Thanks, at least in part, to what they have done over the years and what has taken place, then, they won’t believe that they have much control over their life. This could mean that they will often feel low and even depressed.

A natural outcome

If they do often experience life in this way, it could be said that it won’t be much of a surprise. They won’t have been able to experience much control over their life and this will have caused them to have more or less given up on themselves and life.

Having the hope that their life will change will make it easier for them to keep it together and function. If they didn’t have this hope, it is likely to be even harder for them to keep going.

What’s going on?

Before long, they could start to wonder why their life is this way and why they can’t just move forward. There is a chance that they have been living in hope since their formative years, with this being a time when they missed out on what they needed to grow and develop in the right way.

To handle what was going on, they would have hoped that their mother and/or father would change and give them what they needed. As they were powerless and dependent, they wouldn’t have been able to change them or find another family.

The Only Option

By blocking out reality and believing that they would change, it would have given them a false sense of control. This would have caused them to struggle for the love that their mother and/or father were unable to give them.

If, on the other hand, they had faced reality and the fact that they were totally powerless, this would have been too much for them to handle. They were forced to disconnect from reality to handle a stage of their life that was brutal.

Two Parts

But, although this stage of their life is over and they are no longer powerless and dependent on the person or people who were generally unresponsive to a number of their needs, they are not going to know this deep down. At this point, it could seem as though this is the only thing that they need to realise to change their life.

However, there is likely to be another thing that is causing them to continually recreate a stage of their life that is not serving them. Behind their struggle to change their life and the hope that it will change is likely to be their unmet developmental need for their mothers and/or fathers love.

Two Levels

Of course, this stage of their life will be over and it will be too late for them to receive their love. And, even if their mother and/or father are alive, it will still be too late as this stage of their development has passed.

Nonetheless, at a deeper level, they won’t realise that it is too late as this part of them has no sense of time and is blind. Due to this, they will have been able to replay their early struggle, whilst their conscious mind will have been completely oblivious to what was going on.

The Past Is Present

What this demonstrates is that the needs that were not met during their formative years didn’t simply disappear. Instead, they ended up being repressed and were driven to unconsciously create a life that would ensure that their early misery continued.

Naturally, as their conscious mind didn’t have access to this repressed material, it would have come to a conclusion that was inaccurate - that they have no control over their life. What this emphasises is how important it is to know that there is both a conscious and an unconscious mind and to explore this other, hidden part.

Moving Forward

For them to connect to their inner power and to no longer look for the love that they missed out on during their early years, they are likely to have a lot of pain to face and work through and unmet development needs to experience. This will take courage, 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