Early Deprivation: Can Early Deprivation Give Someone The Need To Try To Make Unavailable People Available?

If someone were to step back and reflect on their life, what they may see is that they have continually been with people who were unavailable. These will then have been people who were physically available but emotionally out of reach.

Conversely, some, if not all, of them might have rarely, if ever, been physically available. They can see that in the beginning, these people were within reach, but as time passed, they became out of reach.

Level one

It can then be as if they were able to go to the first stage and connect to them at a mental and physical level, but that was about it. The second stage, of connecting to them at an emotional level, wouldn’t have happened.

Or, just as they started to go to this level and things started to become serious, their time together soon came to an end. As a result of having been in this position on numerous occasions, they could be well and truly fed up.

Beaten Down

When they think about this area of their life, they can feel helpless and hopeless. But, as they have had setback after setback in this area of their life, this is not going to be a surprise.

What might often enter their mind is that they are missing something that other people have. Unlike these people, they are not going to have what they need in order to have an intimate relationship.

External Feedback

If they were to talk to a trusted friend about this, their friend say that they are just unlucky and that sooner or later, their life will change. They could also say that they are a decent human being who has a lot to offer, or something similar.

Then again, they might say that as they keep ending up in this position, there is a chance that part of them is choosing to do so. They could say that this part of them is influencing their life from behind the scenes, so to speak

Two Levels

After this, they could make it clear that they have a conscious mind or conscious sense of themselves and that they have an unconscious mind. It then won’t be that they are consciously choosing to experience life in this way, but another part of them can be.

Assuming that this is the case, part of them will want to be with someone who is available, but another part of them will have a different intention. This part of them is likely to want to be with someone who is out of reach.

Joining the Dots

What can stand out after this is that when they have been with someone who is unavailable, they have often put in a lot of effort to make them available. This can then allow them to see that there is another part of them that is happy with this scenario.

They can see that if this weren’t so, as soon as it becomes clear that another person is out of reach, they would more or less cut their ties with them. After realising this, they can wonder why this other part of them would be comfortable being in this position.

A Closer Look

The reason that this part of them can be comfortable with this can be because it is trying to receive the love that they missed out on during their formative years. This may have been a time when they were greatly deprived and deeply wounded.

So, instead of receiving the attunement, care, affection and support that they needed, they might have largely received misattuned care, been starved of affection and not been supported. It would then have been normal for them to be rejected and abandoned.

A Brutal Time

For them to handle what happened and to keep it together and function, their brain would have repressed how they felt and a number of their needs. This would have involved them losing touch with their embodied, connected, and fully feeling true self.

In its place will have been the formation of a disembodied, disconnected, and not fully feeling false self. Along with this, they would have lived in the hope that by becoming who their parent or parents wanted and behaving how they wanted, they would be loved.

The Same Story

But as futile as this struggle was, as their parent or parents were probably unable to love them, as they themselves had also been greatly deprived and deeply wounded during their early years, it would have served as a secondary defence. This defence would have allowed them to release tension and helped them to function.

Many, many years will have passed since that stage of their life, of course, but instead of struggling for their parents' love, they will struggle for other people's love. At an emotional level, they won’t have a sense of time and will be blind, which is why this other part of them can’t see that, as this stage of their life is over, and another person is not their parent, it is too late for them to receive what they missed out on.

Moving Forward

For them to no longer unconsciously recreate how it was for them as a child, there will be a number of steps for them to take. They will have beliefs to question, pain to face and process, and unmet developmental needs to experience.

This will take courage, support, 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