Early Deprivation: Can Early Deprivation Make It Hard For Someone To Experience Self-Control?

If someone were to take a step back and reflect on their life, what they may see is that they find it hard to stick to things and often say things that they later regret. As a result of this, they can have endless goals that they haven’t achieved and have fallen out with a lot of people.

Due to this, they can be well and truly fed up and wonder what it is that they can do to be more in control of themselves. The next step can be for them to look into what they can do to experience life differently.

One Direction

One thing that they can do is talk to a trusted friend or family member about what is going on for them. If so, they can be told that they need to develop their mental strength, as this will make it easier for them to control their feelings and thoughts and think before they speak.

After this, they can suggest that they start meditating. Additionally, they can recommend that they ensure that they get enough sleep, eat well, and exercise.

The Next Stage

Assuming that this is what they are told and they go down this route, they can start meditating a few times a week, doing what they can to sleep well, eat well and regularly exercise. As the weeks and months pass, they can find that it becomes easier for them to regulate their inner world.

Consequently, it can be easier for them to not only to start something but to also stick to it. Furthermore, they can find that it is easier for them to think before they speak and to even keep things to themselves.

Another outcome

Alternatively, after going down this route and sticking with it for a number of months, they can find that it doesn’t have much of an impact on them. If so, they can conclude that they are not trying hard enough and just need to keep going.

They can then put themselves down and end up feeling worthless and ashamed. After this, they can go back to doing what they were doing before and hope that this time, it will be different.

Another Angle

However, it might not be any different, and they can then wonder if there is something inherently wrong with them. But, as they will have been doing the right things and this hasn’t worked, this is to be expected.

The reason this approach hasn’t worked can be that they are carrying a lot of pain, making it hard for their system to regulate their inner world. This pain will then be why their feelings are often out of control, which will also cause their thoughts to be out of control.

Two Parts

The endless thoughts that flood their mind will serve as a defence that tries to stop them from being overwhelmed by their feelings. They will then be compelled to do or say things in order to release the tension that builds up inside them.

Once they have released this tension, the tension that is being created by the pain they are in, they will be able to settle down again. If this is taking place, their inability to experience self-control won’t be the issue; it will be a symptom of the fact that their system is weighed down and can’t function as it needs to.

A Closer Look

At this point, they can wonder why they are carrying so much pain. Nonetheless, if they were able to go back in time and observe their early years, they might gradually realise why this is.

This may have been a time when their mother and perhaps their father were emotionally unavailable and out of reach. They would then have missed out on the attunement, care, affection, support and validation that they needed to grow and develop in the right way.

One option

To handle being greatly deprived and deeply wounded, their brain would have repressed how they felt and a number of their needs. This pain and these needs would then have been removed from their conscious awareness, but stayed in other parts of their brain and body.

To help keep this pain and these needs at bay, as repression wouldn’t have been enough, they would have struggled to make their mother and/or father available. This would have allowed them to release tension and given them the hope that, sooner or later, they would be loved.

Its over

Many, many years will have passed since this stage of their life, of course, but as this pain and these needs are still inside them, it will make it harder for their system to regulate their inner world. Along with this, they will still live in the hope that, if they continue to struggle, and this can give them the desire to achieve certain goals, they will finally be loved.

The reason for this is that their unconscious mind has no sense of time and is blind, so it won’t realise that this stage of their life is over and other adults are not their mother and/or father. Taking all this into account, there will be a number of steps for them to take.

Moving Forward

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.

What this illustrates is that for them to experience more self-control, they will need to let go of control and feel out of control. But by feeling their feelings and their unmet developmental needs, they will gradually feel more settled internally.

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