Early Deprivation: Can Someone Feel Comfortable Suffering If They Experienced Early Deprivation?

If someone were to step back and reflect on their life, they may find that they seldom allow themselves to feel good and experience pleasure. What will then be normal is for them to feel low and experience pain.

If they were to look back on their life, they might see that they have been this way for as long as they can remember. Due to what is going on for them, they won’t be able to sustain feeling good or experience too much pleasure.

Stuck

Thanks to this, they might see that they have often taken one step forward and two steps back. Of course, doing well in an area of their life won’t be something that feels comfortable, so they will undermine the progress that they make.

This is not to say that they will always consciously choose to do things that will undermine them. No, what it is generally going to mean is that they will unconsciously do things that will sabotage their life.

The outcome

As a result, it might often seem as though someone or something ‘out there’ is against them, but there will be far more to it. What takes place externally will be a reflection of the conflict that is taking place inside them.

If they didn’t have this understanding, it would be normal for them to conclude that the world is against them. At the same time, they might see that they have often had this view or a view that is similar.

What’s going on?

After thinking about all this, they can wonder why they feel comfortable feeling low and being in pain. As they have been this way for so long, they can be sick and tired of what is going on and be desperate for their life to change.

Now, if they were to imagine living a life where they often feel good and experience pleasure, they can feel alive and powerful, and relieved and grateful. It can be as though they are finally embracing life, as opposed to simply enduring life and existing.

The Next Stage

Yet, before long, they can start to feel uncomfortable experiencing life in this way. They may find that they feel guilty and anxious.

Based on this, experiencing life in this way will be seen as something that is wrong and a threat to their survival. After this, they can wonder why experiencing life in this way caused them to feel bad and as if they are going to die.

A Closer Look

As strange as this will be, if they were able to go back in time and observe their early years, it might start to make sense. This may have been a stage of their life when their primary caregiver was not in a good way mentally or emotionally.

So, this caregiver might have typically been emotionally unavailable and out of reach and depressed. At this stage, as they were powerless and dependent, it would have been essential for them to maintain their connection to them and to please them.

An Adaption

Consequently, they would have most likely made the decision, an unconscious decision, not to allow themselves to experience life differently from this caregiver. This would have taken away their ability to freely express themselves and caused them to stay at the same emotional level as this parent.

Their connection to their embodied, connected, and fully feeling true self would have gradually been replaced by a disembodied, disconnected, not fully feeling and outer-directed false self. Along with the blending with this parents’ emotional state to stay connected to them and be approved of, they would have also hoped that it would allow them to be loved by them.

It Was Futile

But, no matter how they adapted or what they did to try to make this parent into someone who was attuned, caring and affectionate, it wouldn’t have worked. The reason for this is that this parent was probably unable to provide them with the love that they needed.

Nevertheless, this false hope would have made it easier for them to keep it together and function, as it would have aided in repression and allowed them to release tension. Many years will have passed since this stage of their life, but a big part of them won’t realise this.

Self-Protection

At an emotional level, being seen as good and surviving will still be associated with not feeling good and experiencing pain. And, to ensure this happens, a protector part of their psyche will do what it can to make sure that their inner state and circumstances don’t change.

This protector part will have formed when they were very small, and will be doing what it can to keep them alive. For their life to change, what is going on for them at an emotional level, in addition to this protector part, will need to change.

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.

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