Early Deprivation: Can Someone Have The Tendency To Feel Lonely If They Had A Narcissistic Mother?

What someone may find, if they were to step back and reflect on how they often feel, is that they often feel lonely. This is then going to be a time when they experience pain, as they are unable to meet their need to connect to another or others.

Now, this could show that they spend a lot of time by themselves. Then again, it might not be this black and white, as they could spend a lot of time around others.

The Difference

However, if they do spend a lot of time around others, this will be a time when they are unlikely to be aware of how they feel. Thanks to this, they won’t come into contact with how isolated they feel.

But, as soon as they are by themselves, the feelings that were pushed outside of their conscious awareness will appear. Due to how painful these feelings are, they could soon do something to push them outside of their conscious awareness again.

An Automatic process

Still, this is likely to take place without them even thinking about it. Now, though, as they have become aware of how they often feel, they will have been able to become aware of what is going on within them.

At this point, they can wonder why they often feel this way and what they can do to experience life differently. Naturally, as they are an interdependent human being, not feeling connected to others is going to cause them to suffer.

An Exercise

For them to gain a deeper understanding of what is going on, they can imagine that they are around another person or a number of people. During this time, they can observe how they behave.

What they may find is that this is a time when they don’t fully show up. Instead, they can find that they have the need to hide how they feel and a number of their needs and play a role.

It’s Clear

Assuming that this is the case, it is not going to be a surprise that they often feel lonely, as their true self will rarely, if ever, see the light of day. For them to feel connected to others, they will need to express who they are.

When they do this, it will allow them to be seen and heard. On the other hand, when their true self is hidden, and they are playing a role, this won’t be possible.

A Strange Scenario

After becoming aware of their need to hide themselves around others, they can wonder why they behave in this way. As this is not allowing them to feel connected to others, they can believe that there is no reason for them to be this way.

Nonetheless, if they were able to go back in time and observe what it was like for them during their formative years, they might gradually realise why they are this way. This stage of their life may have been anything but nurturing.

Way Back

They may have had a mother who was emotionally unavailable and abusive. If so, they wouldn’t have been able to emotionally attach to her and they would have also been greatly undermined by her.

She may have seen them as nothing more than an extension of herself, and when they didn’t do what she wanted, they might have been criticised, humiliated, rejected and/or left. Therefore, they wouldn’t have felt safe, secure, supported, valued and loved around her; they would have felt unsafe, insecure, unsupported, worthless and unloved.

One Option

To handle living in an environment with a mother who was cruel and unloving and a threat, they would have had to disconnect from how they felt and a number of their needs. This would have involved them disconnecting from their connected, true self and forming a disconnected, false self.

Additionally, as they were egocentric, they would have come to believe that their needs and feelings were bad and that they were worthless and unlovable. Along with hiding their true self, they might have also physically isolated themselves to protect themselves.

A natural outcome

So, as they have the need to hide their true self and their physical self, it is to be expected that they would often feel lonely as an adult. How they feel as an adult will be a continuation of how lonely they felt as a child.

This would have been a time when they were not seen and heard and were alone and there wasn’t anything that they could do about it. But, now that this stage of their life is over, they can be seen and heard, and they no longer need to hide their true self; they can freely express who they are.

The Truth

Most likely, their mother, and perhaps their father, if he was around, was a deeply wounded human being who simply couldn’t love them. The reason for this is that she probably wasn’t loved during her formative years.

For them to be able to reconnect to and freely express themselves, they are likely to have beliefs to question, pain to face and work through, and unmet developmental 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