Emotional Wounds: Can Someone Use Hope To Defend Themselves Against Their Emotional Wounds?

When something is not going well, it can be normal for someone to hope that things will soon change. If they didn’t feel this way, they could feel helpless, and this is not going to allow them to feel good or to see a way forward.

However, it wouldn’t be right to say that experiencing hope is the only option here as one could also believe that things will get better. By being this way, they won’t hope that what is going on changes; they will know that it will change.

A Very Different Place

When it comes to the former, one is going to be coming from a place of weakness. They won’t feel strong or confident in their ability to experience their desired outcome or for things to change, so they will hope that it changes.

Yet, when it comes to the latter, they will be coming from a place of strength. They will feel strong and confident in their ability to experience their desired outcome or at the very least to move forward, so they won’t hope that things change.

It Stands Out

Now, although there are moments like this when one will know that they are in a place of hope, it doesn’t mean that this will always be the case. Another way of looking at this would be to say that there will be times when one will consciously experience hope and times when they will unconsciously experience hope.

Still, even if this is something that is taking place just outside of their conscious awareness, it doesn’t mean that it will have less of an effect. In all likelihood, it is likely to have a far greater impact as they won’t know about it and therefore, won’t be able to do anything about it.

Unmet Childhood Needs

When it comes to something that they are not aware of but hope will happen, it can relate to something that they missed out on during their early years. This may have been a time when a number of their developmental needs were rarely if ever met.

For example, they might have often been neglected and deprived of the love, nurturance and care that they needed to be able to develop in the right way. This would have been a time when they experienced a lot of pain.

One Option

Due to how powerless and dependent they were, they wouldn’t have been able to do anything about what was going on. It wasn’t possible for them to stop what was going on and they wouldn’t have been able to run away.

As a result of this, they had to repress how they felt and while this wouldn’t have stopped what was going on, it would have stopped them from being aware of the pain that they were in. The ability to disconnect from what was truly going on for them would have allowed them to survive.

Too Much To Handle

Losing touch with their true feelings would have allowed them to handle an unbearable situation but what it wouldn’t have done is remove the needs that they had. It wouldn’t have mattered that it wasn’t possible for them to have these needs met as they would have still hoped that they would be met.

This hope, as futile as it was, would have played a big part in what allowed them to survive this stage of their life. Another thing that would have also played a part was their need to survive.

It’s Still There

Many, many years will have passed since this stage of their life but a big part of them will still hope that these needs will be met. This can mean that when they meet someone who they are attracted to they can feel very good and then, as time passes, they can feel full of rage and/or deflated.

If they were to step back and reflect, they might not be able to pinpoint why they felt so high at the beginning and so low as time went by. Then again, they could say that this is because the other promised so much but delivered so little.

Going Deeper

Nonetheless, if they were able to look deeply at what was going for them at each stage, what they would probably see is that a big part of them hoped that they would finally receive what they missed out on as a child. This allowed them to feel full of life and as it become clear that this wasn’t going to happen, they soon fell down.

How they felt when this took place would have been how they felt when their needs were not met all those years ago. Yet, without this understanding in place, it would have naturally felt as though the other person let them down.

Drawing the Line

For them to change their life, they will need to let go of the hope that their unmet childhood needs will ever be met. This is not something that they will do once and that’s it; it will be a gradual process.

The reason for this is that even after they have accepted that one need won’t be met, there will be other unmet childhood needs that are outside of their conscious awareness. These needs will drive them to behave in certain ways.

Two Types of Pain

In addition to letting go of this hope, they will need to work through the pain that they experienced when their needs were not met all those years ago which keeps this hope in place. Working through their emotional wounds won’t be easy but will stop them from endlessly looking for what can’t be provided by another adult.

This can be seen as the difference between conscious ‘legitimate’ suffering and unconscious ‘illegitimate’ suffering; the former won’t last forever, whilst the latter will. By doing this, one will be gradually phasing out their need to replay their early years and to continually be deprived, and allow themselves to finally receive what they need. 

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. 

---

If you feel this has been of value, please leave a comment, like or get in touch. And feel free to share this article.

• Join my Facebook Page.
• Follow me on Twitter.
• The books I have written.
• Consultations.

Oliver JR Cooper
http://www.oliverjrcooper.co.uk