Early Deprivation: Can Someone Be Out Of Touch With Their True Self If Their Parents Lacked Empathy?

What someone may find, if they were to step back and reflect on their life is that they don’t have a good connection with how they feel or their needs. They could then see that their life is largely driven by their need to please others and what is ‘right’.

Consequently, their life is not going to be a reflection of who they really are. But, as frustrating as it will be and as unfulfilling as their life is, they are likely to find that they can’t just change their behaviour.

Inner Conflict

If they were to merely think about changing their life, they could feel anxious and fearful. Doing what is right for them is then going to be seen as something that is wrong and a threat to their survival.

But, as they won’t have a strong connection to their needs and feelings, even if they didn’t feel uncomfortable, they wouldn’t be able to freely live their life. At this point, they could wonder why they are this way.

Nothing New

If they were to look back on their life, what might soon stand out is that they have lived a life that is out of alignment with who they are for as long as they can remember. Throughout this time, this is also what will have felt safe and they won’t have had a good connection with their needs and feelings either.

What this is likely to illustrate is that their early years were a time when they missed out on what they needed to grow and develop in the right way. The connection that they had to their needs and feelings when they were born, assuming that their time in their mother’s womb and birth was not traumatic, will then have gradually been severed.

A Gradual Process

From the moment that they were born, what they needed was a mother who was generally attuned and able to meet their needs. This would have allowed them to not only stay connected to their true, embodied self but also for their emotional self to develop.

They would have been born in an emotionally dependent state and their mothers and fathers care would have allowed them to move out of this state. They would have had a physical and an emotional birth.

A Very Different Reality

Instead, they are likely to have had a mother who generally didn’t attune to their needs and met them. This would have caused them to be greatly deprived and deeply wounded.

To handle the pain that this caused them, they would have gradually disconnected from their body. This would have caused them to lose touch with their feelings and number of their needs.

No Choice

As they were powerless and dependent, they were not in a position to change their mother or father or find another family who could provide them with what they needed. This is why they had to lose touch with their connected, true self and develop a disconnected, false self.

Instead of their awareness being in their body and their head, it will have moved into their head. Not only this, but a large part of their attention would have ended up being outer-directed and focused on their mother’s and perhaps their father’s needs.

The Priority

A stage of their life when they needed to receive would have been a time when they were forced to give. In all likelihood, their mother and perhaps their father were also developmentally stunted and were not in a position to provide them with the emotional nutrients that they needed.

Due to how underdeveloped they were, they still needed to be mothered and perhaps fathered. And, as they were the ones who had the power, their needs ended up taking centre stage.

Two Stages

With this in mind, losing touch with themselves allowed them to survive a brutal stage of their life but, now that they are an adult, being estranged from themselves and focused on others won’t be serving them. Now that they are an adult, they can give themselves the attunement and care that they missed out on as a child.

This means that they can start to attune to themselves and see what is right for them. At first, they might not be able to connect to how they feel and what their needs are, but, by staying with this process, their ability to connect to their needs and feelings will improve.

Another Part

Additionally, they will need to reconnect to their body as this is where their feelings and a number of their needs will be found. For them to do this, they are likely to have defences to work through.

Once they start to work through these defences and develop a better connection to their body, they will come into contact with the pain and unmet developmental needs that they had to repress during their formative years. Working through this pain and experiencing their unmet developmental needs will play a big part in allowing them to stay in their body.

Awareness
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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.