Early Deprivation: Can Someone Need To Reclaim Their Voice If They Experienced Early Deprivation?

What someone may find, if they step back and reflect on their life, is that they tend to keep their thoughts and feelings to themselves. Along with this, they can see that they typically do what other people want and what they think they want.

Thanks to this, it will be normal for them to act like an extension of others as opposed to a separate human being. They are then going to be wherever they are, but it will be as if they typically leave themselves somewhere else.

One Area

So, when they are around a friend, they can primarily listen to what their friend has to say. And, if their friend says something that they disagree with, they might generally keep their thoughts to themselves.

Additionally, if a friend asks them if they want to do something, they could often just say yes even if they don’t want to. The outcome of all this is that most if not all of their friends are not going to know who they really are and they will spend a lot of time compromising themselves.

Another Area

If they are in a romantic relationship, they can behave in a way that is very similar to how it is around their friends. In general, they can do most of the listening and largely go along with what their partner wants.

If they are with someone who is controlling and treats them like an object, they are going to be with someone who can’t accept that they are a separate being who has their own needs and feelings. Being with someone like this is likely to cause them to feel worthless and drained.

A Pattern

If they are in a position where they seldom speak up and assert themselves, irrespective of whether they are in an abusive relationship, they are not going to be able to live a fulfilling life. For this to change, they will need to reconnect to their voice and start expressing themselves both vocally and physically.

Now, for them to find out why they rarely do this, it will be a good idea for them to use their imagination. What can play a part in allowing them to gradually find out why they are this way is for them to imagine that they are with a friend and are speaking up and asserting themselves.

Two Parts

This will be a time when they act like an individual who has their own needs, feelings and thoughts. At first, they can experience a sense of freedom and feel empowered and alive.

But, after a while, they can feel anxious and fearful and have the need to go back to being how they were before – a non-entity. After this, they can wonder why they feel so uncomfortable when they express themselves.

What’s going on?

As confusing as this may be, if they were able to go back in time and observe what it was like for them as a child and before, what is going on for them might make sense. The reason for this is that this may have been a stage of their life that was anything but nurturing.

They might have had one parent who was very controlling and another parent who was the enabler. One parent would then have treated them like they were an object and put them down, physically harmed and/or isolated them if they didn’t do what they wanted and the other would have supported them.

The Message

They would have directly and indirectly been taught that it wasn’t safe for them to express themselves. To minimize the suffering that they experienced and try to be loved, they had to disconnect from themselves and act as if they were an extension of one or both of their parents.

This would have caused them to lose touch with their needs, feelings, their will and their voice. In place of the connection that they had to their embodied, true self would have been a disconnected and outer-directed false self.

It’s over

Many years will have passed since they were living in an environment where they had to silence themselves and act like a non-entity in order to survive, but a big part of them realise this. To this part of them, freely expressing themselves and acting like an individual will cause their life to come to an end.

For them to know that it is over, they will 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.