Early Deprivation: Can Early Deprivation Cause Someone To Be Emotionally Dependent?

Even though someone is an adult, it doesn’t mean that they will feel like one. Instead, they can typically feel as though they are an incapable child who is unable to handle life.

The outcome of this is that they can have the tendency to look to others to make decisions for them and guide them. They can also find it hard to say no and make it clear when they don’t agree with what another person says.

Another Element

Additionally, they might have spent most of their adult life in a relationship. Due to this, they might have been with a number of people who didn’t treat them well, but stayed with them for a long time.

If so, the reason for this is that leaving them is likely to have been seen as being far worse than staying with them. When they thought about walking away from a relationship like this, they might have been filled with anxiety and fear.

Right Now

There is even a chance that they are in a relationship that is not serving them. The person they are with could be controlling, verbally abusive, and they might even be physically abusive at times.

Either way, as bad as it will be for them to be with them, what they see as the alternative will be far worse. They can believe that if they leave them, they will be alone, and this can fill them with fear.

One Scenario

If they were to end the relationship, it might be because they have found another person to be with. This will stop them from having to go from feeling secure in a relationship that is not serving them to being by themselves and feeling as if the ground has been removed from under their feet.

The downside to this is that while they could end up with someone who is better, they might end up with someone who is no different or even worse. Before they were in the relationship they are in, they might have only just left another relationship that was no better.

Stepping Back

Assuming that they were to end the relationship, instead of finding someone else, they might end up reaching out for external support. This can allow them to feel more settled and give them the chance to get to the bottom of why they are this way and change their life.

As opposed to going from one relationship to another and living a reactive life, then, they will be able to find their centre and do what is right for them. This could take place if they were to work with a therapist.

One Approach

During this time, they could talk about how they find it hard to make decisions, direct their own life and don’t like being alone. After this, they can be encouraged to reflect on the thoughts that they usually have and how they behave.

If this is the case, what is going on for them at a mental level will be seen as what is primarily causing them to experience life in this way. The next step will be for them to change their ‘negative’ thinking patterns and behaviour.

The Next Step

As the weeks and months pass, they can find that they feel more settled in themselves and are less dependent on others. Consequently, it will be easier for them to behave like an independent human being.

At the same time, they may find that the work that they do on themselves doesn’t have much of an impact on them. If so, they can believe that they just need to keep going and sooner or later, their life will change.

Another Angle

However, if this approach hasn’t worked, it might not matter how long they apply it for. What this comes down to is that what is going on for them at a mental level might not be what is causing them to behave in this way.

What is going on for them at this level can be a reflection of what is going on for them at a deeper level. At this level, a big part of them can be anchored to a stage of their life when they were deeply traumatised.

Back In Time
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During their early years, they needed a primary caregiver who was attuned and provided them with the care that they needed, so that they could go from an emotionally dependent to an emotionally interdependent human being. But this may have been a time when their primary caregiver was generally unattuned and didn’t provide them with the care that they needed.

This would have caused them to be greatly deprived and deeply wounded. Their physical and mental self would have grown, but their emotional self wouldn’t have.

Brutal Time

For them to handle the moments when they were not touched and held when they needed to be and were left, their brain would have repressed how they felt and a number of their needs. This would have also involved them losing touch with their connected true self and developing a disconnected and outer-directed false self.

Many years will have passed since this stage of their life, of course, but they will still be carrying a lot of pain and be in a disconnected state. For them to be able to handle how they feel and freely express themselves, they will have pain to face and process, and unmet developmental needs to experience.

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.