Early Deprivation: Can Early Deprivation Give Someone The Need To Rescue Others?

If someone were to step back and reflect on their life, what they may see is that they spend a lot of time trying to fix other people’s problems. This can be how they are with their friends and their partner, that’s if they are in a relationship.

Along with this, they could often be this way with people who they meet throughout their day. As a result of this, they could see that due to what they do for others, they don’t have much time or energy left for themselves.

A Tiring Existence

Thanks to this, they can often feel drained and a number of areas of their life might not be very fulfilling. What can also play a part in this is that most of the people, who they try to fix, might be caught up with their own issues.

Thus, they will give a lot, but they won’t receive a great deal back from those that they try to help. Moreover, they could find that after they have been there for someone for a while, this person can become resentful if they don’t do as much for them.

A New Direction

At this point, they can have the need to change their life - to spend less time focused on others and more time being there for themselves. Also, they can want to spend more time around the people who don’t need saving and take responsibility for their own challenges.

Nonetheless, although this is what they will want to do, they could find that there is resistance. The mere thought of changing their behaviour could cause them to experience fear and anxiety.

A Strange Scenario

Along with this, they could also find that they don’t have a good connection with their own needs. Ergo, even if they felt comfortable enough to change their behaviour, they wouldn’t have a clear sense of what it is that they need.

As confusing as this will be, if they were able to go back in time, to when they were a child, it might gradually make sense. This may have been a stage of their life that was anything but nurturing.

Back In Time

Their mother and perhaps their father might have been emotionally unavailable and out of reach. Additionally, one of both of their parents might have seen them as an extension of themselves.

The outcome of this is that they would have been greatly deprived and deeply wounded. To handle what happened, they would have had to lose touch with a number of their needs and feelings.

One option

This would have involved them losing touch with their connected, true self and creating a disconnected, false self. The connection that they had to a number of their needs and feelings would have been severed and they would have had to focus on one or both of their parents needs.

This would have been a way for them to try to avoid being rejected and abandoned. As they were egocentric, they would have come to believe that they were worthless and unlovable, so pleasing their parent or parents would have been a way for them to try to stop themselves from being left and dying.

Another Part

Moreover, they would have lived in the hope – the false hope – that if they were there for their parent or parents, they would be there for them and they would be loved. They were then a child and needed to receive love, but they were forced into being there for one or both of their parents.

They needed this love to grow and develop but this struggle for love would have also served as a defence to keep reality and their true feelings at bay. If they had faced reality and how they felt, it would have been too much for them to handle.

It’s over

This stage of their life will be over, of course, but a big part of them won’t have moved on. So, by unconsciously recreating what it was like for them as a child, they will hope that they will finally be loved.

This part of them won’t have a sense of time and is blind, which is why it won’t be able to accept that this stage of their life is over and another person is not their mother or father. But as it is, they will end up being deprived all over again.

Moving Forward

For them to no longer look for what they missed out on, to no longer abandon themselves, and to reconnect to their needs and feelings, 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.
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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.