Reinventing your Life: 8. "I'll never get the love I need", the emotional deprivation life trap

Emotional Deprivation Questionnaire

1. I need more love than I get.
2. No one really understands me
3. I am often attracted to cold partners who can't meet my needs
4. I feel disconnected, even from the people who are closest to me.
5. I have not had one special person I love who wants to share him/herself with me and cares deeply about what happens to me.
6. No one is there to give me warmth, holding, and affection.
7. I do not have someone who really listens and is tuned into my true needs and feelings.
8. It is hard for me to let people guide or protect me, even though it is what I want inside.
9. It is hard for me to let people love me.
10. I am lonely a lot of the time.

Emotional deprivation is what a neglected child feels. It is a feeling of aloneness, of nobody there. It is a sad and heavy sense of knowledge that you are destined to be alone. Emotional deprivation is a feeling of chronically disappointed in other people. People let you down. We are not speaking about a single case of disappointment, but rather a pattern of experiences over a long period of time. If your conclusion as a result of all your relationships is that you cannot count on people to be there for you emotionally - that is a sign that you have the lifetrap.

The origins of emotional deprivation

1. Mother is cold and unaffectionate. She does not hold and rock the child enough.
2. The child does not have a sense of being loved and valued - of being someone who is precious and special.
3. Mother does not give the child enough time and attention.
4. The mother is not really tuned into the child's needs. She has difficulty empathizing with the child's world. She does not really connect with the child.
5. Mother does not soothe the child adequately. The child, then, may not learn to soothe him/herself or to accept soothing from others.
6. The parents do not adequately guide the child or provide a sense of direction. There is no one solid for the child to rely upon.

Emotional deprivation is difficult to recognize unless you experienced extreme neglect. You might recognize the life trap in yourself only after you have asked yourself specific questions: "Did I feel close to my mother, did I feel she understood me, did I feel loved, did I love her, was she warm and affectionate, could I tell her what I felt, could she give me what I needed?" Emotional Deprivation is one of the most common lifetraps, it is often one of the hardest to detect.

Some people who have the emotional deprivation lifetrap avoid romantic relationships altogether, or only get into them for a short time. This is typical of the Escape coping style. It is probably in these relationships that your lifetrap is most visible. Perhaps you have a history of breaking off relationships when the person starts to get too close. Or you protect yourself from closeness by choosing partners who are unavailable. Or you choose someone who is there, but is cold and ungiving.

Danger signals in the early stages of dating

1. he/she doesn't listen to me.
2. he/she does all the talking.
3. he/she is not comfortable touching or kissing me.
4. he/she is only sporadically available.
5. he/she is cold and aloof (signs starting from high school)
6. you are much more intersted in getting close than he/she is
7. the person is not there for you when you feel vulnerable
8. the less available he/she is, the more obsessed you become
9. he/she does not understand your feelings
10. you are giving much more than you are getting

When several of these signals are occurring at once, run - particularly if the chemistry is very strong. Your lifetrap has been triggered full force.

Emotional Deprivation Lifetraps in a relationship

1. you don't tell your partner what you need, then feel disappointed when your needs are not met.
2. you don't tell your partner how you feel, and then feel disappointed when you are not understood.
3. you don't allow yourself to be vulnerable, so that your partner can protect or guide you.
4. you feel deprived, but don't say anything. You harbor resentment.
5. you become angry and demanding
6. you constantly accuse your partner of not caring enough about you
7. you become distant and unreachable

You might reinforce your deprivation by sabotaging the relationship. You might become hypersensitive to signs of neglect. You might expect your lover to read your mind and almost magically to fill your needs.

Some people with emotional deprivation lifetrap counterattack. they compensate for their feelings of deprivation by becoming hostile and demanding. These people are narcissistic. They act as if they are entitled to get all their needs met. They demand a lot, and often get a lot, from the people who become their lovers. You might be very demanding about material things. You might be demanding about anything except the true object of your craving, which is emotional nurturance.

Some children are neglected in both domains, emotionally and materially. No matter where they turn, they encounter deprivation. These children usually just give up and learn to expect nothing. (the surrender coping style)

Changing emotional deprivation

1. Understand your childhood deprivation. Feel the deprived child inside you.
2. Monitor your feelings of deprivation in your current relationships. Get in touch with your needs for nurturance, empathy, and guidance.
3. review pas relationships and clarify the patterns that recur. List the pitfalls to avoid from now on.
4. avoid cold partners who generate high chemistry
5. when you find a partner who is emotionally generous, give the relationship a chance to work. Ask for what you want. Share your vulnerability with your partner.
6. Stop blaming your partner and demanding that your needs be met.

Three kinds of emotional deprivation

1. Deprivation of Nurturance
2. Deprivation of Empathy
3. Deprivation of Protection

You keep what you want a secret, then get angry when you do not get it. Keeping your needs secret is a way of surrendering to your lifetrap. You make sure that even though your partner is a warm person, your needs still will not get met. If you are with a loving partner, tell the person what you need.  Allow your partner to take care of you, protect you, and understand you. This can be frightening. It means making yourself vulnerable to your partner. You have become very invested in doing the opposite, keeping yourself invulnerable to protect yourself from disappointment. As a chid you had a good reason for this. You have probably had good reason to keep up this wall in many relationships since childhood. But ask yourself, "This time, is it different? Can I trust this person?" If the answer is "yes," perhaps you should take a chance.

Your emotional deprivation lifetrap will not fall away suddenly. It is a matter of slowly chipping away at the lifetrap - of countering the lifetrap each time it is triggered. You must throw your whole being against the lifetrap - your thoughts, feelings, and behavior. It is sad that the more you were damaged as a child, the harder you will have to work. This is one more unfairness in the string of unfairness against you. If you were seriously damaged as a child, you may need professional help.

You could easily access anger about the past, but it was very difficult  to feel the pain. You never saw yourself as responsible for creating relationships, always focused on how the other person was disappointing you, how the other person was letting you down.

Sometimes you are attracted to narcissistic men but now you must resist them. You must learn not only to give love but to receive love in return. It may seem funny that you will have to learn how to take love.