Early Deprivation: Can Early Deprivation Cause Someone To Have A Fear Of Being Ostracised?

If someone were to take a step back and reflect on their life, what they can find is that they have the tendency to please others. This can largely take place without them consciously choosing to do so.

Being this way will mean that they typically focus on other people’s needs and ignore their own. They can then see how being this way prevents them from showing up in just about every area of their life.

Hiding Themselves

So, when they are at work, around friends and family, and around their partner, if they have one, they will generally be easy-going and overlook their own needs. They are then going to be a separate human being who has their own needs and feelings but they will seldom act like one.

A this point, they could be well and truly fed up, with them being desperate to freely express themselves and do what is right for them. But, if they were to imagine changing their behaviour, they could soon feel uncomfortable.

A Strange Scenario

They could have the sense that something bad will happen if they don’t continue to behave in the same way. If they were to talk to a friend about what is going on, they could be told that there is no reason for them to be this way.

Moreover, they could say that they are not here to please others; they are here to live their own life. Nonetheless, unless their inner world changes, they are unlikely to change their behaviour.

What’s going on?

If they were to take a closer look at what is going on within them, they could find that they fear that they won’t be accepted, or supported and that they will be cast aside if they change their behaviour. Therefore, the only way for them to not be isolated from their fellow human beings and not die will be for them to play a role.

Taking this into account, it is not a surprise that they have the need to hide themselves. One way of looking at what is going on for them would be to say that it is irrational.

Another Angle

But, if what took place during their formative years is taken into account, how they experience life as an adult might make sense. This may have been a stage of their life when they were largely treated as if they were nothing.

Their mother and perhaps their father might have been emotionally unavailable and out of reach. Along with this, one or both of them might have been verbally and physically abusive and often left them.

A Rough Time

Instead of living in an environment where they were given what they needed to feel safe, secure, wanted, valued, and loved, they would have grown up in an environment where they were not given what they needed and felt unsafe, insecure, unwanted, worthless and unloved. They would then have been greatly deprived and deeply wounded.

To handle what happened, 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 creating a disconnected, false self.

Straight In

Another part of this is that as they were egocentric, they would have come to believe that there was something inherently wrong with them. This was then the reason why they were treated so badly.

Focusing on their parents and doing what they wanted would have been a way for them to try to prevent them from leaving them and their life coming to an end. But, as they would have been harmed and left, they would have regularly had the experience of dying without dying.

The Past is Present

Many years will have passed since this stage of their life but a big part of them won’t realise this. To this part of them, it will still be essential for them to hide themselves and to please others to avoid being left and their life coming to an end.

The truth is that they are not worthless or unlovable; how they were treated was most likely a reflection of how wounded one or both of their parents were. Their parent or parents had probably also been treated in the same way.

Moving Forward

For their life to change, they are likely to have beliefs to question, pain to face and work through, and unmet developmental needs to experience, among other things. 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