Reinventing Your Life: The Breakthrough Program to End Negative Behavior and Feel Great Again (20 page)

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. Although, as we will discuss next, some people who have the lifetrap Counterattack by becoming demanding in relationships, most do not ask for what they want. It probably does not occur to you to spell out your needs. Most likely you do not ask for what you want, and then become very hurt, withdrawn, or angry when your emotional needs are not met.

Some people with the 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.

Jed is like this. Regardless of how much nurturing he receives from a woman, he still feels that his needs are not being met. However, instead of acting hurt or rejected about not getting enough, he becomes
angry.
This is very different from Elizabeth, who is also hypersensitive to emotional slights, but instead remains
silent
about her needs. Jed and Elizabeth illustrate two different styles of coping with Emotional Deprivation: Jed’s anger and demandingness are typical of the Counterattack coping style, while Elizabeth’s silence is characteristic of Surrender as a way of coping.

Why do some people react to Emotional Deprivation by becoming narcissistic? The answer lies in a combination of the Emotional Deprivation lifetrap and the Entitlement lifetrap. Although as children their
emotional
needs were not met in important ways, narcissists have learned to fight the feelings of deprivation by becoming very demanding about other, more
superficial
needs.

For example, you might be very demanding about what you eat, or how you dress, or whom you are with, or where you go. 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. Unfortunately, these material demands are ultimately a poor substitute for love and understanding, and so you are not satisfied. You go on craving tangible rewards, never addressing the underlying issue, and are
never
satisfied.

As a child, you were not allowed to be demanding about emotional needs. Your mother (probably) did not respond. But if she allowed you to be demanding about other needs, it was at least a way for you to get
something.
This is what happened to Dustin. Although Dustin’s mother was cold, she was excellent at filling other types of needs. She was lavish with material gifts, so Dustin developed a sense of entitlement about material things. Unlike Dustin, 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).

There is an
inauthentic
quality to a relationship with a narcissist. Intimate encounters, even with the people they are closest to, remain superficial. If this is you, at some level you feel a sense of despair at the shallowness of your relationships. It is because you are so seldom demanding about the needs that are most pressing, the primary emotional needs, that your encounters strike a note of falseness.

The following list outlines the steps to change the Emotional Deprivation lifetrap:

CHANGING EMOTIONAL DEPRIVATION

1. Understand Your Childhood Deprivation. Feel the Deprived Child Inside of You.
   
2. Monitor Your Feelings of Deprivation Now. Get in Touch with Your Needs for Nurturance, Empathy, and Guidance.
   
3. Review past 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.
   

Let us explore each step in more detail.

1.
Understand Your Childhood Deprivation. Feel the Deprived Child Inside of You.
Understanding is always the first step. You must come to terms with the truth of what happened to you as a child. As we have noted, with Emotional Deprivation this can be more difficult than with some of the other lifetraps. You may not even know that you were deprived.

Jed knew when he came to therapy that he had been deprived. Such blatant deprivation is easily recognized. Even early in therapy Jed was able to generate images of his neglect—of being the only child without a mother present at countless occasions, from receiving a Cub Scout medal all the way to his high school and college graduations. He remembered forging his mother’s signature on his report cards because she could not bother to sign them.

Jed could easily access his anger about the deprivation, but he had difficulty accessing the pain (typical of Counterattackers). Elizabeth, on the other hand, was in touch with the pain, with how lonely she felt as a child (typical of Surrenderee). It was harder for her to access the anger. You have both anger and grief about your deprivation. As we shall see, it is important to try to feel both.

For Dustin and Elizabeth, understanding the past was more difficult. They were uncovering a more subtle process. Actually, we believe that there are three distinct types of emotional deprivation. Breaking it down this way may help you to clarify exactly what it was that happened to you as a child. You may have been deprived in one or two of these areas but not the others.

THREE KINDS OF EMOTIONAL DEPRIVATION

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

Each kind of deprivation refers to a different aspect of love.
Nurturance
refers to
warmth,
attention, and physical affection. Did your parents hold and rock you? Did they comfort and soothe you? Did they spend time with you? Do they hug and kiss you when you see them now?

Empathy
refers to having someone who
understands
your world and
validates
your feelings. Did your parents understand you? Were they in sync with your feelings? Could you confide in them when you had problems? Were they interested in listening to what you had to say? Would they discuss their own feelings with you if you asked them to? Could they communicate with you?

Finally,
Protection
refers to providing
strength, direction,
and
guidance.
Did you have someone you could go to as a child when you needed advice, and who was a source of refuge and strength? Was there someone who looked out for you, who made you feel
safe?

Jed experienced severe deprivation in all three areas. He was so damaged that, as an adult, he could neither give nor receive any of the three—nurturance, empathy, or protection. For Elizabeth and Dustin, the situation was more complex.

Dustin felt
protected
by his mother, and she was a good person to go to when he needed sensible, unemotional advice. And Dustin had an almost magical belief that his family’s name and wealth could shelter him from all adversity. But Dustin’s mother was neither nurturing nor empathic. However, he had a nurturing and empathic father who healed some of the damage done by his mother and acted to weaken his lifetrap.

Elizabeth seemingly got a lot of love and affection as a child. She generated a number of images of her mother hugging and kissing her. Here is a typical memory: „I am sitting on my mother’s lap. We are at a party. I’m wearing a pretty dress. I feel pretty and special.“ As the superficiality of this image suggests, her mother’s love was a false love. It happened only when company was there to witness it. At bottom, Elizabeth had deprivation of nurturance. But, like Dustin, she did feel protected as a child; in fact, she probably took
too
much advice and guidance from her mother. However, Elizabeth clearly experienced deprivation of empathy. For example, she generated this image in therapy:

THERAPIST: What’s happening?

ELIZABETH (eyes closed): I am at a birthday party with my mother. My mother is telling me to go over and kiss this other little girl I tell my mother I don’t like that little girl But my mother wants me to like her; and she says to me, „That’s nonsense, of course you like her.“

THERAPIST: How do you feel?

ELIZABETH:
Invisible.

Her mother did not
mirror
Elizabeth’s feelings back to her. Her mother neither knew nor seemed to care how she felt.

The first step toward understanding your childhood deprivation is to create images. Go to a quiet, private place and allow images of your childhood to float to the top of your mind. Experience the memories fully, with all the emotions that you felt at the time. Experience the images, then study them. Generate images for each parent. As with Dustin, one parent can offset the damage done by the other. And include all other close members of your family to get a full picture.

2.
Monitor Your Feelings of Deprivation Now. Get in Touch with Your Needs for Nurturance, Empathy, and Guidance.
Become more aware of your feelings of deprivation in your current life. Teach yourself to
notice
when your lifetrap is triggered. It might be a time that you feel slighted, lonely, or empty, or that no one understands how you feel. You might feel sad that your lover is unavailable, or cold and ungiving. You might feel angry that you always have to be the strong one, that you are always the one who takes care of your partner, and it is never the other way around. Any strong feeling of deprivation can serve as a cue that your lifetrap is triggered and that you should pay attention to what is going on.

It is important that you allow yourself to feel all the emotions that get triggered along with your lifetrap. Try not to block any feelings. Explore the whole spectrum of emotions, as fully as you can.

You can use imagery to connect even further with your feelings. When some event in your current life provokes strong feelings of deprivation, relive the experience again through imagery. Allow all your feelings to emerge. Get in touch with your needs for nurturance, empathy, and protection. Then connect the image to an image in the past when you were a child and felt the same way. If you repeatedly alternate between the present and the past in this manner, you will be able to deepen your awareness of the ways you reenact your childhood deprivation in your current relationships.

Dustin did this imagery exercise in a therapy session with us. He was describing an incident with Christine that had upset him greatly. They had already broken up and had run into each other at a party. We asked Dustin to get an image of Christine.

THERAPIST: What do you see?

DUSTIN: I see Christine. She’s there in the middle of the image, dressed in white—like she was in that magazine ad. She looks frozen and perfect. She’s surrounded by glass.

THERAPIST: Where are you?

DUSTIN: I’m outside the glass. I’m trying to tell her something, but she can’t hear me through the glass. I can Y get her to look at me. I’m waving my arms and I’m yelling, but she can’t hear me through the glass.

THERAPIST: Tell me what you’re feeling.

DUSTIN: I’m alone.

We then asked Dustin to get an image of when he felt this way before, as a child. The memory that came was of his mother: „I see her sitting on the couch reading, and I’m walking on the other side of the room very quietly because I know she’d be annoyed if I disturbed her while she was reading her book.“

3. Review Your Past Relationships. Clarify the Patterns That Keep Repeating. List the Pitfalls to Avoid from Now On.
Make a list of the most important relationships in your life. You may want to focus on romantic relationships, or you may want to focus on family or close friends. Think about what went wrong with each relationship. Was the person unable or unwilling to meet your needs? Did you drive him/her away with your incessant demands, which, when filled, never made a difference anyway? Did you grow bored with someone who was treating you well? Were you in fact getting more from the relationship than you acknowledged at the time?

It was in making this list that Dustin’s pattern became glaringly obvious to him. He clearly saw that, with each woman that he had been attracted to, there were clues
from the beginning
that she was emotionally unavailable in some important way. Of course, in each case, he had ignored these early warning signs. It was painful for him to recognize in therapy that his most powerful love relationships had been doomed from the start.

The pattern that emerged from the list Elizabeth made was that she gave a lot to each person, but got little in return. And for Jed, it was that he had been dissatisfied with every woman, regardless of what she gave him. In his characteristic blaming way, he said, „It’s a list of women who were one disappointment after another.“ What is the unifying principle of your list? What are the pitfalls for you to avoid?

4. Avoid Cold Partners Who Generate High Chemistry.
This is that simple rule that is so hard to follow.
Do not get involved with depriving partners
. The rule is so hard to follow because these are
precisely
the partners who attract you the most. We often give patients this rule-of-thumb: If you meet someone for whom you feel a high degree of chemistry, rate how much chemistry on a 0 to 10 scale. If you rate the person a 9 or 10, then
think twice about becoming involved with this person.
Occasionally, such relationships work out, after a great deal of turmoil. But, more often, the strong chemistry you feel will be based on lifetraps that they trigger in you, rather than positive qualities that will make the relationship last.