Needs: Can Developmental Trauma Cause Someone To Disconnect From Their Needs?

What someone may find, that’s if they were to step back and reflect on their life, is that they are often out of touch with their needs. Or, perhaps, to be more specific, they are often out of touch with certain needs.

This can mean that they will typically be aware of their survival needs and even their intellectual needs, but that could be about as far as it will go. As for their emotional needs, then, these could generally be ignored.

It’s Automatic

Still, this doesn’t mean that this is something that they will consciously choose to do. They are then not going to think, ‘right, I’m going to ignore my emotional needs now’, as this is likely to be something that they won’t even be aware of.

Consequently, a number of their needs will be overlooked and this is going to have a detrimental effect on their well-being. They can end up being aware of the effect of being this way but be oblivious to the cause.

The Outcome

There is the chance that they will often feel as though they are running on empty. So, feeling drained and emotionally malnourished will be something that they are used to, and they could often feel frustrated and agitated.

Then again, they could have a number of ways to push this information out of their conscious awareness. For example, their awareness could go fully into their head, which will allow them to more or less completely lose touch with the information in their body.

The Main Position

In general, one could spend most of their time in their head and so it is to be expected that they won’t have a good connection with their emotional needs. For them to be in touch with their emotional needs, they will need to be in touch with their body.

It might not matter if they are by themselves or in the company of others, either, as this could be where their point of awareness typically is. Nonetheless, it could be a lot easier for them to connect to their emotional needs when they are in their own company.

No Chance

Naturally, in order for them to fulfil their emotional needs, they will need to be aware of them and express them when they are around others. If the first part doesn’t take place, it will be highly unlikely that the second part will take place.

With this in mind, for their life to change, it will be essential for them to develop a better connection with their emotional needs. From here, they can go about fulfilling some of them themselves and some of them with the help of others.

A Closer Look

When it comes to their emotional needs, this will relate to their need for attention, intimacy, love, affection, support, appreciation and acceptance. What also stands out is that some of these will relate to their physical needs.

For example, being held or touched will take care of a physical need and it will take care of one or more emotional needs. If one spends a lot of time in their head, it is to be expected that most if not all of their physical needs will also be ignored.

Out of their Control

Taking into account how important both their emotional and physical needs are, it can seem strange as to why one would have the tendency to lose touch with these needs. What should be normal is for them to stay connected to their needs when they are in their own company and around others.

If they were to think about how long they have been this way, they may find that they have been this way for as long as they can remember. Due to this, they could believe that this is just how they are and were even born this way.

A Deeper Look

Nonetheless, if they were able to go back in time and re-experience parts of their early years, they might soon realise why they are this way. This may have been a stage of their life when they were often neglected and when they were given attention, it might have largely been missatuned care.

Not having their developmental needs met on a regular basis would have caused them to experience a lot of pain and to feel ashamed of their needs. The only way for them to handle this pain would have been to disconnect from themselves and to go into a shut down, collapsed state.

Self-Protection

This wouldn’t have changed what was going on exte
ally but it would have stopped them from being aware of the pain that they would have experienced through being left. Leaving their own body was their only option as they couldn’t change their caregiver's behaviour and they couldn’t simply find another caregiver.

The pain that they experienced through not having their needs met would have wiped them out if this hadn’t taken place. Their underdeveloped brain and nervous system were not equipped to handle so much stimulation.

Two Parts

Disconnecting from themselves would have caused them to become disembodied and this would have estranged them from their emotional and a number of their physical needs. They would have been born connected to their body and after being traumatised throughout their infancy and toddlerhood, an inner split would have been created.

At this stage of their life, disconnecting from themselves and giving up would have allowed them to survive and now it will be causing them to suffer unnecessarily. The trouble is that being in touch with their needs at this stage of their life would have been incredibly painful and expressing them would have been seen as something that would have caused them to be rejected and abandoned and, thus, put their very survival at risk, and this is why it won’t just be a case of them changing their behaviour.

A Few Hurdles

Even if they were able to connect to their body and their needs, there will still be resistance when it comes to expressing them. Ergo, for them to move forward there will be a number of things for them to deal with.

Their body/unconscious mind will be filled with emotional wounds and trauma and dealing with these emotional wounds and resolving this trauma will play a big part in what will allow them to get back into their body, connect with their needs and feel comfortable enough to express them. This is likely to be something that will take time as opposed to something that will take place in a few weeks or months, for instance.

Awareness

If someone can relate to this and they are ready to change their life, they may need to reach out for exte
al support. This is something that can be provided with the assistance of a therapist or healer.