Sunday, August 22, 2010

Self deprivation and ego states

Roses says:

“Yes - listening to the child ego state... that would have to be a learned thing? With practice it will get easier? “

How difficult it is depends on what is the cause my friend and in the previous post I have only mentioned one way in which this can occur. There I mentioned some people have considerable difficulty listening to their Child ego state or that part of the personality.

When this happens the person can end up stroke deprived or has a general sense of deprivation where what the individual’s wants are rarely satisfied. It never gets to be ‘their turn’ when their needs are met and they get satisfied. This is common in people who are depressed or those who used drugs excessively like I said in the pervious post.

smoking teen

This can be a function of an overly active Critical Parent. That part of the personality which criticises self and makes them work all the time or never ask for what they want and so forth. The diagram I used was this one. The person is said to have a large internal critic.

This can be treated as I said by reducing the expression of the CP at ones own Child. Or more correctly, in counselling it is always better to increase behaviour rather than trying to decrease behaviour. One would make contracts to increase the expression of their Nurturing Parent ego state to the Child. If this happens then the CP will naturally decline.

CP deprivation

On other occasions the self deprivation is not caused by an overly active CP but is a function of a maladapted Child ego state. This is usually a sign of more serious psychopathology and the person is more psychologically damaged. In this case the Child ego state does not believe its need should be met. It feels it is of little worth so its needs and wants are not valuable enough to be satisfied. This is not from the CP but is what the Child ego state feels about itself.

After this has been the case for some time the person looses touch with their own Child needs and wants such that the are not even aware they are being deprived. The Free Child is so deprived that the person is not even ware of what their needs are anymore. If one is not aware of them, then obviously the needs are not going to be expressed, let alone satisfied.

Police dog

As I said this is indicative of ‘deeper’ emotional problems and thus more difficult to treat. The person needs to start to feel more worthy, then the needs can start to be expressed and ways of meeting them can be established. However feeling more worthy is not an easy thing to do and this is where the therapeutic relationship assumes importance. It is through the relationship with the therapist where the client can begin to feel a bit more self worth.

Graffiti

1 comment:

  1. "It is through the relationship with the therapist where the client can begin to feel a bit more self worth" - ohh gosh that's lovely Tony! Thank you for saying that

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