Seyed Morakabi’s Reviews > Emotional Neglect and the Adult in Therapy: Lifelong Consequences to a Lack of Early Attunement > Status Update

After all, it is gratifying to be told forever that you should look after yourself more and not always put others first.

Compulsive caregivers with this core very strongly walled off are at risk of burning out. It is usually possible to spot the early warning signs of giving from a place that does not have much to give and feeling that other people’s needs become demands rather than opportunities to express love. If this state of affairs continues for too long, it can become dangerous and presage burnout.

For some people compulsive caregiving turns into a way of feeling powerful and in control of the world around them.It makes them be the strong one, the hero who is always coping in a crisis, the rock that everybody can lean on when they are in trouble. And while a person may still experience a resonance with feelings of need and terror in others, these feelings are now just this: in others, rather than in themselves.

Finally, caregiving is a way of doing something better than what has been done to the child: knowing the pain of being ignored, they will not do the same to another human being. This last motivation may be present unconsciously only but can be extremely powerful.

Second, an ability to care for others gives the child a little power and a little sense of their own goodness. They won’t feel quite so small and insubstantial if they can give something to another and thus have the power of making someone else better.

Sometimes people create a secondary gain narrative around this fear of change.

They don’t feel that the child deserves any help, or they get so frightened themselves by the child’s fear that the child ends up having to reassure them.

One of the common experiences, and one relevant for therapy, is a lack of expectation that the world will help them meet their needs or manage their feelings.

We end up having a long conversation about this question: Can he allow himself to have a good feeling of having met a challenge without having to spoil it for himself?

One of the consequences of developmental deficits is that the person will have to hold on very tightly to what they do have and will be extremely fearful of anything that risks even a small loss. Such a person will then come across as very risk-averse or as very stubbornly resisting change.