Have you ever felt like no matter how much you give, how hard you try, you just can’t seem to get the validation or love you’re looking for? Or that no matter what you achieve, there’s an underlying feeling that it’s never enough?
When our emotional needs were not fully met as children, be it through neglect, constant comparison, or a lack of warmth, we often try a multitude of different strategies to achieve them. Unfortunately, they are often unsuccessful and result in a constant loop of frustration and feelings of failure.
This post aims to explore how our childhood experiences often shape our adult lives, particularly when feelings of being unwanted or unlovable emerge. As a therapist, it’s such a common theme in the work I do – my hope is that this offers you some hope, because you really are not alone. Therapy is one way of helping us break free from these old patterns by understanding ourselves; we’ll discuss this further later.
Childhood Emotional Needs
As children, our emotional needs are fairly simple; we need love, attention, validation, and safety. When these needs aren’t met, it creates a variety of responses as we feel unseen, unimportant, or unloved. In reaction, we often develop coping strategies to get these needs fulfilled (If you’re a people pleaser, this may resonate with you). Carl Rogers, a leading figure in the approach to psychology I practice, argued that unconditional positive regard is essential for healthy development. In simple terms, as children, we need to feel accepted and loved for who we are, not just for what we do or how we perform. Without this, we feel like we’re constantly trying to earn love or approval, leading to lifelong emotional struggles.
Common Strategies Children Develop to Gain Love and Validation
When emotional needs are unmet, children develop strategies to feel loved, wanted, and valued. While these strategies may have helped us survive in childhood, they often turn into patterns that cause pain and frustration as we grow older. Here are some common strategies:
Striving for Success and Perfection
If you noticed that the only time you received attention or praise was when you succeeded, you may have sought to push yourself to keep achieving in areas that your parents valued. Perhaps you learned early on that success in a sport or interest that your parents appreciated was the key to receiving love and validation. Over time, this drive for success became your coping strategy, a way to ensure you’d always meet others’ expectations.
As an adult, you may constantly feel like you have to prove yourself to others, fearing failure or criticism and fueling perfectionism. This level of success is unfulfilling as well as unachievable, which can lead to chronic stress, self-criticism, and burnout because you never feel good enough.
It can be useful to look back at all the achievements in your life, and how many of them did you start because of someone else? How often did that certificate feel like a failure because the goal wasn’t winning the race, it was what that win meant to someone else?
People-Pleasing
If you grew up in a household where love seemed conditional on your ability to meet others’ needs, you may have learned to put everyone else’s needs ahead of your own. This can also play out in families where parents are constantly arguing or a parent is struggling with depression. You may have become a ‘people-pleaser,’ believing that only by making others happy could you earn their love. You may have taken responsibility for the happiness of your unhappy parents, which can result in taking on parental responsibilities with siblings or chores.
As an adult, this pattern can lead to resentment, exhaustion, and feelings of being taken for granted. People-pleasers often struggle to say ‘no’ and feel guilty when they prioritise their own needs, leading to dissatisfaction and burnout.
Competitiveness
If attention was divided among siblings in your home, it’s common for children to compete for love or approval, constantly striving to outdo others to feel valued. This can lead to an excessively competitive nature that drives you to compare yourself to others constantly.
As an adult, this competitive mindset may cause you to feel inadequate or unworthy, even when you’ve achieved great things. It can also create difficulty in truly celebrating the success of others, leaving you feeling disconnected from genuine joy or fulfilment.
Avoidance/Withdrawal
If emotional needs were never met or consistently dismissed, some children become emotionally withdrawn, avoiding close relationships or turning inward. It’s unbearable to feel anything, so you avoid feeling anything, but the consequence of avoiding feelings of pain only results in positive feelings also being suppressed.
As an adult, you may struggle with emotional intimacy and keep people at arm’s length due to being unable to trust others. This withdrawal often results in loneliness, isolation, and a feeling of disconnection, despite a deep desire for connection. The fear of being hurt or rejected keeps you from forming close, meaningful bonds with others.
The Cycle of Failure – The Unloved Child Becomes the Unlovable Adult
While these strategies helped us cope as children, they can become traps as adults. They are often driven by a deep, internalised belief that we must earn love or worth, rather than feeling accepted for who we truly are.
Although these strategies impact how we behave as adults, we carry this inner child with us and often find ourselves continuing to seek the approval we failed to achieve as children. We internalise this need and repeat the pattern over and over, believing that we must earn love or worthiness rather than feeling accepted for who we truly are. This cycle of emotional survival strategies often keeps us stuck, unable to break free from the patterns that hold us back from living authentically and with fulfilment.
Moving from Survival to Acceptance – How Counselling May Help
Change is possible, but it’s not easy. Therapy can offer the insights and the support you need to break free from these limiting patterns and begin to develop healthier ways of meeting emotional needs. We do this by exploring your material more deeply than you can do alone – we get down to the hidden meanings and emotions that sit behind it all.
Exploring Your Unmet Needs
We start by understanding the emotional needs that were unmet in childhood and how these needs influence your behaviour. The challenge is getting below the surface and understanding where these patterns began, then you can start to see how they’ve shaped you thoughts, feelings and sense of self-worth.
Building Self-Acceptance
The person-centred approach to therapy is rooted in acceptance, and the relationship is everything. By offering a secure space for you to feel accepted and valued for who you are, without judgment, you can begin to drop the mask and discover your internal values. This helps you develop self-acceptance and self-compassion, allowing you to let go of the need for perfection or external validation, but to know your true self-worth.
Developing New Coping Strategies
As we explore these old strategies, therapy can help you replace them with healthier ways of coping. A common example for people-pleasers is learning to set boundaries, which goes against the fundamental rule you live by, not disappointing anyone. I did say it’s not easy!
Growth and Healing
Recognising the patterns that were formed in childhood can be challenging, but it’s also incredibly empowering. By understanding how your survival strategies shaped your adult life, you can begin the journey toward breaking free from old cycles and building a more authentic and fulfilling life.
Could Counselling Help You?
If you’re reading this post and it resonates with you, I would guess that you’re already seeking to break free of these recurring patterns of behaviour.
My counselling practice is built on compassion, empathy and acceptance, and I offer a supportive space where you can explore these patterns, gain self-understanding, and develop healthier ways of relating to yourself and others. It’s essential that whoever you choose, they feel like the right fit for you. So, if you can spare 20 minutes, I would love to have a call to discuss your goals and to explore if maybe working together can help. Call 07969547876 or message me, and we can arrange a suitable time.
