Many people who come to therapy say they come from a normal family and have not experienced abuse or ill treatment. This is why they cannot explain why they have grown in a certain way, why they have emotional problems and often cannot trust others but themselves. They say that their parents are good people, hard-working people, who sacrificed themselves so they can have everything they needed and did not experience great shortages, they weren’t beaten nor cursed.

One way of mental and emotional vulnerability much more subtle than physical abuse, which has long-term consequences is neglect – or deprivation. When we say these terms in fact, we refer not to the things that have happened, but rather to those that have not happened although they should have happened. Neglect or deprivation occurs when part of the child’s needs is either not satisfied or recognized as important and are therefore ignored. Deprivation can be carried out on several levels and may be more or less severe. It can be related to care, since the child is deprived of adequate care – he is not given food in time, is not changed in time or is left in physical discomfort for long periods of time, he receives no attention or affection. In this respect, little children left in extremely crowded placement centers and with little and often underqualified staff, children have developed what we find in literature as hospitalism. The absence of affectionate attention, caresses and emotional contact has led to the setting up of isolation/loneliness and self-stimulation phenomena, by which the child tries to make up for the lack of connection by self-soothing behavior such as cradling or thumb-sucking. The seriously neglected child withdraws into a world of his own, in which he tries to find the peace and comfort he needs with his rudimentary means. In severe cases, the child can become dissociated from the world but also from his own body, whose sensations become a source for discomfort and overwhelm.

Another kind of deprivation is empathy deprivation, in which the child feels that his needs, his emotions and his dispositions are not understood by others, are not shared and have no impact on others. These children understand that they need to repress their needs and emotions, because they will not be well received by others, they will be rejected, denied, misunderstood or ignored.

Deprivation of protection refers to lack of support and guidance, but also to lack of protection from dangers either from the environment or from others. Many children from families with many brothers and sisters were allowed to grow up with them and were exposed to dangers that the larger brothers did not know/could prevent. Domestic accidents such as scalding, burning or cutting, falling from trees or animal bites can all happen when a responsible adult does not supervise the child according to the needs of his or her age and stage of development. Thus, the child can learn that the surrounding environment is dangerous, that he has no one to count to help him or, often, he does not even get the idea that someone should actually be there.

Children who grow up in deprivation often become adults who are used to counting only on themselves and who do not know how to seek help or to turn to others for support. They live with the expectation that their needs of emotional support, empathy, attention and understanding will not be met by others. This is why they can become hyper-independent and have difficulties in getting together with others on equal terms, or on the contrary, they can become extremely anxious and clinging to the relationship. Often, they can develop secondary schemas such as self-sacrifice and unrelenting standards. One of the most important obstacles to overcoming this scheme is the belief of these people that emotional deprivation is a normal thing that cannot be changed. This is why the therapeutic relationship is both a safety framework and a shaping factor for a new relationship pattern.