By Dr Jo White, Advanced Certified Schema Therapist, Supervisor & Trainer
The emotional deprivation schema is one of the most common schemas in individuals with emotional difficulties. Nurturance, empathy and protection are the foundations of secure attachment. If any or all of these needs are not met, this has a significant impact on how the person relates to themselves and others.
In this blog I put a spotlight onto the emotional deprivation schema to help you identify it with your clients and notice the challenges it might present. I finish off with my top tips for working with this schema so you can feel confident about how to move forwards.
What is the Emotional Deprivation Schema?
The emotional deprivation schema is an expectation that no one will provide emotional support or understand the individual. There are three main areas of deprivation:
Deprivation of nurturance: The absence of affection, warmth and attention.
Deprivation of empathy: The absence of understanding and attunement.
Deprivation of protection: The absence of direction, strength and guidance.
Your client may have experienced deprivation of one, two or all three of these needs.
Presentation in Therapy
The individual’s presentation in therapy will depend on whether they are surrendering to the schema, avoiding activating the schema or overcompensating for the schema. Here are some of the signs you might spot in therapy.
Surrendering “I don’t deserve nurturance, empathy, protection” | Avoidance “I don’t want nurturance, empathy or protection” | Overcompensation “I demand nurturance, empathy and protection” |
Doesn’t express needs. Try not to burden the therapist. Look after the therapist’s needs. Doesn’t complain if messed around. Feels uncomfortable with limited reparenting. | Doesn’t attend therapy. Doesn’t see the value of emotional connection. Seeks soothing alone through food, gambling, shopping. | Demands emotional needs are met and they are prioritised perfectly. Doesn’t consider therapist’s needs. Runs over time. Criticises the therapist For meeting their own needs (e.g. holidays). |
Awareness of the Emotional Deprivation Schema
Clients with this schema may be unaware of its presence when they enter therapy. This is because the schema develops from a deprivation or absence of nurturance, empathy and protection and so if the individual has never received these elements, it can be hard to understand that they could have been there. It’s an emotional world the client never knew existed. As a consequence, the YSQ may not highlight this schema as significant. However, as you progress with your assessment and explore the quality of relationships via a clinical interview or imagery for assessment, the absence will become clear.
Aims of Schema Therapy
Use your assessment process to identify how the emotional deprivation schema shows up for your client and the ways in which their coping modes continue to prevent them from getting their needs met.
The major goals of treatment for clients with an emotional deprivation schema include:
Recognising that they have emotional needs, accept and understand these needs
Developing relationships with people who can meet those emotional needs
Communicating emotional needs to others
Holding realistic expectations of other people’s ability to meet those needs (don’t avoid asking and don’t demand perfect care)
Challenges when working with the Emotional Deprivation Schema
Vague Memories
Where there is significant emotional deprivation in a client’s early life, they may find it difficult to recall specific memories from childhood. Emotional deprivation is a lack of something and therefore is harder to remember and describe than big traumatic events that may have happened. Individuals with the emotional deprivation schema are likely to have experienced little emotion-focused conversation regarding events in their life and so may not be able to provide a narrative of their experiences or describe how they felt or what the event meant to them. Descriptions of memories and childhood may be vague and difficult to grasp. This can make it challenging to know how to move forwards with tools such as imagery rescripting.
Parentified Child
When a parent’s emotional needs are not being met appropriately, they may lean on their child emotionally. The child starts to meet the needs of the parent instead of the parent meeting the needs of the child. This is one way in which the emotional deprivation schema can develop. When working with this early history, you may come up against misplaced loyalty. The client becomes protective of their parent when they perceive the therapist is being critical of the parenting they received. In doing this, the client’s focus turns away from their emotional needs and towards their parent and their parent’s needs. This can block awareness and acceptance for the client of their emotional needs.
Perfect Care
A further challenge that might arise when someone has an emotional deprivation schema is the wish for perfect care. This might show up as a resistance to sharing emotional needs with someone unless they are perfectly attuned and empathic. The individual may be hypervigilant for signs of mis-attunement and invalidation and quickly pull back from sharing their needs as it doesn’t feel safe, thus reinforcing their belief that no one will be there for them.
The wish for perfect care might also trigger the angry child mode, leaving the individual feeling and expressing resentment about their needs not being met perfectly by people in their life. The expression of resentment deters other people from wanting to meet the person’s emotional needs, again reinforcing the schema.
Now you have an overview of the schema and the challenges that might arise with emotional deprivation, let’s have a look at my top tips for moving your work forwards.
Tips for Working with the Emotional Deprivation Schema
Emotional deprivation may not be identified by your client in the YSQ and they may not describe deprivation early in therapy. Look out for this schema as you explore the qualities of their key relationships in childhood.
There are three elements to emotional deprivation. Look out for which elements are present for your clients and think about how you can shape your limited reparenting to meet those needs.
Deprivation of Nurturance | Deprivation of Empathy | Deprivation of Protection |
Provide care for your client. E.g. offer a fidget toy to prevent skin picking. | Attune to your client. Understand the meaning of what they share. Offer validation. | Stand up for your client in imagery rescripting, validate their needs and encourage them forwards. |
Help your client to recognise and assert their needs and push through the discomfort experienced when someone isn’t perfectly nurturing and empathic to fully express needs.
If your client overcompensates for their emotional deprivation, help them to recognise the limits to what other people can offer via the therapeutic relationship and empathic confrontation.
Imagery rescripting is the perfect forum for healing the emotional deprivation schema. Go into images with your client and provide lots of limited reparenting to meet the needs of nurturance, empathy and protection.
Images might be sparse, because the deprivation is a lack of something rather than a big event that happened. Nurture a child who is sitting alone, educate them about how they might be feeling or what they might be thinking, validate their emotions and highlight their unmet needs to key figures in their childhood.
If the child was parentified, gently use empathic confrontation to highlight unmet needs to parents. Reassure the child that you are not here to criticise their parent and that they tried their best, but let them know their needs are important and they deserve to have them met.
Warmth offered via limited reparenting may need to be titrated as it might be too overwhelming for the emotionally deprived child. Gradually increase expressions of warmth over time so they can be gradually integrated.
Conclusion
Working with the emotional deprivation schema can be a complex and nuanced process, but healing this schema can have a profound effect on an individual's life. By understanding the ways this schema manifests — whether through surrender, avoidance, or overcompensation — you can better tailor your therapeutic approach to meet the unique needs of each client.
Remember, the absence of nurturance, empathy, and protection in early life can leave deep emotional gaps that shape how individuals relate to themselves and others. Identifying and addressing these unmet needs through techniques like limited reparenting, empathic confrontation, and imagery rescripting can provide powerful avenues for healing.
As therapists, our role is to provide an environment where clients can begin to recognise, express, and advocate for their emotional needs. By applying the strategies discussed you can empower your clients to break free from the constraints of emotional deprivation and move towards a more connected and emotionally rich life.
Would you like to train in Schema Therapy? Find out more about my certification programme here.
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