If we don’t get our emotional needs met in our childhood, we often have 4 choices (roles to play out)…to force others to give us the energy and emotions we require to feel safe and secure. This information was taught to me by Marisa Peer and I expand on these 4 potential roles, inside my own lectures and self sabotage coaching certification course.

1) We can become sick – I call this Neotony. Neotony is the scientific study of child/infant characteristics, which draw a security figure or parent to care for it. If our parents didn’t give us the love we needed in childhood…..it’s very easy to attain that energy by becoming a sick child, who then turns into a perpetually sick adult. It’s hard to become healthy and happy, when being sick and depressed gets us more connection, love, energy and attention. Many adults are trapped in this very cycle today, a very real form of arrested development. It’s even harder when we don’t realize that these childhood adaptations are well documented. Childhood adaptation strategies, used to attain safety and security when we were children, only hinder our evolution as adults…….and cause great emotional pain for ourselves and the people around us. Adults who act, think and behave like children are impossible to have independence adult relationships with. The adult who acts and thinks like a child bases their relationships on dependence and not mutual satisfaction and contribution.

2) We can become the over achiever – many parents only give love, energy and attention to their children when they achieve high societal standards. High marks, top ranks in sports, high incomes, high strata occupations etc. This leaves the child, who turns into an adult……completely exhausted. They often work around the clock, can’t sit still and need to be constantly achieving…..in order to satisfy the lack of love, connection and energy they didn’t get in their childhood. The parents may have even passed away but the program remains. Burn out is very common in this cycle, as are key relationship breakdowns.

3) We can become the carer/helpers and/or protectors/rescuers. When a person has a fear that they’re not loved enough to stay part of their tribe, they often revert back to a “caring role”. Every tribe needs a “carer” and if you care for others, the people being cared for will always cast a tribal vote to keep you inside the inner circle. This increases safety and security, regarding tribal bonding and tribal affiliation. Nurses, aids to the elderly or even people who constantly surround themselves with sick people…….who perpetually need help, all qualify inside this category. These people give yet often get nothing in return….and this is exactly why they give in the first place……because they want to constantly prove their worth to the tribe, to guarantee their right to be there. Females in this role often become the carer/helpers. Male protector/rescuers relate to the military, policing, firefighters etc. There’s nothing wrong with any of these roles, if we we hold the capacity and courage to review why those roles attracted us in the first place. Unfortunately the carer/helper is most often attracted to the rebel/over achiever or sick person……..so they can again prove their worth over their entire lifetime. These are romances that are set to explode eventually like dynamite because they’re completely unsustainable.

4) We can become the rebel. When we don’t get our emotional needs met by becoming moral, good and healthy people…….we often revert to connecting through chaos. (as I call it) As a successful person who didn’t drink alcohol, coffee or eat junk food for nearly 8 consecutive years etc……I can tell you that it was extremely lonely. All our official media and government channels ONLY provide energy and attention to people who are messy. We live inside a society that glorifies, celebrates, promotes and gives the limelight to every form of dysfunction imaginable. If you’re a contributing member of society, very little attention or celebration comes your way. Parents as well only seem to get involved in their children’s lives when there’s something wrong. This lays the energetic foundation and ground work for children to become messy rebels, who then turn into the same as adults.

These are the 4 roles we can play when we don’t feel like we got what we needed in our childhoods. The solution is education and to consciously interfere with these patterns. We’re not children anymore and we can give ourselves what our parents didn’t (or couldn’t). We’re capable now of parenting and caring for ourselves. We don’t need to petition others to parent or care for us anymore. We can do that ourselves…..and we can be super successful while we’re doing it. We can indeed have it all and enjoy it all as well. Sometimes it’s as easy as consciously understanding we’re not children anymore and we’re perfectly OK to care for ourselves and to take on the world from a firm foundation of our true adult power.