Do you often feel guilty for having needs and find yourself apologizing in situations more often than not? If so, this week’s blog is for you!
Trauma and the Disempowered Person
In our current day and time, it is difficult to feel like you as an individual matter. There are so many forces that are bigger than you that seem to have an outsized impact on you. Perhaps this has never been as true as it is today.
The Trauma of Disempowerment
You may very well have grown up in a family where you were taught to be seen and not heard, or that despite what your parents told you, your needs weren’t tended to very well…or at all. This is very typical and is at the very heart of what trauma is about.
The Unseen Trauma
Many of my clients report that even though they weren’t neglected or abused growing up, there was a time when they realized they couldn’t talk to their parents about their emotional upsets and challenges. This gets at the need for emotional support that children and adolescents experience throughout their growing up process. It doesn’t mean that their parents didn’t care about them, but that they weren’t taught by word and deed that their needs truly mattered.
Apologizing for Having Needs Can Be the Result
If you weren’t taught that your needs were important growing up in word and deed, then it can seem like an imposition to bring these up with other people. You may feel obligated to apologize for simply needing to get up to go to the bathroom during a meeting or an event.
If you have trauma in your background, this is definitely associated with some degree of guilt and/or shame, and is a vestige of that early trauma. The trauma here is not abuse or neglect, but is instead not being seen or known, as the famous psychiatrist Bessel Van der Kolk once described.
How the Need to Apologize for Having Needs Persists
As people with trauma move into adulthood, they bring their adaptation patterns from childhood into their adult relationships. You tend to look at others in your life as you did with your caregivers and other authority figures growing up. This is oddly also the case in your primary relationships, where a spouse can remind you of one or more of your early family members.
How to Work Against the Guilt for Having Needs
One important way to recover from the trauma of not being seen or known is to get to know the wounded inner child within you. There are many ways to do this, and many forms of therapy focus on building a positive and healthy relationship with this part of your psyche.
Another way to work against the tendencies towards guilt for having needs is to stop apologizing to people for these. Instead of saying “I’m sorry” you can simply say “Excuse me.” It can help to remove from your language the words that can foster guilt or shame. And if you do feel a twinge of guilt or shame then tell yourself that you don’t need to feel those emotions anymore. They’re not a requirement, but just a leftover from your childhood.
What If You Still Can't Help but Apologize for Having Needs?
If you continue to struggle with guilt and/or shame at having needs despite your best attempts to overcome this, then it may be a good idea to seek professional help. It is important that you understand your intrinsic sense of self-worth, as well as the importance of identifying and addressing your inherent needs. I support you in taking the next step in that direction today!
Written by Scott Kampschaefer, LCSW-C
Visit our page on trauma therapy to find out how Scott can help you in overcoming childhood trauma.
