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How a lack of healthy entitlement can ruin your relationships
Healing from childhood wounds & achieving healthy entitlement
‘I feel like I am earning my existence’
These words were uttered by a client of mine recently after identifying that he was having a hard time feeling like he ‘deserves’ to have even the most basic needs of respect, love, and care met.
We had been able to identify a range of behaviours that were driven by a need to be validated and ‘approved’ by others and even by himself. He felt as though he was working hard daily, only to feel ‘good enough’ about who he was.
The need to be loved, seen, and validated is deeply wired within human beings. The degree to which this need has been met in childhood can determine the level of ‘deservingness’ we feel, not only as young people but also throughout our entire adult life.
Whilst big-headed, arrogance is not much to aim towards- it is important to recognise that there is a healthy middle path during which people will be able to feel rightfully deserving of good things (relationships, jobs, good treatment) but simultaneously feel valuable and capable enough to reject situations and relationships that are not measuring up or end up being destructive. We call this a sense of…