Love or Emotional Hunger: Can You Tell the Difference?

Colette Dowling, LMSW

Straight off, real love nourishes the other person, be it a child or an adult. The real lover is interested in supporting the other person and encourages the unfolding of his or her personality.

But love can be confused with emotional hunger. Emotional hunger has little to do with the other person and everything to do with oneself. The person driven by emotional hunger didn't get what she needed as a child. It's a primitive condition of pain and longing that is caused by deprivation. Often it's assed from generation to generation, in a family. The emotionally hungry parent uses the child for her own needs.

What are some signs of emotionally hungry parenting? It can be seen in a variety of behaviors.

* anxious overconcern and overprotection

* resentment of a child's accomplishments

* wanting an attention the child gets for oneself

Parents who are capable of giving love are not themselves emotionally hungry. They have a positive self image and can feel compassion for the child. Parents who are capable of loving can maintain boundaries. The child of such a parents looks loved.

By comparison, children of hungry parents develop reciprocal hunger. They're overly dependent and emotionally volatile, write Firestone and Catlett, in their book, Fear of Intimacy. They develop clinging behavior and are afraid to explore the environment.

As adults, children of emotionally hungry parents have higher than normal anxiety states. They fear success (which, emotionally, would mean separation from the parent) and in love relationships they tend to be witholding because of earlier fears of being depleted or sucked dry. Emotionally hungry parenting has put them "on the take", in other words. They feel deprived. What is given to them, by the other, is never enough. They may be terrified of having children of their own for fear they will be emptied.

Some questions for assessing your own level of emotional hunger:

* How willing are you for your mate to have friends of his (or her) own?

* Are you envious or your mate's successes and involvement with work?

* Do you believe your mate should spend all of his (or her) spare time with you?

The victim of emotional hunger does not feel loved, can't feel loved, because life will never offer enough compensation for what was lost in childhood. The sad truth is that love can't cure the victim of emotional hunger for the simple reason that he or she can't FEEL love.

The things that stand in the wy of feeling love can be worked out in a therapist's office. There the chain of intergenerational hungering can be broken. In fact, it needs to be broken if one ever wants to be able to truly love another.

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NYC psychotherapist Colette Dowling, LMSW, has a private practice in Manhattan and specializes in the treament of women, especially their conflicts with love, intimacy and personal success.

Colette has written eight books and is best known for uncovering women's psychological conflicts with independence in her best-seller, The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fears of Independence.

Other books she's written are "You Mean I Don't Have to Feel This Way?" (the first book for the lay reader about the the biological underpinnings of depression, anxiety and addiction), Red Hot Mamas (about women's lives after 50), and The Frailty Myth, about the psychological effect on women of having been historically discouraged from developing the full strength of their bodies.
Excerpts from Colette's books can be found here.

For more inforamtion on Colette's therapy practice see her profile at Psychology Today.

Colette is a graduate of The Smith College School for Social Work and has done avanced training at The Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy.

You may reach Colette at dowlingcolette@earthlink.net or by calling 718-594-0201.You can listen to Colette talk about what it's like starting therapy with a new therapist below.

For articles on women's mental health see Colette's website.

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