Introduction to core emotional needs: What if I had a terrible childhood? (Schema Therapy Deep Dive - Part 1.1)

Introduction

In a previous post, I introduced Schema Therapy. Most therapies acknowledge that our curious questions about how we are the way we are can be traced back to nature or nurture—biology and environment.

While nature certainly plays a role, psychology—and talk therapy in particular—has always focused on nurture. The therapeutic relationship is the foundation of counselling, making the dynamic between therapist and client crucial. The transference and countertransference that inevitably occur in therapy deserve closer examination.

To understand and bring awareness to these deeply personal ways of relating, we must first explore the core emotional needs of both therapist and client.

This post will address core emotional needs at the level Jeffrey Young, Janet Klosko and Majorie Weishaar (2003) originally intended: complex, enduring, and often rooted in childhoods marked by neglect, abuse, or both.

If you believe you had a relatively stable childhood, I’ll refer you to Introduction to core emotional needs: But I had a good childhood (Schema Therapy Deep Dive - Part 1.2).

My journey as a clinical psychologist began in public mental health wards, state-run drug and alcohol services, and community service and housing. Later, I worked with private health providers, where many clients were deemed "too well" for public mental health support—yet they grappled with serious issues while navigating daily life.

These individuals deserve good mental health as much as anyone. Beneath recurring depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive habits, or reliance on "a bottle or two" to cope, there was often a chaotic stoicism—a detached or "no need" response to life’s stresses. Everything seemed to trigger them, yet they clung on. Some through sheer grit until they couldn’t anymore. Others through delusions their minds created just to "get on with life." There were those where everything seemed too hard and the want to be loved, nurtured and seen seems to grow and is never satisfied.

This post is dedicated to those who still feel these struggles intensely.

I see you. I believe you.

Core Emotional Needs

For many adults, survival hinges on compartmentalising, suppressing, or intellectualising their childhood experiences. They’re not just surviving their past—they’re surviving adulthood, too.

Some can’t articulate what’s missing, even when they’re no longer in danger—just stuck in unfulfilling relationships or friendships where "nothing’s too bad." Others remain trapped in emotionally or physically violent dynamics, dismissing it as "normal." Then there are those who live lonely lives, reasoning, "At least no one can hurt me if I don’t let them close."

In researching core emotional needs, I found most frameworks drew from attachment theory, developmental psychology (often framed as parenting advice), and cognitive-behavioural principles.

Here's Jeffrey Young and friends (2003) outline of five core emotional needs:

(a) Safety and Nurturance- to form strong emotional connections with caregivers which are the foundation for healthy psychosocial development.

Attachment is crucial for for survival and for fostering healthy physical, emotional, and social development. For clients who have survived into adulthood with neglectful, abusive and absent childhoods, the idea of the other core emotional needs ring hollow. Without the foundation of secure attachment, the concepts of play, fun, healthy boundaries and self-control, freedom to express themselves, autonomy and sense of self seem like a pipe dream.

For individuals raised by parents who battled to meet their own basic safety needs, they either watched fearfully as their caregivers fought with unresolved demons or rarely saw them. Some have it 'easier', where the adults in their lives were there, and only beat them when they were 'bad' or didn't do well in school. There was the occasional outburst, but that could be worked around if they just kept really quiet or make themselves busy.

(b) Play and Spontaneity

To talk about spontaneity and play is to talk about what generally makes a childhood fun, exciting and filled with joy. Often times, this sense of exploration and adventure is reflected to have happened with other children - siblings, cousins, classmates or even alone. The idea that it is something which caregivers needs to engage in or teach a child sounds almost counterintuitive to most adults. Isn't that what children do?

Well, for many people who struggle with this concept in adulthood, we only need to look at what play was like for them as children.

I have heard stories of almost no play with busy parents, intimidating parents, or serious parents. Growing up, play was most likely associated with other children, siblings, and sometimes just the self.

Some of these children may eventually grow up to be adults who can afford play, but they still don't know how to - rest, sleep, travel, go for drives, cinemas, spend on books, clothes, go to the park, yoga, trying new foods, join a sports team, etc. Others who still struggle with secure attachment and financial stability, may not know these joys at all or don't feel like they deserve them.

(c) Freedom to Express (needs, opinions and emotions)

"Children should be seen and not heard".

"Children should listen to their parents".

"This is for your own good".

These are common messages that have been passed on and enacted in different levels. The idea that children need to be taught how to express themselves can range from very foreign to indulgent.

Children learn from a very young age how they should and shouldn't communicate.

Babies stop crying from exhaustion or learn to self-soothe—if caregivers model it.

Children mimic parents’ communication styles: patient guidance, screaming matches, or silence to avoid conflict.

By adolescence, they’re labelled—"rebellious," "perfect," or "withdrawn." Few learn authentic self-expression. Instead, they mould themselves to parental needs, becoming parentified children.

As younger selves who were never modelled healthy self-expression or were shown differently, they grow up to be adults who react in their adult relationships and friendship like how they were as children.

(d) Autonomy, Competence and Identity

With less than secure attachment, unable to be spontaneous and play, not knowing what their own thoughts and feelings are separate from parents, how likely it is children would grow up to be adults who are connected yet independent?

With unstable first interpersonal connection with caregivers, inner connection is unlikely and so the cycle continues into adulthood. People do what they think they're suppose to do, go through life stages because that is what everyone does and developmental stages say. And yet, there is little or no connection with their inner world, their self, identity, values and meaning.

When core emotional needs go unmet, adulthood becomes a series of motions—not a lived experience.

(e) Realistic Limits and Self-control

This core emotional need I've decided to discuss last always. It seems to be opposite to the rest which 'benefit' the child.

The idea of children learning how to control themselves, respect rules, cultivate self-discipline and responsibility is crucial but often done in punitive ways by parents who are overworked and likely parented in authoritarian or abusive ways themselves.

In other words, the core need is crucial - the execution so far, can range from nonexistent to downright abusive.

Generations of hardship, busy and tired parents are likely to impose strict, controlling, 'disciplined' rules and inflexible ways of thinking on children. With the focus on putting food on the table, the idea of rules keeps the household running - sometimes even enlisting older children to do this work. There is minimal time for nurturance, play, and opinions or feelings.

Sometimes these limits are beaten into us. Fear is a great motivator for survival, not for thriving.

Conclusion

Where does this leave us?

You may be wondering:

"Yep, this sounds very much like me and how I grew up".

"My life is okay, but I want to thrive, not just survive my current circumstances"

You may be horrified:

"I didn't realise how much of this happened to me".

"I thought I was okay."

"I wasn't that bad but now I think some things were actually worse than I thought"

Schema therapy ultimately aims to address these needs.

It can :

• Exploring how you coped as a child,

• Unpacking ingrained beliefs (schemas) about yourself and the world,

• Recognising how you shift between emotional states (modes) in different situations

  
  

It can ultimately help you heal and fulfil your core emotional needs by being the Healthy Adult you deserve to be. I look forward to sharing more with you.

See you soon,

Helen

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“For in every adult there dwells the child that was, and in every child there lies the adult that will be.”

― Yong Kang Chan,

author of Parent Yourself Again: Love Yourself the Way You Have Always Wanted to Be Loved