Vulnerable Child Modes

Question 1

What Are Vulnerable Child Modes?

Answer 1

Individuals, in effect, reexperience states of vulnerability related to experiences of unmet needs in childhood. This broad category can be differentiated into experiences related to specific primary maladaptive schemas

Question 2

Lonely Child (Neglected Child)

Answer 2

Feels alone with no one to turn to when faced with confusing or distressing experiences or situations. Parents have not been available to help the child with difficult emotions, so that the person feels empty, alone, socially unacceptable, undeserving of love, unloved and unlovable.

Question 3

Abandoned Child

Answer 3

An intense experience resulting from sudden traumatic separation from the mother or primary caretaker. This can result in and engulfing experience of being all alone in an endless dark place when occurring in the first few months of life.

Question 4

Rejected Child

Answer 4

An experience of being emotionally cut off from a primary caretaker with an implicit or explicit message, “You are not wanted, I don’t care what you feel or what your experience is.” The child experiences invalidation of his/her needs and feelings.

Question 5

Terrified Child

Answer 5

An experience of intense terror in response to one or more traumatic events including exposure to or witnessing angry exchanges, threats or assaults from parents.

Question 6

Abused Child

Answer 6

Feels mistreated, abused, betrayed, and anticipates further abuse. There is usually a strong Punitive Parent voice.

Question 7

Humiliated / Shamed Child

Answer 7

Feels worthless and incapacitated by shame, anticipates further humiliation.

Question 8

Dependent Child

Answer 8

Feels incapable of making own decisions, and believes that s/he needs a strong person at his/her side to guide him/her to make the right decisions. This is usually the result of overprotective parents who failed to encourage the development of autonomy and self-reliance.

Question 9

Desperate Child

Answer 9

Feels desperate because of the intensity of the pain of basic needs not being met. May be related to any of the unmet needs so may blend several of the above. The pain is experienced as unbearable or close to unbearable and there is little or no expectation that those needs can be met or that the pain will end: often hidden behind a coping mode such as Helpless Surrenderer or an Overcompensator.