How Emotional Starvation Breeds Dangerous Leadership (Part 1)

Note from Jenny:

I’m very excited to share with readers excerpts from Bernhard Streisselberger’s upcoming workbook, The Affirmed Heart: A Path to Emotional Maturity and Self-Gift (Sophia Institute Press). His book helps us to understand how a lack of affirmation early in life can lead to relationship dysfunction in adulthood. Whether the unaffirmed person is a religious leader or a leader within their homes, the lack of emotional maturity has grave consequences.

Learn more about Bernhard and the coaching cohort groups he’ll be offering in September 2026.

The Unaffirmed Leader: How emotional starvation breeds the most dangerous kind of leadership; and why the Church keeps mistaking pathology for holiness

(Malachi Cowie / Unsplash)

You’ve met them: the leader who radiates confidence but leaves a trail of wounded hearts. The shepherd whose flock exists to fill a void no flock can fill. What if the most dangerous people in your community aren’t the obvious villains, but the unhealed hearts who most convincingly wear virtue as armor?

The Hunger You Can’t See

At the heart of many struggles in ministry, family, and religious life lies a condition that is often invisible to the observer but devastating to the individual who suffers from it. Dr. Conrad Baars and Dr. Anna Terruwe identified this condition as Emotional Deprivation Disorder (EDD), originally called frustration or deprivation neurosis.¹ It is not a failure of will, a lack of faith, or a moral failing. Rather, it is a developmental arrest in the emotional life caused by a fundamental lack of affirmation during childhood.

According to Baars, authentic affirmation acts as the emotional food necessary for the “humane emotions” of love, desire, and joy to mature. When a child is deprived of this nourishment (the communication that they are good, lovable, and worthwhile) their emotional development stalls. Emotional Deprivation Disorder is distinct from “repressive disorders” where emotions are in conflict with each other. In EDD, the emotions are simply undeveloped because the “psychic birth” never occurred. This second birth is the psychological awakening where, upon being affirmed, a person finally begins to live and thrive in their full psychological capacities. Without it, while the body, intellect, and spirit may mature, the emotional core remains that of a child, leaving the adult with a deep, unquenchable hunger to be wanted, significant, and lovable.²

While the root cause is the same, the symptoms of EDD manifest in three primary ways:

1. The Full-Spectrum Deprivation Syndrome: This person feels like a child in an adult body. They are often fearful, insecure, and lonely. They may appear “nice,” people-pleasing or passive, avoiding conflict at all costs because they fear losing the approval of others. They struggle to make decisions and often feel inadequate, regardless of their actual achievements.³

2. The Partially Affirmed “Normal”: Here, the lack of affirmation was not total, or one parent compensated for the other. These individuals often appear “normal” to the outside world. However, internally, they are never truly happy or content. Their symptoms are miniatures of the full syndrome: a lingering sense of insecurity, an inability to make decisions, and a deep-seated feeling of inadequacy despite external success.⁴

3. The Self-Affirming Person: This is perhaps the most dangerous manifestation for a community. If an unaffirmed person possesses high energy, intelligence, or charisma, they may attempt to affirm themselves. They may become high achievers, but their motivation is not service and self-gift; it is a desperate attempt to convince themselves and others that they are worthy. As Baars notes, “Even when they succeed in becoming very rich, or famous, or important in politics or business or the religious life [...] and are envied or admired because of their power and fame, they are doomed to discover sooner or later that they are still where they started from, namely, feeling unloved and worthless and insignificant.”⁵

The Mechanics of Immaturity and the Danger to Ministry

The Baars Institute explains that emotional maturity requires the integration of the emotions with reason and will. For the unaffirmed person, this integration is fractured.⁶ The unaffirmed person is not at peace with themselves. They harbor a secret conviction that they are fundamentally flawed or unlovable. Because their humane emotions were starved, their assertive emotions often run wild. Fear-based repression leads to scrupulosity and anxiety; energy-based repression leads to control, aggression, and an overly “driven” lifestyle.⁷

Without the foundation of being loved, the individual cannot truly possess themselves. They are reactive, not proactive. Their actions are driven by a need to fill the void, not by a free choice to give themselves. We can only give what we possess. Therefore, an unaffirmed person has great difficulty making a sincere gift of self.

This is where the reality of our emotional wounds intersects with the sacred responsibility of leadership. When a leader lacks the deep security of being affirmed, their ministry can inadvertently become a venue for self-healing rather than a channel of grace. Because they lack true self-possession, they may be tempted to unconsciously seek out subordinates who will validate their own sense of worth, creating a dynamic of dependency rather than freedom.

In stark contrast, the fully affirmed leader operates from a place of integrated wholeness and stability. Because they are secure in their own identity, they do not desperately need to extract validation from others. Their authority is not a tool to manage their own insecurities, but a gift to protect and nurture the spiritual growth of others. They lead not to be filled, but to give.

A Critical Distinction: Neurotic Repression vs. Rational Restraint

A critical distinction must be made here, as it is often a point of confusion in our society as a whole. Emotional, neurotic repression and rational, loving self-restraint may look very similar on the outside but there is a world of difference on the inside.⁸

• Neurotic Repression is an unconscious process where one emotion, usually fear, pushes down another emotion because it is perceived as inadequate, dangerous or sinful. The person is not at peace with the repressed emotion; they are fighting it. This builds tension until it explodes in a compulsive outburst or manifests itself in psychosomatic illnesses. It is a battle within the self.⁹

• Rational Restraint is a conscious, willful act. The person acknowledges the emotion, accepts it as a valid signal of one’s human nature, but deliberately chooses not to act upon it because reason and virtue dictate a different response. The emotion as such is not repressed; it is integrated and governed. Only the expression is restrained. Because the emotion has been acknowledged and integrated rather than repressed, the internal conflict resolves, allowing the agitation to subside naturally over time.¹⁰

The unaffirmed person, lacking the security to own their emotions, defaults to repression. They believe they must “kill” their feelings in order to be holy. This is the root of the “stoic saint” myth that plagues our Church. It is not holiness; it is a psychological malfunction that creates a false self, a mask that hides the wounded child beneath.

Recognizing Emotional Deprivation Disorder is not an act of condemnation, but of liberation. It allows us to name the wound. For the seminarian, the priest, the religious, the lay leader, and those with a vocation in family life, this diagnosis is a safeguard. It reminds us that before we can be shepherds of souls, we must be healed of our own hunger. Only when the heart is truly affirmed can it become a vessel of affirmation for others. Only when wounds are acknowledged can they become sites of grace.

The Affirmed Heart Journey is a a 10-week guided journey toward emotional maturity, interior freedom, and sincere self-gift—with workbook, weekly group coaching, and community support.

Click here to learn more about Bernhard’s Coaching Cohort group and join the wait list.

1. “Emotional Deprivation Disorder,” The Baars Institute, accessed May 23, 2026, https://www.baarsinstitute.com/emotional-deprivation-disorder.

2. Baars, Feeling and Healing Your Emotions, 118-119, 122.

3. Baars, Feeling and Healing Your Emotions, 121.

4. Ibid.

5. Baars, Feeling and Healing Your Emotions, 121-122, 127.

6. “Emotional Deprivation Disorder,” The Baars Institute, accessed May 23, 2026, https://www.baarsinstitute.com/emotional-deprivation-disorder.

7. Baars, Feeling and Healing Your Emotions, 132-135.

8. Baars, Feeling and Healing Your Emotions, 72, 109–110.

9. Ibid., 133–134.

10. Ibid., 109–110.

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