2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
"Modern society is infantile." A hackneyed phrase that no longer hurts the ear. This is a reality that is gradually being accepted by both those who give such a characteristic and those to whom this characteristic is directed.
"Help me grow up", is a request that people over 30 are now making in the psychotherapist's office.
What is infantilism? And who are the infantile people?
Infantilism (from Lat. infantilis - children's) - immaturity in development, preservation in behavior or physical appearance of features inherent in the previous age stages (Wikipedia).
In life, these are physiologically adults and psychologically immature people (both men and women) who treat everything that happens around them like children:
- stomp their feet, scream and sob when their demands are not heard;
- pout their lips with displeasure and take offense when they do not fulfill their whims and desires;
- they blame the people around them for all their failures and losses, and not their laziness and limited abilities;
- demand love and care from everyone - colleagues at work, parents, even their own children, without any response from their side. Because everyone Should and Obliged to take care of them and accept them as they are;
- do not recognize a sense of duty and the phrase "rules for all".
What do all these and many other characteristics of the infantile personality have in common?
The main thing is a certain attitude towards life's circumstances and difficulties.
Infantile people, like children, shift all responsibility for what is happening in their lives to other people, demanding pleasures, satisfying needs and creating favorable conditions around them … Also, infantile people, on the one hand, are egocentric - fixated on themselves and their desires, on the other hand, they do not understand much of what is happening to them in their lives and do not strive for understanding as such. Accordingly, very often they find themselves in affective states that they do not understand.
At the heart of such infantile behavior is the main psychological defense mechanism with the help of which people have adapted to experience and live through life's troubles and difficulties. Over the years, each person invents such psychological defenses for himself.
For infantiles, this is a regression, which determines their strategic line of overcoming life's difficulties.
Regression is a return to a familiar, old way of acting after a new level of competence has been achieved
That is, growing up, infantile people probably learned and learned some other ways of reacting to reality, but in certain situations they habitually regress into childhood and return to the techniques they worked out at an earlier age in order to achieve what they want and not face obstacles. They need to pout their lips harder, shout louder, cry, take offense, pretend to be weak, and then, you see, there will be another kind person who will help solve all the problems.
Infantile people do not want to admit that
life is not only the Cote d'Azur with a paradise bounty in hand, that life is labor, disappointments, losses, and limitations
They want to live according to the principle of pleasure, excluding the principle of reality.
Naturally, such a life for the time being they succeed and is very convenient, BUT!
Over the years, resentments against those who do not help and "help not as you want" people accumulate so much that a person remains on his own in his life. Either he has to hide these grievances very competently from prying eyes, but in his soul he is torn apart by anger and resentment, which lead to a number of psychosomatic diseases or the use of antidepressants.
The unbearable character of infantile people over the years is overgrown with more sophisticated claims and conflicting actions and is the first reason for the impossibility of creating strong and long-term relationships, and life without a family closer to 40 makes many of them ask the question: “Maybe the reason is in me?"
Such people in certain situations usually feel like 3-5-7 year old children. They are used to receiving everything without straining or disappointing. They may have several marriages, far from one child, a successful business of their own, or they may not have all of this - that is, neither material well-being, nor the number of children is an indicator of adulthood.
Infantile people do not understand that the most important thing that they have not received in their life is the experience of living frustration - not getting what they want, losing, losing; experience of independent choice and taking responsibility for your choice; the experience of living the ambivalence of feelings - both good and bad, in relation to one person.
And although their request sounds: "Help me grow up", even consciously approaching the barrier of their infantile capabilities at the turn of 40, they stubbornly await changes at the wave of a magic wand, self-sufficient, without any effort on their part.
After all, so many years have been successfully lived according to this scenario.
therefore infantile people are not just stuck in childhood, they persistently try to live in this state for the rest of their lives.
Will it work?
Usually closer to the age of 40, life still forces one to ask questions, but not in relation to accusing others, but in relation to oneself. It is difficult to find answers to such questions on your own.
Psychotherapy enables people of any age to change their lives.
Do you want to change your life? Try it!
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