And The World Cracked In Half. Divorce Trauma And Its Consequences For The Child

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Helping children, to minimize the consequences of divorce, is possible only by helping adults to realize their feelings, responsibility and their adult role in relationships with children.

Anticipating reactions and comments on the topic "Better a divorce than life in hell, with an alcoholic father", etc., I will say right away - this article is not an appeal "NOT TO DIVORCE", contrary to common sense! Domestic violence, alcoholism, toxic relationships, as well as, in general, just a lack of love, warmth, mutual understanding are the worst conditions for the life and development of a child, capable of traumatizing much more than a divorce of parents. And this is a completely different story (including - these are other stories of clients and their injuries). In this article, we are talking, to a greater extent, about functional normative families, where love, attention, and well-being reigned "for the time being." Where two loving, once people, decided not to be together anymore. And this fact divides the child's life into - BEFORE and AFTER.

When the most conscientious parents, taking care of their child, turn to a psychologist when deciding on a divorce, their request is "How to make sure that the child does not get hurt?"

And, a psychologist, I have to tell the truth. NO WAY! This is impossible. Divorce is a traumatic event in the life of a family, and it is an impossible task to save a child from natural experiences at a wave of the wand.

The question should be posed differently - how to help him survive the trauma and prevent neurotic symptoms from developing! This is what is aimed at - both the help of specialists involved in accompanying a family in divorce, and the responsibility of adults and parents.

Divorce is not an event! Divorce is a process! And this process begins long before the divorce itself. It can be assumed what it is accompanied by: a special emotional background, a tense situation in the family, reticence, conflicts, recriminations, etc.

Therefore, as a rule, at the moment the parents decide to divorce, the child already has his own certain "baggage": anxieties, internal conflicts, fears, anxieties, resentments, tension.

It can be assumed that the trauma of divorce for a child will be the more serious, the more serious and massive this baggage, the stronger the child's intrapsychic conflicts, formed before the divorce.

The basis of the child's inner experiences during the divorce of the parents:

1. Fear of loss of love (destruction of the illusion of infinity of love).

The child is faced with the fact (and often parents tell him just that) that mom and dad no longer love each other. He makes a simple conclusion: - "If love ends, then you can stop loving me." It turns out that the love of adults is not forever! That is why children often begin to say that the departed dad does not love him. The child begins to seriously fear that he will be abandoned by his parents and other loving adults.

2. Fear of losing a second parent

So, as most often the child remains with one parent (with the mother) - he loses (in his subjective experience) one object of love - the father. The child gets the experience of losing his father, and his fear of losing his mother is activated. As a result, the child displays behavior conditioned by anxiety: increased dependence on the mother, "clinging to her", the need to control the mother (where she went, why does something, etc.), increased anxiety for her well-being, health, tantrums about leaving, etc. The younger the child's age, the more intense the manifestations of dependence and anxiety.

3. Feelings of loneliness

The child is often left alone with his own experiences. Not always his behavior betrays inner feelings - outwardly he can remain calm, and often, his behavior only "improves" - parents and relatives believe that he is either small and "understands little", or already big and "understands everything."Due to a lack of their own resources, adults are not able to talk with a child about what is happening so well as to reduce the intensity and trauma of his experiences. It is hushed up, any information, parents and relatives do not report their own experiences and states. Trying to protect the child, close adults "ignore" the topic of divorce, bypass any talk about what is happening. The child is not able to understand if everything is all right with them. In the absence of reliable information about the present and the future, the child is forced to fantasize, and fantasies are always more catastrophic. Avoiding to deal with "sore topics", not knowing what to say to the child - adults unconsciously distance themselves, isolate themselves from him. Therefore, a child, being alone with his fears, misunderstanding, internally experiences a feeling of loneliness and alienation: his familiar, stable and predictable world has collapsed. The sense of basic security and trust in the world has been broken. The future is unpredictable and unclear.

4. Loss of identification, self

Since the child's personality is based on identification with aspects of the personalities of both parents, the child, in the person of the leaving parent (more often, the father) loses part of himself! He is identified with those qualities that were present in his father - for example: strength, perseverance, the ability to protect himself. The child is faced with many questions that cannot be answered: Who am I now? What is my surname now? How many relatives do I have now? Will my grandmothers stay with me now in the same composition? And what family do I belong to now - my mother's? How am I supposed to treat my dad now? Do I now have the right to love him? Where will I live? How can my life be changed? Etc.

Symptoms, behavioral reactions, intrapsychic processes of the child

Aggression. Anger. Guilt

Anger and aggressiveness, manifests itself behaviorally, often as a result of the fact that the child feels abandoned, betrayed. Feels that his wants and needs are not respected.

Also, anger and aggression can cover fear, which is difficult to cope with, to take control. More often, children direct their rage against the parent they believe is guilty of the divorce. Either she turns against both at once, or alternately against the father, then against the mother. On the father - as on a traitor who left the family. The mother, too, is perceived as a traitor - she could not save the family, and, most likely, it was because of her that the father left!

Divorce of parents almost always causes a child's guilt: children blame themselves for what happened. Moreover, the younger the age, the stronger the tendency towards self-accusation. And this is no coincidence.

A child, by nature, is egocentric, he feels himself the center of the Universe and simply cannot imagine that anything in this world is happening without his participation. Children are characterized by the magical nature of thinking, which stems from the leading psychological defense of children - omnipotent control, i.e. the perception of oneself as the cause of everything that happens in the world, and the child's unconscious conviction that he is able to control everything.

The consequence of this protection is the feeling of guilt that arises if something gets out of his control.

In family conflicts, children often act as mediators, trying to reconcile parents, also taking responsibility for their quarrels. Also, the formal reasons for parental conflicts are often connected precisely with the issues of raising a child - it is at this point that mutual claims to each other are legalized. And when a child sees that his parents are quarreling because of him, of course, he is sure that he is the main reason for their quarrels.

Therefore, we can say that a child's aggression stems not only from disappointment, rage or children's fears, but to a large extent, it is generated by a sense of guilt.

The problem is also whether the child will direct his aggressive impulses, feelings, fantasies and aspirations that he cannot cope with:

- against yourself (which leads to depressive symptoms)

- will displace them (where? into what symptom will the repressed go: somatic reactions, behavior?)

- will project its aggressiveness on others ("pour out" bouts of rage, anger, ill will on others)

- develops fears of a paranoid type (jealousy, distrust, control).

It is impossible to predict exactly where, but it is absolutely certain that the aggressive potential of children who have survived the divorce of their parents is very high, due to the experienced grievances and disappointments. And, this area of aggressiveness is associated with fear (loss of love, mother, contact with the father, etc.) and guilt.

Regression

⠀ The first, natural and adequate reaction of a child to adaptation to a changing life situation (divorce), which is NOT neurotic (normative) yet, is regression.

Regression is a defense mechanism, a form of psychological adjustment in a situation of conflict or anxiety, when a person unconsciously resorts to earlier, less mature and less adequate patterns of behavior that seem to him to guarantee protection and safety. When you want to go to the state of "handles", unconsciously return "to the womb", to find that serenity, calmness and protection.

Examples of the manifestation of a child's regression:

- increased dependence (on the mother)

- the need to control the mother (where she went, why does something, etc.)

- tears, whims, tantrums

- stereotypes of behavior related to an earlier age, a return to old habits, from which he got rid of long ago

- bedwetting, enuresis, fits of rage, etc.

Children must be able to regress in order to be able to restore the trust that was lost during the divorce.

It is important for parents to understand that their six-year-old son or daughter is currently "functioning" like a three-year-old child, and in this situation he simply cannot! Do not be afraid, worry about this fact, treat it with understanding as a natural process of the psyche. This is a temporary process, which will take place the sooner, the more adequately the parents react to this: they will not worry, shame, or try to “fix” it.

From the extent to which adults themselves are stable in this process, and are able to provide support to the child - to talk to him, to withstand his regressive behavior, to understand and accept him in this.

Every psychologically HEALTHY child will react, worry! Only the child whose attachment to parents has long been destroyed will not react to divorce, any feelings and emotions are suppressed. Even if outwardly the child does not show feelings, this does not say anything about his real state. It only says that adults do not know about him. Or don't want to know! Fears, feelings of guilt, anger and aggression flood the child, and the psyche, in order to cope with these experiences, tries to displace them. But, sooner or later, these repressed forms of experiences return, only in an altered form - in the form of neurotic, and even somatic symptoms! They do not appear immediately, they can remain outwardly invisible.

3. The child becomes more obedient

It is not uncommon for a child to react to a divorce situation with “behavior improvement”: he looks calmer, becomes very diligent at school, obedient, trying to show adult behavior.

This makes adults very happy. But, most of all, a mother who herself needs support.

A child, in a moment of crisis, has an INCREASED need for attention to his needs, support! Moreover, on a larger scale than usual! At this moment, the mother is required to behave, which she is most often neither mentally nor physically capable of - she herself is in stress, depression, time trouble in solving household, financial and administrative issues! This means that subjectively, the child has lost not only his father, but also most of his mother - that part that is ready for care, attention, warmth, understanding and patience.

Since the mother herself is in a situation of stress - she, internally emotionally, wants the child to bring as little trouble as possible, understand everything, be independent and adult. At this moment she needs an absolutely obedient, independent child, who does not really need attention.

And, out of fear, to lose his mother, to lose her to the end - the child becomes like that! HE SHOWS THE DESIRED BEHAVIOR! He's getting better than he was before the divorce, trying to be exemplary. Of course, adults are glad to this fact - "he is such a good fellow!".

In fact, the absence of changes in behavior, an open manifestation of aggression, resentment, regression, grief, tears, tantrums, activated fears (everything that is normative in this situation and speaks of the work of the psyche aimed at overcoming traumatic experiences) is a more alarming call than all of the above! The child's apparent calmness and indifference to divorce is in fact a mixture of repression of feelings, and resignation to circumstances. Approximate behavior, his "adulthood", suggests that the child is forced to take responsibility for the feelings of the mother - to become a supporting object for her, thereby performing an overwhelming task for his psyche. This process is called parentification - a family situation in which a child is forced to become an adult early and take custody of his parents. This is a very unfortunate situation for the development of a child, because he is too small to care for adults (their feelings) and be responsible for other people. There should always be an adult next to the child who guarantees his safety, protects him from troubles and supports him when he feels bad or something does not work out. When such an adult himself is in a state of helplessness, and is not able to show the behavior of caring, protection, the child has to take on an unbearable burden. And this, subsequently, negatively affects his further development and life in general!

So, summarizing, we can responsibly say that: a change in the child's behavior for the "better" marks the point from which the neurotic consequences of a child's experience of a parental divorce begin!

Divorce of parents through the eyes of a child. How does a child feel when his dad and mom break up? How does he see his loved ones who are painfully experiencing a break in relations?

When parents divorce, a very important function for the child is lost - the triangulation function: when - when the third one relieves the tension between the two - my mother scolds me, I can go to my father for support. Now - the child must withstand the tension of a dyadic relationship (one-on-one with his mother), and there is nowhere to hide! Now - there is no rear in the face of the third. Now all over the world - you have one partner! And we are TWO - alone with each other, with all strong feelings: love, and outbursts of anger, irritation and discontent.

For a child, this transition from triple to dyadic relationships is very difficult. It's one thing when I can maintain a relationship with two parents at the same time, and it's quite another when I can see my dad only if I refuse mom and vice versa.

When parents, especially in the acute stage of their conflict, are not able to negotiate, cooperate, and even more so unleash a "war" for the child - the child is forced to abandon one of the parents in order to fearlessly coexist with the other, identifying with him.

A child inevitably has a so-called "conflict of loyalty": when I have to constantly choose between mom and dad.

This conflict of loyalty is so unbearable that the child has no choice but to unconsciously “split” the images of the parents: he makes the father guilty and bad, and the mother becomes innocent and good. This happens all the more true when the parents themselves resort to such a splitting mechanism: in order to finally part, the other must be declared a "scoundrel" or "bitch". Divorcing a "fool" or "irresponsible goat" is much easier. And this is inevitably transmitted to the child, even if the parents are sure that they "do not swear in front of the child" or, "I never tell the child bad things about the father!" Thus, parents underestimate the child's sensitivity to what is happening in the family.

The child inevitably loses one of the parents!

Father, if:

- the mother hinders communication with the child, and they really see very little physically, the child enters into a coalition with the mother against the father. He shows loyalty to his mother.

- the child himself can refuse to communicate with the father if he is internally declared guilty.

Mother if

- the child accuses the mother of not seeing his father now. He internally rejects his mother, loses emotional connection with her, idealizing his father.

Divorce for a child is most often a betrayal on the part of the one who leaves. That gives rise to a feeling of burning resentment, and at the same time a feeling of failure, defectiveness - after all, leaving the spouse, the leaving partner leaves the child as well (in his inner experience). The child is looking for the reasons for what is happening in himself: am I really not good enough, smart, beautiful? I didn't live up to expectations. The child ascribes to himself the blame for "not being good enough." When a loved one leaves you, he takes with him a part of your sense of completeness!

Subsequently, this can influence the development of a traumatic scenario of a relationship, an already matured child with partners: for girls, scenarios of "the return of the love of an inaccessible dad" are frequent. Then, in her adult life, over and over again, she unconsciously chooses inaccessible, emotionally cold men, often married. Or, trying to avoid the trauma of repeated rejection and loss - to be afraid of any connection with a man, to remain cold, "independent and independent" herself, avoiding intimacy.

For boys (early preschool age) who, after a divorce, remain to live with their mother, a variant of the scenario of "total opposition of the mother" is possible, reflected in endless conflict relations with partners: the absence and devaluation of the father, resentment against him does not give the possibility of identification with the male role. Therefore, the boy is forced to identify with his mother, i.e. With a woman. At the same time, he strives to avoid this identification, actively resisting it. Which, in the circumstances, is very difficult. Just as small, weak, and totally dependent on the only remaining available object of love - the mother. Identification with the mother can only be avoided by desperate resistance to her - her requirements, her example, experience, knowledge, advice, etc. The opposition of the mother desperately protects the boy from female identification, and it will have to be paid for by conflicting relationships with her. And, if the trauma remains not experienced, then with all the women on whom this role will be projected, in order to implement the traumatic scenario.

Trauma tends to repetition, in order to "take revenge" over the circumstances in which it appeared. Therefore, it is unconsciously repeated and acted out.

Prevention of childhood psychotraumas in parental divorce - a guide to action

1. Legalization and open manifestation of pain is the only way to overcome it. Otherwise, it cannot be "reworked", and then deep scars remain in the child's soul forever. The ability for a child to openly experience, worry, show natural behavior and reactions to this event (aggression, regression, anger, etc.) is a guarantee that the trauma can be experienced and reworked.

It is necessary to provide the child with a "space", a container where the child can safely place his own experiences, without the threat of facing negative reactions from the mother and other adults (without fear of traumatizing or angering her). Therefore, it is necessary to TALK with the child! A lot and often! Anwser the questions:

- don't you love him now?

- and dad left because he doesn't love me?

- and I won't see him now?

- will I have grandmothers now?

- and what will be my surname now?

These and similar questions of the child must be answered!

Please note that the child does not always ask questions! Therefore, these conversations should be initiated by adults!

2. In a situation of parents' divorce, the child loses a sense of security, stability, and predictability. These are basic needs. Losing them, the child loses support. The task of the parents is to return it to him. It is important to reduce his anxiety, to tell him HOW it will now be.

- where and with whom he will live

- how his meetings with his father, grandmothers, etc. will be organized.

- how to change the regime of his day, and life in general, taking into account the changes

etc.

VERY DETAILED! What will change and what will remain unchanged - for example, the love of parents!

It is necessary to tell the truth (focusing on the age of the child). If the mother herself is not sure how the process of communication between the father and the child will now be built, then it is necessary to tell the truth - “I don’t know yet how it will be, but I’ll tell you as soon as I find out.” It is important not to hide anything from the child! Lack of reliable information makes it possible to develop fantasies and expectations! Which, in any case, will be catastrophic in comparison with reality - either positively or negatively: either too idealized or too demonized.

3. It is important not to interrupt the relationship with both parents (with the normality and their safety, of course), to restore attachment to both parents, in new conditions! The child must make sure that he has not lost in the full sense of the second parent, just communication is now built according to different rules and in different conditions.

Not to support and, even more so, not to provoke a "conflict of loyalty" - not to force the child, in the literal sense, to be torn apart, splitting his psyche!

The ability to overcome this internal conflict is to reduce the value of your own self.

“I know I shouldn't be good to my dad (according to my mom), but I can't do it any other way. But, I am not able to fulfill my father's expectations and be only on his side. I know I hurt with it both … I love both, and I cannot refuse either of them. And, what can I do if I continue to love both and can refuse either of them! I know this is bad. And, I feel bad! I'm just too weak and not worthy of love myself … ". Thus, the love of a child in his own eyes becomes "Disease" which he is ashamed of, but which he still cannot get rid of.

The child feels that he is betraying either both parents - showing loyalty to them in turn, or one of them, making a choice in favor of the other. It is intolerable for his psyche, because such feelings for his parents jeopardize his safety and his ability to survive. Then he, unconsciously, prefers to close negative feelings on himself, developing a sense of inferiority.

Divorce itself does not lead to disastrous consequences for the child - the child reacts primarily to the emotional state and behavior of the parents in relation to themselves and each other.

Under favorable conditions for divorce, which both spouses can create, the child can survive this situation with minimal loss and without significant harm to his emotional well-being.

Seeking professional support from a psychologist, accompanying him in the process of divorce (the whole family, child, mother) and the post-divorce period can be the best solution to subsequent problems