Trauma Transmission Mechanism

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

Author: Lyudmila Petranovskaya Source: subscribe.ru

I know, no fault of mine

The fact that others did not come from the war, That they are - who are older, who are younger -

Remained there, and not about the same speech, That I could, but could not save them, -

It's not about that, but still, nevertheless, nevertheless."

Alexander Tvardovsky

How can war or repression traumatize people born badly after the events?

And yesterday I read the poems of a wonderful person, teacher and in general our friend Dmitry Shnol. Just about that.

What we didn’t finish

We will leave to our sons:

Unconscious roles

Lumps of fears in the corners.

We were left with wholesale

The salt of orphanhood on my lips

The smell is crib, pearl barley, The cry of the nurse in the doorway.

At the time of adult defaults

A lump in my throat grew

From the unmourned, early

No one knows about tears.

It was a pity, in fact, -

Life in the sixth year, -

Mom, Sasha, aunt Nelya, Teachers in the garden.

Death went to the state

Invisible here and there -

Behind the counter of the store

And at a party for moms.

We have absorbed this air

With surrogate milk, They drove football for half a day, So as not to ask about -

So as not to ask about the wild, Bitter, not experienced, Spilled everywhere here

And not visible at the same time.

And from this legacy

We can't go anywhere

And the heart plays pranks

From daily labor.

But maybe our grandchildren

Suddenly it will be possible to overcome

Barely audible alien sound

The approaching night.

Here is such a mechanism. Children are responsible for their fathers. Not according to the law, but according to life, whether we like it or not. Everything unspoken, not named by its proper names, everything from which no conclusions are drawn, remains for descendants. "And we can't get away from this inheritance …"

By the way, I am convinced that this is the only reason why criminals should be tried. Punishment will not correct anyone; revenge will not alleviate anyone's pain. But what was called a crime, weighed and evaluated, paid for and redeemed, remains in the past, and the unnamed continues to hang on the necks of children. Not necessarily direct descendants of the offender.

Apparently, all this will not be detached from me until it is written. I give up and write.

How is it still transmitted, trauma?

It is clear that you can always explain everything by “flow”, “interweaving”, “ancestral memory”, etc., and it is quite possible that you cannot do without mysticism at all, but if you try? Take only the most understandable, purely family aspect, parent-child relations, without politics and ideology. About them later somehow.

A family lives for itself. Young at all, just got married, expecting a baby. Or just gave birth. Or maybe even two were in time. They love, they are happy, they are full of hope. And then a catastrophe happens. The flywheels of history budged and went to grind the people. Most often, men are the first to fall into the millstones. Revolutions, wars, repressions are the first blow to them.

And now the young mother was left alone. Her destiny is constant anxiety, backbreaking work (you need to work and raise a child), no special joys. A funeral, "ten years without the right to correspond," or simply a long absence without news, such that hope is melting. Maybe this is not about the husband, but about the brother, father, and other relatives. What is the mother's condition? She is forced to control herself, she cannot really surrender to grief. There is a child (children) on it, and much more. Pain is tearing up from within, but it is impossible to express it, you cannot cry, you cannot become limp. And she turns to stone. Freezes in stoic tension, turns off feelings, lives, gritting his teeth and gathering will into a fist, does everything automatically. Or, even worse, plunges into a latent depression, walks, does what is supposed to, although she wants only one thing - to lie down and die.

Her face is a frozen mask, her arms are heavy and not bend. It is physically painful for her to respond to a child's smile, she minimizes communication with him, does not respond to his babble. The child woke up at night, called out to her - and she was howling dully into the pillow. Sometimes anger breaks out. He crawled or approached, tugs at her, wants attention and affection, when she can, she answers through force, but sometimes she suddenly growls: "Yes, leave me alone," as she pushes her away, that he will fly off. No, she is not angry with him - at fate, at her broken life, at the one who left and left and will no longer help.

Only now the child does not know all the ins and outs of what is happening. He is not told what happened (especially if he is small). Or he even knows but cannot understand. The only explanation that, in principle, can come to his mind: my mother does not love me, I interfere with her, it would be better if I were not there. His personality cannot be fully formed without constant emotional contact with his mother, without exchanging glances, smiles, sounds, caresses with her, without reading her face, recognizing shades of feelings in her voice. This is necessary, laid down by nature, this is the main task of infancy. But what if the mother has a depressive mask on her face? If her voice is monotonously dull with grief, or tensely ringing with anxiety?

While the mother tears the veins so that the child can survive elementarily, does not die of hunger or illness, he grows up to himself, already traumatized. Not sure that he is loved, not sure that he is needed, with poorly developed empathy. Even intelligence is impaired under conditions of deprivation. Remember the painting "Deuce Again"? It was written at 51. The main character is 11 years old in appearance. The child of war, more traumatized than the older sister, who captured the first years of a normal family life, and the younger brother, the beloved child of post-war joy - the father returned alive. There is a trophy clock on the wall. And it is difficult for a boy to learn.

Of course, everything is different for everyone. The reserve of mental strength for different women is different. The severity of grief is different. The character is different. It is good if the mother has sources of support - family, friends, older children. And if not? If the family found itself in isolation, as "enemies of the people", or in evacuation in an unfamiliar place? Here, or die, or stones, and how else to survive? Years go by, very difficult years, and the woman learns to live without her husband. "I am a horse, I am a bull, I am a woman and a man." A horse in a skirt. Woman with eggs. Call it what you want, the essence is the same. This is a person who carried an unbearable burden, and was used to it. Adapted. And in another way, he simply does not know how. Many people probably remember grandmothers who simply physically could not sit around. Already quite old, everyone was busy, everyone was carrying bags, everyone was trying to chop wood. It has become a way of dealing with life. By the way, many of them became so steel - yes, this is such a sound - that they lived for a very long time, they were not taken by illness, and old age. And now they are still alive, God bless them. In its most extreme expression, at the most terrible coincidence of events, such a woman turned into a monster capable of killing with her care. And she continued to be iron, even if there was no longer such a need, even if later she lived with her husband again, and nothing threatened the children. As if she was fulfilling a vow.

The brightest image is described in Pavel Sanaev's book "Bury Me Behind the Skirting Board."

And here is what Ekaterina Mikhailova writes about “The Scary Woman” (“I am the only one” in the book called): “Dull hair, a tightly stitched mouth …, a cast-iron step … Covetous, suspicious, merciless, insensitive. She is always ready to reproach with a piece or give a slap in the face: “You cannot feed on you, parasites. Eat, come on!”…. Not a drop of milk can be squeezed out of her nipples, she is all dry and tough …”There is still a lot of very precise said, and if someone has not read these two books, then it is imperative.

The worst thing about this pathologically changed woman is not rudeness, and not imperiousness. The worst thing is love. When, reading Sanaev, you understand that this is a story about love, about such a disfigured love, that's when the frost breaks through. I had a girlfriend as a child, the late child of a mother who survived the blockade as a teenager. She described how she was fed, holding her head between her legs and pouring broth into her mouth. Because the child did not want and could no longer, and the mother and grandmother thought that it was necessary. Their hunger experienced so much from the inside gnawed that the cry of a living girl, dear, beloved, could not block the voice of this hunger.

And my mother took my other girlfriend with her when she performed clandestine abortions. And she showed her little daughter a toilet full of blood with the words: look, guys, what are they doing to us. Here it is, our female share. Did she want to hurt her daughter? No, just keep it safe. It was love.

And the worst thing is that our entire child protection system still carries the features of the "Scary Woman". Medicine, school, guardianship authorities. The main thing is for the child to be “okay”. To keep the body safe. Soul, feelings, attachments - not before. Save at any cost. Feed and heal. Very, very slowly, it wears off, but in childhood we got it in full, the nanny who beat in the face with a doormat, who did not sleep during the day, I remember very well.

But let's leave aside extreme cases. Just a woman, just a mom. Just grief. It's just a child who grew up with a suspicion that he is not needed and unloved, although this is not true and for his sake only the mother survived and endured everything. And he grows up, trying to earn love, since it is not given to him for nothing. It helps. Requires nothing. Busy himself. He looks after the younger ones. Achieves success. Tries to be helpful. Only useful people love. Only comfortable and correct. Those who will do their homework themselves, wash the floor in the house, and put the younger ones to bed, will prepare supper for the arrival of their mother. Have you heard, probably, more than once this kind of stories about post-war childhood? "It never occurred to us to talk to my mother like that!" - this is about today's youth. Still would. Still would. First, the iron woman has a heavy hand. And secondly - who will risk crumbs of warmth and intimacy? It's a luxury, you know, to be rude to your parents. The injury went to the next round.

The time will come when this child himself will create a family, give birth to children. Years like this in the 60s. Someone was so "rolled" by an iron mother that he was only able to reproduce her style of behavior. We must also remember that many children did not see mothers very much, at two months - a nursery, then five days, all summer - with a garden in the country, etc. That is, not only the family, but also institutions, in which there were always enough "Scary women".

But let's consider a more favorable option. The child was traumatized by his mother's grief, but his soul was not frozen at all. And here, in general, the world and the thaw, and flew into space, and so I want to live, and love, and be loved. For the first time picking up her own, small and warm child, the young mother suddenly realizes: here he is. Here is the one who will finally love her for real, who really need her. From that moment on, her life takes on a new meaning. She lives for the children. Or for the sake of one child, whom she loves so passionately that she cannot even think of sharing this love with someone else. She quarrels with her own mother, who is trying to lash her grandson with nettles - this is not allowed. She hugs and kisses her child, and sleeps with him, and will not breathe on him, and only now, in hindsight, realizes how much she herself was deprived of in childhood. She is completely absorbed in this new feeling, all her hopes and aspirations are all in this child. She "lives his life", his feelings, interests, worries. They have no secrets about each other. She's better with him than with anyone else.

And only one thing is bad - it grows. Growing rapidly, and then what? Is loneliness again? Is it an empty bed again? Psychoanalysts would say a lot here, about displaced eroticism and all that, but it seems to me that there is no special eroticism here. Only a child who has endured lonely nights and no longer wants. He does not want so much that his mind knocks off. "I can't sleep until you come." It seems to me that in the 60s and 70s this phrase was often spoken by mothers to their children, and not vice versa.

What happens to the child? He cannot but respond to his mother's passionate request for love. This is beyond his strength. He merges happily with her, he cares, he fears for her health. The worst thing is when mom cries, or when her heart hurts. Not that. “Okay, I'll stay, Mom. Of course, Mom, I don't want to go to these dances at all. " But in fact you want it, because there is love, independent life, freedom, and usually the child still breaks the connection, tears it painfully, harshly, with blood, because no one voluntarily will let go. And he leaves, taking the guilt with him, and leaving the insult to the mother. After all, she "gave all her life, did not sleep nights." She invested all of herself, without a remainder, and now she presents a bill, and the child does not want to pay. Where's the justice? Here, and the legacy of the "iron" woman comes in handy, scandals, threats, pressure are used. Oddly enough, this is not the worst option. Violence generates resistance and allows you to separate, albeit with losses.

Some lead their role so skillfully that the child simply cannot leave. Addiction, guilt, fear for the mother's health are tied with thousands of strongest threads, about this there is a play by Ptushkina "While she was dying", on which a much easier film was shot, where Vasilyeva plays her mother, and Yankovsky - a contender for a daughter. Every New Year's show is probably seen by everyone. And the best - from the point of view of the mother - is the option if the daughter nevertheless marries for a short time and stays with the child. And then the sweet union can be transferred to the grandson and last further, and, if you are lucky, it will be enough until death.

And often enough, since this generation of women is much less healthy, they often die much earlier than their war-mongers. Because there is no steel armor, and the blows of resentment destroy the heart, weaken the defense against the most terrible diseases. Often they begin to use their health problems as an unconscious manipulation, and then it's hard not to play too much, and suddenly everything turns out to be really bad. At the same time, they themselves grew up without maternal attentive tender care, which means that they are not used to taking care of themselves and do not know how, do not receive treatment, do not know how to pamper themselves, and, by and large, do not consider themselves such a great value, especially if they get sick and become "Useless."

But we are all about women, but where are the men? Where are the fathers? Did you have to give birth to children from someone? This is difficult. A girl and a boy who grew up without fathers create a family. They are both hungry for love and care. She both hope to get them from a partner. But the only family model they know is a self-sufficient "woman with eggs" who, by and large, does not need a man. That is cool, if there is, she loves him and all that. But he really didn't need anything, he didn't sew the mare's tail, the rose on the cake. “Sit, dear, on the sidelines, watch football, otherwise you are interfering with cleaning the floors. Do not play with the child, you walk him around, then you will not fall asleep. Don't touch, you'll ruin everything. Get away, I myself”And stuff like that. And the boys are also raised by mothers. They are used to obeying. Psychoanalysts would also note that they did not compete with their father for their mother and therefore did not feel like men. Well, and purely physically in the same house, the mother of the wife or husband, or even both, was often present. Where to go? Go here and be a man …

Some men found a way out, becoming a "second mother". And even the only one, because the mother herself, as we remember, “with eggs” and iron rattles. In the best version, it turned out to be something like Uncle Fyodor's dad: soft, caring, sensitive, permissive. In the middle - a workaholic who just ran away to work from all of this. In a bad one - an alcoholic. Because a man who is not needed for nothing by his woman, who all the time hears only "step away, do not interfere", but separated by commas "what kind of father are you, you absolutely do not take care of children" (read "do not do as I see fit"), remains or change a woman - and for whom, if everyone around is about the same? - or go into oblivion.

On the other hand, the man himself does not have any coherent model of responsible parenting. In front of their eyes or in the stories of their elders, many fathers just got up one morning and left - and never returned. It's as simple as that. And nothing is normal. Therefore, many men considered it completely natural that, leaving the family, they ceased to have anything to do with it, did not communicate with the children, and did not help. They sincerely believed that they owed nothing to "this hysterical woman" who remained with their child, and at some deep level, maybe they were right, because often women simply used them as inseminators, and they needed children more than men. So the question is, who owes whom. The resentment that the man felt made it easy to come to an agreement with his conscience and score, and if that was not enough, vodka is sold everywhere.

Oh, these divorces of the seventies are painful, cruel, with a ban on seeing children, with a break in all relationships, with insults and accusations. The agonizing disappointment of two disliked children, who so wanted love and happiness, pinned so many hopes on each other, and he / she deceived, everything is wrong, bastard, bitch, scum … They did not know how to establish a cycle of love in the family, each was hungry and wanted to receive, or only wanted to give, but for this - the authorities. They were terribly afraid of loneliness, but it was to him that they went, simply because, except for loneliness, they had never seen anything.

As a result, grievances, mental wounds, even more ruined health, women are even more fixated on children, men are drinking even more.

For men, all this was superimposed on identification with the dead and disappeared fathers. Because the boy needs, it is vitally important to be like his father. And what if the only thing that is known about him is that he died? Was very brave, fought with enemies - and died? Or even worse - it is only known that he died? And they don't talk about him in the house, because he disappeared without a trace, or was repressed? Gone - that's all the information? What is left for a young guy other than suicidal behavior? Booze, fights, three packs of cigarettes a day, motorcycle racing, work until a heart attack. My father was a high-altitude assembler in his youth. My favorite trick was to work at height without insurance. Well, everything else too, booze, smoking, ulcer. There is, of course, more than one divorce. At 50 years of age, heart attack and death. His father went missing, went to the front even before the birth of his son. Nothing is known except the name, not a single photograph, nothing. It is in this kind of surroundings that children grow up, the third generation is already.

In my class, more than half of the children had divorced parents, and of those who lived together, perhaps only two or three families looked like marital happiness. I remember how my college friend told me that her parents were watching TV hugging and kissing at the same time. She was 18, she was born early, that is, her parents were 36–37. We were all amazed. Crazy, or what? It doesn't work that way!

Naturally, the corresponding set of slogans: "All men are bastards", "All women are bitches", "A good deed will not be called a marriage." And that, life has confirmed. Wherever you look …

But good things happened. In the late 60s, mothers were given the opportunity to sit with children up to one year old. They were no longer considered parasites. So who would put a monument, so the author of this innovation. I just don't know who he is. Of course, I still had to give up a year, and it hurt, but this is already incomparable, and about this injury next time. And so the children happily passed the most terrible threat of deprivation, the most crippling one - up to a year. Well, and usually the people were still spinning, then my mother would take a vacation, then my grandmothers took turns, they won a little more. Such was the constant game - the family against the "approaching night", against the "Terrible woman", against the iron heel of the Motherland. Such cat and mouse.

And a good thing happened - separate housing began to appear. The notorious Khrushchev. We will also erect a monument someday to these flimsy concrete walls, which played a huge role - they finally covered the family from the all-seeing eye of the state and society. Even though you could hear everything through them, there was still some kind of autonomy. The border. Protection. Den. Recovery chance.

The third generation begins their adult life with their own set of traumas, but also with their rather large resources. We were loved. Let not the way psychologists say, but sincerely and a lot. We had fathers. Let the drinkers and / or "henpecked" and / or "goats who abandoned their mother" are in the majority, but they had a name, a face and they also loved us in their own way. Our parents weren't cruel. We had a home, native walls.

Not everyone is the same, of course, the family was more and less happy and prosperous. But in general. In short, we owe it. But about that next time.

Before moving on to the next generation, I think it’s important to talk about a few points.

I'm already used to the fact that how many times do not write at the end and beginning of the text something like “of course, all people and families are different and everything happens in different ways”, always the number of comments will be as follows: “but I do not agree, all people and families are different and everything happens in different ways. This is fine. I am more worried that someone and anxiously asks: is everything wrong with us, are we not with everyone together?

Once again, I'm just trying to show the mechanism of transmission of trauma. In response to the question "how can it be that people who were born half a century later are traumatized." This is how it can be. This does not in any way mean that this is exactly the way and only that, and that everyone has this and in general. I illustrate the transmission mechanism with one fairly common storyline example. It happens in another way, of course.

First, as many noted, there are generations “in between,” that is, with a shift of 10-15 years. And there are some peculiarities. Some commentators have already noted that those who were teenagers during the war and grew up too quickly then had a hard time becoming mature people. Perhaps, yes, this generation retained its “adolescence” and adventurousness for a long time. Even now they often do not look at all at their 75. By the way, it turned out to be very talented, it was it that ensured the flourishing of cinema, theater, literature in the 70s. It is to him that we owe some kind of, and a scoop by the frond. There are pluses in adolescence. But, perhaps, this is precisely why the Fronde remained a Fronde, without becoming anything more serious. There was no swearing. With mature parenting, it was also not very good, with children they tried to "make friends." But this is not the most difficult option, you must agree. Although the same traumas did not escape them, and the general existential melancholy of Brezhnev's time drove many into the grave ahead of time. By the way, they seem to have passed on their "eternal youth" to children. I have a lot of friends around the age of 50, and they do not look at all older, if not younger than us, 40-year-olds, which will be discussed later. Much of what has appeared in our country for the first time and again in recent years, appeared precisely thanks to those who are now 50 with a tail. And much of what appeared did not last long, because there was not enough solidity.

Secondly, as many have rightly noted, injuries in the 20th century came in waves, and one covered the other, preventing not only licking the wounds - even realizing what had happened. This more and more depleted, reduced the ability to resist. It was the helpless fathers born in the 40s who were unable to protect their children from Afgan. After all, this war was not perceived as sacred, nor in any way justified at all, the boys themselves were not at all eager for it, and the authorities were not ready for strong repressions then. They could have protested, and everything would have ended earlier, but no, there was nothing. Doomed they let go. And go and figure out what the trauma is more from - from the war itself or from this passive helplessness of the parents. In the same way, shifts in the waves of trauma within the family are possible: for example, the daughter of the "Scary Woman" can also grow up "iron", but a little softer, and then there will be a different scenario.

Thirdly, the history of the family itself, which has its own tragedies and dramas, illnesses, betrayal, joys, etc., is always superimposed on the mass traumas of the people. And all this may turn out to be more significant than the historical events. I remember how one day a company recalled the events of the 1991 putsch, and one man said: and the day before my son fell from a tree and injured his spine, they were afraid that he would paralyze, so I don’t remember any putsch. And my grandmother told me that on June 22, 1941, she was terribly happy, because her daughter was born at night, and she seemed to understand that war and something else needed to be experienced, and happiness overlapped everything.

Finally, here's what else is important. How a child is influenced by a parent's experience depends on two opposing aspirations. On the one hand, the child strives to be like a parent, to reproduce his life model, as the most famous and thoroughly studied. On the other hand, the people in the family are linked to each other, like pieces in a puzzle, where one has a notch, there another has a ledge. A child is always complementary to his parents: they are helpless - he is superman, they are authoritarian - he is knocked down, they are afraid of him - he becomes impudent, they overprotect - he regresses. If there are several children, everything is simpler, they can "distribute responsibilities": one can be like a parent, and the other is additional. It often happens that way. And if one? What bizarre forms will it all take? Plus, it includes a critical attitude towards parental experience and a conscious effort to "live differently." So how exactly the trauma will manifest itself in the specific case of a particular person - no one will say in advance. There are only storylines, streams, in which everyone flounders as they can.

Naturally, the further in time from some generalized trauma, such as the World War, the more factors and the more complex their interaction, as a result, an increasingly complex interference pattern is obtained. And, by the way, as a result, we are all now alive and discussing all this, otherwise whole generations would lie down and die, traumatized. But since the flow of life goes on, everything is always not so unambiguous, doomed.

I wanted to clarify all this before continuing.

ADF. By the way, there was a very interesting thread about airplanes. Everything is pretty clear there. Children are excellent at reading the bodily reactions of adults. Even carefully hidden, just at the level of cold sweat, palpitations, pallor. And if adults have an explanation in their heads (survived the war - I'm afraid of the sound of airplanes), then children do not. And the inexplicable bodily reactions of adults frighten the child even more, his panic reactions to the same circumstances are fixed. This is if you do not think about reincarnation, etc. And if you think, even more so.

So, the third generation. I will not be rigidly attached here to the years of birth, because someone was born at 18, someone at 34, the further, the more the distinct "banks" of the stream are blurred. The transmission of the script is important here, and the age can be from 50 to 30. In short, the grandchildren of the military generation, the children of the children of war.

"We owe it" is, in general, the motto of the third generation. Generations of children forced to become parents of their own parents. In psychologists this is called "parentification".

What was to be done? The disliked children of war were spreading around such powerful vibes of helplessness that it was impossible not to respond. Therefore, the children of the third generation were not independent for years and felt constant responsibility for their parents. Childhood with a key around his neck, from the first grade on his own to school - to the music room - to the store, if through a vacant lot or garages - nothing too. Lessons ourselves, heat the soup ourselves, we know how. The main thing is that mom does not get upset. Memories of childhood are very revealing: “I didn’t ask my parents for anything, I always understood that there wasn’t enough money, I tried to sew it up somehow, get along”, “I once hit my head very hard at school, it was bad, it felt sick, but I didn’t tell my mother - I was afraid to upset. Apparently, there was a concussion, and there are still consequences”,“A neighbor pestered me, tried to paw, then showed me his farm. But I didn’t tell my mother, I was afraid that her heart would become bad”,“I missed my father very much, even cried on the sly. But he told my mother that I was fine and I didn’t need him at all. She was very angry with him after the divorce. " Dina Rubina has such a poignant story "Thorns". The classic: a divorced mother, a six-year-old son, selflessly portraying indifference to a father whom he passionately loves. Together with my mother, curled up in a little den against the alien winter world. And these are all quite prosperous families, it also happened that the children looked for drunken fathers in the ditches and dragged them home, and they pulled their mother out of the loop with their own hands or hid the pills from her. About eight years old.

And also divorces, as we remember, or life in the style of a cat and a dog”(for the sake of children, of course). And children are mediators, peacemakers who are ready to sell their souls in order to reconcile their parents, to glue together the fragile family well-being again. Do not complain, do not exacerbate, do not shine, otherwise dad will get angry, and mom will cry and say that “it would be better for her to die than to live like this,” and this is very scary. Learn to anticipate, smooth corners, defuse the situation. Always be vigilant, look after your family. For there is no one else.

The symbol of the generation can be considered the boy Uncle Fyodor from a funny cartoon. Funny, funny, but not very funny. The boy is the oldest of the whole family. And he also does not go to school, which means that it is not seven. He left for the village, lives there himself, but worries about his parents. They only faint, they drink heart drops and helplessly spread them with their hands. Or do you remember the boy Roma from the movie You Never Dreamed of? He is 16, and he is the only adult of all the characters in the film. His parents are typical “children of war”, the girl’s parents are “eternal adolescents”, a teacher, a grandmother … To comfort them, here to support, to make peace, to help there, to wipe away tears here. And all this against the background of the lamentations of adults, they say, it's too early for love. Yeah, and babysitting them all is just right.

So all childhood. And when the time has come to grow up and leave home - the torment of impossible separation, and wine, wine, wine, half with anger, and the choice is very funny: separate and it will kill mommy, or stay and die as a person yourself. However, if you stay, they will always tell you that you need to arrange your own life, and that you are doing everything wrong, bad and wrong, otherwise you would have had your own family for a long time. If any candidate appeared, he would naturally turn out to be worthless, and a long latent war would begin against him to a victorious end. There are so many films and books about this that I will not even list.

Interestingly, with all this, they themselves and their parents perceived their childhood as quite good. Indeed: children are beloved, parents are alive, life is quite prosperous. For the first time in many years - a happy childhood without hunger, epidemics, war and all that.

Well, almost happy. Because there was also a kindergarten, often with a five-day day, and a school, and camps and other delights of Soviet childhood, which were in good color to some, and to some not very much. And there was a lot of violence, and humiliation, but the parents were helpless, they could not protect. Or even in fact they could, but the children did not turn to them, they took care of them. I've never told my mother that they hit the kindergarten in the face with a rag and push pearl barley through vomiting spasms into the mouth. Although now, in hindsight, I understand that she would probably have smashed this garden one stone at a time. But then it seemed to me - it is impossible.

This is an eternal problem - the child is uncritical, he cannot reasonably assess the real state of affairs. He always takes everything personally and greatly exaggerates. And he is always ready to sacrifice himself. Just as the children of the war mistook ordinary weariness and grief for dislike, their children mistook some of the immaturity of fathers and mothers for complete vulnerability and helplessness. Although this was not the case in most cases, and parents could stand up for the children, and would not crumble, would not moderate from a heart attack. And the neighbor would be shortened, and the nanny, and they would buy what they need, and they would be allowed to see my dad. But - the children were afraid. Exaggerated, reinsured. Sometimes later, when everything was revealed, the parents asked in horror: “Well, why did you tell me? Yes, I would, of course …”No answer. Because - you can't. It felt so, that's all.

The third generation has become the generation of anxiety, guilt, hyperresponsibility. All this had its advantages, it is these people who are now successful in various fields, they are the ones who know how to negotiate and take into account different points of view. Foreseeing, being vigilant, making decisions on your own, not waiting for outside help are strengths. Protect, take care, patronize.

But hyperresponsibility, like any hyper, has another side. If the inner child of military children lacked love and security, then the inner child of "Uncle Fyodor's generation" lacked childishness and carelessness. And the inner child - he will take his own in any way, he is. Well, he takes it. It is in people of this generation that such a thing as "aggressive-passive behavior" is often observed. This means that in a situation “I must, but I don’t want to” the person does not openly protest: “I don’t want to and I will not!”, But he also doesn’t resign himself to “well, it is necessary, this is how it should be”. He arranges sabotage in all sorts of different, sometimes very inventive ways. Forgets, postpones until later, does not have time, promises and does not, he is late everywhere and everywhere, etc. Oh, the bosses are howling from this: well, such a good specialist, pro, clever, talented, but so disorganized …

Often people of this generation note in themselves the feeling that they are older than those around them, even the elderly. And at the same time, they themselves do not feel "quite mature", there is no "sense of maturity." Youth somehow leaps into old age. And vice versa, sometimes several times a day. The consequences of "merging" with the parents, of all this "living the life of a child" are also noticeable. Many people remember that in childhood, parents and / or grandmothers did not tolerate closed doors: "Are you hiding something?" And pushing the latch into your door was tantamount to "spitting in the mother's face." Well, about the fact that it is okay to check pockets, a desk, a briefcase and read a personal diary … Rarely did any parents consider this unacceptable. I am generally silent about the kindergarten and school, some toilets were worth what, what nafig borders … As a result, children who grew up in a situation of constant violation of borders, then observe these borders with extreme jealousy. They rarely visit and rarely invite them to their place. Stressing spending the night at a party (although it used to be commonplace). They do not know their neighbors and do not want to know - what if they start to be friends? They painfully endure any forced neighborhood (for example, in a compartment, in a hotel room), because they do not know, they do not know how to set boundaries easily and naturally, while enjoying communication, and they place "anti-tank hedgehogs" on distant approaches.

What about your family? The majority are still in difficult relations with their parents (or their memory), many did not succeed with a lasting marriage, or did not succeed on the first attempt, but only after separation (internal) from their parents.

Of course, the attitudes received and learned in childhood about the fact that men are just waiting to "dabble and quit", and women only strive to "crush under themselves", they do not contribute to happiness in their personal lives. But there was an ability to "sort things out", to hear each other, to negotiate. Divorces have become more frequent, since they have ceased to be perceived as a disaster and a ruin of one's entire life, but they are usually less bloody, more and more often divorced spouses can then quite constructively communicate and deal with children together.

Often the first child appeared in a fleeting "inseminating" marriage, the parental model was reproduced. Then the child was given in whole or in part to the grandmother in the form of a “buy-off”, and the mother got a chance to separate and start living her own life. In addition to the idea of comforting my grandmother, the “I put my life on you”, heard many times in childhood, also plays a role. That is, people grew up with the attitude that raising a child, even one, is something unrealistically difficult and heroic. We often hear memories of how hard it was with the first child. Even those who gave birth already in the era of diapers, food in cans, washing machines and other bells and whistles. Not to mention central heating, hot water and other benefits of civilization. “I spent my first summer with my child at the dacha, my husband came only for the weekend. How hard it was! I just cried with fatigue.”A dacha with amenities, no chickens, no cow, no vegetable garden, the child is quite healthy, my husband brings food and diapers by car. But how hard it is!

And how difficult it is, if the conditions of the problem are known in advance: “to put your life to death, not to sleep at night, to ruin your health”. Here you want - you do not want … This attitude makes the child afraid and avoid. As a result, the mother, even sitting with the child, hardly communicates with him and he frankly misses. Babysitters are hired, they change when the child begins to become attached to them - jealousy! - and now we get a new circle - a deprived, disliked child, something very similar to the military one, only there is no war. Prize race. Look at the kids in some expensive full-service boarding house. Tics, enuresis, outbursts of aggression, hysteria, manipulation. Orphanage, only with English and tennis. And those who do not have money for a boarding house, those on the playground in the residential area can be seen. "Where did you go, you idiot, now you will get it, I have to do the washing later, right?" Well, and so on, “I’m not strong against you, my eyes wouldn’t see you,” with genuine hatred in my voice. Why hate? So he's an executioner! He came to take life, health, youth, as my mother herself said!

Another variation of the scenario unfolds when yet another insidious attitude of the hyperresponsible takes over: everything must be RIGHT! The best way! And this is a separate song. Early adopters of the parental role of "Uncle Fedora" are often obsessed with conscious parenting. Lord, if at one time they mastered the parental role in relation to their own dad and mom, can they really not be able to raise their children at the highest level? Balanced nutrition, gymnastics for babies, developmental classes from one year, English from three. Literature for parents, we read, think, try. Be consistent, find a common language, do not lose your temper, explain everything, HAVE A CHILD.

And the eternal anxiety, habitual since childhood - what if what is wrong? What if something was not taken into account? And if it could have been better? And why am I lacking patience? And what kind of mother (father) am I?

In general, if the generation of children of the war lived in the confidence that they are wonderful parents, which ones to look for, and their children have a happy childhood, then the generation of hyperresponsible people is almost universally affected by "parental neurosis." They (we) are sure that they didn’t take into account something, didn’t finish it, “didn’t take care of the child much (they also dared to work and build a career, mothers are vipers), they (we) are totally not confident in ourselves as in parents, always unhappy with school, doctors, society, they always want more and better for their children)

A few days ago a friend called me - from Canada! - with an alarming question: daughter at 4 years old does not read, what to do? These anxious eyes of moms when meeting with the teacher - my columns do not work! “Ah-ah-ah, we will all die!”, As my son likes to say, the representative of the next, unimportant, generation. And he is still not the brightest, since he was saved by the impenetrable laziness of his parents and the fact that at one time I came across a book by the Nikitins, which said in plain text: mothers, do not worry, do as pleasant and convenient for you, and everything will be fine with the child. There was still a lot of stuff that said that it was necessary to play with special cubes and develop all sorts of things, but I safely missed that:) It itself developed to a fairly decent scale.

Unfortunately, many of them turned out to be rather weak with laziness. And they gave birth to parents with terrible force and in full. The result is sad, now there is a wave of requests with the text “He does not want anything. Lies on the couch, does not work and does not study. Sits staring at the computer. He doesn't want to answer for anything. She snaps at all attempts to talk. And what would he want if everyone already wanted him for him? For what should he be responsible if there are parents nearby who do not feed them bread - let him be responsible for someone? It's good if he just lies on the couch and does not take drugs. Do not feed a week, so maybe it will get up. If he already accepts, everything is worse.

But this generation is just entering life, let's not hang labels on it for now. Life will show.

The further, the more the “shores” are eroded, multiply, split, and the consequences of the experience are bizarrely refracted. I think by the fourth generation, the specific family context is much more important than the global past trauma. But one cannot fail to see that a lot of today is still growing from the past.

Actually, there is still a little bit why it is important to see and what to do with all this.

I was very upset that someone did not hear the important thing: the child's perception of the situation can be very different from the real state of affairs. It was not the people of wartime who disliked their children, it was the child who perceived their "hardened" state from grief and overload. It was not the children of the war themselves who were really helpless en masse, it was their children who interpreted their parents' insane request for love that way. And “Uncle Fedora” is also not paranoid, deliberately killing any living initiative in their children, they are driven by anxiety, and the child can perceive this as the attitude of “being helpless”.

You see, no one is to blame. No one gave birth to children, so as not to love, use, castrate. I have already said and will repeat again: this is not a story about crazy people, not about soulless monsters, who just get a better job in life at the expense of others. It's all about love. About the fact that people are alive and vulnerable, even if they can endure the impossible. About how strangely the flow of love is distorted under the influence of trauma. And about the fact that love, when it is distorted, can torment worse than hatred.

- A generation of grief and stoic patience.

- Generation of resentment and need for love.

- Generation of guilt and hyperresponsibility.

- The features of the generation of indifference and infantilism are already being drawn.

The teeth of the wheels cling to each other, "pass on", "pass on".

They ask me: what to do? But what to do when the flow is clogged, clogged, dammed up, distorted?

Clean. Disassemble, rake, knee-deep, waist-deep, as much as necessary to climb into the dirty rotten water and clean it with your hands. To get out of there grievances, guilt, claims, unpaid bills. Rinse, sort, throw something away, mourn and bury something, leave something as a keepsake. Give a place and a path to clear water.

You can do this yourself, with a psychologist, individually, in a group, simply by discussing with friends, spouses, siblings, reading books, as you please, whoever can and wants to. The main thing is not to sit on the bank of a muddy stream, pouting offendedly and not booing about “bad parents” (they say that even a community like that is in LiveJournal, is it really?). Because you can sit like this all your life, and the stream will continue to go - to children, grandchildren. Environmentally highly unclean. And then you have to sit and boo about useless children.

It seems to me that this is precisely the task of our generation, it is no coincidence that most of the participants in the discussion are from it. Because, let me remind you, we have a lot of resources. Taking responsibility is no stranger to it. We are all educated, again. It seems that we are quite capable of this task. Well, in general, as long as possible, that's enough already.