OFFENSE - THE FEELING OF THE INNER CHILD

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

"It's a shame to tears." Is this state familiar?

I have never seen a person in my office at a reception who does not bear a single grievance. Some of them are known, they are talked about. Partly they are not realized because of the prohibitions on resentment or anger, disguised as pseudo-forgiveness, suppressed, put on the “distant shelf”, or harshly denied. But in all these cases, despite the difference in strategies, for some reason it is very difficult to cope with resentment alone.

Perhaps not all colleagues will agree with me, but I see the main reason for the inability to cope with acute, and especially chronic, conditions that permeate the entire fabric of life and feelings of resentment in the lack of unconditional acceptance, rooted in early childhood experience. I will explain both about the unconditional form of acceptance, and about the fact that resentment is something as if very childish, the experience of an “inner child”.

There is a lot of literature on the subject that it is absolutely necessary for every child to accept him as he is, without requirements, barely born, to meet the framework of the expectations of parents and family. I read a lot of such literature while studying, had my own experience of acceptance, undergoing trainings and personal therapy in several different approaches. But I want to share one example that surprised me and showed how tightly I was held captive by stereotypes.

I was present at the Playback Theater performance and the troupe on the stage asked to name any feeling and state, and played it on the stage. At first, "decent" feelings were asked - joy, love. And then they called hatred, and the actors with the same inspiration with voices, bodies, music began to express it, added strength and shades. And at that moment I did not recognize, but felt what it is - acceptance. Allowing all feelings, as if admitting the right: "Yes, you can feel that." Gaining this understanding is the path to a life of no offense.

Somewhere I saw an assumption about the origin, etymology of the word "offense". That it is a derivative of "about" and "kind". It seems to me that this is very true in the light of the fact that if they “do not see”, “they look around”, this is “do not accept”. How many times have we heard (and told our children!) “Don’t get angry,” “don’t sour,” “don’t slow down,” etc. And "well, what are you offended as a child." All these formulas are about the fact that it is as if you cannot feel what you really feel. Message: "I do not want to see this and deal with it." And the little man gets used to ignoring, in fact, himself - the present, and begins to accumulate resentment inside himself, mixed with everything that is "not allowed" - anger, irritation, jealousy, etc. If there is also a message “do not dare to be offended” that is already on the verge of sadism, then all this mixture of experiences goes deep inside, corroding the soul, and sometimes the body, from the inside. And what is also extremely important - all subsequent grievances activate these, already accumulated, actualize the state of the wounded child in a person who has matured in appearance.

At one time I worked as a so-called "host" at the Moscow Green House, an organization modeled after the Green Houses in France, based on the theoretical legacy of Françoise Dolto. Children under the age of 4 are brought there, in fact, this is a place for early socialization, while one of the adult relatives always stays with the child. In the examples of interaction with such young children, the difficulties of parents to recognize and share quite natural experiences of fear (that the mother, for example, will not return if she is not visible outside the door), anger (on the topic that it is time to leave or it is necessary to follow the rules). And how difficult it is sometimes for adults to master the phrases “Yes, you are angry, I understand it is unpleasant, you want to stay, but it's time for us to leave.

What does the mechanism for the formation of this experience - resentment - look like?

The initial state is the expectation of something desired: from an affectionate look, a smile to recognition of services to a family, country or the world community. The "appetite" of different people, at different ages and different situations is very different.

The second important component in this state is a sincere confidence that you are entitled to it by right. Such a sense of fairness of expectation. In the case of an adult, he may well know specifically what he is entitled to - whether it is fame, money, a gift, etc. In the case of a child, a teenager, everything is much more complicated with awareness, the image of what is needed is often unclear or distorted, in general, there is more confusion.

Often, a teenager who craves approval, on the contrary, begins to flaunt his independence or becomes aggressive. What causes the opposite response and then plunges into a state of bitter resentment due to misunderstanding. Moreover, he himself may completely fail to notice his behavior, how it looks to others, his provocations.

If you think about the situation of a very young child, who also does not know how to speak, the situation is as follows: a child at this age quite naturally thinks of himself as the center of the universe, which must adapt and satisfy his needs for warmth, food, safety, reliability and, of course, love. … And if this does not happen chronically, or happens with too much delay, the child grows up with a deep sense of resentment and injustice of this world, distrust of the world and of each person in particular.

Whether it will be only in the form of a constant slight "resentment" or will result in the form of a personality disorder - narcissistic, for example, or paranoid, depends on the degree of dissatisfaction with basic needs.

Cure for this personality disorder requires long-term psychotherapy. Once formed, it can no longer be overcome without the participation of an understanding person who, on the one hand, can provide, on the other hand, a safe and stable therapeutic interaction experience different from childhood, and on the other hand, clarifying the essence of the mechanisms of the formed disorder.

Let me explain a little easier the moment that sometimes it is difficult to "digest" an offense on your own. The fact is that only when someone else, besides the person himself, recognizes the fairness of claims, at least, and, as a maximum, replenishment of the deficit of something that was not received in time, the resentment recedes, regret comes in its place, in more serious cases grief …

There are methods of psychotherapy in which the following idea is accepted: you have to be grateful already for the gift of life that your parents gave you. Nobody should support and love you. I am rather a supporter of the point of view of a psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott. Its essence is that the child did not choose whether to come to this world full of dangers and troubles, pain and loss. And the parents' job is to try to smooth out this situation, to make it bearable. And again, the recognition that this is necessary for every human baby, and that if this did not happen, then it means that an injury has been inflicted, already brings relief and makes it possible to burn through this misfortune and look for more comfortable, kind, accepting situations and people in the future. …