Old Children

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

Some people manage to grow old without ever growing up. Never having learned to take responsibility for your life. They, despite their 25, 30, 40… 60 years old, perceive the world in a completely childish way, in the same childish way they avoid responsibility for themselves, for their choices. Infantilism. Belief in fairy tales and miracles, belief that someone big, adult and strong will help. Faith, which once from a support and a resource suddenly turned into an excuse for its passivity. Where does it come from and how to deal with it?

Freedom and self-realization is impossible without responsibility. But when responsibility is perceived as synonymous with guilt, one really wants to avoid it, push it away and “shake it off” on someone else. If parents do not understand the difference between responsibility and guilt, then their child, growing up, has every chance of becoming an infantile. Responsibility is always my choice, it is that part of my reality that I am ready and want to control. The second important support in infantilism is learned helplessness. Large and strong elephants are held by a small branch stuck in the ground. How does this happen? When elephants are still very small, they are put on a chain, tied to a strong post, and they remember for the rest of their lives the futility of trying to pull out this post. This is how learned helplessness is formed. We are not much different from elephants here.

You need to understand that infantilism is not a characteristic of a person, it is a characteristic of a relationship. This is a symptom of the system in which he is located and in which he grew up. He is like that because the system in which he lives allows him to be like that.

If you don’t want someone else’s work to be thrown onto you, don’t take responsibility for it. For example, a mother suffers and complains about her over-aged son: he does not work and does not strive for anything in life, but only sits around playing computer games all day. But she continues to provide him with everything necessary for life, she pays for his apartment, prepares food for him, gives money, and thereby supporting not her child, but his neurosis. Such a mother is an accomplice, a co-author of a system in which infantilism is encouraged by one side and beneficial to the other side.

Mutual family support is very important. Who else, if not your family, can you turn to when it's difficult for you? And I’m not at all about how help is bad. I'm talking about parasitism, when some live at the expense of others, when those who are psychologically older have to constantly solve other people's problems.

Feelings of guilt, a sense of duty, a sense of self-superiority, feelings of pity - these are few things that can keep a "rescuer" in such a model of relationship. And it’s also a “great” way not to solve your problems, not to take care of your life: “I’m busy, I am constantly helping this bum!”. And then it is also a kind of infantilism, only more sophisticated and socially acceptable.

This was written by the psychotherapist Stephen Karpman, the author of the well-known scheme - the triangle: “victim-rapist-rescuer”. All these roles are not only present, but also constantly change places: the victim becomes a rapist, and begins to attack the former rescuer.

If you notice that you are caught in this kind of system. And that you constantly save, get angry and suffer in a relationship with a loved one who is abusing your care. This is a reason to think about why you need it? And what, in fact, a disservice you are doing to such a rescued person. Try to soberly weigh: is your help beneficial, maybe the person really needs support, and maybe he is maliciously using it, although he unconsciously uses it. And then this is a reason to change something in the relationship, to take responsibility for your life, and not for someone else's.