WHERE DOES CHILDHOOD GO?

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

We are responsible for those

who was not released on time …

Good boys and girls

who have not lived through a teenage riot, continue to remain in this close

image I for the rest of my life …

In the course of working with the actual psychological problems of my clients (dependent relationships, weak psychological boundaries, toxic feelings of guilt, etc.), I often find behind this an unresolved problem of separation from parents. A number of questions naturally arise:

What prevents a child from separating from his parents?

What happens in the soul of a child going through separation processes?

What are the parents of a teenage child experiencing?

How do parents contribute to a failed separation?

What happens if the separation process fails?

On what grounds can this be determined?

I will try to answer all these questions in my article.

Separation as a condition for personality development

Separation is not just a process of physical separation from parents, it is an opportunity through this separation to meet with your Self, to know it, to find your unique identity. In the process of the child's individual development, we can observe his periodic movements from parents to himself and back. These movements from oneself to the Other and from the Other to oneself occur cyclically. In some periods, these tendencies become pronounced and polar.

In the individual development of a child, there are two such vivid periods of movement from the parents - the crisis of an early age, often referred to by psychologists as "I-myself crisis!", and the teenage crisis. This process is especially acute in adolescence, in which a teenager literally faces a choice: betraying himself or betraying his parents. It is at this point of choice that the separation process takes place.

Consequently, psychological separation from parents (otherwise separation) is a natural process that reflects the logic of the child's individual development. In order for a teenager to meet himself, he needs to get out of the psychological symbiosis with his parents.

What is going on in the soul of a teenager?

The teenager is torn between parents and peers, between anger towards parents and guilt. On the one hand, there are parents with their world, with their vision of life, with their life experience. He only needs to accept this world, agree with it. Accept the "rules of the game" of parents, support their norms and values. The choice of such a perspective promises the comfort and love of the parents. This keeps the child from the growing need for separation.

On the other hand, a new world opens up for a teenager - a world of friends with the opportunity to test parenting experience, not to take it for granted, to get your own experience. It is captivating, exciting, intriguing and frightening at the same time. For a teenager, this is a choice.

And the choice is very difficult!

Parents' worries

It is not easy for parents either. The separation processes of children are given to good parents, as a rule, extremely painful. Their child is changing, experimenting, trying on new unusual images of himself, trying new forms of identity, new ways of relationships. And parents often find it difficult to agree with this, rebuild and accept his new image. From the familiar, convenient, predictable, obedient it turns into unpredictable, unusual, inconvenient … It is not easy to accept and survive. Parents during this period live a whole range of unusual and difficult feelings for themselves in relation to a teenager. What are these feelings?

Parents are scared: I wouldn’t fit where … I wouldn’t have done anything … What will come of it? What if he contacts a bad company? Try drugs? What if it stays like this forever?

Parents are angry: And who is he like? When will it stop! How long to? Got it already!

Parents are offended: What is he missing? You try and try for him, you do not regret anything, you grow and grow, you do not sleep at night, but he … Ungrateful!

Parents are ashamed: Ashamed in front of people! Disgrace us with your behavior! This is not how I imagined my child!

Parents yearn: What happened to my affectionate boy? Where has my obedient baby gone? How quickly did the time go and when did they grow up? Time cannot be returned and children will never be small again …

The guilt trap

Changes in adolescent behavior are of great concern to parents: What happened to my child?

Parents in this situation start frantically looking for ways to "return" the child to the previous habitual, "correct" state. All available means are used: persuasion, threats, intimidation, resentment, shame, guilt … Each parental couple has its own unique combination of the above means.

In my opinion, the most effective in terms of interrupting separation processes is the combination of guilt and shame with the dominance of guilt.

Let me make a small digression about the essence of guilt.

Guilt and shame are social feelings. They allow a person to become and remain human. These feelings create a sense of social belonging - We. The experience of these feelings sets a vector in consciousness directed towards the Other. At some point in an individual's development, guilt and shame play a key role. The child's experience of guilt and shame engenders moral consciousness in him and creates an opportunity for him to overcome the egocentric position - the phenomenon of decentration. If this does not happen (for a number of reasons), or occurs to an insignificant extent, then a person grows up fixed on himself, or, more simply, an egoist. Sociopathy may be a clinical variant of this development option.

However, if the experiences of these feelings become excessive, then the person “goes too far from his I to the Other,” the Other becomes dominant in his consciousness. This is the path to neurotization.

Therefore, in relation to guilt, as indeed in relation to any other feeling, in psychology there is no question "Good or bad?", But rather the question of its relevance, timeliness and degree of expression.

However, let's return to our story - the story of separation.

Good parents, having experimented with a set of antiseptic agents, very soon realize that wine works best for "retention". Perhaps no one feeling is capable of holding another as much as guilt. Using guilt to hold on is essentially manipulative. Guilt is about connection, about loyalty, about the Other and his attitude towards me: "What do others think of me?" The wine is sticky, enveloping, paralyzing.

- You were such a good boy / girl as a child!

The following message is read behind these words of the parents:

- I love you only when you are good!

Guilt is love manipulation.

- If I'm bad, then they don't like me - this is how a teenager deciphers a parental message for himself. Hearing this from the closest people is unbearable. This makes you want to prove the opposite - I'm good! And not to change …

This is how the child's separation processes are frustrated.

The teenager falls into the trap of guilt.

Time goes by, and a real reluctant, accusing parent with the message "How can you be like that!" gradually becomes an inner parent. The trap of guilt - guilt imposed from the outside - slams shut and becomes an internal trap - the trap of consciousness. From now on, a person becomes a hostage to his image "I am a good boy / girl" and restrains himself from changes from within.

Not every child is capable of opposing parents with something effective against guilt. The punishment for rebellion for many turns out to be unbearable: distance, ignorance, dislike. And surely there are many adults who, like my clients, may well try on the following phrases: “I suppressed it in myself. I didn't allow myself to be bad. I tried to be good, very correct, listened to my parents, read the necessary books, came home on time”. The teenager is normally antisocial: rebellious, impudent, challenging everything familiar.

I confess that I also sinned with this, even though I knew all this theoretically. And I was glad when my teenage daughter intuitively invented an original way that would allow her to be inaccessible to my guilt trap. In response to my words about "where did my dear obedient girl go?", I heard the following:

- Dad, I have changed. I got bad!

Thank God, I had the courage and wisdom to hear and understand the meaning of these words. It is my task as a parent - to live parting with my child, to be sad and mourn his passing childhood, which is so sweet and so dear to me. And let the child go to the big world, to other people. And I can handle it. And without all this, the joy of meeting him as an adult is impossible, and this meeting itself is impossible.

"Betrayal" of parents as a developmental norm

The teenager faces a choice: "The world of parents or the world of peers?" And in order to separate, and therefore develop, psychologically grow, a teenager naturally and inevitably has to betray the world of his parents. This is easier to do through identification with peers. Moreover, the value of friendship becomes dominant at this age and adolescents begin to make friends against their parents. It is unnatural when teenagers choose the world of their parents and betray the world of their peers. This is a dead end in development.

This choice is difficult. The situation is especially difficult when the parents are good, and practically insoluble when they are perfect. Normally, a child eventually becomes disillusioned with his parents. And meeting is impossible without disappointment. (I wrote about it here.. and here) The ideal parent does not give cause for anger, for disappointment. And it is impossible to leave such a parent.

The separation process is also complicated when the parents or one of them has died. In this case, it is also impossible to be disappointed - the image of the parent remains ideal. If the parent leaves during this period of development, the child cannot be disappointed in him.

Unauthorized separation

Failure to "betray" parents has two consequences: immediate and delayed.

Immediate consequences can manifest in the form of peer relationship problems. Failure to betray your parents can lead to betrayal of friends. The teenager in this case is not in the best situation: his own among strangers, a stranger among his own. At its worst, this can lead to bullying.

Delayed effects can be summarized as a tendency towards emotional dependence. In addition, there may be problems with personal boundaries, problems with building relationships, social shyness.

I will try to sketch out the manifestations that can mark problems with incomplete separation.

Signs of a failed separation from parents:

• Existence of a set of expectations - Parents owe me!;
• Conflicting feelings towards parents;
• Feeling of "dead" attachment to parents;
• Life "with an eye to parents";
• Strong feelings of guilt and duty to parents;
• Strong resentment towards parents;
• Claims to parents for “spoiled childhood”;
• Responsibility for the happiness and life of parents;
• Involvement in parental manipulations, excuses, emotional proof of one's innocence;
• Desire to meet parental expectations;
• Painful reaction to parental remarks.

If you find more than three signs from this list - draw your own conclusions!

Good boys and good girls who have not lived through a teenage rebellion remain this tight image for the rest of my life: "I am not like that / not like that!" The image of a good boy / girl limits, does not allow to go beyond its boundaries. And this is a tragedy. The tragedy of an unreached identity and an unlived life.

And I would like to end the article with a deep phrase: “On the day when a child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes a teenager; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise”(Alden Nolan).