INTERNAL INJURY CHILD (TRAP INJURY)

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

INTERNAL INJURED CHILD

(INJURY TRAP)

Where there is no childhood

there is no maturity either.

Françoise Dolto.

Grow into really

healthy family -

here's real luck.

Robin Skinner

In psychotherapy and in life, one can quite often meet with the "virtuality" of a person's mental reality, its insubordination to material physical laws. One of these most striking phenomena is the phenomenon of psychological time and psychological age.

PSYCHOLOGICAL AGE

Modern theories of development contain the idea that the process of development involves not only consistency, but also simultaneity. life is not applied to childhood as its simple continuation, but the timelines (objective and subjective) are superimposed on each other and exist simultaneously. To be fifty, says J. M. Robin, the representative of the French School of Gestalt Therapy, does not mean to cease being forty, twenty, three years old. This means that if you are fifty, then at the same time you are forty, thirty, twenty, ten, five and two years old.

The possible discrepancy between physical (physiological, passport) and psychological age is a fairly well-known phenomenon in life. We often encounter in real life the facts of such a discrepancy, both physical and psychological: a person may look older / younger than his age, behave inappropriately for his passport age. In psychology, there are even terms for these phenomena - infantilism and acceleration.

Growing up, a person does not abandon the experiences of previous experiences; rather, these experiences are layered like growth rings on a tree cut. The idea of the presence of a person's experiences of his former self was most clearly reflected in psychology in the works of E. Berne, who argued that in the structure of the personality of each person, regardless of his age, three components can be distinguished - Parent, Child, which he called Ego-states.

The aforementioned internal Ego-states can be alternately actualized - now, now the Parent, now the Child can appear on the psychic scene. Each internal state has its own functions, feelings, thoughts, attitudes, habitual modes of action. Each state consistently appears on the “stage of mental life” of a person in certain life situations.

A psychologically healthy person is characterized by mobility, dynamism of the selected Ego-states, the possibility of their change. Psychological problems arise when a person is rigidly fixed on any one Ego-state, which are often the causes of many of his psychological problems.

INTERNAL CHILD AND INTERNAL ADULT

Let us consider in more detail two such states - the states of the inner child and the inner adult, hereinafter referred to as the Child and in the text.

Every adult was once a child, and at any age. As stated earlier, this childhood experience persists - its inner child. Every adult also has his experience of adult experiences, integrated by him into the image of an inner adult.

Let's compare these two states: Child and Adult.

The child is vital, creative, spontaneous, emotional. The child's functions are play, creativity.

- responsible, aware, balanced, rational. The Adult's functions are decision making, choice, caring, support.

Child - demanding, needy, dependent …

Adult - giver, confident, supportive, calming …

Childhood attitude towards life - "wait" and "receive". Expecting adults to satisfy their needs and get what they give him.

The adult attitude is "to act", "to take" and "to give." Not to expect anything from others and from life, but to act, take for oneself, and give to someone in need.

The ability of a person to be in contact with his inner states - the Child and the Adult - is a condition of his psychological health. Psychological problems arise when some part of the personality turns out to be turned off, non-functioning. This can apply to both the Child state and the Adult state.

When does this happen? How does it manifest? I will describe the most typical variants of such manifestations.

What is the inner child like?

In a therapy situation, one often encounters the phenomenon of the actualized state of the "Child". This phenomenon can be noticed both by observing a client who regresses greatly in therapy - crying, looks helpless, disorganized, so referring to his inner experiences. In this case, to the therapist's question: "How old are you now?", "How old do you feel?" a person can sometimes answer: 3, 5, 7 …

In the experience of therapy, there are two types of inner children that are more often encountered. I will call them conditionally - Happy Child and Traumatized Child.

HAPPY CHILD

A Happy Child is one who had a Childhood - carefree, happy. A happy child had "good enough" (D. Winnicott's term), loving, accepting, adults (not infantile), psychologically healthy parents. Such parents did not involve the child in their adult games, did not burden him with parental functions, did not use him as their narcissistic extension, etc. In general, they did not deprive him of his Childhood. This list of "sins" of parents goes on and on. How many of these parents do you know?

Happy are those people who had psychologically adult parents capable of performing a number of important parenting functions, such as:

• Containment (the parent softens the child's failures, smoothes them out, does not allow the child's emotions to reach a state of panic and horror);
• Advance payment (a parent believes in the capabilities of his child, provides him with the conditions for independent achievement of goals);
• Maintaining a sense of joy in the baby in happy moments for him (parents are sincerely happy with their baby, feel pride in him).

In the process of interaction, parental qualities-functions (care, support, acceptance, love) are appropriated, assimilated by the child and become, over time, the functions of the child himself - self-support, self-confidence, self-acceptance, self-reassurance and many other “self- . Having become an adult, such a person in standard life situations familiar to him no longer needs the support of his parents and is able to work independently in a “self-mode”.

If such already adults have a good connection with their inner child, then for them there is an opportunity to feed from this state with energy for life. As an adult, a happy Inner Child can confidently walk through life, solve problems, make decisions, make choices. Such people seem to be harmonious, whole, they have more chances to be psychologically healthy and happy. A happy child is a source of creativity, energy, spontaneity, life.

The inner “Happy Child” is a resource state for an adult. Good contact with your Happy inner child is a source of positive human experience.

The happy inner child knows well what he wants. Adults, as a rule, find it difficult to answer this simple question, or, in the worst case, do not want anything. Many psychological problems - life crises, depression, neuroses - are the result of a bad connection with the inner Happy child, which a person forgets about in the maelstrom of adult problems. In this case, the task of psychotherapy will be to restore connection with your inner child for the emergence of energy for life.

Only the Happy Child has the ability to grow up psychologically in a natural way. A much more complicated situation arises in the absence of the state of a Happy child in the psychic reality of a person. It can be a rejected, used, appropriated, sacrificing, abandoned, forgotten, child. I will call him in one word - traumatized. Such a child is trapped in trauma.

INJURED CHILD

The traumatized child is frozen, anxious, squeezed.

This is a child who was deprived of Childhood. His parents, if they really existed, were too busy with their adult problems, often either ignoring him or overly incorporating him into their adult life. These are either "bad parents" - insensitive, distant, reluctant, rejecting, egocentric, or "too good", "ideal parents" - overly sensitive, anxious, overprotective, "suffocating" with their care and love. And no one knows what is better for a child. There is a well-known expression in psychotherapy - all mental problems arise from lack or excess.

A child may be traumatized as a result of chronic failure to meet one or more important needs. This is the result of the parents' inability, for physical or psychological reasons, to meet his vital childhood needs. Since parental figures are the source of many of the child's vital needs (for safety, acceptance, unconditional love, support, etc.), the nature of the trauma can be different. More details about this can be found in our (written jointly with Natalya Olifirovich) book "Fairy stories through the eyes of a psychotherapist", published by the publishing house "Rech" (St. Petersburg).

Deprived of the opportunity to satisfy some vital need for him, the child is faced with the need to prematurely face the harsh reality of life, and is forced to grow up early. Psychologically unprepared for adulthood due to the immature of a number of adult functions, he often resorts to idealizing the world as a defense. Idealization creates the illusion of the existence of a good, supportive, protective world as opposed to the real and unfavorable world.

A vivid illustration of this phenomenon is the heroine of G. Kh. Andersen - "Girl with matches". Freezing, hungry, the girl imagines in the light of burning matches the bright world of the Christmas holiday, her loving grandmother - the only person in her life from whom she received spiritual warmth.

The traumatized child is forever stuck between two worlds - the world of the Child and the world of the Adult. Outwardly, physically, such people look like adults, internally, psychologically, they remain children - little adults. Such people are always psychologically in the position of a child - undernourished, eternally hungry, dissatisfied, needy, dependent, demanding of others. Resentments, discontent, reproaches, claims of such an adult child are originally intended for parents. However, other people, most often their life partners, can fall under these feelings. See the chapter "Complementary marriage" about this in more detail.

The traumatized child appears on the "mental stage" in a difficult situation for a person - stress, overexertion, mental trauma, crises. In these difficult situations for a person, his internal resources are insufficient to cope with them, and the mechanisms of psychological defense that work successfully in familiar conditions fail.

Such people complain, take offense at others, life, peace, fate. The psychological reason for this behavior is the fear of being left alone, the lack of trust in a loved one and in the world in general. They are like small, anxious, chronically hungry, unsaturated children cannot believe that the other person will not leave them, will not leave, will always be available. In fear of being lonely and defenseless, such people "cling" to partners, creating dependent relationship patterns with them.

FORGOTTEN CHILD

There is a certain category of adults who initially had the experience of experiencing an inner Happy child, but later lost touch with this inner state. Many adult problems can result from such a loss: lack of meaning in life, depression, alienation, inability to intimate relationships, apathy, boredom, loss of joy in life, its stereotypical nature, "blandness", meaninglessness.

The ultimate variant of such alienation from your Inner Child can be crises in the life of an adult.

A crisis is a kind of regression to early ways of behaving and understanding the world, the loss of the usual attitude. At the same time, a crisis is also a real opportunity to change and move to a new stage in your life. In a crisis, there are two possible alternatives for a person: survive or die. Here we are not necessarily talking about real, physical death, but rather psychological death. This kind of death is seen as a stop in development, stagnation, following habits, patterns and stereotypes. Life is about creative adaptation, the ability to see and choose, to be open to the outside world and the world of your experiences.

Getting into a crisis situation, the Adult each time faces the need to meet with his inner Child, and successful overcoming of the crisis presupposes a dialogue between the child and the adult part, as a result of which it is possible to "cleanse from the husk" - everything superficial, external, secondary, and acquire a new level of integrity. depth, sensitivity, inner wisdom.

The most difficult situation arises when an adult with an inner traumatized child is in a crisis state. Its adult part cannot take anything from its childish part - neither spontaneity, nor spontaneity, nor joy - there is simply no such thing. The person may then be in deep depression, often with thoughts of death. In such cases, the help of a professional psychologist / psychotherapist is needed. The focus of professional attention here shifts to the therapy of the state of the inner traumatized child. It is impossible to get such a person out of the crisis without working through their early childhood traumas.

In addition to the cases of chronic deprivation of early childhood needs described above, any person in a situation of mental trauma can also get into such a “childish” position of a defenseless, disorganized child in a situation of mental trauma, when the adverse impact of the external environment is prohibitive for his personal adaptive resources.

However, such cases of forced regression are easily recognized due to their obvious connection with the traumatic factors that cause them. These are examples of acute mental trauma immediately following traumatic circumstances. If, in such cases, psychological assistance is needed, then it is not of such a long-term nature and solves other problems than in the case of the above-described injuries resulting from the frustration of early needs in parent-child relationships.

WHAT TO DO? THERAPEUTIC REFLECTION

The main therapeutic task in working with the client "Traumatized child" will be his growing up, "growing up". The essence of psychotherapy in this case is to create such a psychotherapeutic relationship in which the client would have space for the additional formation of his early interrupted developmental processes.

The result of successful therapy is the emergence of the possibility of meeting and integrating two internal states - the Child and the Adult.

What can be done in this situation if there is no opportunity to resort to professional therapy, and the person is trapped in an injury?

For traumatic people, as mentioned above, the main task will be to "grow" their inner traumatized Child, who is able to rely on himself, to cope with the challenges of life. And this function has to be mastered by the person himself.

At the first stage, it will be important for you to learn to recognize situations in life in which the inner traumatized child is actualized and to meet those experiences that will be characteristic of him. These can be experiences of a state of abandonment, abandonment, rejection, uselessness, loneliness, powerlessness.

There are two possible strategies for working with your inner child: support and an encounter with reality.

1st strategy - support

The Traumatized Child, as mentioned above, is a child who, in childhood, chronically lacked love, acceptance and care from people close to him.

The task of a person who wants to “grow up” his inner child is to try to become such a parent for him at least for a while - attentive, caring, sensitive, unconditionally loving and accepting. How to do it? To do this, you can go to a toy store and choose for yourself the toy that you liked, that somehow internally responded, cut off, emotionally touched. You have to try to imagine that this toy is you yourself - a little one in need of care and love - your Inner Child. In the future, getting into a situation of "appearance on the stage" of an internal insecure, restless, dependent state in every possible way to take care, support, patronize their psychological "double". As a result of this kind of attentive and caring attitude on the part of the Inner parent to his Inner child, a person should have a feeling of reliability, stability, confidence.

2nd strategy - meeting reality

This strategy becomes possible after a careful study of the first strategy - support. In the case of using the second strategy, a person turns to his adult inner part and accepts it.

This becomes possible by creating a situation of meeting with your adult part by asking yourself the following reflexive questions:

• How old am I really now?
• What do I know about myself as an adult?
• What kind of adult / adult man / woman I am
• How do I feel as an adult?
• What do I want, what can I do as an adult?

In order to make it easier to answer these questions, you need to remember such situations in your life when you were strong, confident, adult. Saying the answers to these questions by a person and immersing him in this state returns and strengthens his experience of himself as an adult, mature, confident person who can cope with life's difficulties.

The second strategy, as I have already noted, is possible only in the case of a well-developed first one. Before you face the reality of your adult side, you need to invest a fairly large amount of support, acceptance, care, and love in your child side - the Inner Child.

I will consider the possibilities of resuscitation of my child's part - the Inner Child and meeting with him in more detail in the next chapter using the example of A. Exupery's fairy tale "The Little Prince", written by me in co-authorship with Natalia Olifirovich.