Mom Went Bad

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

Sooner or later in the life of any child there comes a moment when he needs to go forward. Move on, start something new, become more independent and "bigger" than before. And, of course, mom informs him about it.

For the first time she "informs" him about the beginning of the path purely biologically - childbirth begins, and a person who has hitherto been in the bosom of universal harmony is forced to go through the horror, pain and struggle of his physical birth. And this pattern of interaction is the main one for the Child-Mother dyad (both in everyday and metaphorical and archetypal senses), and this pattern can be described as "licked - bitten" or "gave - took away". The bottom line is the alternation of periods of rest, nourishment and comfort with periods of frustration and "pushing forward". (In the archetypal aspect, this is Life and Death, as the mythological cycle of the Mother).

In normal development, the cycles go in a spiral, and the person does not get stuck in their development, getting a balance of slightly insufficient support and non-traumatic disappointments, which are at the optimum perceived as tasks and challenges.

In the psychological field, the mother "begins to deteriorate" by about 2, 5-3 years of age, when the baby first encounters requirements for him, with refusals immediately or even to give him something, and the fact that in life, in principle, not everything is achievable (i.e. with the reality and the need for limitations and the application of one's own efforts to achieve something). Also, it is often at this age that a child has "competitors" for his mother's love - that is, younger brothers / sisters.

And the first normal reaction for a child will be anger, resentment and fear. The child is trying with all his might to "return" his "good mother" - by making scandals, tantrums, "blackmailing", regressing, and so on. "A good enough mother" (in Winnicott's terminology) is able to withstand all this and build boundaries without depriving the child of support, thanks to which the child will actually step forward, to cope with the anger and disappointment of the 3-year crisis and the "fear period" of 4-year-olds.

At this stage, the splitting (in the child's psyche) of the image of the Divine Mother into Good and Bad occurs. How this universal and normative phenomenon can be judged by the multitude of fairy tales, which say that "the mother died" and her place was taken by the "evil stepmother" (with subsequent tips on how to cope with this.) Again, splitting is normal. ends with a "new rapprochement" (rapprochement) and the reunification of the Good and Bad images of the Mother into a single, more or less close to reality, adequate and supporting image (figure). Which, however, does not mean that the child will henceforth accept all subsequent necessary frustrations with delight)) Protest behavior persists and is a sign of a healthy psyche, testing the world (Mom) "for strength" and mastering new territories.

Unfortunately, very often the primary separation becomes traumatic due to either the child's initial undernourishment of love and maternal support (lack of basic trust in the world), or because the mother cannot withstand the "hatred" of her child and reacts to the protest too harshly or, conversely, infantile. The main differences traumatic separation from normal - this is sharpness, suddenness, simultaneity and categoricality. This action, which is felt by the child as "cutting off" him for nothing, nothing from the mother, and this happens most often when the mother, as they say, "has accumulated".

Those. for some internal reasons (because of her own neuroticism) mom did not put up the necessary demand (a new border) for too long and "endured" to the point that she decided to "cut from the shoulder."The next step in this case is even worse than the previous one, because, as a rule, the mother forbids the child to feel and show feelings about her actions + refuses to explain them (because this would mean admitting herself wrong and guilty). Normally, prohibitions / boundaries are set clearly and many times, with explanations and acceptance of the child's feelings.

Traumatic separation in the future leads to the emergence of many transferences (especially the divine), codependent behavior and the strongest separation anxiety that occurs in a person every time he has to do something new and / or when the usual environment changes. Anxiety leads to the fact that a person aggravates, resists changes, closes in (loses confidence) or runs away purely physically, without even understanding what he is being offered, if the proposed is labeled by him as "new and different", as well as, if necessary (a proposal from the outside) become more independent (for example, finally start to "do your own thing" and apply your knowledge instead of endless study).

Finally, I will add that an attempt to raise a child completely without frustration (protecting, allowing everything, without telling "the horrors of life" from "the best intentions") also leads to trauma, which is much stronger and more difficult to cure than with "normative trauma" (about what the plot of "Sleeping Beauty" tells).