Separation Or Growing Up Of An Adult

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

The issue of separation is well represented in modern psychological media. Many write that an adult by his conscious adolescence should already be sufficiently autonomous from his mother's "buns and cuddles", and it is desirable that the contact between the parent and the adult "child" does not suffer, remains productive, comfortable for both.

What is separation?

Based on the well-known encyclopedia, separation is the psychological process of separating a child from parents, the process of becoming a separate independent and independent personality.

This definition sounds as if the standard process of finding your adult identity should take only a couple of weeks in the everyday life of a growing person, no more. However, in real life this is not the case: many people who are quite thinking and well aware of reality have been working on this process for many years, if not all their lives.

How to understand that you have not gone through the separation process?

Very simple. In the process of communicating with your parents, you may feel:

Guilt that you are “not what mom / dad wants” (unsuccessful, stupid, irresponsible, etc.);

Shame for not living up to parental expectations;

Anger at parents and the simultaneous fear of being left without their support ("I can neither with them, nor without them", "I love them and I hate them equally");

Anger at yourself for doing something wrong;

Strong tension in the relationship, perhaps - the desire for revenge, as a reaction to the unwillingness / inability to be yourself with loved ones, to place your needs in your common field of contact;

Unpleasant physiological sensations in the body after communicating with relatives, exacerbation of symptoms of diseases - as a reaction of the body to non-constructive communication with loved ones;

Fear or anxiety arising during communication with parents or immediately before / after contact with them;

Loneliness, avoidance of communication, isolation;

Despair, depression or even depression, “giving up” in endless attempts to find a suitable way to interact with loved ones;

Manipulation by parents or the use of their own manipulations in order to get what they want from them and many others;

What can we face while living the separation process? What are these feelings / reactions?

First of all, it is anger as a reaction to violation of boundaries. The fact is that before the "launch" of the autonomization process, a person feels that he is merged with loved ones, for example, with his mother. This means that he perceives himself and his mother as a single whole: common interests, common tastes, common desires. Isn't this stage of development similar to the relationship between mother and child in childhood? But we are talking about similar processes in the life of an adult who wants to be separated from their parents. And when the already "grown-up child" wants something different than the parent wants and defends its boundaries, in this place the shaking of the system begins. Each subject of this system is unbalanced by such processes, conflicts occur - inevitably anger on both sides, as a result of a misunderstanding of one by the other, as well as a feeling of disrespect on the part of those close to the things and processes that are important for a given subject.

You can also face great sadness and self-pity from the fact that loved ones do not understand you. Sadness can also be evidence of crushing disappointment resulting from the loss of the ideal parent (s). It hurts. And it's very sad. This process can lead to loneliness, isolation as a sensation, or a way of avoiding unpleasant communication. Fatigue and exhaustion from constant attempts to preserve and protect "one's own" in the "common" world are also often found in the emotional world of an autonomizing person. Despair, a sense of a dead end in trying to reach out to loved ones or in general to figure out how to communicate with relatives now, go hand in hand with fatigue and exhaustion. You may also feel - or even inevitably feel - fear when you try to separate from your parent. This happens because a person does not yet have the experience of autonomy, but there is anxiety about how to remain without the usual support and protection. And this is really really scary, because there is uncertainty ahead, and even without a safety rope. And of course, let's not forget to mention the two pillars on which the separation process rests: guilt, self-criticism (for the desire to separate from the parent) and the feeling of shame (for not being able to “gratefully” devote your whole life to your parent in response to he gave birth to you and raised you).

You can imagine with what a huge range of feelings, a colossal burden a person encounters in his attempts to “find himself”, to separate, becoming autonomous.

Do we have a choice whether to go through this process or not?

I am afraid that the answer to this question will be negative: usually every mentally healthy person goes through the separation process, just at his own pace and at his age. This, of course, can be resisted, but nothing worthwhile will come of it. However, the good news is that each of us has a choice: how quickly we get through it and how painless it is.

So what's the least painful separation process?

More often than not, in the struggle for independence, throwing one "crutch" aside, we grab hold of another. After pushing away real parents with their "inconvenient" ways of interaction, we frantically search for other "mommy" or "daddy" who will love us as much as the old ones, but will give us a little more freedom. This is how early (and not so) marriages happen, when young people are torn from the "parental nest" to "get married." And in the ordinary life of adults, similar tendencies are noted.

The very idea of finding an "improved crutch" does not strike me as shameful. It is quite understandable thing: "I am scared, and I am looking for support for myself (mother, only this time a good one, better than the old one)." And here, it seems to me, it is important to honestly be aware of what is happening in your soul: to admit to yourself the desire to find a companion, protector, assistant on the path of growing up. And out of concern for your future, nevertheless, for such purposes, choose a professional psychologist who has both the necessary sensitivity and professional skills and knowledge.

Then your path to self-reliance, autonomy and personal independence will be easier than you imagined.

What awaits each of us after the completion of the separation process?

• Feeling of self-worth, self-respect and self-acceptance (the position “I am what I am”) without focusing on the opinions of others;
• A feeling of general freedom, euphoria and lightness from the need to be responsible only for your actions, and be responsible only for your feelings and reactions;
• Feeling of freedom to choose your own paths of development;
• Interest in your inner world, the vector “What am I?”;
• Relief from the absence of restrictions previously set by relatives;
• The joy of meeting with yourself now;
• Peace, liberation, as the absence of the need to constantly struggle with someone;
• Surprise from the opening up new perspectives and the authenticity of the world;
• Safety as a basic need of any individual for normal functioning in society;
• Gratitude to the parents for what they have given in this life;
• Tenderness and love for parents;
• The opportunity now to choose a distance in relations with parents and build productive contact, taking into account their needs;
• The joy of communicating with parents, etc.

As you can see, we have something to fight for, living through this difficult process.

In conclusion, I would like to remind you that … Our mothers destroy us, but they also create us. After all, through the same processes that hurt us: claims, violations of borders, pressure on our desires, ignorance of our needs, etc. - pieces of someone else's, unchewed experience fall off from us. We get hurt, rebel, get angry, experience loneliness and melancholy, but we cleanse ourselves of the “not-us” and find ourselves.