I often hear people beat up on themselves about acting or feeling 'like a child.' Usually this sentiment is followed by something like, 'I'm an adult, I should be passed this kind of thing.' I get it, I really do. We are attracted to the fantasy that the passage times means we become adults. Moreover, we are attracted to the fantasy that being an 'adult' means we no longer feel out of control, bad, angry, pouty, jealous, rejected, rebellious, etc. Unfortunately, well, you get the gist. Another way of looking at development is that we have different parts of ourselves. Some parts get more nurture than others, and those parts grow up faster. So if we were lucky enough to have parents that could tolerate our sadness and anger then those sad and angry parts of ourselves grow up alongside our loving parts. If we didn't, then those sad and angry parts of ourselves might get left behind and stay feeling 'childlike.' In order to grow up, all parts of ourselves need to feel accepted. This is pretty rare, so that leaves us feeling 'childlike' sometimes. Or maybe we should just reconceptualize our idea of adulthood to include difficult feelings that still need acceptance. That is one of the goals of therapy.
We learn most of what we know about relationships before we can even talk. In the business, we call this knowledge 'pre-verbal.' Our preverbal experience is pesky because, well, we don't have words for it. Imagine that your parents were very anxious about having a newborn and every time you cried, they were triggered into a panic attack. You won't remember this, but your wiring will adapt to take care of that parent, either by cutting off your needs so as to not threaten them, or by not learning to self regulate your emotions because you never got the proper kind of comfort. Either way, this is pre-verbal experience that leaks into later life and because so habitual that it is like the air we breathe. Whenever you wonder why you would do something that isn't good for yourself, or something that you rationally wouldn't decide to do, the stock explanation is that it's preverbal. We all find ourselves in those situations where we don't understand why we keep doing some self-destructive behavior, or why we can't do the more healthy behaviors we know we should. Well, the reason we can't figure out why is that it is generally pre-verbal. And because it feels too hard to figure it out with out verbal brains, we generally opt for explanations like, "I'm just lazy," or "I lack discipline," or "something is just wrong with me." This is where things really get messy and intractable. When I hear people say these things, I know we are up against the hard and early stuff. The hard stuff consists of the stuff we can't remember, the stuff we don't have words for, and the stuff that is too hard to feel. When you find yourself using these kind of self-blaming phrases, pause for a second and wonder what is going on, and what you might have had to adapt to as a baby in order to survive.
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AuthorI am a psychotherapist in private practice in Manhattan and Brooklyn Archives
December 2015
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