“Fell into childhood” - a reproach, in psychological decoding meaning “Young lady, you have gone beyond the limit of what I consider acceptable - return to the place that I have allocated for you in this world and do not fidget, otherwise your behavior and train of thought do not fit with my worldview. And I am uncomfortable.”
I got to the kindergarten in the center of the city quickly in my car, but I stopped a couple of times on the way, I kept doubting whether, and what I should do there, as a 30-year-old IT specialist. And yet I decided and did not regret it!
In the kindergarten I was met by two teachers, such tall girls.
One teacher looked very nice, she was a head taller than me, her name was Zhanna Arkadyevna. She came up to me, looked into my eyes so soulfully, I even swayed with excitement and almost buried my nose in her bust. And she...
Childhood. There is so much in this word that is bright, good, kind and truly sincere.
After all, only when we are small do we love and be friends sincerely. We don’t try to use each other for any of our own purposes; we don’t need anything other than friendship. The concept of "using" will come later, when we grow up.
He and she were in the same group in kindergarten. Then life brought them together at school, in the second grade. They were friends. We went to school together, walked outside, played with a ball, visited each other for days...
The world of childhood, big and beautiful, we all lived in this world, we all walked through the world of childhood. There is nothing more wonderful and more beautiful than the world Togo. In the world of childhood there is eternal carelessness, kindness, the lightness of an airy cloud, naivety and childish spontaneity, carelessness. Happy childhood will never leave the soul and heart of everyone. Probably every person lives with memories of a carefree childhood.
But all children dream and want to be adults and imitate adults. I really want them to be big...
There are moments in life when you want to return to the past, go somewhere far away, to the land of childhood - the land of lived moments; a country that is crazy, carefree, sometimes not very have a fun life; a country where you have already been and are still drawn there... But all these are dreams, or they have not yet invented a time machine, or a reverse process in metabolism, which, although it would not return there, would make our body forever young. Almost all teenagers and children strive to grow up quickly, not understanding what they have in their...
Childhood is not a small head with big thoughts, unlike the body. Childhood is
Positive emotions and boundless joy of a simply happy creature. The thing is
The fact that childhood is passing, and these emotions and states of happiness that one dreams of
Grown-up people are not going anywhere. It's about feelings, not age. You
You can feel this again by opening up to the world, marveling at its miracles every day, every
Little things and every big thing, discovering the miracle of your...
There are two of them, there are two of them all the time. Two men. I often began to dream about them in my sleep. The woman in white said: This is your father. And I've never seen him. The second man wears black clothes all the time, but I don’t see his face. And in my dreams I keep leaving them. Well, I don’t believe in a kind uncle...Flowers, good clothes, cars. I am often driven around in a nice car. And from the window I look at the city or nature. But I don’t see who else is sitting in the cabin. The ride is smooth and quiet. It’s pleasant and doesn’t make you feel dizzy at all. Although I haven't since childhood...
I dreamed of the past
And my heart beat faster.
I started to lose control
I started to lose control...
I felt insecure -
You stopped loving me!
Something trembled in me
Something trembled in me...
I didn't mean to torture you.
I'm sorry I made you cry...
I didn't mean to torment you -
I'm just a jealous guy.
(John Lennon, "The Jealous Guy")
In this song from the album Imagine, Lennon describes two trances at once. First, from an adult in the present, he turns into a wounded child in the past. Secondly, it is not he who loses control, but the inner child into whom he has turned - it is this child who is afraid, trembles and jealous. This song was more suited to the title “Jealous Wounded Child” because its hero turned into a child (he dreamed of the past and became younger than he really was).
Has anything like this ever happened to us? Our partner somehow looked at us wrong - and suddenly we are overwhelmed by a storm of emotions. This is the dark side of our child - a circuit that turns on automatically, taking us from the present to the long past.
Age regression is a condition in which you act as if you are younger than you actually are. The observer sees the image of the traumatic episode and continues to store in memory the image of the injured child, which captures his image, thoughts and feelings. If any situation resembles this picture, the child again reproduces previous thoughts and feelings that have a very distant relationship to reality.
Age regression is the most common type of trance. It is directly related to a moment of traumatic experience that was too difficult or incomprehensible to be accepted and integrated. Therefore, the observer resists the perception of what is happening, preferring to immerse himself in memories. Therefore, as an adult, you sometimes lose control over your actions, words, feelings, reactions. You experience the world through the eyes of your inner child, limiting your understanding, possibilities, and choices.
Let's consider this example. The mother wants the child to please her. She asks him to do what pleases mommy in order to earn her love, attention and recognition.
Such a demand is too painful for a child to comprehend. Asking the child to refuse own desires and, perhaps, even from oneself in order to please mommy (and therefore survive) - this means cutting off the child from his deepest needs. The startled and stunned observer creates the “obsequious child” survival strategy.
He, however, has another side - an evil and aggressive one lurking under the mask of obsequiousness. Another thing: wouldn't you be angry if you had to ingratiate yourself to beg for love? Many of my patients were always slightly irritated with the world. When a patient tells me: “I’m always angry at the world!” - I ask him: “What need of yours remains unsatisfied?” Anger and frustration are the result of not getting what you want -
Often we get angry and curse the whole world instead of asking ourselves the question: “What do I want and am not getting?”
This question interrupts childish anger and resentment, helping the adult to realize his real needs, which have remained unsatisfied until now.
Accusation“It's such a relief to know who to blame for everything. If you are suffering, someone must be to blame for it... We often blame others for our own decisions and actions. In this blaming trance, someone always has to do everything for you, and you have no responsibility - neither for asking for what you want, nor for saying no, nor for doing what you want. "
Of course, it is not easy to directly ask your partner or spouse for what you want, since the dark side of the inner child wants to receive without asking for anything. Asking is risky and dangerous, since the child has already been punished for it. Parents often said things like, “What do you think you are?” “Do you think money grows on trees?” In India (see Chapter 14 “Pseudo-spirituality”) it is believed that the expression of one’s desires, like the desires themselves, is the source of all human problems. In many situations, a child learns to get what he wants, not by asking directly, but by acting in a roundabout way. Sometimes mom or dad serve as an example, showing the child how to get what he wants without asking. The parents demonstrate their manipulations to the child, and years later the child in the adult’s soul is angry with his wife because she “does not understand without words” his signals. Very often, people complain that their spouse does not understand what they want from them until they are told it directly.
I once worked with a patient who wanted to understand his relationship with his mother. I asked him, “What did you want from her?” He replied: “I wanted to get everything I want, whenever I want it, without asking.” When an adult heard what his inner Child wanted, he was able to free himself from his desires.
cut off own feelings hurt. Often the child pretends that his desires are not so important. Years later, he doesn't know what he wants. The famous psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich, in his book The Murder of Christ, compares natural vitality and energy to Christ. Reich suggests that the parent, by trying to make the child comfortable and cutting him off from natural desires and feelings, “kills” his life force. Reich calls this the "emotional plague." Reich argues that when our life force suppressed or destroyed, we begin to suppress and destroy the life force of other people. In other words, you are trying to suppress or destroy someone else's life force exactly to the extent that your own life force is suppressed or destroyed.
IN last years In the West, ancient healing systems of acupuncture, known long ago in Asia, became popular. Why? We believed, like Reich, that the cause of illness was a blockage of the natural energy flow.
For example, if a girl is considered unattractive, she may experience pain and try to protest against this attitude. Deep down, however, the inner child creates a trance: “I am ugly.” This trance is very common and can be accompanied by migraines, ulcers and colitis. After all, cutting off your natural flow of energy is not an easy job.
Another example. The child experiences some strong emotion in relation to mom. Mom calls this energy “anger” and suppresses it - with words, punishment or denial of love. This flow of energy, now called “anger,” has to go somewhere. Where does he go? The child transfers it inside himself, creating anger towards himself, self-hatred, guilt or depression. I recently worked with a patient whose throat started to hurt when he was angry. As he focused on his throat, the image of his dad appeared before his eyes. When I asked him to express his anger to Dad, his throat tightened. I asked him, “What would you like to tell dad?” He replied: “I would like to strangle him!” When I asked him to do this mentally, his throat tightened, as if he wanted to strangle himself. We see how a man, unable to express anger towards his father, turns it against himself and “strangles” himself. Result: chronic sore throat.
When faced with a problem, a person can suddenly “become younger” - and then not only his feelings and emotions, but also his thoughts become infantile. It can be assumed that any problem contains an element of age regression, indicating the presence of an inner child.
The inner child interacts with itself in the past, and not with another person in the present. I worked with a divorced woman who told me that her husband always thought she was a whore. No matter how she tried to prove that he was wrong, it was all useless. One day during breakfast, she looked into his eyes and saw that he was “watching a movie.” He was fading into the past. Instead of own relationships with his wife, he saw the relationship between the child and his mother, and transferred this picture from the past to the present.
This process, repeated as a child, often makes us lonely in our relationships with others. Instead of communicating with others here and now, our child communicates with parents there and then. The child becomes a hypnotist, instilling in the adult inadequate patterns of perception and behavior. And then we lose contact with the other person and the outside world, feeling loneliness, misunderstanding and alienation.
A woman who is in a trance of “I am ugly” will most likely attract a man who will consider her that way. The general trance of their inner children (her and her husband) may be a repetition of their old family trances. In essence, both husband and wife fall into a state of age regression, projecting the parent onto the partner and losing touch with each other.
When an adult “falls into childhood,” blind spots form in his perception. A relationship cannot be normal if neither partner is present in the here and now.
Task1. Recognize when you “fall into childhood.”
2. Notice in what situations this happens and what is the “trigger”.
3. Look where the inner child is - near you; inside your physical body; both here and there at the same time?
4. Observe the personality of the inner child.
5. Accept responsibility for creating this identity.
6. Realize that you are the observer and creator of both the personality of the inner child and the window through which you see the world through his eyes.
7. Stop creating the inner child personality as such a window.
Age regression is the basic process by which an observer moves from the present to the frozen past. The observer sees the world through his eyes dark side inner child, thereby hiding the picture of the present. Interrupting this process frees the observer from hypnosis and places the memory where it belongs - in the past. Let's consider this example. An observer sees a little girl in 1956. Uncle Henry pesters her. The observer is not able to correctly understand what is happening at this moment and feels confusion and chaos. In this chaos, the observer “turns on the freeze frame” and makes the decision: “Don’t trust men, and this won’t happen again,” trying to protect the girl. In 1992, a 42-year-old woman harbors a wounded child in her soul that arises when John wants to enter into intimate relationships with her. The observer transfers the relationship with Uncle Henry in 1956 to the relationship with John in 1992. The woman “falls into childhood” and becomes a girl - frozen and trembling for some unknown reason.
In this example, the observer sees in the picture an offended little girl and the offender - Uncle Henry. Both characters live in the inner child - the victim and the offender. These two parts continue to arise in interactions with men years later. In this case, the offender is projected onto men, and the woman feels like a trembling victim; or the role of the victim is transferred to the child, and the “tormentor” comes out and tortures him. It is the “tormentor” (as part of the inner child) who causes pain to other children; This explains that almost every person who causes pain to children in one way or another experienced it themselves in childhood.
Let's look at another example. I recently worked with a patient who complained that she hated herself and heard a voice inside her head saying: “You are bad,” “You need to be punished,” “I hate you.” We discovered that as a child she was tormented by her stepfather, who said these exact words to her. The observer saw in the picture the stepfather and the girl he was beating. Both lived inside her, and she heard a voice inside her head saying her stepfather's words. This part merged with her and became a “tormentor”. Therefore, the voice of the tormentor (hypnotic suggestion) became part of the dark side of her inner child.
These voices and subsequent low self-esteem were the result of a trance induced by the tormentor. When the inner child merges with this trance, even after many years the torturer continues to live inside him, hypnotizing the adult with disgusting suggestions. Frozen memory and resistance to the chaos that arose in past situation, - this is what forces the observer to constantly consider the past as the foreground, and the present to be put behind. Dehypnotization returns everything to its place - the present comes to the fore, and the past recedes back.
It is extremely important to discover your inner child and the trances with which he holds on to problems. The observer can then again take responsibility for creating the inner child. Your task is to observe and explore the trances of your inner child, which you previously called a “problem” or a “symptom”. The trance you used as defense mechanism in childhood, we will call it a “family trance”, since you (the child) were suggestible, and your parents were hypnotists. People were taught to survive using familial trance skills. Children who did not conform to the family trance could be labeled as “bad” or “problematic.” People fall into trances without understanding why they are acting childish. This is the process of age regression.
Here's another example. A little girl sits on her daddy’s lap and learns to be a “sweetheart” so that her daddy can buy her a new dress. Years later, she sits on her husband’s lap, turning into the same “sweetheart” in order to receive a new dress. This is the same trance of the inner child.
You create your experience using the process of age regression to avoid facing the present. Your task is to awaken from this sleepy stupor and become the observer and creator of your true experience of life here and now. When will you wake up, when will you be free from this childhood condition- you will have access to resources that were not available when you were a child.
When you become disidentified from your trance, many problems lose their grip on you.
Next step How to deal with age regressionRemember.
When you are immersed in memories, when age regression has completely taken over you, allow yourself to fully enter into the situation that you have been resisting. In other words, you need to look at the chaos or trauma without freezing the frame or interrupting the movie. Then you resisted, not wanting to see this film - and now this frame appears again, and again, and again.
Step 1. Recognize your trance.
The most important thing in freeing yourself from the trance of the inner child is to recognize it. Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) said: “To break out of prison, you must first understand that you are in it.” (Ram Dass "The Only Dance") By noticing and observing your inner child, you become an observer - this is the first important step.
Step 2. Answer the following questions and record your answers.
1) Location. Where is the inner child located within your physical body or in the surrounding space?
2) Self-esteem. When you merge with this character, does your self-image change? How?
3) Attitude. When you merge with this character, does your view of the world change? How?
4) Does this character have any feelings or emotions? Which?
Step Z. Now that you know more about the personality of your inner child, ask him two questions and write down the answers. Keep asking questions until you know the answer.
1) What don't you want to know about yourself?
2) What do you not want to experience?
When your inner child responds to you, write down its responses.
Step 4. Homework.
Once you know the answers to the questions, over the next week, observe how often you become an inner child.
Step 5. Give this character a name: loser, victim, manipulator, etc.
Every time he appears, or you notice that you are merging with him, call him by name. This will help you to disidentify and no longer identify with the inner child, but instead become an observer of what is happening here and now.
SummaryExploring the two sides of the inner child allows us to observe its actions. This introspection enhances our awareness. Mindfulness helps us break out of our mechanical childhood trance. To get rid of something, you first need to study it. These exercises promote the awareness we need to explore the workings of the inner child in order to release it and return to the Present.
In winter, even familiar things are difficult. Reduction daylight hours leads to the fact that we confuse day with night: we leave the house when it is still dark, and return during twilight. Low air temperatures can also result in fatigue. But if you look at winter through the eyes of a child, the perception of this difficult time of year will change dramatically. Remember how kids rejoice at the first snow? They are surprised, as if they see a fairy-tale white kingdom instead of their home yard. Then they run outside, not afraid of the frost, gather friends and laugh and build a snowman, beaming with a healthy glow. Children don't care that the days are shorter in winter because they are filled with games. Why don't you remember these happy moments this coming weekend?
“Returning to childhood can be understood as a return to something natural, that is, to one’s real self. This is especially important if it increases internal conflict, causing a feeling of loss of path, false guidelines, self-alienation,” comments Jungian psychoanalyst Lev Khegai.
During the weekend, reward yourself with a trip to the park to shed some weight. working week: play snowballs with abandon, imagine yourself as a champion figure skating or have a cross-country skiing competition. Just a couple of hours spent “as a child” will relieve nervous tension and relieve the burden of daily worries.
“Adult life closes our ability to express emotions, but if you try, you will be surprised how normal and natural it is. The fact is that stress freezes us, blocks creativity, and a person who plays is, first of all, a creative person,” explains child psychoanalyst Anna Skavitina. It’s worth asking yourself the question: “Why not, since an adult decides everything himself?” – and then (the most difficult thing) overcome fear through willpower. Children or friends you trust will become...
Lev Khegai notes that one of the meanings of childhood is a new beginning, and behind the children's games of adults there is a desire to be born again, that is, the hope for a creative renewal of life. Of course, you can arrange a “holiday of disobedience” for yourself in the summer. But in winter this is especially true: “The end annual cycle, the most dark time, the death of the old sun and the birth of a new one. Together with the baby Jesus, we seem to be born again, we find new meanings of our being, discovering in ourselves inexhaustible source life-affirming creativity. That's why winter activities have special meaning", adds the psychoanalyst.
So, winter is the best time to return to childhood. Nature itself gives us the opportunity for this. In addition to the usual games on fresh air, dozens of options for winter recreation with children or “instead” of them have appeared - from snowmobiles to dog sledding. What kind of black stripe can we talk about when everything around is covered in white?
