#35 There’s No Such Thing As Grown Ups
~ 10 minute read time ~
When you look in the mirror, do you see an ‘adult’ or just the kid you’ve always been? We may grow older and, hopefully, some wisdom is gained along the way if we’ve paid enough attention to life’s lessons, but deep down we’re all still children.
That’s great if you’ve retained your sense of fun, a joie de vivre and a curiosity about life, but it’s potentially less great if you’ve carried forward some of your emotional immaturity and your inner child serves up self-sabotaging behaviour.
How many adults do you know who act like petulant toddlers? How many alleged ‘grown ups’ are still guided by their base level reactions to the world? What about certain people you have to walk on eggshells around? I’ve seen a few adult tantrums, some of which have come from me!
Society pressures us to start taking life more seriously the older we get. We lose some of our sense of fun, youthful interests or childhood passions as we ‘outgrow’ and replace them with more acceptable age-appropriate behaviours.
It’s a strange dichotomy, where we choose to lose the facets that would potentially serve us well in adulthood, such as finding joy in simple things, our openness and honesty. Yet, we cling on to certain aspects that eventually cause us problems like bearing childish grudges, clinging on to upsets or not dealing with change very well.
Many unresolved childhood traumas are carried into the Big Bad World, we consciously forget about them until they reveal themselves often catching us unaware or blindsided. These traumas that accrue as a result of simply being born into the physical world, growing up and the shock of having to let go of our youth, or if some of us had difficult or dysfunctional parenting, if there was bullying, physical/emotional abuse or other stressors from adolescence - can manifest themselves in any number of troublesome ways.
Trauma can appear in difficult behaviour, a sense of disconnection from the world, addictions, difficulty in starting and/or maintaining healthy relationships. The link between chronic stress and diseases such as cancer has been shown to be significant.
Many problems encountered in adult life can be traced back to unresolved emotional issues in childhood. When we feel angry or upset about a specific event, or maybe we’re unsettled or anxious for a reason we’re unable to put our finger on - the response we’re feeling may be coming from a deeper well of emotion than the perceived trigger itself.
In his book ‘The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma’, Bessel Van der Kolk says:
“One does not have to be a combat soldier, or visit a refugee camp in Syria or the Congo to encounter trauma. Trauma happens to us, our friends, our families, and our neighbours.
Research by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has shown that one in five Americans was sexually molested as a child; one in four was beaten by a parent to the point of a mark being left on their body; and one in three couples engages in physical violence. A quarter of us grew up with alcoholic relatives, and one out of eight witnessed their mother being beaten or hit.
It takes tremendous energy to keep functioning while carrying the memory of terror, and the shame of utter weakness and vulnerability.”
As many developmental psychologists have noted, children are like sponges soaking up energy around them, internalising it helping them to build up their view of the external world.
Dr. Gabor Maté suggests that when a newborn child enters the world, the very presence of an evolved central nervous system points to the expectation of nurturing and love. A baby coos for affection needing to be held and stimulated, this is key for the first 3 years of an infants’ life. Similarly, the way we’ve evolved lungs shows there’s an expectation of the presence of oxygen to be breathed.
It’s not like we can click our fingers and suddenly go back and fix all of our childhood wounds, so that we can become fully healed adults. What we can do, however, is personal development work on ourselves bringing awareness to where our weaknesses keep tripping us up whilst also acknowledging where we’re strong, kind or loving. It’s an ongoing process.
The big thing I’ve found in my own healing journey is the need to establish a sense of personal ownership, accountability but above all, awareness of my thoughts and actions. So many people decry their feeling of victimhood and will sell you their sob story if you’re prepared to listen.
Sharing stories is a wonderful way of naming and getting the pain out BUT, there must come a point where we choose to underline it and change the narrative by not wallowing in our tales of woe any longer than necessary.
For all our sadness and disappointment in life, no matter how shocking or hard the experience, we must make a choice! Do we allow trauma to define us for the rest of our lives, or do we re-write the story and re-wire our brains through new thinking and action?
Trauma is not your fault.
A child is just trying to find its way in the world and we can’t choose the families we’re born into. Families can be great or terribly dysfunctional, often we don’t quite know which category ours fall into until much later when we’re able to reflect with some life experience and a wider frame of reference.
There may come a time when a person has so many issues and life is falling apart at the seams, it’s only then do we either face up to where we need to heal or continue suffering?
We can try our best to move on but issues keep repeating if we try and push them away. Through avoidant behaviour we never seem to learn our lesson - we may have a trail of bad relationships, we may have stuck in jobs we hate, we may have abused our own bodies or it may have come in the form of a big health scare.
We may have trudged through life so negatively impacted that we’re awaiting a diagnosis; or we’re so disembodied that a frightening near-miss accident wakes us up because we were so out of tune with ourselves.
“If adults are more compassionate, they are less prone to violence. If they are raised to not think like victims, they are less likely to blame others for their own challenges.
And perhaps, through raising better adults, we can even end violence and war as we know it.
We can change the world simply by changing the way we parent.”
Part of my healing has been almost re-parenting myself, becoming the father I always needed but never felt I had.
Over the past year or so, I’ve worked so hard on improving areas where I struggled. I’ve stopped the negative self-talk where I would always berate myself for the littlest mistake. I always thought that angry voice in my head was when my Dad used to tell me off all the time, even though I wasn’t a particularly naughty kid.
After he died, I had to face up to the fact he was gone and I couldn’t blame him for my suffering anymore, it was a choice.
It’s easier to blame others than to face up to our own complicity in the cause of our suffering. Suffering takes effort, I chose to channel that effort into a more constructive mindset working towards better outcomes.
Now, I’m much kinder to myself, more compassionate to myself and others and the rewards are a sense of peace and contentment, feeling comfortable in my own skin which hasn’t always been the case.
I back myself more, whereas before I lacked any kind of self-confidence and would often project onto others who I always held in higher regard than myself, yet I’d be disappointed when people let me down.
That’s unfair, because if you don’t even try yourself, you can’t complain when others try and either fail or achieve a different outcome to the one you’d hoped for. By putting too much on others, you remove yourself as a stakeholder in your own life.
Also, don’t forget that humans are terrible eyewitnesses so our subjective ‘memories’ based on youthful experiences are snippets of our take on an event. How often have you reminisced with an old friend or family member, only to realise you had a certain take on it that wasn’t the commonly held view? Then you feel weird because a long held memory or belief was now up for re-appraisal.
Which is why I always advocate against holding such firmly entrenched views, everything is up for debate and review!
Much of how we conduct ourselves as adults is based upon the decisions we made as children. Our core values are formed early, from birth to around 7 years old so the things we hold dear as the very tenets upon which we base our entire foundational beliefs for being, could actually be based on rash childish reactions.
I’m so surprised when people attempt to categorise the world in such black and white terms. There is so much that should be left open to interpretation that we can rarely, if ever, be sure of the world as we see it. Our worldview is an internal representation based upon electrical signals sent to our brain from our 5 senses. That’s a pretty narrow set of channels through which to perceive an entire Universe!
I think many of our problems could be improved, if not resolved, by working on and healing our individual trauma - looking after yourself is not selfish, it’s a service to society. A better, more resolved you is a healthier, happier and more positive contributor to humanity. If we aim to heal ourselves, and it’s a constant work in progress, we can share our stories and inspire others to heal themselves too.
“Self-care is not selfish. You can’t serve from an empty vessel.”
We can’t change or undo the hurts caused in the past, but we can forgive so that it lightens the burdens we choose to carry forward.
“Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.”
We all still carry our inner child within us, give them space to speak to you through your intuition and listen to what it wants to say to the grown up you.
There is so much healing in giving them a voice, some of what comes up may be difficult but, like bruising, it just needs to come out and heal.
If you need help, make sure you’ve got the right people around you. The child within you just needs to be seen and heard.
“Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself.”
As soon as you can forgive, change your victim mindset, you can claim your sovereignty and step into your personal power.
We’re all still just kids and the world is our playground, reduce the emotional baggage and aim to travel light.
If we took the time to heal ourselves maybe there’d be fewer wars, a healthier environment, less poverty, more food to go round, less need to hoard wealth and we’d be a much healthier, happier and prosperous species?
Just a thought…
Love
LP x
