To finally grow up you have to “kill your mother”.  However, many people have a problem with this

To finally grow up you have to “kill your mother”. However, many people have a problem with this

Relationships with parents in adult life are a topic that arouses great emotions. There has been more and more talk about it in recent years. Many of us only at a mature age notice various problems and start working on them.

Some time ago, psychotherapist Justyna Dworczyk spoke about breaking away from parents’ expectations. According to the expert, in order to become an adult, we must, in the psychological sense, “kill our mother”. In turn, he must allow him to do so.

To safely transition into adulthood, a parent must help him

During the conversation, the psychotherapist referred to a fragment from the book “Waking to Life” by Thomas H. Ogden. – Growing up requires the involvement of willpower and unconscious mental work, and this goal can only be achieved with the help of parents who support mental development. […] Growing up – becoming fully ourselves – requires not only a loosening of ties to identifications with both healthy and pathological aspects of our parents; we have to “kill” something vital in them – not all in one hit and not in all dimensions, but we have to contribute to their dying – says Thomas H. Ogden.

As the expert notes, “killing” a parent is usually not an easy process. – Therefore, for a child to be able to safely transition into adulthood, a parent must help him or her. She must give herself the right to – I am not afraid to say it – die as the mother of a child and be born as the mother of an adult. That role is over. An adult child no longer needs a guardian parent, but a parent who is the adult’s partner.

Psychotherapist: Children are not born to meet our expectations

Moreover, such a process may generate opposition, resistance and accusations. – Children are not born to meet our expectations. “I failed” is a symptom of the so-called narcissistic extension, i.e. “what I couldn’t handle, my children will handle for me and for me”, the focus is on “I”. The demands of a parent’s unfinished personal development mean that some people have to keep their children with them until they fulfill their desire for them to be perfect – according to their assumptions and plans. And this will never happen, said the expert.

Source: Gazeta

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