There are way too many child adults around.
In which I consider the developmental needs of adults who act like children
Child adults. You know who I’m talking about.
Me, for example.
When I feel needy — a totally unacceptable feeling for me — and express it by being angry and self-righteous
When I gleefully compose, in my mind, snarky rejoinders to people who have wronged me
When I run around doing everyone’s jobs for them (without their asking) and then sulk when no one appreciates me
When I am so fearful — of failure, of others’ judgment, of conflict, of powerlessness, of my own internal critic — that I paralyze myself and blame or denigrate others
Child adults, in other words, are adults who have regressed and are behaving like children.
It’s funny — writing this feels transgressive, like I’ve just broken a serious taboo. I mean, we don’t talk about adults this way. We talk about children’s development; we even talk about adolescent development; but we never talk about adult development.
We just assume that, once you’ve reached age 30 (because the adolescent stage now extends through our 20s, apparently), you qualify as mature. As ripe. As finished. No more growth for you.
Which means behavior that adults engage in is supposed to be acceptable by definition. Certainly not something anyone gets to call out.
But that’s just crazy. And it’s contrary to the fact that, as living beings, we are always changing — at least, we always have the potential to change and be better (and worse, for that matter).
So let’s talk a little about adult development. Starting with fitting together. (Of course.)
As you now know, because you have read every single post I’ve written since Being Better began, human beings fit together all the time. Throughout our lifetimes. We never stop. It’s how we work, how we function, how we survive, as living organisms.
And the ways we become accustomed to fitting together stay with us past adolescence. Our expectations and assumptions about the world that we developed growing up stay with us. In fact, they deepen. Because we’ve been practicing those beliefs and behaviors and fits for many, many years.
Most of the time we adults are super flexible. We respond to circumstances effectively, doing the dance that is required for the moment, getting our work done. It’s when stress hits that we tend to revert — one might even say regress — to earlier survival tactics — or fits — that worked for the child but do not work for the adult.
Stress like not getting our way or feeling ashamed or not having control or being deeply disappointed or disagreeing with someone.
Survival tactics like throwing tantrums (something only children do, right? guess again), wholesale blaming, vicious attacking, and cutting off. Jumping on Dichotomy Drive, the road where there are only two rigid destinations: on or off, good or bad, right or wrong, me or you. No in-between. No middle ground.
It’s been reported that getting on Dichotomy Drive feels really good. Raging, snarking, hating, hitting, withdrawing, punishing, blaming, defining, controlling, harassing, threatening, playing the martyr, pinning people to the wall — oh boy! These are effective antidotes to being flooded with unbearable feelings!!
But they are evidence of a developmental gap, a space one was unable to bridge when one was forming psychically. Specifically, they are evidence that the adult (like the child) who is manifesting these behaviors has a crucial immediate need: to be contained. And a crucial long-term need: to learn how to metabolize overwhelming feelings, that is, to contain themselves.
But hold on: I’m talking here about defensive acting out. That is, acting out that is a psychological defense against anxiety. Acting out that helps adults manage overwhelming conscious emotions (or emotions that never make it to consciousness because the defenses kick in that fast) in ways that they learned as children. Because these defenses worked for them as children. In their childhood realities.
Reality is key. There are acts of rage that are not defensive because they are justified by reality. A racist reality, for example. A misogynistic reality. A classist reality. A Christian Nationalist reality. Realities that demonstrably exist. And need to be changed.
As my therapist once put it, sometimes we have to shout to be heard.
When adults act out defensively, they impose their childhood reality onto their current reality. And they regress to being children in that remembered reality. (This is called transference. A really really useful concept.) It’s possible that, like children, child adults hope through their acting out that someone will stop them, will hold them, will care for them. But they don’t really have a right to expect that, do they? Because, of course, adults are fully formed and don’t need this kind of developmental care.
And so we adults let each other run rampant.
I’m kind of relieved to be able to write this out loud: that adults need to develop, too. Child adults need to be held, contained. By themselves, first and foremost. That is, when I’m needy or snarky or grandiose or scared and anxious, I’m my first caretaker. I can pay attention to myself, notice my emotions, wonder about them, get help working through them, figure out what I’m willing to do about them, feel compassion for myself. Stop myself from acting out. Learn from myself about myself and others.
If that fails, then I need to be contained by firm and centered and caring adult adults. My husband or friend (or parent or therapist or psycho-coach) can say, “What do you need? You probably won’t get it if you don’t ask for it — cuz I can’t read your mind.” Or “Please stop doing my jobs for me. I’ll get to them in my own good time — and if that’s too late for you, let’s talk about a compromise.” Or “What are you afraid of? How does your fear help you? How does it hinder you?” Adult adults can disrupt — to use a very popular word these days — maladaptive transferential patterns and encourage child adults to try something different. Because action that contradicts our baked-in expectations of the world is the only way to change those expectations and make way for better expectations that spawn better behavior, healing, growth.
We adults are not done growing. And some adult behaviors are just plain wrong. When we’re child adults (and we all are sometimes), we need to own it. When we’re adult adults, we need to offer loving containment. We all need it. No matter what age we are.
And if we don’t do it, who will?