Chapter 15: The adult child

The greater the adaptation required,

the more the individual suffers a split

between the instinctual truth and the

provisional, adaptive personality. 

  …[T]he greater the adaptation, the

more one suffers, for the psyche

will symptomatically protest

this continued wounding.

~ James Hollis

So we are each wounded in childhood.

And we carry those wounds into adulthood.

And the wounds shape our perceptions, our reactions and especially our coping without our realizing it.

Adult child is the term we use to describe this phenomenon.

Adult children are people still living according to Plan A – the set of adaptations they developed as kids.

That’s one definition. Here’s another:

Adult children are grownups who still feel like kids inside.

Maybe not all the time, but often, and especially under stress.

This happens because, under stress, adult children enter the equivalent of hypnotic trance.

In that trance, they forget that they’re grownups, and experience themselves as the kids they once were – scared, guilty, angry, confused and helpless.

The worse they were wounded as children, the more powerful this trance is.

Anyone who’s ever experienced a panic attack knows what I’m describing.

So does any adult who’s ever felt him- or herself regress to the age of six in the presence of family members.

These feelings are what R.D. Laing was describing when he said, “We are all in a post-hypnotic trance induced in infancy.”

This means, to some extent, we are all adult children.

And that there is no such thing as a completely adult human being.

That idea is so important it bears repeating:

There is no such thing as a completely adult human being.