when it interferes with life, and when it helps

Someone else’s infantilism infuriates. One’s own is not always recognized. But, like any other, infantile behavior does not arise without a reason – we understand why it is needed, why it causes so much resentment and how to get rid of it.

Infantilism: what kind of animal is this?

And without any definition it is clear that infantilism is a dirty word, a good person will not be called an infantile. It means that children’s features have been preserved in the psyche and behavior of an adult. Which?

But which ones you don’t like and seem childish, they have been preserved 🙂 In this sense, the term resembles a bag that everyone is ready to fill with whatever comes to hand – both frivolous outfits, and love of entertainment, and impulsive behavior, and the desire to shift their problems on others, and selfishness.

I will highlight those features that seem to me the most significant. The key is that an infantile person does not take responsibility for his life. It manifests itself in different ways.

Responsibility for failures lies with other people or circumstances

In especially severe cases, an infantile person blames everyone and everything if something goes wrong. Late for work? So this is due to the fact that the bus did not come on time! Small salary? So these entrepreneurs are greedy freaks. Life failed? So it’s because of wife/husband/partner #2. In a word, there will always be someone who framed our hero and mixed all the cards for him.

In a milder version, a person passes in unusual circumstances:

“Everything was going well until the crisis caused me to be laid off, and now I can’t get a job.

At the same time, somewhere in the background looms the idea that the world is unfair if crises happen in it and you can’t find a normal job.

Responsibility for your emotional state is delegated to others

An infantile person demands to be reassured, recognized, taken on board, because he is very dependent on the opinions of others. In close relationships, this looks like a merger, when there is a need to dissolve in a more stable partner.

In relation to the rest, it is a thirst for approval and recognition. If such a person does not receive this, self-esteem falls catastrophically. At the same time, he does not know how to calm himself.

Responsibility for solving one’s own problems is assigned to others

Why solve your problems on your own, if there are those who can solve my problems? This is how infantile people think and actively begin to shift the solution of their problems to others, arguing that they must do everything to make the infantile happy. As an illustration, a small anecdote.

A man flying in a hot air balloon found himself lost. He noticed a woman on the ground, and descending below, he addressed her:

“Excuse me, could you help? I made an appointment with a friend an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am right now.

– You are in a balloon 30 feet from the surface of the Earth, between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude answered the woman.

— You must be a programmer?

— Yes, how did you guess?

– You gave me an absolutely accurate answer, but I have absolutely no idea what to do with this information, and I’m still lost. To be honest, you didn’t help me at all.

– Are you a manager?

– Yes. How did you guess?

You don’t know where you are or where you’re going. You got up there thanks to the air. You made a promise you have no idea how to keep and you expect people below you to solve your problems. And, finally, now you are in the same position in which you were before meeting me, but for some reason now it was my fault.

Why is infantilism infuriating?

There are two reasons for this. The first is obvious. The second is not.

The obvious reason is that few people like it when they try to force him to solve other people’s problems or serve other people’s emotional needs. Of course, if it is important for someone to experience the illusion that without him an infantile person will be lost, then this compensates for the inconvenience. Actually, such unions, where one feels comfortable as a child, and another as a problem solver, can be stable. But in any other scenario, there is a desire to shake off the infantile from the neck.

However, infantilism can be infuriating when you see its manifestation in people who have done nothing wrong to you. Where does resentment come from?

And the reason is that you cannot afford to be infantile, or you can, but you do not accept these qualities in yourself, and someone else’s infantilism acts like a red rag on the White Guard. As soon as someone is different and wants to be on the handles, as soon as the hand reaches for the revolver, you immediately want to tinker with this adult child with his face on the asphalt, so that he finally realizes what adulthood is, and never, NEVER allowed himself THIS!

How infantile are you?

Infantilism is often perceived as a total characteristic: this person is infantile, and this one is not. But in fact, infantilism not only differs in the degree of severity, but also this severity varies from situation to situation.

For example, a person can be an excellent leader, solve the most difficult problems, take responsibility for thousands of lives, but completely get lost when you need to change a baby’s diaper and blame this matter on your wife.

In the same way, in situations where we do not have resources (we are tired, we get sick, there are more problems than we can take out), the psyche regresses, and there are more manifestations of children: someone becomes hysterical, someone clogs under a blanket, someone acts impulsively, and someone begins to blame the world around him for his failures, which is not the case for him, as long as a person has strength.

Therefore, almost everyone in life has periods and situations when he demonstrates infantile traits, some more, some less.

When is childishness useful and when not?

Infantilism is usually scolded, but there would not be so many infantile people in the world if there was no benefit from infantilism. Here are some examples.

Your boss knows everything best and wants to control everything. If you are independent and do not need guardianship, you will constantly be in conflict with him, because your decisions will always be different from his. And if you show the right degree of infantility and let him harness himself to your work, then he will be happy. A happy boss is the key to a happy career.

It works the same way in personal relationships. If one partner wants to patronize, control and provide, then the second must demonstrate infantile features so that this dance does not fall apart. And yes, gender doesn’t matter.

You want to have a successful career and be responsible for nothing. It’s a paradox, but many successful people are just distinguished by the ability to pursue only their own interests, to appoint others to blame, to shift their problems onto other people’s shoulders. This works great both in the corporate world and in politics.

The same Nassim Taleb regularly attacks the establishment, accusing it of the fact that the guys have settled comfortably – they do not risk their own skin, leaving others to pay for their mistakes. (By the way, about sore points. People who have read Taleb’s books, tell me, does he do something in them other than pouring mud on everyone, calling everyone fools and quoting philosophers? Does he offer something constructive?)

Are you sick of it. It happens that personal maturity helps to build a life in which a person is happy. But it also happens that a person fails to realize his personal fairy tale. Health problems, force majeure, the death of loved ones – all this can knock down even a very courageous and responsible person. And here the ability to ask for help, climb into someone’s arms and generally prove to be not very responsible and reliable can be saving. Sometimes saying “I couldn’t” and letting others down is more correct than trying to solve all the problems and die in the process.

But much more often, infantilism creates problems, and not only for others, but also for infantile people themselves. Is it possible to somehow reduce the degree of infantilism?

How to get rid of infantilism

Or at least significantly reduce its level? As a person who played the fool at the institute, hoping to write a great novel and become famous, I can tell you what helps to get rid of infantilism.

See the benefits of taking responsibility

It is important to understand that infantile people avoid responsibility for a reason. She is a burden for them. The burden you want to get rid of. Very often, responsibility is equated with guilt, with punishment, with problems. Who in their right mind would want to volunteer to take it?

But responsibility can be viewed differently. This is the answer that you give to life depending on the circumstances. It is the choice of the path you wish to follow. There are many difficulties, but there is also a lot of freedom. This is a prize that is definitely worth fighting for.

Before you try to get rid of infantility, you need to make its reverse side attractive – mature and responsible behavior, and see what it can give you. You, not others.

Learn to reach your goals

Infantile people have a way to achieve their goals – to sit on the neck of others. The problem is that they don’t know how to achieve their goals on their own, and there can be many reasons for this: they don’t know how, they don’t believe in themselves, they are afraid of failures and disappointments. Naturally, there are no universal recipes here and cannot be, so I will list a few ideas that turned out to be useful to me.

Reduce pain from mistakes. It is difficult for infantile people to develop, since development is inevitably associated with mistakes, and mistakes are painfully perceived by them. A trick that has helped me deal with mistakes more easily is this. When I need to learn something new, for example, reach a new level in income, I set myself the goal not to reach a new level, but to figure out how to do it. This helps to understand which processes lead to the desired result.

At the same time, I will reward myself for the number of attempts. The more different hypotheses tested, the better. As a result, errors are not perceived as errors, and in the course of experiments, hypotheses are accumulated that have brought results. So it turns out to get to the desired goals and not get too exhausted along the way.

Increase your chances of success. I tended to perceive the world as unfair because I didn’t give it a chance to prove otherwise. For example, I made only one attempt, did not achieve the desired goals and was disappointed.

When I began to perceive the world as a sales funnel, things went smoothly. It turned out that if you make 100 attempts, then 10 of them lead to the desired result. Of course, “instantly hitting the bull’s-eye – almost without aiming” is more pleasant, but the approach through the funnels is more reliable.

To be in situations where “no one but me will do.” It can be useful to be alone with a problem that needs to be solved. Such situations are useful to feel your strength and make sure that there are more resources than it seems.

Enjoy your own decisions. When you manage to achieve the goals that you have set for yourself, infantile behavior becomes unnecessary, just as crutches become redundant if the legs are healthy.

To change for the better, it’s enough to be seriously interested in yourself, so I run a free telegram channel where I write about various psychological problems and life hacks that help to cope with them. Subscribe if interested.