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The fear of being happy

 WIN

Psychotherapy/Psychoanalysis  

Work   

Insight

resume

Why Don.t Children Listen

poetry

For The Children of Crown Heights

With the strength of a giant - of life itself - the child within you clings to the past.

We fear being happy, as we fear giving up something dear to us, the love and feelings of protection we knew as children. The child within us will cling to the past rather than give in to happiness that can come with adult independence and assertiveness.  Moreover, for the sake of security, this will be done with the strength of life itself as the child within you clings to the past out of fear of its own destruction.

To ensure its own security, the child within you wishes to do and see just as it always has. This reassures the child that nothing has changed and that there is no threat of change; the beloved parent will not abandon it.

To some degree, we all unconsciously want to remain children.  Most might have a hard time accepting they have a desire to be a child. However, unconsciously there is a desire to return and relive a time when one's parents provided for them; a time when things were given to us, a time where we did not have to go after and pursue what is now needed to maintain our adult life style.    The

difficult part is to come to terms with this notion and to understand what this desire affects in our adult life.

How free are we to enjoy our lives? This question is in fact our clue to the desire to return to a time of parental protection; the greater the misery the greater the need return and be cared for like a child.  The greater the degree of pleasure in our lives the freer we are of this desire.

If life does lack the level of joy you had imagined possible, you must then begin to examine your fears regarding the responsibilities of adulthood. When this challenge is taken, you will start to move down the path of freeing yourself from the hold of the unconscious desire and discover entering a new life arena of feeling confident and being productive in ways you had not imagined possible.