Animation "Pack Baby"
The first generation of "Haidian mothers" and "chicken dolls" daughters: they were once inseparable, but they had no self; And after separation, each found itself.
"People" magazine has a "mother-daughter dialogue" column, in the third issue, invited the first generation of "Haidian mother" Ms. Connie, and her daughter, short video blogger An Wei.
In the description of the two people's respective perspectives, we can see the process of a pair of inseparable mother and daughter growing up separately.
01
A daughter who was "engulfed"
Whether it is from An's perspective or Connie's perspective, we can see that it is difficult for children to express their voices in front of their mothers until their daughters go to college.
From the second grade of Anwu Primary School, Connie began to take her children to various cram schools.
An Wei described her mother's treatment of her studies as follows: "After the fifth grade, my mother began to shift her focus to me, like her business. ”
Every weekend, holiday, winter and summer vacation, Anjiao is really on the way to study, and even their family has a joke, "Chinese New Year's Eve there is a Spring Festival Gala and Chinese New Year's Eve dinner in the evening, then play in the afternoon, can't you do two sets of questions in the morning?" ”
Connie feels that as a mother, especially a single-parent family, it is more important to raise her children to be excellent; I don't want my children to lack anything, education, love, stability in the family ...
will try to give the child the best things. Therefore, in terms of learning, we must also go for the best. From the People's Congress Affiliated Elementary School, the People's Congress Affiliated Middle School, to Anji being admitted to Cornell University, every step is in accordance with Connie's plan for the child.
An Yan: "For me, in addition to being "chicken", there is also a feeling - I have been living in the shadow of a special cow's mother, how hard you work and how good you are, others will tell you: your mother is really a cow." ”
Admitted to Cornell University, no one will say that An Wei is very hard and so on, the teacher said that An Wei can be admitted to Cornell to be grateful to Connie, classmates said that if he had a mother like Connie, he could also be admitted to Cornell.
An Wei's major was also chosen by Connie, and she felt that girls lived very comfortably as hotel managers, so she wanted An Wei to do related work.
Because Connie was separated from her father at an early age, she only had a daughter in her life and felt that no one else could be trusted except her family. Therefore, Connie pulled up an all-round line of defense against Ann.
"When I was a child, I couldn't go out alone, I couldn't ride a bicycle, even if it was three kilometers from home to school, it was all picked up by car, so that I didn't learn to take the subway until I graduated from high school," An said.
When I went to school in the United States, my mother also wanted to accompany me, so I followed. But I was actually very resistant, and on the day of departure, I seriously considered whether to cut her passport, but then I didn't do it. ”
Dutch psychoanalyst Ikki Freud proposed that there is a "symbiotic fantasy" in the mother-daughter relationship, and it is easy to form a kind of intimacy and dependence between daughter and mother that is difficult to get rid of, forming a pair of intertwined and addicted duos.
Connie and An Wan have a mother-daughter relationship, obviously there is such a "symbiotic fantasy", mother and daughter are one; Connie's love for Ann is a kind of engulfing love.
"She is all I am, my whole is hers, and raising her well is my only goal." I felt like she was my daughter and I wanted to protect her forever, unconditionally. In the conversation, Connie mentioned her previous thoughts and attitudes towards the mother-daughter relationship.
From the point of view of psychological development, this state of integration with the mother usually occurs in infancy.
Psychologist Margaret Mahler calls the second 2-6 months of birth a symbiotic period, during which the baby is in a state of oneness with the mother, which helps the mother understand what the baby needs.
At this time, integrated maternal love is an important guarantee for the survival of the baby.
But after 6 months, the baby will gradually find itself an independent individual, the mother is not himself, and he is not the mother, and begins to leave the mother's safe base to explore outward, and finally achieve the "separation and personalization" stage.
If, during this period, for subjective or objective reasons, the mother cannot allow separation in a way that adapts to the development of the baby, overprotective, controlling, and still maintaining a state of integration with the baby, it will bring the baby the trauma of being engulfed.
Babies who are swallowed may not be able to develop normal self-boundaries, and the fear and anger of domination, control, and anger are deeply suppressed in the mind, while also destroying the ability to learn to dominate their own world.
Connie arranged everything for Anwu, academic, work, life, everything was ready for her, which was an overprotection, but also an excessive interference and control, so that Anwu lost the opportunity for trial and error, lost the opportunity to explore herself, and lost her curiosity about the world in the process of growing up.
During her teenage years, she never knew what she wanted, and she felt that she basically had no ability to think for herself.
When asked why she wanted to study this major in college, she was ashamed to say it, and when she saw that her classmates genuinely liked their major, An Wei felt helpless and brought a huge impact.
An Wei felt that "I have one thing in common with the children in Hengzhong, we have always been managed, I have never had time and space to think about what I want, I have never thought about the meaning of everything I do, and when I start thinking, the pattern has been formed, and it is easy to lose some interest in the world." ”
02
Mother and daughter separated from guilt and pain
From the beginning of college, it was the moment when Ann and Connie were truly separated.
An Wan, who grew up slowly, began to be confused and afraid because she could not find her place, and a sense of separation ran through her adolescence.
She felt that she should be in a higher position, but her mother and family said she should be lower.
In this internal and external conflict, she wants to find her true place. So I want to break through from my mother's all-round encirclement, derail from the track planned by my mother, and want to live my life.
An Yu when she was a teenager, many of her struggles were "suppressed" by her mother and her family.
An tried to lock himself in his room by saying that he did not study, but he attracted a "criticism meeting" from the whole family. An said: "Everyone came to criticize me, and I didn't get any understanding for this, but everyone criticized me more. ”
Going to school in the United States gave An Wei the ability and space to fight this integrated relationship and separate from her mother.
Refusing to go to the house rented by his mother to eat, participating in the new student activities in school, coldly handling the relationship with his mother, slowly achieving separation from Connie, and forcibly cutting off the symbiotic connection between mother and daughter.
Later, Connie gave up her studies and returned to Beijing, only to let An Jiao spend a less suffocating time abroad.
The mother-daughter relationship enters a new milestone here. An Wei, who "changed tracks", slowly tried and made mistakes in his life, explored, and looked for more possibilities for himself.
After returning to China, An Wei did not do the so-called special serious and special money-making things, but kept looking for his own direction, going to animation companies, becoming an Internet celebrity, and shooting videos.
Connie also slowly realized that Anji was her daughter, but not a clone of herself.
Connie: "The love and education that a mother gives her child is OK to a certain extent, but if it exceeds that degree, it may become her bottleneck or even a ceiling." ”
In fact, in the process of separation, An Wei did not get rid of the pleasure of her mother's control, but more felt that she was a bad daughter, the psychological pressure was particularly great, and she felt very guilty and self-blamed.
Every time she went to school in the United States separately, Anji was both painful and suffocating. Connie's very desperate expression made Ann feel guilty and wanted to stay. But Anji knew that this was the only chance he could leave.
"I can only push away, there is no other choice. So I have no right to cry, no right to cry. ”
Although leaving the unhealthy relationship with his mother caused him pain, it was also the beginning of Anji's own growth.
And Connie is also tormented in this process of disengagement. She admits that she also needs emotional weaning.
In this "weaning period", Connie described it this way: "Really thinking about heart-wrenching, can't think, can't look at things in the room." "The teacher I know over there sent me photos of Anjiao participating in the event, crying first, crying a little. ”
There is a saying in psychology that a healthy parent-child relationship requires going through three separations.
The first separation is at birth, when the baby is physically separated from the mother, but at this time the emotional dependence still exists, and the spirit is still the mother-infant community.
The second separation took place at about six months, the "separation and personalization" phase mentioned above. Separation is physical and explicit separation again, while individualization is psychological separation.
The third separation can last a long time, arguably from the age of three to eighteen, or even longer. This is the separation of the individual from the original family, to find his own sense of subjectivity, a sense of subjectivity of "this is my world, I have the final say".
It can be said that experiencing separation is to follow the law of children's growth, and it is also the only way to complete the parent-child relationship.
Connie and Anjiao's inseparable mother-daughter relationship will eventually lead to separation, and symbiotic fantasies are just fantasies.
The separation of Connie and An's mother-daughter relationship is also in line with their respective psychological development and changes in the current situation. This is also the stage that we and our parents go through when we become adults.
As children, when we grow up and become adults, we slowly detach ourselves from our parents' lives in the stages of going to school, going to work, and starting a family, and the parent-child boundary has infiltrated from each other to separation from each other, forming a clear boundary.
At the same time, adult children, both financially and emotionally, have a greatly reduced need to rely on their parents.
Economic independence has given children an increasing voice, and the family power structure has changed from unilateral power to equal distribution. The parent-child relationship will change from the unilateral discipline of the previous parents to a bipolar, balanced, interactive relationship.
These changes will also make the parent-child relationship between each other fundamentally changed.
This requires parents and children to be aware of and adjust each other's relationship patterns to maintain a good state of parent-child relationship.
Otherwise, in the present time that each other has changed, it is still difficult to get along in the past way, it is difficult to meet the needs of the present, which will only make the relationship deadlocked, bringing conflicts and contradictions.
This is also the reason why many young people are now ambivalent about going home during the holidays.
want to go home to see my parents and reunite as a family;
But after returning home, there will always be quarrels, young people feel that their parents do not want to listen to what they say, parents feel that their children grow up and their wings are hardened, and they always talk back.
03
Growth after separation
Freud said: "The main motivation for the growth of children comes from separation from their parents".
When children grow up and become adults, it is actually the process of developing a separate self.
In this process, ta needs to find where his place is in the world, needs to become an independent individual, and has the ability to think independently; And these require the separation of ta from their parents, and they also need their parents' permission to separate.
This is well embodied in Ann and Connie. After keeping a certain distance from Connie, Ann constantly seeks her own space, learns to get rid of the imprint of controlled growth, and slowly explores the topic of "who am I".
He has fallen into the pain of self-pulling, and has also fallen into the nothingness of resisting everything but still can't find himself, but in the end, An Wei still found his own positioning, and did something that made him happy and could make this society progress.
"So this kind of thinking also freed me from a lot of limitations. The road to happiness seems to have been stretched, and now the whole person is in a state of tearing down and reset. ”
And Connie also has a new view of the mother-daughter relationship: "To describe it figuratively, I feel like a seesaw, I want to be close to her, like when she was a child, pay attention to her safety, hold her; Slowly she wants to stay away from me, and I should be farther away, and if I get closer, I will be out of balance. Maybe it's a dynamic balance. ”
After separating from Ann, Connie is also looking for her own position, "what I live for", realizing that she needs her own life and does not need to revolve around her children.
Getting rid of the old identity of parents and children, after experiencing separation, is to let both parties redefine the parent-child relationship as independent adults. This re-identification of the relationship will promote the sublimation of the relationship.
In this new relationship, each of them treats each other as an individual, respects each other's ideas and feelings, and supports and accepts each other. This is a healthy, nurturing parent-child relationship.
END
▎This article is the original article of the center, please indicate the source when reprinting, and the company reserves the right to pursue users without permission.