Motherhood — forbidden feelings Bashny.Net

A dialogue between two psychologists about difficult feelings after the birth

 

"Life is busy as perpetuating itself and surpassing itself; if all it does is support itself, it means not to live but to die."

 

This quote is a feminist writer and wife of the Sartre — Simone de Beauvoir. Before I would consider this quotation from the point of view of the consumer society, saying that only indulging in hedonism and gluttony, does not go far. These classes are enjoyable and even very good, but if your life is not realized any sense, and you just eat, drink, and go to work, then it is possibly a way to crisis, depression, existential vacuum. The meaning is not something out there, a large, highly spiritual and abstract and inaccessible.

The meaning can be very simple and straightforward, the main thing to find him. The meaning may be at work, if you love it, and I am a, or, if it brings money to my family if the main value for me is family. Love, friendship, beauty, art, knowledge, travel, family, children... In all these fields full of meanings for each of us. We Excel in work and sport, immortalised in art and children, for example. It's simple and it means to live. But what if there is meaning, and the joy of its realization?





About unexpected feelings during the first pregnancy in 30 years have passed since our first dialogue with Elena. Today I want to deal with the feelings of young mothers who managed to become involved in the miracle birth of a new life, to buy like the biggest sense possible. Does this mean that they are protected from depression and burnout? Whether their life from this moment filled with unconditional meaning and happy a priori? Whether they received an inexhaustible source of strength and love? And what they do with it all?

Maternal instinct vs. The mother echidnaAnastasia:

The maternal instinct as though there are as if it is not. It is, if someone wants to take the child on hands and in General approaching him, he is there when the child woke up and cried when he was peacefully sucking when smiling and agukaet. However, when the baby cries in the evening and bends, it lasts a long time and nothing helps, the maternal instinct begins to flicker like a faulty light bulb in the stairwell: that is, no.

Generally, when the baby does not sleep and does not let go of himself, not giving to drink the first Cup of coffee, take a shower, focus on writing articles, to sleep in a little bit, straighten your back and allow the hands to rest (underline), then gradually he loses the kind, infinitely loving his mother and replaced by some other woman.

I remember how my son was maybe a week, he is very tiny, I hold him in my arms, he cries and I look down on the floor and pretend that if I now opens his hands, the child will fall and be broken, and certainly will not survive, and nothing can be done. It's all over. Forever. And that thought does not scare me, only raises the question of criminal liability and psychological torment after the deed. But I really consider the option of a "Bang" son on the floor, though, and choose not to.

Elena:

For life I remember the impression of Chekhov's story "sleepy": how the girl-maid shakes a baby from lack of sleep and wants to strangle him. I was 12 years. And this was the first information that children can have a variety of desires, including all sorts of terrible. And, of course, the maternal instinct that that child would have survived no matter what.

But who said that maternal instinct prevents want rest for yourself? Task – child to survive and not die from lack of sleep. Maternal instinct does not mind if you will take all possible help from other people. For the money, does not matter. It's really hard around the clock with your child, especially if the psyche is such that the contact can not withstand a lot. And I congratulate you, with your instinct, everything is OK, if you're thinking and not doing. That is, if you don't Bang son on the floor, everything is OK. But the thoughts are there are many. Now even the Czechs aware of this was.

There are now a totalitarian trends in motherhood, however, as in everything else. Sit with your child in the morning until the evening, feed her to the kindergarten and to develop it around the clock! This is your sense of home, purpose and the main exit to the stage. And, Yes, please arru. Narcissistic nonsense in the long run. Attempt to become the perfect mother. Mother heroin, I call it. Usually ends with a loud failure.

Children allow us to rise above itself vs.BoredomElena:

I'm not sure that children allow us to rise above itself, but they are just forced to find out own limitations, resources of love, for example. Resources of patience, the limits of bodily functions. Their forms and manifestations. And here is a girl, and thinks that will give birth to five children, sees herself in the picture: she in a beautiful dress with hair and five angels. Then one gives birth and highly disappointed in myself. No angel, no hair. So the kids are working on the reality principle against vulgar idealism.

Psychologists children highly recommended, reduce the degree of regulatory activity. Know a great story about psychologists with a psychoanalytic bias, which is quite a hard stance to normal weaning, I think it is necessary to tie this thing to a year — nothing separation process to detain. And then faced with the real experience and the food up to two years. So that children is an experience first and foremost. The experience itself is a real mother. I think it is never boring to know, but I certainly predeformation.

It is important that there are no universal rules. And those women who regress well, themselves largely the children, they were not very boring crawl with a typewriter on the floor, for example, or dolls to dress up. It is a high completely. And women of intellectual labour regress very poorly given. Bored of the same thing to do every day. Ate, peed, pooped, popukal, sleep – Groundhog day.

And now a lot of women of intellectual labour, and they do Groundhog day is not recommended. Even sometimes dangerous. Depression causes and minipigs. Because to regress to the biological condition to be able to. Cow to be in school are not taught the girls, taught to be a cow! So, if you are not able to be converted into a container, chew grass and milk yield increase, it is not necessary to torture yourself and child. You - motherhood is not suitable. And the meanings will have to combine to surpass itself in complicating the logistics of their own lives.

Anastasia:

Yes, I understand what you mean. I sometimes think that maybe having a baby was a mistake. It's some kind of super-complicate their own lives, do not know why. Do I just go on about society and really wanted him to?

By the way, you might think that the super-complexity of life – it's like a challenge, a challenge that must be overcome, to overcome, to show imagination, individuality, to do something. No. Most of the time it's like doing nothing, just uncomfortable, tyanuchee, stupid, uncontrolled releases of adrenalin, often without a good reason, despair and waiting, waiting, waiting...

I'm waiting for when the baby eats, when he goes to sleep, when he will poop when he will stop crying when her husband cook the food when the husband will be able to give me a Cup of tea, which is a meter away from me, but I'm afraid to move, because the son finally fell asleep in my arms... a Lot of just looking in one spot, examining the walls, the bookshelves. I'm waiting for when he grows up. It's been 2 months. Yay! During this time, he's not dead, not sick, very grown up. Great! Waiting for more. It will be easier.

Elena:

Here in this place where you wait until he grows up, I have a lot of resistance occurs. You know, children grow very long. Twenty years approximately. That's if you're lucky, some do not strive to grow. So, the issue immediately arises is to combine fear for the life and health of the child and enjoy your own life with your child. Fear is normal is reduced. The first year in this sense the emotional load. But he's not going anywhere this fear. It goes on in the background. So expect nothing special.





Children, cats and mimimi vs BiologyAnastasia:

The baby often does not seem to me impossible nice. I do not feel ease, unconditional affection and joy, when you look at it. All these feelings available to others in relation to my son, but rarely to me. As though with me something not so. Also, my son sometimes cries in my arms, and the hands of the Pope or the nurse calms down.

I to it basically – the food and colic after, and all the interesting and exciting it with others. I don't even have fantasies with him in something to play. I'm so stressed about everything, so focused on his condition, what topics for games I just don't come to mind. I little talk to my son. I imagined it as the most beautiful and natural – to communicate with the child, to tell him, to sing him a lullaby, but I often have no words, I can only be silent and gaze into his eyes, hoping that he will understand me. However, I'm not sure he actually understands me.

Elena:

For a long time the mother and child constitute a single mental system, intricate. Like pregnancy, when it is not clear – there are two of you or you together one. The child was born, and the unconscious one. It is very convenient, because the maternal instinct is running on a non-verbal level. You understand it without words really. And verbal level is gradually attached. Don't you just do unnecessary actions. Save power.

In General, by the way, an important point about the instinct – the need to trust him. It is also very convenient, do not have to explain words, just my instinct tells me so all the others go to hell!

Anxiety is an important part of instinct, there would be trouble, the children would not survive. Another important part of the instinct to listen – that's all right actually, everything will be fine. It is also about faith. Faith in God, good for you and your child to the world, something good. The balance of these elements helps the mother to withstand the load.





Children fill our lives with meaning vs. Mommy in the decreeAnastasia:

I can't say that"Oh the horror, my life has lost all meaning!". She, on the contrary, it seems to be acquired thoroughly and unconditionally. Once immobilized in the decree, it turned out that what I really painfully missing is the ability to run the washing machine, take shower, drink coffee, go to the store and choose their own clothes, walk the same and generally to be alone, sit or lie down, drink wine with friends, to travel.

But it is perhaps already the whole list. My life, it turns out, consisted of simple household manipulation, consumption, sloth, gluttony and communication. Where professional growth? Where is the higher sense? All I lack is the ability to safely drink a cappuccino?!

And then think that everything turned out. My life before birth was not so full of sense. Just more opportunities to make a fuss. In any case, now you're not someone smart, Mature and interesting, and mommy in the decree, just a mom, with the interests of the type eat, sleep, cook.

The complexity of identity — I think that a lot of young moms. There is a transition, transformation. When you get married or graduate from the Institute, also there is a transition into a qualitatively different state, in a different role and a different life. However, for me, the transition to the mother – yet the most difficult.

Elena:

Here you listen and marvel dayus! Such complex thoughts! I in a similar situation was not at all available philosophical maxims.

In General, the meaning is, of course, cool, but when it works biology, senses quietly Smoking in the corner. Simone de Beauvoir, by the way, in addition to confusing personal life seems to be not given birth to children. So, some choice here observed. This is something exciting- time to be given to biological life. In the modern world is a direct extension of consciousness unseen. The trip to nature.

To sleep, to eat, to feed and work is all I cared about after giving birth. I'm not physically able to sit within four walls for more than two days. So deeply sorry and know that it will end. Hormonal storm subsided, and feelings appear, the main thing, just don't torture yourself! Not to be a mother-heroine! Nanny, grandmother, your best friends.

Generally, practice shows that things are better as soon as you receive the reliable assistant. And for a child it is important. Now so much information in the world, so much noise, children must somehow pull it off. You must implantiruete environment with a sufficient amount of information that is provided by a large number of people around the child, a large contact. Mother alone with my father working this cannot neither provide nor sustain.

A woman is reborn after giving birth vs. How not to fall apartAnastasia:

Then a little more about biology. Even his own body no longer belongs to you. Can't get sick because you need your child. You need to watch your diet because you breastfeed. And even after birth, you may have stretch marks on the abdomen, stretch marks appear on the chest, the stomach may still be large and out navel, the back can root, root can also the head, may be the stagnation of milk, sore nipples.

And all this happens with you first. You've never given birth and don't know how is the postpartum recovery, how much time will pass before everything will be as before with your body and will, at least approximately.And all this – your motherhood. My motherhood. In varying degrees, go through it every woman.

Elena:

Well born "other" woman. And rarely is easy. Usually hard and need to devote time, effort and money. Itself comes out. It hurts, the sex phenomenon of the other life and it seems always will be. And this, incidentally, is also a choice, not fate. There is a funny moment. Observed repeatedly that up to six months child, couples often discuss the desire to have a second.

Then these conversations completely disappear, but the phenomenon is curious. Whether this fantasy ranks the prospect of the restoration of the family cycle, or establishes a joint satisfaction of the unborn child. But it suggests that you turn to a new bodily rails – sex, conceiving a new child. All artfully arranged, of course.

Early development vs. Good enough motherAnastasia:

In addition to biology, there is still strong psychological pressure from outside. It is now fashionable to care about the psychological comfort of the baby, the formation of a secure attachment, a full and always early in development, but all should be as natural and with boundless love.

In principle it is not difficult. You the maximum relax, strapped to a baby in a sling, give him the breast on demand and go about their business. Sometimes you take it out of the sling, to give to the Pope who puts him on the abdomen "skin to skin" and they're cute communicate. Diapers your child wears, his ass is breathing, and when he needs the toilet – you do it accurately determine, and planted it. Elementary. No, of course, sometimes he cries.

But then you know exactly what it is and your calm support your baby. In General, it seems that I am not the mother and it turns out that my baby because of this can not be happy and peaceful, and very often forced to suffer from my imperfections and the imperfections of the world which I create.

Elena:

I know we're not in Paradise and children are not angels. Sometimes, Yes, when baby smiles and you feel this special love, it seems that we are in heaven, but it's a beautiful moment, and it completely disappears along with evening colic.

And another important thing that somehow, in determenirovana the world all the time forgotten: mom, dad, family and development is an important thing, but the main role is still that of a child, it depends on more, not less. His temperament, character, physical characteristics, and heaps of everything else. We can something affect, but we greatly exaggerate this effect. Don't do that – it just increases the dissatisfaction with each other. So, enjoy biology, and the meanings and existence will not disappear, will appear later."

 

Authors: Elena Leontieva, Anastasya Zaritskaya, especially for

 

P. S. And remember, just changing your mind — together we change the world! ©

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