The Secret to Fixing Your Adulthood

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Disney Plus Hulu will make your day every day. Bluey for the kids, the all new Hulu original series Furious for the second they're down. Good Morning America for your morning. ESPN College Game Day for your Saturday. And Toy Story 5 for a cozy family movie night on Sunday. Make your day every day with Disney Plus Hulu. 18 and older with the Disney Plus Hulu bundle subscription. Access these titles via Disney Plus. Terms apply.

SPEAKER_2 (0:30)

The Crispy Chicken Crunchwrap Slider is back at Taco Bell. The slider-sized crunchwrap with nuggets inside you loved the first time, now with a spicy kick you're gonna love this time. Hidden Valley Diablo Ranch. Or you could order some crispy all-white meat nuggets on their own. Pretty sure you love those anytime. Every time. Okay, all of the times.

The Crispy Chicken Crunchwrap Slider. A brand new classic is back. Only at Taco Bell.

And participating US. Taco Bell locations for limited time and while supplies last.

Dr. K (1:01)

At a particular age, you have to do a particular thing. And once you learn how to do that thing, then you can move on. And so we have a series of challenges in life. And when we fail to do a thing, we actually become developmentally stuck. And we have to sort of like fix that later in life. So if you missed a childhood, is there an element of accepting that that's gone? Absolutely. But growing into healing can grow into loss or growing into healing can grow into fullness. Which from a simple standpoint is like what we call a corrective emotional experience.

SPEAKER_4 (1:32)

In order to become an adult, you got to learn to let go of that childhood you didn't get. Like you can't pick up adulthood if you're still holding on to whatever it was you missed as a kid, falling through the cracks of what your parents missed as a kid. And I focus on this fault, because I feel like growing into healing is growing into loss and losing that. And it's interesting, because when I look back on my childhood, I have two memories. Memories of what happened and the memories of what should have happened. And that keeps me from focusing on what's happening now. Every decision I make, I'm still trying to merge those somehow and win whatever I lost when I was a kid. And so now I live in this world that I don't enjoy, because I adopted this mindset of this incomplete little boy trying to travel back in time and fix whatever wasn't right. How much easier would it be to just accept that part of that was missed, instead of putting my adult development on hold to wait around for it? Because childhood is not a progress bar. It's not task oriented. It ends with age, whatever it was, is what it was supposed to be.

It's not a new responsibility, something you gotta go back and complete. It's done.

You gotta move away from that fault, because only then can you pick up who you're supposed to be as an adult.

Dr. K (2:41)

So I love this because there's a lot of good stuff. And there's a part of me that says, if you do what he says, you will end up the way that he is. So we talk about acceptance. There's a lot of good stuff here, right? Like, there's the childhood that I had, and there's the childhood that I should have. That growing into healing is growing into loss, and accepting that this is the way life is. And I have to accept that, right? My childhood is gone. It'll never come back. I will never have that joy. And if that's the path that you take, this is the emotion that you will end up with. Because actually, there's a fair amount of evidence from developmental psychology. There's a lot of good stuff here. And I respect this dude for making the poetry. It's beautifully read, you know, really taps into something that's amazing and tragic about the triumph of the human spirit. And I think it's like kind of wrong. If we look at developmental psychology, we learn a couple of really scary things. That life actually is a progress bar. And that if you just leave your childhood behind and you grow into an adult without that piece of childhood, and this is what happens to so many people, you will be a sad adult. You'll be an adult, but you'll be a sad adult. And this is the real tricky thing, right? Because we don't know how to reclaim that childhood. And so we sort of resign ourselves to this adulthood without a childhood. But I think that there's a lot of stuff. And today we're going to talk about someone called Erik Erikson. And Erik Erikson, I'm not trying to dunk on this guy, by the way. I genuinely think he's onto something really good. But I think it's poetry, right? There's poetry and there's science. And poetry speaks to the human experience and really taps into something that I think is very real. But then there's the science of it. So Erik Erikson comes along and he develops this theory. And what he notices is that human beings have particular goals at certain stages of development. At a particular age, you have to do a particular thing. And once you learn how to do that thing, then you can move on. And so we have a series of challenges in life. And when we fail to do a thing, we actually become developmentally stuck and we have to sort of like fix that later in life. So if you missed a childhood, is there an element of accepting that that's gone? Absolutely, but growing into healing can grow into loss or going into healing can grow into fullness, which from a simple standpoint is like what we call a corrective emotional experience, right? So if you were never loved as a child, you have to accept that you were not loved as a child. That's really healthy, but that's not where it ends. The real way to fix that is to be loved as an adult, to be loved in the way that a child was loved as an adult, to be spoiled, to be indulgent. And I think there are a couple of really good examples of this through Erik Erikson, which I think make a lot of sense. Here is the progress bar of childhood. When we're somewhere around three to six years old, we have this basic task of initiative versus guilt. So what does this mean? So when a child is like two, they don't have choices. They can't demonstrate initiative. They don't like to decide what we're doing today. They don't get to control or steer their life at all. But once we get to be about three, four, five, and six, that's when we can demonstrate initiative. Hey, today, I want to go to the zoo. Or if we go to the zoo, I want to see the anacondas, not the tigers. And a five-year-old can demonstrate, they can try to steer the car of their life in small ways. And the way that people respond to that is really important, okay? So when I want to do something, I want to see tigers, or let's say I want to see snakes, which means that I have an initiative. And let's say that my parents have a phobia of snakes. So they say, no, snakes are for Slytherins, and we are Gryffindors. This is bad, how dare you like snakes? So when a child demonstrates initiative, right? So sometimes I'll see this with like, you know, boys who want to wear dresses, or girls who want to play with trucks, right? Or any number of things. When you demonstrate initiative, does the world punish you for it, or make you feel guilty? And there's a certain amount of guilt that's kind of healthy, okay? It's like, oh, you want to stay up till midnight, like you can't do that, that is wrong. Like this is right, this is wrong. So there's a certain amount that's healthy. But basically you have some kids who grow up in environments where what they want is punished. They're taught that you're selfish.