An essential part of being an adult involves taking responsibility for ourselves. This means making conscious, empowered choices on our own behalf.
Very young children aren’t fully capable of doing this because they are too unformed and helpless to understand or deal with all the things happening to them. These children need the adults in their lives to care for them and protect them from harm.
As children get older, they’re capable of taking on more and more responsibility at home and at school, as well as in the care of pets or of younger siblings. These childhood responsibilities set them up for becoming more empowered and successful in their adult lives.
We learn to be responsible as adults by being given responsibility as children. Doing chores, baby-sitting, walking the dog, having a paper route, are all things that have given children a greater sense of personal responsibility.
One way we fail to learn responsibility as an adult is to be overly spoiled or protected as a child. The more our parents do for us, the less capable we are of taking responsibility for ourselves, as an adult.
Some people are good at being responsible adults. They make conscious, informed decisions about their lives and as a result are confident, secure and productive.
Some people prefer to abdicate their personal responsibility, leaving it up to others to take on the adult role in their lives.
Some of these individuals are holding on to their young-child identity, hoping to compensate for the care that was lacking in their early life and not understanding that this can’t be done.
Others are simply crippled by having been so spoiled in childhood (by over-protective, over-involved parents) that they have no idea how to take responsibility for themselves as adults.
People who take responsibility for themselves are able to learn from their mistakes. This is because their parents haven’t over-protected them, so they’re able to recognize if and when they’ve made a mistake.
Those people who abdicate responsibility are unwilling to recognize that they’ve made a wrong choice. These individuals will never have the opportunity to correct their behavior and make better choices in the future. They’re doomed to repeatedly suffer the consequences of these bad choices.
Responsible adults are empowered in their relationships. They’re able to express their needs and share their feelings freely. They can confront their partner about problems which arise between them and are able to resolve conflicts with minimal difficulty.
Because they hold themselves accountable, they don’t engage in blaming or shaming and they don’t make excessive or unreasonable demands. They respect their partner, which results in mutual trust and greater closeness.
Those who refuse to be adult in their relationship must resort to being indirect and manipulative or passive-aggressive in order to express their needs and feelings.
These behaviors result in a high degree of conflict and a low level of intimacy. The child-identified individual wants their partner to take care of them and this has a number of possible outcomes.
They might get into a co-dependent relationship in which both parties take turns being taken care of by the other. Ultimately, this type of relationship will result in frustration and mutual resentment.
The child-identified individual might also find a willing care-taker in an abusive, controlling individual. These relationships are fraught with emotional and physical violence.
Alternatively, they might meet a mature adult who would have been happy to love them if it weren’t for their refusal to stand on their own two feet.
An empowered adult will have no interest in being the care-taker of an otherwise capable adult, and they will quickly exit the relationship.
An individual who insists on making other people responsible for their life leads a chaotic existence, full of unnecessary suffering. A helpless child is potentially a sitting duck for the sociopathic predators of the world.
In the same way, the child-identified adult’s refusal to act on their own behalf and their attitude of extreme neediness and dependence makes such an individual into ideal prey.
Whereas a child could have a real-life adult to protect and defend them from harm, the adult who abdicates responsibility has abandoned themselves.
They are the classic victim, living in the futile hope of being rescued. In reality, the only person who would take on such a task would be someone who is emotionally troubled, themselves.
As I said above, a healthy adult isn’t interested in care-taking another grown-up, and they certainly aren’t looking to rescue anyone. They want a relationship of empowered equals where both parties share and care but don’t expect parenting.
Those people who take on the rescuing role always have ulterior motives; usually to be taken care of and rescued themselves, but sometimes to dominate and oppress.
The person who chooses to be a victim guarantees that at best, they’ll suffer unpleasant co-dependency and at worst, they’ll be chronically mistreated.
The way out of the victim-role is to choose to grow up and live as a fully-fledged adult. It means recognizing that the dream of being taken care of is a false one.
The child-identified adult needs to see that once childhood is over, they are the only person capable of appropriate self-care.
There is no compensating in the present for a lack of love or care during childhood. The way to deal with such a past is not to remain a child but to embrace adulthood.
When someone finds their power and realizes that they now have a choice about what happens in their life, they free themselves not just from the victim-role of today but from the feelings of helplessness they experienced, years ago.
They can let go of unnecessary suffering and embrace a life full of the possibility for happiness and success.
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