Abdicating Adults

In our reactive modern life, we benefit from those who can remain unflustered and steady, guided by clear, compassionate principles.

What would it be like if a group of children were sent white‑water rafting, and there was no adult present to take responsibility? Or imagine leaving a couple of young teenagers in charge of a kindergarten, what would happen? For the first five minutes there might be laughter and play. But at the first sign of conflict, frustration, or real difficulty, chaos would quickly follow.

Such images keep coming back to me when I look at modern life. It can feel as though the adults have abdicated. Temper tantrums dominate. Power is abused. Reaction replaces reflection.

I wonder if what we are witnessing in the helter-skelter of modern life is a deficit of adult care. When we are left unattended, judged, treated cruelly, or simply not cared for well enough, we become as frightened as small and vulnerable children.

Mature adults work to make things as safe as possible — for everyone. They actively communicate that they believe in and hold the dignity of each human person. They value solidarity over domination. Whatever they face, they trust and hold on tenaciously to moral principles, especially when the path forward is unclear.

When adults face challenge, need, injustice, and competing demands, they don’t flee or explode. They meet reality head‑on, with rationality, with compassion, and with checks and balances. In my work as a psychotherapist, I think of this as adulting. It is a function that many have not been sufficiently shown or modelled. We may have not had someone believe in us and properly see and trust us for long enough to allow this necessary part to emerge.

One thing is sure. When the adults don’t show up, when there is no-one to consistently show us who we are and soothe us, or let us know what is required of us, there are consequences for our vulnerable selves. We become those abandoned children running amok in the kindergarten, or let loose on the terrifying water — overwhelmed, undisciplined, chaotic, panicky or numb.

Abdicating adults create trauma. Without a map, unsure of what to do next, we do what we think we must in order to survive. We duck and dive. We rush about. We react. We do this, then that, hoping for the best. But all the while, underneath, we are profoundly alone and scared.

When fear rules, we can get caught up on a spinning wheel (trauma is catchy), less likely to be able to take in things that are good for us. We feel out of control, and the world feels out of control. What can be done?

There’s a poem by Kathy Galloway, the first leader of the Iona Community, in which she writes

There is no shelter from the rage of life
So meet its eye, and dance within its storm

Adults need help to build their muscles

In response to rage and lack of shelter, the more mature, grounded, adult part of us may still be there, looking on. It might glimpse what’s happening through the cracks in our fingers. It may even know that some of what we are doing isn’t really good for us — or for other people. But in the face of mayhem, that adult has less power. It can step back, even just give up, allowing the chaos of trauma to take over and rule the roost.

Working on developing these adult functions is something I see repeatedly in my clinical work. Adult parts of us need encouragement and even training, and the right kind of modelling. Just as it takes time to develop a muscle in the arm, so it needs compassion, patience and belief to grow and develop reflective ways of being, step by step. Not reacting — but thinking.

Perhaps healing — personal and collective — begins when enough of us are willing to pick up the oars.