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Even in our adult life, we may keep on using magical thinking – the imagining of arbitrary connections between things and events that cannot be linked with actual causal connections.
We also employ the concepts of error (of being wrong), of being guilty, of not being good enough, in order to establish an arbitrarily labelled logical and acceptable order for things.
When hard times come, by employing the pseudo-causative mechanism
that might be called “these bad things happened because I was wrong and so everything that happened is my fault”, we like to think that we have managed to create logical connections between events that seem to have no apparent connection.
In this way we calm ourselves, because now “I know why this happened” and we enclose in our Shadow whatever threatening feelings may be produced when we suffer the inexplicable cruelty of life.
So the existential roots of an error in being, and of our accompanying guilt as children, can resonate within our adult time in adult situations and create tormenting feelings which can dreadfully affect our course through life.
In other words, when we undergo terrifying feelings because of losing control in hard times as an adult, these feelings may resonate with Shadowed feelings from the hard times of our childhood.
Then we may be like guilty children who failed to cope with the difficulties of growing up;
we become children again, but in adult clothes and in an adult reality. And guilt magically becomes a suitable explanation for what we are feeling – no matter that this guilt is actually a reproduction of a child’s guilt for not being good enough to cope with life. It is as if life itself is transformed into a parent who is displeased with our failure to do the right thing, who is displeased with us because we are what we are.
NOTE:
this text is an excerpt form my 2nd book translated in English “Shadow: our silent companion through life’s journey”
*** “The Hereticals” is a series of live videos that I do in fb and I upload also here, in my web-page, as well as in my channel in You Tube.
*** All of “The Hereticals” are on concepts that I think are horribly abused by internet, social media and pop-psychology (love, forgiveness, interconnectedness, positive thinking, the power of our thoughts, etc).
*** I do not claim at all that what I say about such concepts is any kind of “truth”, I only present my personal approach.
NOTE: All of “The Hereticals” are based on and refer directly or indirectly to the theory and philosophy underlying Gestalt therapy and especially its existential aspects.