The Millennial Generation is one of the most damaged generations the world has ever seen. This generation didn’t grow up with an increasing desire to be on this planet and to create a beautiful reality, but rather, a growing dread of “adulting.”
The simple reason for this was the horrific notion that babies should be allowed to cry so that they wouldn’t grow into “spoiled” children.
Books like The Continuum Concept demonstrate that the opposite is true: babies who are held continually for the first nine months of their life experience what it is like to be a passive, loved observer of the world through felt-perception. Such babies naturally become curious about the world instead of anxious, lonely, and depressed.
I was born in 1989 to two very well-meaning parents. They wanted to raise “the perfect baby” and so they read all the modern books on parenting which encouraged them to let me wail. Now, in my thirties, I’m still working to undo the damage through consciousness alchemy practices such as The Completion Process.
When a baby is left to cry they experience the world as one of utter horror. There is no relief. There is no belief that anyone will ever come. The crying child experiences the world in total grief. Without a concept of object-permanence there is no way to understand that “Mom will be right back.” This isolating, horrifying experience primes the limbic system in the brain for an ongoing stress response that will last for life if it is not treated with some form of consciousness alchemy. This isn’t just flowery language with some scientific terms sprinkled in, this is scientifically verified truth.
For more about developmental trauma, read my article: Developmental Trauma.
Because millennials didn’t experience an appropriate series of loving, curiosity-inducing events as babies, they didn’t grow into children who willingly took on responsibilities. Instead, every revelation about what it took to be an adult was met with dawning horror.
Age four: “I have to learn to wipe myself?”
Age six: “I have to go to school?”
Age ten: “But washing dishes makes my legs itch and hurt!”
Age sixteen: “Sinks require cleaning?! I thought the water flowing over them took care of that!”
Age seventeen: “What do you mean I have to pay taxes?”
Age twenty-one: “You mean I have to spend my own money on taking care of myself?!”
Taking on responsibilities is a natural process in a healthy upbringing. Within a loving community, a child will have natural curiosity about what the adults are doing and want to join in. Communal hunting, cooking, cleaning, building, and crafting are natural features of tribal living, and children at the age of three are already experimenting with joining the labor force. They may try for thirty seconds, get bored, and do something else. Yet by the time these children reach puberty they are already happily engaged in almost all of the same activities as adults without feeling any resentment, hurt, or fear about it. On the contrary, they feel confident, sure of their place, and experience a deep sense of belonging.
By lacking that first experience of being loved as a passive baby, we remain (to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the severity of the trauma and the extent of healing since then) babies, still requiring someone to care for us, hold us, feed us, and so on. Modern psychology is still catching up to this reality. Self-help books will practically shout at you to “grow up” but that’s just the problem – you can’t just grow up by merely deciding overnight to do so.* You must have the experience that you missed. The solution is to become a baby again and experience someone loving you the way your mother should have loved you.
*You may think that you can choose to grow up overnight because many people appear to do so by utilizing their ability to repress aspects of themselves more deeply. Basically, making this choice is fully identifying with your parents who mistreated you as a baby and continuing to abandon that aspect of yourself all the more fully.
As Teal Swan is always saying: “To heal is to experience the opposite.” You must have the opposite experience of being neglected, isolated, and afraid.
For more about this, I recommend several books and videos which I have linked below:
- The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff
- The Anatomy of Loneliness by Teal Swan
- Childhood Disrupted
- What’s Wrong with Millenials by Teal Swan
- Healing the Emotional Body by Teal Swan
- Emotional Wake-up Call by Teal Swan
