Why do we get irritated by someone’s infantile manifestations or behavior in general? Recently, a good friend of mine, in a conversation about the characters of one famous play, described her heroine like this: “... This infantile, one of those who always infuriates us, strong women, so much that we want to vomit and throw! And I immediately wanted to figure out why we, “strong women”, and not only us, are so irritated by someone’s infantile behavior. There are reasons, and probably more than one. I found two, and I’ll tell you about them. Firstly, most people don’t like to be manipulated. There are, of course, exceptions among us; there are also situations when we voluntarily agree to be in this capacity of a savior, a caring patron. But for the most part, people do not like it when people try to force them in this way to solve other people’s problems and satisfy other people’s psychological needs. Sooner or later, you want to get rid of this communication. An “infantile” (my friend’s term) or an adult who behaves like a child, with the help of his childish behavior, involves another person in his game “I am your child, you are my caring parent.” Any message emanating from a child’s state is sent to the parental part of another person, evoking corresponding emotions and encouraging him to parental manifestations - care, guardianship, protection of the very child who awakened these parental feelings in him. In the diagram it looks like this: Yes, it happens that it is important for someone to feel needed, essential, irreplaceable. Then the message that without him an infantile person will simply disappear comes at a very opportune time - it hits the right spot. If we look around carefully, we will see quite a lot of unions, where one is in the role of a child and the other in the role of a parent and they are comfortable together, they go through life, constantly triggering each other’s mechanisms: one feels like a powerful problem solver, and the other is gentle baby behind a stone wall with his protector. This is a fairly stable union. However, in the rest of the world, people’s attempts by the “infantile” to sit on their necks cause irritation and a desire to free themselves from it. Secondly. We have to see manifestations of infantility even without any attempts to manipulate us. It’s just that a person feels this way and behaves this way (we will leave the reasons without explanation), and is not even going to use us in any way for his own purposes. Why is his childishness, childishness perceived negatively and annoying by us? The whole point is that someone can afford this childishness, and someone cannot. You cannot allow yourself to be childish even for a moment, you are simply a “strong woman” or a “serious man.” The reason for irritation is that you do not accept, deny these childish qualities in yourself, your inner Child is blocked, and because of this, the inner Parent is hypertrophied and his motto is: “Everyone, sit quietly! No matter what happens!” He cannot allow himself and you to have fun, enjoy life, be sad, or show feelings. With this state of ego states, your mind is directed not at analysis, but at following rules, and it demands this from both itself and others. This means that if an adult next to you suddenly conventionally “wants to hold you in your arms” or offers to “play Easter cakes,” you explode with irritation and anger. After all, you will never allow yourself to do this. This is what a trigger can tell you. Irritation, as part of the emotion of anger, signals that it is time for you to pay attention to your inner child, to your childish part. She may lack love and care, some spontaneous actions, pleasures, novelty. It's time to relax, pay attention to yourself and take care of your inner child. Spa treatments will help you take care of yourself physically. If you don’t have enough real hugs, then you need to organize it for yourself: a warm cozy blanket hugs you, a warm bath will be gentle for your body, as well as a swimming pool, jacuzzi, hammam. A relaxing massage will also help. Travel or a simple walk to unfamiliar and interesting places will give you novelty and impressions.