Who's hiding under the bed? Childhood is perhaps the most difficult time in life. You need to grow and develop, adapting to the demands of life. If you didn’t learn, didn’t adapt, that means you died out. Not necessarily literally, but definitely in a social sense. You may vegetate below the rung of the social ladder! In this post I will try to describe some situations in which mothers, like fathers, slowly create an anxious child - a future neurotic adult. You will be surprised how easily and imperceptibly this happens, and thanks only to good intentions. Every living organism is concerned about maintaining its well-being. The parent also has a double burden - about himself and the offspring! Fear is a protective reaction of the body that launches the fight or save program. But anxiety, it sticks around our thoughts and limbs like a liquid haze, whispering that again nothing will work out. Fear is specific - I see an object that threatens me, this can even mobilize me, but anxiety only disorganizes me. Anxiety is closely related to the fear of the dark: “I don’t see danger, but it’s there somewhere.” It is natural for a child's weak body to fear the unknown, especially those who hide in the dark - after all, darkness by nature is full of the unknown. But the worst thing is when there is no adult nearby, with a powerful flashlight in his hand, who can show that there is nothing dangerous there. When a parent is full of his fears or carries an emptiness of indifference, the child is left alone with his anxiety. A high level of anxiety can be compared to a blow to the head. Such anxiety prevents you from learning, narrows your perception, impairs your memory, and so on, to put it simply, prevents you from growing up. Growing physically, a person remains a small, frightened or even worse, embittered with fear, child. If it happens that the child has not received the sense of security he so needs, being a neurotic adult, he will strive to receive attention not because of the need for intimacy and mutual cooperation, but to satisfy the need for security. To get rid of the feeling of loneliness, he will cuddle up to a person he doesn’t even love, just so that he won’t be so scared alone! Most of our protective habits are formed in early childhood, however, their list can expand, adding dangerous hobbies, alcohol or drugs. And all just to reduce the tension of anxiety, at least for a short time. This is how the circle closes: the tension decreases a little, and then the anxiety creeps in again. Real fear can be overcome by accomplishing what the senses considered impossible. What about anxiety? Who will protect us from ourselves? Popular wisdom says that “The salvation of drowning people is the work of the drowning people themselves.” How else!? After all, these are already our feelings, even if these are fears that our parents rewarded us with. Feelings cannot be defeated. It seems to us that we will conquer something within ourselves by ceasing to think about it - we will push it out of the field of consciousness. But a sticky feeling of uncertainty creeps in at the most inopportune moment. And then we begin to understand that we cannot hide from pain either in sleep or in alcohol. It is impossible to change your past, you can only change your attitude towards it, and the ways to do this are different, temporary and effective. Still, I want to end on a positive note. I think maternity hospitals will soon have a sign on them: “Caution Children! Instructions not included." Good luck to everyone in life and protecting the younger generation from what awaits them in the future!