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They say about some: naive, like children. Their views and actions sometimes touch their acquaintances, but at the same time … harm their personal relationships, not to mention their professional reputation. What are the origins of this style of behavior?
“The thought that someone wants to harm me or can deceive me hurts me,” admits 38-year-old Marina. – Probably because I myself absolutely trust people, I believe in their decency, as in my own. With age, I had to learn to make allowances for my own naivety, but this is difficult: for example, many colleagues still manage to load me with their work today! A naive person often feels like a victim, but is he really a victim?
“Naivety presupposes benevolence and gullibility,” explains psychotherapist Gleb Lozinsky. – But often such people hide an unconscious rapture of their own helplessness. A person is ready to again and again find himself in the role of a victim in order to relieve himself of responsibility, shifting it to other people. That is why the words and actions of a naive person often cause irritation and even aggression in others.
Desire to be loved
Gleb Lozinsky finds an explanation for such behavior in the psychoanalytic theory of object relations: “Its origins may be in an excessively close connection between the mother and father of the naive. In such a family, the wife, as a rule, dissolves into the husband. She is sure that only her self-sacrifice will save her wonderful family. And even if a man devalues and humiliates her, she does not notice it.
Such relationships do not imply close communication with the child, he grows up with a personal absence of a mother and the confidence that she is … the best. As an adult, he, most likely, will also not notice the negative personality traits and character of other people.
“I sincerely believed that there was true love between us, and turned a blind eye to the actions of my friend,” says 32-year-old Karina. “For the sake of our relationship, I sacrificed a lot, although I did not feel happy.” And so it continued until Karina’s partner suddenly left her.
Advice to an outsider
You should not rush to console your interlocutor as soon as you hear his complaints again: they say that I again became a victim of my own naivety. On the contrary (without causing feelings of guilt), try to lead him to the idea that you need to take at least part of the responsibility for what is happening. You will help him by asking clear questions instead of dealing with complaints. Ask, for example, if he could have behaved differently in this situation. Move the conversation into a playful direction, together come up with options for behavior in situations that provoke him to be naive.
Escape from reality
An adult who looks at the world with wide eyes, not distinguishing between fiction and reality, is not much different from a child. Preserving an infantile consciousness in himself, he lives in his fantasies and dreams, stubbornly not wanting to return to earth.
Elena, 30, recalls: “My mother, an honest and scrupulous person, taught me to trust people. Now I can be offended and even disappointed in other people, but still I try to remain open to the world, do not fence myself off from others and do not stop trusting them.
This story illustrates another mechanism of naive behavior. “It can be a manifestation of an unconscious desire to get away from reality, to stop perceiving it as it is,” explains Gleb Lozinsky. – Perhaps, in childhood, Elena was subjected to emotional pressure from loved ones. And naivety now protects her from possible aggression: it is easier to seem like a naive fool who does not understand what is happening than to try to be an adult, ready to be responsible for her actions.
Such a reaction, having worked once, is fixed for many years. So naivete becomes a style of behavior.
“I try to keep my principles”
Ksenia, 25 years old, ballerina
“I know what friends and colleagues say about me: Ksenya is a kind soul. And I really try to be open and reliable, despite the fact that I suffer a lot because of my naivety. In the choreographic school where I studied, classmates played me cruelly more than once. About two years ago, a good choreographer was recruiting a new cast, and we were going to go see him. But my friends played a joke on me, naming the wrong date of the meeting …
However, that incident did not affect our relationship – I am still glad to them and help when they ask me. And yet, having gone through a series of disappointments, trying to maintain my principles, I came to the conclusion that you need to surround yourself with people like me. Naturally, this decision has narrowed my social circle, but now I feel more secure.”
What to do?
Change your perspective
Again and again, suffering from your naivety, you often do not even try to draw conclusions from bitter experience. Try to remember when and why you first had to behave “naively”. Reflect on how you can change this behavior while building confidence.
Explore your own “I”
How did your parents treat other people? Do you feel like an adult? Focus on the adult part of your personality and answer these questions for yourself. Can I stop believing in what I firmly believed until now? What does my experience teach me? What can I rely on in myself to feel like an independent person? Transactional analysis is one of the methods of psychotherapy that will complement your introspection.