I am a very observant and analytical person, with a wealth of personal life experience.
What I have realized from observing people throughout my life: a frightening majority of people are psychologically crippled to one degree or another—in other words, there is a whole spectrum of trauma, from anxiety disorders to borderline states and psychopathy.
There are no adults around me, but children in adult bodies. I kept wondering what had been the key factor in the psychological breakdown of entire generations. Why, and where did it come from?—I asked myself. It is as though everyone’s psychological foundation is deliberately damaged from the outset, just as their physical health is damaged by unnecessary medical procedures before a child has even had time to be born.
I hardly see any truly alive people around me. I used to see more life and true nature in people; among the older generation, there seemed to be more people who were alive and had relatively stable, healthy psyches.
I consider everything that is imposed, and how easily people are brainwashed, to be the consequence of their having been deeply traumatized from the outset. With a psychologically healthy society, it would have been impossible to do what has been done now and impose such false values and beliefs. People are manipulated because they were deeply traumatized from the beginning.
The psyche is traumatized in infancy. Moreover, it must be a mechanism that is well established and regular, normalized, and directed at the very foundation—the fundamental basis itself.
After all, the psyche has the ability to recover and develop despite even severe but isolated stresses. Here, however, it feels as though a methodical blow was struck, then another and another, compounded by a lack of compensation and harsh conditions that did not promote the healing of wounds. Traumatized people are unable to build healthy families or give birth to and raise healthy offspring. The distortions intensify from one generation to the next.
Recently, I came across information about a method of training (there is no other way to describe it) that was once imposed and known by the term “let them cry it out.” Naturally, I became interested in this phenomenon. I thoroughly researched and organized this topic for myself with the help of artificial intelligence. Below, I would like to present the facts I was able to uncover. I believe this is the mechanism that caused the key damage to people’s psyches.
The roots of this phenomenon reach deep into the Soviet past, but in the 1980s and 1990s we saw its terrifying peak. Probably because it was not only propaganda that was working intensively—the parents themselves had already been crippled by this machine. Without hesitation, they continued to cripple their children and pass the baton on. It was a systematic assault on the psyche of several generations.
And although the barbaric methodsThings like “let them cry it out” may officially be a thing of the past, and psychologists have long exposed their terrible consequences, while the guidance offered today is entirely different. But the damage on such a massive scale has taken its toll, and we constantly see the consequences. Children who grew up in those times continue this unconscious sadism with their own sons and daughters simply because they experienced it themselves and do not know—and often do not want—any other way.
Those who try to raise their children differently are still subjected to society’s disapproval: “you’re not raising them,” “you’re spoiling them,” “they’re manipulating you”…
People with black holes inside are incapable of understanding their children’s needs. Caring about a child’s emotional state, fears, and experiences is pushed into the background. In the foreground is the training of obedient and convenient children. A person whose own will was once killed subconsciously kills it in their offspring as well.
For modern generations, the spiritual feat lies in healing their human part—to learn to rely on themselves, get angry, defend themselves, love, and be truly alive here on Earth.
What I have realized from observing people throughout my life: a frightening majority of people are psychologically crippled to one degree or another—in other words, there is a whole spectrum of trauma, from anxiety disorders to borderline states and psychopathy.
There are no adults around me, but children in adult bodies. I kept wondering what had been the key factor in the psychological breakdown of entire generations. Why, and where did it come from?—I asked myself. It is as though everyone’s psychological foundation is deliberately damaged from the outset, just as their physical health is damaged by unnecessary medical procedures before a child has even had time to be born.
I hardly see any truly alive people around me. I used to see more life and true nature in people; among the older generation, there seemed to be more people who were alive and had relatively stable, healthy psyches.
I consider everything that is imposed, and how easily people are brainwashed, to be the consequence of their having been deeply traumatized from the outset. With a psychologically healthy society, it would have been impossible to do what has been done now and impose such false values and beliefs. People are manipulated because they were deeply traumatized from the beginning.
The psyche is traumatized in infancy. Moreover, it must be a mechanism that is well established and regular, normalized, and directed at the very foundation—the fundamental basis itself.
After all, the psyche has the ability to recover and develop despite even severe but isolated stresses. Here, however, it feels as though a methodical blow was struck, then another and another, compounded by a lack of compensation and harsh conditions that did not promote the healing of wounds. Traumatized people are unable to build healthy families or give birth to and raise healthy offspring. The distortions intensify from one generation to the next.
Recently, I came across information about a method of training (there is no other way to describe it) that was once imposed and known by the term “let them cry it out.” Naturally, I became interested in this phenomenon. I thoroughly researched and organized this topic for myself with the help of artificial intelligence. Below, I would like to present the facts I was able to uncover. I believe this is the mechanism that caused the key damage to people’s psyches.
The essence was to leave a crying child alone in the crib, not go to them, and let them fall asleep on their own from exhaustion.
The idea behind this approach was to break the association between falling asleep and the parent’s presence (rocking, feeding, or carrying), so that the child would learn to fall asleep without someone else’s help.
What it looked like in practice (Two main versions)
The method became enormously popular at the end of the 20th century because it really did “work” very quickly. Usually, within 3–7 days, the child stopped crying at night and fell asleep independently. For parents exhausted from sleep deprivation, it seemed like a salvation.
This approach was imposed throughout the Western and industrialized world. But in the USSR, this system took on a uniquely cruel and comprehensive scale, with virtually no peacetime equivalent anywhere else.
While in the West the method was more of a “fashionable medical trend” and a matter of parental choice, in the Soviet Union it became a strict state doctrine that was almost impossible to avoid.
That is why this catastrophe manifested itself more strongly and deeply in the USSR than anywhere else.
Why did the USSR promote this so heavily?
This was driven by the Soviet state’s economic and ideological imperatives:
How was this imposed? (Mechanisms of control)
The system operated so comprehensively that Soviet women were left with virtually no chance for intuitive motherhood.
1. Extremely short maternity leave
Until 1956, paid maternity leave in the USSR lasted only 2–3 months (56 days before childbirth and 56 days after). The woman was then required to return to work. The child was sent to a nursery, often one that operated five days a week, where one caregiver was responsible for a dozen infants. It was physically impossible to provide individualized care or hold babies in one’s arms there.
2. Strict medical instructions (the three-hour schedule)
For decades, the main bible of Soviet mothers was the work and guidance of Soviet academic pediatricians (such as A. F. Tur and G. N. Speransky), and later, in the 1970s, Benjamin Spock’s translated book. Government manuals required:
A Soviet woman did not belong to herself when it came to motherhood. An entire army of state employees monitored compliance with the prescribed routine:
Propaganda was spread through mass-circulation magazines (“Rabotnitsa,” “Krestyanka”) and famous Soviet posters. They depicted stern, sterile women in white coats and infants lying in neat rows, all wearing identical bonnets. Motherhood was presented as a public duty to the state rather than a personal emotional relationship. Any signs of “excessive tenderness” were branded as philistinism and petty-bourgeois remnants that would raise an egotist.
Ultimately, through this system of “rejecting crying” and tens of millions of Soviet people went through a strict hourly regimen, which shaped a distinct generational type—people with high compliance, but often with deeply buried inner anxiety and a lack of basic trust in the world.
Psychologists, neuroscientists, and pediatricians today agree that “controlled crying” methods (especially their harsher versions, such as those of Weissbluth and Estivill) caused immense damage to the psychological health of entire generations.
The main harm was that children were forcibly deprived of a basic biological need—the need for safety and contact with a significant adult.
Here are the main consequences this approach led to:
1. Learned helplessness as the foundation of personality
The main mechanism that became established in an infant during the first months of life under the “let them cry it out” method was learned helplessness.
2. Destruction of healthy aggression and the will to win
In psychoanalysis, a child’s anger and crying (when the child demands their way) are viewed as the foundation of healthy vital aggression—the very energy that, in adulthood, drives ambition, goal achievement, competition, and the defense of personal boundaries.
In the first months and years of life, a child learns that the world is safe only through their mother’s or father’s response. When an infant cries, they are not “manipulating”; they are signaling stress, hunger, or pain. If no one consistently responds to them, they develop an anxious-avoidant attachment style. In adulthood, such people find it incredibly difficult to trust their partners; subconsciously, they expect betrayal and withdraw from close relationships.
4. Toxic stress and its impact on the brain
The acute stress experienced by a crying infant in darkness and solitude literally “floods” their developing brain with cortisol and adrenaline. At that moment, neural connections that have not yet matured are damaged. In the future, this may lead to:
A child whose crying was ignored receives the message: “Your feelings and your bodily signals (fear, cold, discomfort) are not important; they mean nothing.” As they grow up, such people often cannot recognize their own emotions and bodily signals (alexithymia), and tend either to ignore illnesses or, conversely, to become immersed in psychosomatic symptoms.
6. The transformation of terror into rage
An infant left to scream in the dark experiences not merely discomfort, but the existential terror of death. If the child’s nervous system is naturally strong and has a powerful response pattern, this unbearable fear transforms within them into primal, profound rage.
This is one of the key mechanisms of the human psyche. In order not to feel like a helpless, humiliated victim, a person unconsciously adopts the position ofthe person who caused him pain—the position of power and control.
Modern clinical psychology and psychiatry directly link cold, rejecting parenting methods (including ignoring an infant’s crying) to the development of severe personality disorders.
Harm to the parents themselves and to relationships between parents and children
This method harmed not only children, but also mothers. Any healthy woman experiences physical pain at the hormonal and instinctive level when her infant cries. The Ferber/Spock method forced women to consciously suppress their maternal instinct, sit by the door with tears in their eyes, and time the minutes on a timer. This destroyed the intuitive bond between mother and child and often led to severe postpartum depression and a lifelong feeling of deep guilt.
For some parents, this method became the point after which their attitude toward their child grew colder and harsher. Psychologists explain this through the mechanism of psychological defense:
Of course, it cannot be said that every child left to cry it out according to the Ferber method grew up to be a psychopath or someone with borderline personality disorder. The development of a full-fledged personality disorder usually requires a combination of three factors:
Here are these “quiet” and less noticeable consequences, which poison the lives of millions of adults:
1. A Total Epidemic of Alexithymia (Emotional Blindness)
Alexithymia is the inability to recognize, name, and experience one’s feelings.
The body of an infant left to “cry it out” spent hours in a chemical hell of cortisol and adrenaline. From birth, the nervous and immune systems learned to function in a state of mortal danger.
While a psychopath consciously uses people, a counterdependent person simply panics at the thought of love, even though they deeply need it.
People who have experienced this method often feel a panicky, unconscious fear of being alone with themselves in an empty room—for that is exactly how they suffered in childhood.
When an infant’s will was broken and they were forced into silence through exhaustion, their brain’s ability to experience joy became dulled.
Because such people developed alexithymia as a result of trauma (they shut down their own sensitivity so as not to go insane in childhood), they are physically incapable of empathizing with another person’s pain.
The catastrophe of this method is not that everyone grew up to be criminals or psychopaths. It is that millions of people grew up “half-alive.” They function, work, and build cities, but live with a constant inner lack of warmth, unable to feel happy and safe on this Earth.
The “cry it out” conveyor belt split society into two camps of traumatized people:
Why is infantile harm deeper and more terrifying?
When a child is beaten or humiliated at kindergarten, it is terrible. But that child already has experience that the world can be different. If they are loved at home, they know: “Kindergarten is bad, but home is safe.” They have something to rely on.
An infant who is left to “cry it out” has no point of support at all. For them, their mother is the entire world, the whole Universe. When this Universe goes dark and deafens them with silence in response to their cry for help, the infant’s very foundation of mental health collapses. The brain switches to survival mode and forms a deficient personality structure.
In adulthood, this manifests as follows:
Infant trauma is damage to the very cement in the foundation, while trauma at an older age is like sledgehammer blows to walls that have already been built.
The Echo of the Cradle: Why Is It So Difficult for Grown Children to Create Their Own Families?
When a child who has passed through the conveyor belt of infant coldness grows up and tries to build their own family relationships, they encounter an invisible but concrete wall. It turns out that building love according to “instructions and timers” is impossible, while trusting a real person feels mortally frightening.
Here are the main reasons why creating healthy families is so difficult for this generation:
1. The “Functional Marriage” Model (Family as a Business Project)
Since the grown child saw only functional care from their traumatized parents (fed, clothed, homework checked), they subconsciously copy this model in their own family.
An infant whose cries were ignored internalized a rigid biological program: “The person you love most (your mother) may lock you in the dark and ignore your pain. Intimacy is dangerous.”
In a healthy family, conflicts bring people closer, but traumatized people do not know how to navigate them. Their healthy aggression is blocked, and their emotional skills are underdeveloped.
Many adult children of traumatized parents are terrified of having children themselves. In their subconscious, motherhood and fatherhood are associated with hard labor, violence against oneself, biochemical hell, and loss of freedom. They feel that they simply have no inner resources, warmth, or love to pass on.
Conclusion: The “scream it out” conveyor belt created millions of adults who are physically capable of signing marriage papers at the registry office but psychologically lack the tools to create a safe, warm, and supportive family home. Without deep inner work, they are doomed either to loneliness or to repeating their parents’ pattern.
The idea behind this approach was to break the association between falling asleep and the parent’s presence (rocking, feeding, or carrying), so that the child would learn to fall asleep without someone else’s help.
What it looked like in practice (Two main versions)
- The strict version (the Marc Weissbluth method): The child is put to bed fed and dry at the designated bedtime; the parents leave the room, close the door, and do not return until morning, regardless of any crying or screaming.
- The gentle/Graduated version (the Richard Ferber method): The parent leaves the child but returns at strictly defined, gradually increasing intervals (for example, after 3 minutes, then after 5, 10, and 15 minutes) to gently stroke the child or say “shh” calmly, but does not pick the child up or feed them.
The method became enormously popular at the end of the 20th century because it really did “work” very quickly. Usually, within 3–7 days, the child stopped crying at night and fell asleep independently. For parents exhausted from sleep deprivation, it seemed like a salvation.
This approach was imposed throughout the Western and industrialized world. But in the USSR, this system took on a uniquely cruel and comprehensive scale, with virtually no peacetime equivalent anywhere else.
While in the West the method was more of a “fashionable medical trend” and a matter of parental choice, in the Soviet Union it became a strict state doctrine that was almost impossible to avoid.
That is why this catastrophe manifested itself more strongly and deeply in the USSR than anywhere else.
Why did the USSR promote this so heavily?
This was driven by the Soviet state’s economic and ideological imperatives:
- Women as a workforce: The Soviet authorities needed women in factories, on construction sites, and in the fields. Maternity leave during various periods of the USSR was very short (after the war—only a few months; later, up to one year). A child had to grow up “convenient”: sleeping through the night and eating strictly according to schedule, so that the mother could work fully for the benefit of the state.
- Early transfer to state care (nurseries): At the age of 2–3 months to 1 year, children were often placed in nurseries. One nursery caregiver physically could not rock or hug 15–20 crying infants. Therefore, children were prepared at home from birth for a “conveyor-belt” system: the child had to get used to crying alone and calming down on their own.
- Raising a member of the collective: Soviet pedagogy (beginning with the time of Makarenko) was based on the idea that the interests of the collective were above those of the individual. Excessive attention to an infant’s individual needs (their crying) was considered “bourgeois individualism.” From infancy, children were accustomed to strict discipline, suppressing their “wants,” and following the general daily routine.
How was this imposed? (Mechanisms of control)
The system operated so comprehensively that Soviet women were left with virtually no chance for intuitive motherhood.
1. Extremely short maternity leave
Until 1956, paid maternity leave in the USSR lasted only 2–3 months (56 days before childbirth and 56 days after). The woman was then required to return to work. The child was sent to a nursery, often one that operated five days a week, where one caregiver was responsible for a dozen infants. It was physically impossible to provide individualized care or hold babies in one’s arms there.
2. Strict medical instructions (the three-hour schedule)
For decades, the main bible of Soviet mothers was the work and guidance of Soviet academic pediatricians (such as A. F. Tur and G. N. Speransky), and later, in the 1970s, Benjamin Spock’s translated book. Government manuals required:
- Feeding strictly by the clock (every 3 or 3.5 hours), with a mandatory six-hour break at night.
- If the child cried between feedings, only boiled water was to be given. Crying was interpreted as a “useful exercise for developing the lungs.”
- A complete ban on rocking (because it “spoils” the child and “shakes the brain”) and co-sleeping.
A Soviet woman did not belong to herself when it came to motherhood. An entire army of state employees monitored compliance with the prescribed routine:
- Home-visiting nurses came to the house without warning. They checked the cleanliness, weighed the child, and sternly reprimanded the mother if she did not feed the child on schedule or picked up a crying infant.
- Disobeying a doctor in the USSR was equated with irresponsibility and condemned by society. Notes such as “the mother indulges the child’s whims and spoils the child” could become grounds for a disciplinary investigation through the trade union.
Propaganda was spread through mass-circulation magazines (“Rabotnitsa,” “Krestyanka”) and famous Soviet posters. They depicted stern, sterile women in white coats and infants lying in neat rows, all wearing identical bonnets. Motherhood was presented as a public duty to the state rather than a personal emotional relationship. Any signs of “excessive tenderness” were branded as philistinism and petty-bourgeois remnants that would raise an egotist.
Ultimately, through this system of “rejecting crying” and tens of millions of Soviet people went through a strict hourly regimen, which shaped a distinct generational type—people with high compliance, but often with deeply buried inner anxiety and a lack of basic trust in the world.
Psychologists, neuroscientists, and pediatricians today agree that “controlled crying” methods (especially their harsher versions, such as those of Weissbluth and Estivill) caused immense damage to the psychological health of entire generations.
The main harm was that children were forcibly deprived of a basic biological need—the need for safety and contact with a significant adult.
Here are the main consequences this approach led to:
1. Learned helplessness as the foundation of personality
The main mechanism that became established in an infant during the first months of life under the “let them cry it out” method was learned helplessness.
- The essence of the mechanism: The child cries—no one comes—the child realizes that their actions have no effect—the child falls silent and gives up.
- The consequence in adulthood: As they grow up, such a person is subconsciously convinced: “Nothing depends on my actions,” “Taking initiative is punished,” “Go with the flow; you won’t change anything anyway.” Their inner drive to fight for their the right to change their life or leave destructive circumstances (whether abusive relationships or an unbearable job).
2. Destruction of healthy aggression and the will to win
In psychoanalysis, a child’s anger and crying (when the child demands their way) are viewed as the foundation of healthy vital aggression—the very energy that, in adulthood, drives ambition, goal achievement, competition, and the defense of personal boundaries.
- When this crying was systematically suppressed, the child’s will was stifled in its infancy.
- Instead of a self-confident person, a conformist was formed. They find it extremely difficult to say “no,” are terrified of conflicts, and are ready to agree to any terms as long as they are not rejected.
A conformist is a person who completely conforms to the opinions of the majority, authorities, or group rules, even if deep down they disagree with them or those rules harm them. - They completely abandon their individuality, personal opinions, and independent decisions in order to “be like everyone else” and not stand out.
In the first months and years of life, a child learns that the world is safe only through their mother’s or father’s response. When an infant cries, they are not “manipulating”; they are signaling stress, hunger, or pain. If no one consistently responds to them, they develop an anxious-avoidant attachment style. In adulthood, such people find it incredibly difficult to trust their partners; subconsciously, they expect betrayal and withdraw from close relationships.
4. Toxic stress and its impact on the brain
The acute stress experienced by a crying infant in darkness and solitude literally “floods” their developing brain with cortisol and adrenaline. At that moment, neural connections that have not yet matured are damaged. In the future, this may lead to:
- Increased anxiety and panic attacks in adulthood.
- Problems with self-regulation (it is extremely difficult for a person to calm themselves when they are nervous).
- Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
A child whose crying was ignored receives the message: “Your feelings and your bodily signals (fear, cold, discomfort) are not important; they mean nothing.” As they grow up, such people often cannot recognize their own emotions and bodily signals (alexithymia), and tend either to ignore illnesses or, conversely, to become immersed in psychosomatic symptoms.
6. The transformation of terror into rage
An infant left to scream in the dark experiences not merely discomfort, but the existential terror of death. If the child’s nervous system is naturally strong and has a powerful response pattern, this unbearable fear transforms within them into primal, profound rage.
- The child subconsciously concludes: “The world is a hostile jungle. If I am weak, I will die. To survive, I must become more dangerous and tougher than this world.”
This is one of the key mechanisms of the human psyche. In order not to feel like a helpless, humiliated victim, a person unconsciously adopts the position ofthe person who caused him pain—the position of power and control.
- What this looks like in adult life: A person adopts the methods of the system that broke them. They become emotionally deaf, authoritarian, and cruel toward those weaker than themselves (subordinates, partners, their own children). They convey the attitude: “No one felt sorry for me, and I will feel sorry for no one. Life is a struggle; the strongest survive.”
Modern clinical psychology and psychiatry directly link cold, rejecting parenting methods (including ignoring an infant’s crying) to the development of severe personality disorders.
Harm to the parents themselves and to relationships between parents and children
This method harmed not only children, but also mothers. Any healthy woman experiences physical pain at the hormonal and instinctive level when her infant cries. The Ferber/Spock method forced women to consciously suppress their maternal instinct, sit by the door with tears in their eyes, and time the minutes on a timer. This destroyed the intuitive bond between mother and child and often led to severe postpartum depression and a lifelong feeling of deep guilt.
For some parents, this method became the point after which their attitude toward their child grew colder and harsher. Psychologists explain this through the mechanism of psychological defense:
- Hardening through detachment: Nature made humans so that an infant’s cry causes an adult almost physical pain. To endure an hour or two of their own child’s crying behind a wall without coming to help, the parent had to literally “freeze” their empathy.
- Transferring it to daytime:
Once they had learned to suppress their compassion at night, some parents unconsciously carried this harshness over into their daytime lives. It became easier for them to perceive the child through the lens of discipline and schedules rather than genuine emotions. Phrases like “they’ll cry and stop” and “there’s no need to spoil them” became the motto of their parenting, driving parents away from their children.
Of course, it cannot be said that every child left to cry it out according to the Ferber method grew up to be a psychopath or someone with borderline personality disorder. The development of a full-fledged personality disorder usually requires a combination of three factors:
- Genetic vulnerability (inborn characteristics affecting the sensitivity of the nervous system).
- Consistency (if it happened a couple of times, the psyche adapts; if it was the parenting system day after day, it causes trauma).
- The general atmosphere in the family (if the parents were essentially cold, cruel, or emotionally unavailable during the day).
Here are these “quiet” and less noticeable consequences, which poison the lives of millions of adults:
1. A Total Epidemic of Alexithymia (Emotional Blindness)
Alexithymia is the inability to recognize, name, and experience one’s feelings.
- When the infant cried and no one came to them, their brain shut down their emotional receptors so they would not go mad with terror.
- What it looks like today: Millions of people have grown up who sincerely answer “Nothing” or “Fine” when asked, “What are you feeling right now?” They do not know how to empathize, find it difficult to love, and do not understand when they are sad or angry. They live “only in their heads,” like robots.
The body of an infant left to “cry it out” spent hours in a chemical hell of cortisol and adrenaline. From birth, the nervous and immune systems learned to function in a state of mortal danger.
- What it looks like today: When these children grew up, their bodies began destroying themselves. Doctors and psychotherapists see a direct link between infant stress and a vast number of modern chronic illnesses: irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), ulcers, psoriasis, neurodermatitis, thyroid problems, and early heart attacks. Uncried tears and suppressed screams literally become trapped in the body as muscular armor and illness.
While a psychopath consciously uses people, a counterdependent person simply panics at the thought of love, even though they deeply need it.
- Having lost trust in their mother during the first months of life, the person learned: “Intimacy is mortally dangerous. If you trust someone, they will abandon you.”
- What it looks like today: These are adults who cannot build long-term relationships. As soon as a partner grows closer, they become frightened and run away (under the pretext of “I’m bored,” “she “it’s not right for me,” “I love freedom.”). This is a generation of loners who change partners, throw themselves into work (workaholism) or gadgets, just so they don’t have to open their soul to another person.
People who have experienced this method often feel a panicky, unconscious fear of being alone with themselves in an empty room—for that is exactly how they suffered in childhood.
- What it looks like today: They constantly need background noise. They come home and immediately turn on the television or music. They endlessly scroll through the news feed, watch short videos, drink alcohol, or keep themselves busy until they are nearly exhausted. This is a panicked escape from that very inner emptiness and darkness in which they were once locked away.
When an infant’s will was broken and they were forced into silence through exhaustion, their brain’s ability to experience joy became dulled.
- What it looks like today: A huge number of people live in a state of grayness. On the surface, everything seems fine—they have an apartment, a job, money—but they feel nothing. Life seems bland to them; they do not know how to enjoy the little things, laugh sincerely, or derive pleasure. This is chronic, low-grade depression whose roots reach back to those very nights when the child realized that the world was dead and cold.
Because such people developed alexithymia as a result of trauma (they shut down their own sensitivity so as not to go insane in childhood), they are physically incapable of empathizing with another person’s pain.
- A person can inflict colossal suffering on others (moral or physical) and sincerely not understand what the problem is. Their empathy has been “cut out.” It seems to them that everyone around them is simply pretending or “whining,” just as, in the doctors’ opinion, they themselves once “whined and wailed” in their cradle.
The catastrophe of this method is not that everyone grew up to be criminals or psychopaths. It is that millions of people grew up “half-alive.” They function, work, and build cities, but live with a constant inner lack of warmth, unable to feel happy and safe on this Earth.
The “cry it out” conveyor belt split society into two camps of traumatized people:
- Passive, spineless conformists — who meekly submit and endure.
- Cruel, aggressive tyrants — who control others through fear, violence, and suppression, replaying their infant trauma over and over again.
Why is infantile harm deeper and more terrifying?
When a child is beaten or humiliated at kindergarten, it is terrible. But that child already has experience that the world can be different. If they are loved at home, they know: “Kindergarten is bad, but home is safe.” They have something to rely on.
An infant who is left to “cry it out” has no point of support at all. For them, their mother is the entire world, the whole Universe. When this Universe goes dark and deafens them with silence in response to their cry for help, the infant’s very foundation of mental health collapses. The brain switches to survival mode and forms a deficient personality structure.
In adulthood, this manifests as follows:
- A child from a cruel kindergarten grows up thinking: “People are scum; I must know how to defend myself or attack first.” (Relational trauma.)
- A child subjected to the “cry it out” method grows up subconsciously feeling: “I do not exist, I am empty, the Universe is dead, and whatever I do is meaningless.” (Existentialtrauma of annihilation).
Infant trauma is damage to the very cement in the foundation, while trauma at an older age is like sledgehammer blows to walls that have already been built.
The Echo of the Cradle: Why Is It So Difficult for Grown Children to Create Their Own Families?
When a child who has passed through the conveyor belt of infant coldness grows up and tries to build their own family relationships, they encounter an invisible but concrete wall. It turns out that building love according to “instructions and timers” is impossible, while trusting a real person feels mortally frightening.
Here are the main reasons why creating healthy families is so difficult for this generation:
1. The “Functional Marriage” Model (Family as a Business Project)
Since the grown child saw only functional care from their traumatized parents (fed, clothed, homework checked), they subconsciously copy this model in their own family.
- What it looks like: The husband and wife live like cohabitants or business partners. Their home is perfectly orderly, and the payments are up to date. a mortgage, children enrolled in extracurricular activities. But inside the family, there is absolute emotional emptiness. The spouses do not know how to speak openly, share their vulnerabilities, or support each other during crises. The marriage is held together solely by external obligations and collapses at the slightest emotional storm.
An infant whose cries were ignored internalized a rigid biological program: “The person you love most (your mother) may lock you in the dark and ignore your pain. Intimacy is dangerous.”
- What it looks like: As they grow up, such a person desperately seeks love, but as soon as the relationship becomes truly deep and sincere, their alarm system switches on. They begin to unconsciously sabotage the marriage: nitpick over trivial matters, provoke arguments, bury themselves in work, cheat, or simply run away without explanation.
In a healthy family, conflicts bring people closer, but traumatized people do not know how to navigate them. Their healthy aggression is blocked, and their emotional skills are underdeveloped.
- What it looks like: During family disputes, they fall into one of two extremes. Either it is total conformity (a person endures hurt, remains silent, agrees with everything, and then ends up in the hospital with psychosomatic symptoms). Or these may be uncontrollable outbursts of rage (that same accumulated infantile anger kicks in, and the person smashes everything around them because of an unwashed cup).
Many adult children of traumatized parents are terrified of having children themselves. In their subconscious, motherhood and fatherhood are associated with hard labor, violence against oneself, biochemical hell, and loss of freedom. They feel that they simply have no inner resources, warmth, or love to pass on.
Conclusion: The “scream it out” conveyor belt created millions of adults who are physically capable of signing marriage papers at the registry office but psychologically lack the tools to create a safe, warm, and supportive family home. Without deep inner work, they are doomed either to loneliness or to repeating their parents’ pattern.
The roots of this phenomenon reach deep into the Soviet past, but in the 1980s and 1990s we saw its terrifying peak. Probably because it was not only propaganda that was working intensively—the parents themselves had already been crippled by this machine. Without hesitation, they continued to cripple their children and pass the baton on. It was a systematic assault on the psyche of several generations.
And although the barbaric methodsThings like “let them cry it out” may officially be a thing of the past, and psychologists have long exposed their terrible consequences, while the guidance offered today is entirely different. But the damage on such a massive scale has taken its toll, and we constantly see the consequences. Children who grew up in those times continue this unconscious sadism with their own sons and daughters simply because they experienced it themselves and do not know—and often do not want—any other way.
Those who try to raise their children differently are still subjected to society’s disapproval: “you’re not raising them,” “you’re spoiling them,” “they’re manipulating you”…
People with black holes inside are incapable of understanding their children’s needs. Caring about a child’s emotional state, fears, and experiences is pushed into the background. In the foreground is the training of obedient and convenient children. A person whose own will was once killed subconsciously kills it in their offspring as well.
For modern generations, the spiritual feat lies in healing their human part—to learn to rely on themselves, get angry, defend themselves, love, and be truly alive here on Earth.
Healing trauma rooted in infancy is a profound process that psychotherapy calls “re-rocking” or “growing an inner parent.”
Since an infant does not think in words, this trauma does not live in logic but in the body and emotions—in the form of background anxiety, muscle tension, and a fear of rejection. Therefore you need to help yourself through the body, feelings, and actions.
Here are concrete steps for entering that very “dark room” and saving your inner infant:
1. Return to the body (Grounding)
A traumatized psyche retreats “into the head” (intellectualization) to avoid feeling childhood pain. Your task is to bring your attention back to the physical body.
You need to give yourself what your parents did not give you, becoming an ideal mother to yourself.
Learned helplessness is healed through action and reclaiming the right to anger.
Each time you make a decision, stop the “people-pleasing” conveyor belt.
Stop running in the race for achievements just to earn your mother’s approval.
You can walk this path on your own, but with a guide it will be faster and safer, as your psyche will activate powerful defenses.
Since an infant does not think in words, this trauma does not live in logic but in the body and emotions—in the form of background anxiety, muscle tension, and a fear of rejection. Therefore you need to help yourself through the body, feelings, and actions.
Here are concrete steps for entering that very “dark room” and saving your inner infant:
1. Return to the body (Grounding)
A traumatized psyche retreats “into the head” (intellectualization) to avoid feeling childhood pain. Your task is to bring your attention back to the physical body.
- “Weight and Support” practice: When anxiety comes over you, sit down and feel the floor with your feet and the back of the chair with your back. Tell yourself: “The Earth is holding me. I am safe. I am heavy; I exist.”
- Physical contact: Hug yourself. Wrap yourself in a heavy, thick blanket (this imitates safe swaddling and a mother’s embrace, reducing cortisol levels). Massage your feet and hands—restore sensation to your body.
You need to give yourself what your parents did not give you, becoming an ideal mother to yourself.
- Talking to your younger self: Find a childhood photograph of yourself (preferably the earliest one). Put it somewhere prominent. When you feel bad, scared, or guilty, look at it and say aloud: “I am with you. I see you. You no longer need to scream for me to come. I will never abandon you. You are good”.
- Legitimizing tears: If you feel like crying—cry. Infant crying was blocked; now it needs to be cried out. Don’t shame yourself for weakness.
Learned helplessness is healed through action and reclaiming the right to anger.
- Learn to say “No”: Start with small things. Decline an inconvenient meeting, don’t answer the phone outside working hours, and don’t do things you don’t want to do just to gain someone else’s approval.
- The right to protect your boundaries: When someone tries to pressure you, notice the impulse in your body. Anger is a marker that your boundaries have been violated. Let that energy move: say firmly, “You can’t treat me that way,” without falling into childish hurt or excuses.
Each time you make a decision, stop the “people-pleasing” conveyor belt.
- Ask yourself: “Am I doing this because I genuinely want to, or because I’m afraid I’ll be rejected or considered a bad person?”
- Allow yourself to be “inconvenient,” “selfish,” and “wrong” in the eyes of others. Your autonomy is more important than other people’s comfort.
Stop running in the race for achievements just to earn your mother’s approval.
- Keep a journal, but don’t record “successful success” in it—record the moments when you took care of yourself. Cut off external evaluations. Remind yourself: “My worth does not depend on my grades, salary, or my boss’s opinion. I am valuable simply because I was born.”
You can walk this path on your own, but with a guide it will be faster and safer, as your psyche will activate powerful defenses.
- Look for specialists who work not only through conversation but also through the body and emotions. The most effective approaches for this trauma are body-oriented therapy, Bodynamics, EOT (emotion-focused imagery therapy), and EMDR (a method of desensitization through eye movements that is excellent at clearing stress stuck in the subconscious).
