What did you want to be when you grew up? In adulthood, this question sometimes gets thrown around as career-wisdom, a path to what you really should be doing in life. I don’t think this question can unlock some secret of your soul, but I think it can hold they key to your childhood unconscious. Think about it, when you imagined what you wanted to be when you grew up, it wasn’t about getting together a rational plan, it was pure fantasy– fed straight from the unconscious and reeled into that movie-projector in your mind.
Recently, I began reading Alice Miller’s Drama of the Gifted Child, when I found myself paused cold, repeatedly underlining a passage. Miller was painting a picture of childhood fantasy, explaining the unconscious needs that drive these daydreams. The fantasy at hand was a child who imagines becoming a famous artist. The alienated wish Miller pulls from this is: ” my parents understand me when I try to express my feelings and do not laugh at me…everyone takes me seriously, even those who do not understand me.” She goes on to explain that this fantasy has the child imagining a world where they could be happy or sad whenever anything makes them happy or sad. Not needing to be cheerful for anyone else, not needing to suppress anxiety or meet other’s needs, able to be angry without fear that something bad will happen.
As I looped Miller’s words around my brain a few times, my face grew frozen and a familiar knot settled in my stomach. This explanation fit for me, my answer to “what do you want to be when you grow up” usually was artist. Her words describing the need to be seen, understood and taken seriously rang clearly into the heart of my inner 7-year-old.
Renowned Psychotherapist, Armand DeMile did a podcast called “Significance and Pareidolia” on this very topic last spring. According to DeMile a child’s fantasy of what they want to be when they grow up shows how and where they feel insignificant, the areas where something is missing. He also concludes that what you wanted to be shows what your idea of significance was, what you thought you needed to be loved, important, listened to.
Many of us went through several incarnations of career-dreams as children, our fantasies morphing as our needs and understanding of life shifted. The first thing I can remember wanting to be was a ballerina. I imagined that I would be famous and beautiful. I would be seen, but untouchable as I danced on the stage, there for everyone to view but so far away from them all. I also wanted to be a fashion designer, I fantasized that I would be creative and cool, transported to a chic world where people not only “got” me but celebrated me–very different from my real life as an awkward 4th grader in a shoe-box mid-western town. I also always wanted to be a writer, which I would become. When I imagined being a writer there was a fantasy of being respected, listened to, felt, understood. That I would be allowed to finally speak and tell my story with the breadth of emotions I experienced… I would be allowed to be myself– the real truthful me.
In Ned’s childhood fantasies, he always took on the role of someone he knew, imagining being in the career of one of his relatives. I think this makes perfect sense for his child-self’s concept of significance. Ned was looking directly to those who were significant, those who had power and control– and wanting to be them. On Armand’s podcast, many more careers are explained as he took callers and helped them explore their fantasies. There was a pilot who just wanted to get away and be above it all, a world-traveler who needed to escape her family to find love, a lawyer who was talked out of everything he wanted as kid and a ventriloquist who wasn’t allowed to feel his own anger and needed to channel it into an altar voice.
It seems it is all too easy to forget how incredibly lonely it feels to be a child, to let that massive feeling of insignificance slip back, deep into the unconscious.We suppress those feeling of invisibility, of being unimportant and misunderstood, because this seems better than re-living it. Pushing it all down in to the black of memory is often easier than facing those dark feelings in the short-run. However what we don’t work through will continue to lurk emotionally, that loneliness and sadness pulling at the heart-strings, forever aching just below the surface. If we face our pasts however, we can begin to heal and move on, living happily with our inner-children. You can connect with that lonely-kid inside of you, and a great place to meet them is on the plane of imagination.
Questions for Reflection on What you Wanted to Be When you Grew Up:
- How did you imagine yourself being X. What tasks would you do? Where would you be? What were the specifics?
- How did people treat you in this fantasy? What did they think of you?
- How did this fantasy make you feel?
- Were your parents a part of the fantasy? Where were they?
- What (if you can remember) were your perceptions of this career? How would you have described it?
- How did the feelings of the fantasy compare to your real life?
- How did what you were seen as in the fantasy compare to real life?
- Why (to your inner child) is X career important?
- Why did you need to be X to be loved?
What did you want to be? Do you see this fitting into a hole where you did not feel significant or in control?
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5 Comments
When I was little, I wanted to be a fish. When I realised that wasn’t possible, I settled on wanting to be a Marine Biologist because I loved sharks so much. I don’t think it says a lot about me as a kid, except that even then everything about me was fairly practical. Even my adulthood fantasies were practical.
This post was beautiful. xoxo
Alle Malice´s last blog ..Time Capsule: November 4, 2006
Alle- I actually thought about marine biologist as I was writing this because I know a lot of my childhood friends wanted to be one. I imagine it has to do something with wanting to relate to another world completely, it is almost like living in a fantasy world, working with marine creatures! It is practical, but that also shows you had/have a good grip on what is seen as important!
& Thank you
Great post! When I was little I wanted to be a paleontologist (dig up dinosaur bones). I also wanted to be a vet, a ballerina, and a game show host (among other things) all at the same time. As I’ve grown up, I find it hard to stick to one career path, and make big decisions about my life. I think there is probably some kind of connection there, although I really hadn’t thought about it before this.
Miss Peregrin´s last blog ..The Great Gemma Ward Debate (Or, is this really fat?)
The first think I remember wanting to be was a vet. I think it had something to do with how much I LONGED to have a dog for a pet. I always wanted to write, too.
Miss P, paleontologist is certainly interesting! You must have imagined a lot of travel, and digging up the bones almost seems like solving a puzzle.
Stacie, caring for animals was a big part of my childhood too, and it has been interesting to explore what that did for me…
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