From the author: Link to the original source: The topic of the article is replacement children. The topic is not easy. But, it seems to me, very important. I see how a person’s life can change after he begins to realize his replacement role and becomes able to separate from it. How much sadness, anxiety, guilt, apathy “suddenly” goes away. then he is freed from the depression in which he, it turns out, was immersed almost all his life. But he didn't realize it. Because this depression, this grief - this was the air that he began to breathe in the womb. The person simply did not know that it could be different. But let's take it in order. What is a replacement child? This is a child whom parents gave birth instead another, deceased or lost child. Moreover, the parents could have done this consciously (parents often talk about this openly). Or they could have done it unconsciously. In addition, one more clarification needs to be made. Not any child who was born after the death or abortion of the previous one, is a replacement. Whether he is a replacement or not - as I already said, is determined not by the fact of the death of the previous one, but by the perception (conscious or unconscious) of the parents. A born child is more likely to become a replacement if his parents were unable to move away from the image of the deceased child and identify a new one with him child. Why is there a substitution of images of the deceased and the new child inside the parent? When a child dies, it is a great loss and grief for the parents. In place of the child, who was the center of life for the parents, a void forms. And this is a very difficult experience. In order to cope with this and begin to live fully, parents must do a lot of work within themselves. The work of grief. Grieving is the mental process of accepting the loss of a loved object, letting go of this object and filling the emptiness left in the place of this object. I plan to do a separate issue on the topic of grief. Because very often it is the lack of grief that is the cause of many neuroses, phobias, psychosomatics, etc. What does grief do? Grieving helps to stop investing all mental energy in a lost object (through endless memories, fantasies, mourning, etc.). And direct this energy to other objects. In other words, to create new relationships. With a new child. Replacement is essentially a replacement for grief. The replacement child is condemned to the role of a rescuer for his parents. He removes the burden of grief from them, consoling and restoring them. In order to begin to live, such a child needs to free himself from the phantom (image) of a dead child, which was placed inside him from the mother’s psyche. But I would consider the problem of replacement children a little broader: as children, who grew up in an atmosphere saturated with grief and sadness. Whether this is connected with the death of a previous child or with other unresolved situations in the life of parents - this seems to me to play a secondary role. In any case, a child raised in an atmosphere of grief will carry this burden within himself. The mark of death .Grief is mourning for life. This is the funeral of life. Grief is always more about death than about life. We are all, in some sense, surrogates for the Ideal Child of the narcissistic part of our parents. So even if you did not have any brothers or sisters who died, this information may also help a lot can be about you and your experiences. Just instead of a real dead child, think about the image of the ideal child that your parents had. And with which every parent compares their real child. Watch a video on this topic here. What is typical for substitute children? These are numerous fears, passivity, lack of initiative, dependence and immaturity, reclusiveness. They consider themselves defenseless and incompetent. They have a constant feeling that the world in which they live is unpredictable and dangerous. Sometimes children experience the same symptoms that led to the death of the previous child. Although there is no physical basis for these symptoms. These children show an unhealthy interest in everything related todeath. The replacement child does not have the right to be himself. Wherever he goes, such a person feels unwanted. He is usually sad, withdrawn and lonely. The person has no sense of self-worth. Such children are constantly in a state of competition with those who have died. For the most part - in unconscious competition. Competition in which it is impossible to win. Because parents always tend to idealize a deceased child. And it is generally very difficult to compete with the dead. The “trap” of a replacement child is that he unconsciously strives to be as ideal as the deceased. But at the same time, he has no right to be like that. After all, he “ guilty" to the deceased. It’s as if he took his life. And so the replacement child finds himself “crucified” between the ideal Self (the idealized image of the deceased child in the psyche of the parents) and the need to suffer failures in order to atone for his “sin.” The process of separating the child from the deceased child is made more difficult by that they are confused in the mother's unconscious. And this confusion is very important to her. This is protection from depression, or in other words, from mental death. This confusion manifests itself in different ways: for example, a mother calls her children by the same name, sees and emphasizes the strong external or internal similarity between them, etc. A replacement child is an illusion. An attempt by parents to deceive death. And such a child will experience this illusoryness and “deceitfulness” in relation to himself. Such people may say that all my life I have been living as if not in my body. I never felt like my body was mine. Or, all my life, it was as if I was looking at myself from the outside, how I move, walk, talk. But I never felt inside. Another feature of such children is a heightened sense of guilt. On the one hand, this is the fault of the parents. Who experience their love for a new child as a betrayal of the deceased. On the other hand, it is the fault of the child himself. Who perceives his life as having been given to him at the cost of the death of another. The replacement child seems to live his whole life with a dead child inside. What is the way out? I’ll say right away - this is the case when I strongly recommend turning to a professional therapist. Trainings on personal growth, which are based on motivation, on strengthening the human self. There is also a danger of going into various kinds of energy practices. For example, constellations, etc. Because such people, often without realizing it themselves, live on the border of life and death. And personal growth trainings are more likely to move such a person not along the path of finding his own self. But along the path of achieving the ideal self. That is, they will strengthen the merger with the deceased idealized child. Energy practices can upset the fragile balance between life and death within such a person. And to violate in the wrong direction, which threatens to fall into psychosis (that is, into mental death). Psychotherapeutic work in this case turns out to be the safest and most effective. If the replacement child is still small, then, as a rule, it is necessary to work in parallel with both the mother and child. In the process of working with the mother, two children “unstick” inside the mother. And she becomes able to perceive them (both consciously and unconsciously!) as two different personalities. In this way, the child receives space for life, first inside the mother’s psyche, mother’s perception. And as a result, in external life. The mother of the replacement child must learn to distinguish between merging ideas about the dead and the living. And this work is not simple and not quick, unfortunately. Not quick - because powerful psychological defenses are triggered. After all, if such a decoupling occurs inside the mother, then she will have to do the work from which she “ran away” with the help substitutions. The work of grieving for a deceased child. But it is worth it so that the living child can live a full life. It is very important that the family remembers and talks about the deceased child. Not as some idealized figure. But simply as about a child who was loved. And which is not there now. And this