Want to Take Back Control of Your Life? Learn How to Grow Up
- 20 hours ago
- 9 min read
Written by Sabio Janiak, Founder of Mastering Harmony
Sabio Janiak is a psycho-sensory specialist and human behaviourist, and founder of Mastering Harmony. He guides individuals to rewire stress-driven neural patterns, resolve trauma, and restore emotional balance using cutting-edge neuroscience and holistic methods, empowering lasting clarity, resilience, and high-performance living.
We spend enormous amounts of time trying to improve our lives. We work on procrastination, motivation, productivity, emotional regulation, and childhood wounds. We set goals, make plans, and try to understand why we repeatedly sabotage the things we say we want, but underneath some of these struggles may be a more uncomfortable question, "What if part of the problem is that we have never fully grown up?"
Not physically. Not intellectually. Professionally, we may be highly competent. Psychologically, however, an earlier part of the personality can still retain considerable executive power. When life demands commitment, responsibility, discipline, difficult decisions, or sustained discomfort, we may avoid, postpone, or abandon what we started. We wait until we “feel ready.” We resist limitations. We retreat into fantasy or imagine that somewhere else, something better is waiting for us. The adult has developed, but in some areas of life, the child may still be in charge.
The eternal child
In Jungian psychology, Puer Aeternus, Latin for “eternal youth,” describes the archetypal pattern of the eternal child, a part of the personality that remains psychologically attached to youth, possibility, idealism, and freedom from limitation. The Eternal Child carries remarkable qualities, imagination, creativity, curiosity, spontaneity, sensitivity, playfulness, idealism, and the ability to perceive possibilities others may not yet see. These qualities are not the problem. The problem begins when they are not integrated into a mature psychological structure.
Possibility can then replace actuality. Freedom can become avoidance of responsibility. Spontaneity can become inconsistency. Sensitivity can become intolerance of discomfort. Idealism and romanticisation can become ways of escaping imperfect reality, and keeping every possibility open can make genuine commitment increasingly difficult.
This distinction is fundamental. Growing up does not mean getting rid of the inner child. It means no longer asking the inner child to perform the job of the adult.
The inner child has a shadow too
We often romanticise the inner child. Contemporary discussions frequently present it as innocent, wounded and vulnerable, a part of ourselves waiting to be seen, protected and cared for. That is only part of the psychological picture. Children can also be impulsive, demanding, possessive, jealous, aggressive, entitled and intolerant of frustration. They naturally seek immediate gratification because capacities such as perspective, emotional regulation, responsibility and long-term decision-making are still developing.
This does not make the child bad. It makes the child developmentally immature.
Some defensive patterns may develop through experiences of not being sufficiently seen, understood, protected, or emotionally met. Others can be reinforced through overprotection, excessive accommodation, or insufficient boundaries and responsibility, an important consideration in Adlerian psychology. The neglected child can develop maladaptive strategies, but so can the pampered child.
This raises an uncomfortable question for contemporary inner-child work, "What happens if healing becomes confused with giving the inner child everything it wants?" Compassion can unintentionally become accommodation of immaturity. The wounded child deserves care. The frightened child deserves protection. The unseen child deserves recognition, but the infantile, demanding, or sabotaging aspects of the personality also require boundaries, integration, and development.
Healing cannot only mean comforting the child. Eventually, the child also has to grow.
When the eternal child enters adult life
The puer pattern does not necessarily look childish from the outside. Someone can be intelligent, talented, educated, and professionally successful while struggling in particular areas with chronic procrastination, unfinished projects, resistance to routine, repeated changes of direction, difficulty committing, dependence on motivation, low tolerance for frustration, or the expectation that others should rescue, regulate, or accommodate them.
None of these behaviours alone establishes an eternal child pattern. Each can have many psychological, neurological, and situational causes, but when several repeatedly organise our lives, perhaps we need to ask something deeper than, “How do I stop procrastinating?” Perhaps the question is, “What am I avoiding by refusing to commit?”
Commitment is where fantasy meets reality
Commitment is psychologically demanding because choosing one reality means surrendering other possibilities. To choose one path means leaving others unexplored. To finish something means allowing it to become real and therefore imperfect. To master a discipline means accepting repetition. To build a relationship means encountering another human being beyond our fantasy of them. To create something meaningful means continuing after novelty disappears.
Fantasy offers unlimited possibility. Reality requires selection.
As long as something remains imagined, it can remain perfect. The career I have not begun can still be extraordinary. The relationship I have not committed to can still be ideal. The project I have not completed cannot yet be judged. The life I have not chosen still contains every possibility.
A life cannot be built entirely in potential. Eventually, possibility must encounter limitation. Limitation is not necessarily the enemy of freedom. Very often, it is what allows creation to happen.
The musician accepts the discipline of practice. The entrepreneur accepts the consequences of decisions. A relationship requires commitment. The artist accepts the limitation of form. Without limitation, there may be infinite possibility but very little creation.
Refusing to choose can feel like freedom, but refusing to choose is still a choice.
Growing older is not the same as growing up
There is nothing wrong with being childish when we are children. A child is dependent by design. Its nervous system and psychological capacities are still developing. It requires protection, regulation, boundaries, resources, and guidance from adults. The child naturally asks, "Am I safe? Do you see me? Will somebody take care of me? Will somebody help me when I cannot manage this myself?"
These are legitimate developmental needs. The problem begins when strategies formed within dependency continue operating automatically in circumstances requiring adult agency.
An adult may possess considerable intelligence, knowledge and resources while still responding to difficulty through an internal operating system organised around avoidance, dependency, gratification or emotional survival. We can therefore become older without necessarily becoming psychologically more mature. Growing older and growing up are not the same process.
The cybernetics of growing up
Cybernetics is the study of regulation, feedback and control within systems, offering a useful model for understanding psychological maturity. Its central question can be translated into human behaviour very simply, "What has executive control of the system?"
Suppose I establish a goal, then reality provides feedback. I become tired. Progress is slower than expected. I am criticised. I become bored. I fail. I feel afraid. The fantasy meets reality.
At that moment, the hierarchy of the personality becomes visible. If every uncomfortable internal state can override the original intention, emotion effectively becomes command, I don't feel like doing it, therefore, I won't. This is uncomfortable, therefore, something must be wrong. I am afraid, therefore, I should stop. I have lost motivation, therefore, I need another direction.
Feelings are not necessarily instructions. They are information.
Maturity is the increasing capacity to receive that information without automatically surrendering executive control to it. I can listen to fear without allowing fear to make every decision. I can experience frustration without immediately abandoning the goal. I can feel disappointment without destroying what I have built. I can recognise exhaustion and intelligently rest without turning rest into permanent avoidance. I can feel something without being governed by it.
This is not emotional suppression. It is regulation.
From a cybernetic perspective, this distinction is crucial, feedback should inform the system, not automatically take control of it.
Adulthood is agency
Growing up does not mean becoming rigid, joyless, or relentlessly disciplined. Nor does maturity mean remaining in relationships, careers or situations that are harmful or fundamentally wrong. Sometimes leaving is the most mature decision available. The crucial question is, "Who is making the decision, and from what state?"
Adult agency allows us to say, I am afraid, and I can still choose. I am tired, and I can evaluate what is required. I committed, and I understand what it requires. I made a mistake, and I can repair it. This direction is genuinely wrong, and I can consciously change it. I need help, and I can ask for it without surrendering responsibility for my life.
The mature adult is not someone who never struggles. It is someone increasingly capable of remaining the author of their response. That is agency.
Healing the inner child is only half the work
Inner-child work has contributed something important to contemporary psychological culture, recognition that childhood experiences can continue to influence attachment, threat perception, beliefs, emotional reactions and behavioural strategies in adulthood.
Healing cannot end with validation. If inner-child work becomes exclusively about comforting, protecting and accommodating the child, we may inadvertently leave the existing hierarchy untouched. Our adult life remains organised around the child's fears, wounds, desires and reactions.
Integration requires another movement. The child needs care. The adult needs authority.
The playful child can create. The curious child can explore. The sensitive child can feel. The imaginative child can dream, but the adult makes decisions, establishes boundaries, evaluates consequences, tolerates frustration, accepts responsibility, commits, and finishes.
There is an important paradox here. The inner child may become safer when it no longer has to run the life. The adult can finally protect the child because the child is no longer being asked to govern.
Helping grown-ups grow up
This understanding has become an important part of the work I developed through Mastering Harmony. I describe its purpose very simply, Helping Grown-Ups Grow Up.
This is not about suppressing the inner child or becoming more rigid, serious, or controlled. It is about recognising where childhood patterns may still be influencing adult relationships, commitment, boundaries, emotional reactions and decision-making, and developing the adult capacities needed to respond differently.
Through the Eternal Child work within Mastering Harmony, I explore these patterns with individuals and couples. The intention is to preserve the creativity, sensitivity, curiosity, and playfulness of the inner child while strengthening adult agency, self-regulation, responsibility, and conscious choice.
In its simplest form, care for the child. Integrate the shadow. Strengthen the adult. Change the leadership.
Understanding why we became who we are matters, but understanding the past is not the final destination. At some point, healing must also become development.
The price of remaining eternal child
Avoiding adulthood can initially feel like freedom. No commitment means no restriction. No completion means no judgement. No decision means no wrong decision. No responsibility preserves the possibility that somebody else may eventually solve the problem.
Yet almost everything substantial in adult life requires sustained commitment across time, trust, mastery, relationships, expertise, financial stability, businesses, families, communities, bodies of work and a meaningful life.
These things cannot be built through possibility alone. They require repetition, responsibility, limitation, and time, and time removes possibilities whether we choose or not.
The person who continually protects infinite possibility may eventually discover that very little becomes actual. That is the hidden bargain of the eternal child. By refusing limitation, we can also refuse creation.
Keep the child, change the leadership
Growing up does not require abandoning youthfulness. It requires integration.
Keep the wonder, imagination, sensitivity, curiosity, playfulness, and capacity to see possibilities others may not yet see, but place these qualities inside an adult psychological structure capable of giving them form.
The child imagines the house. The adult builds it. The child discovers music. The adult practises the instrument. The child falls in love with an idea. The adult stays long enough to create it. The child dreams of freedom. The adult develops the capacity to sustain it. The child asks, “What could my life become?” The adult asks, “What am I willing to do consistently to create it?”
We need both, but they do not have the same function.
Who is sitting in the executive seat?
When you notice yourself procrastinating, escaping, abandoning, blaming, or perpetually waiting to feel ready, perhaps the first question should not be, "How can I make this feeling disappear?"
Instead, ask, "Who is making this decision?"
Is this an adult evaluation of reality or an old protective strategy attempting to escape discomfort?
What am I afraid will happen if I commit? What responsibility am I avoiding? What fantasy would I have to surrender? Am I interpreting discomfort as evidence that I should stop? Am I asking somebody else to take responsibility for something that belongs to me?
Perhaps most importantly, "What would the adult version of me do next?"
Usually, the answer is remarkably ordinary. Have the conversation. Keep the appointment. Practise again. Set the boundary. Ask for help. Admit the mistake. Do what you said you would do. Finish what matters.
Growing up may ultimately be less about becoming serious and more about becoming capable of self-governance.
Fear can speak without becoming the decision-maker. Emotion can be felt without becoming command. The wounded child can be cared for without governing the entire personality. The playful child can remain alive without being responsible for adult decisions.
Perhaps this is what adult freedom actually means, not freedom from responsibility, limitation, or discomfort, but the capacity to consciously determine our response to them.
The eternal child does not need to disappear. It carries some of our greatest human qualities, but it was never meant to govern the whole life.
If you want to take back control of your life, perhaps one of the most confronting and liberating questions you can ask yourself is also one of the simplest, "Where in my life is it finally time to grow up?"
Read more from Sabio Janiak
Sabio Janiak, Founder of Mastering Harmony
Sabio Janiak is a psycho-sensory specialist and human behaviourist, and the founder of Mastering Harmony. Over the past two decades, he has worked in 88 countries as a therapist, musician, and workshop facilitator, exploring the connections between sound, art, the nervous system, and human behaviour. He specialises in trauma resolution and nervous system regulation, helping individuals rewire stress-driven neural patterns and restore emotional balance. Using holistic modalities and applied neuroscience, Sabio empowers people to cultivate resilience, emotional clarity, and self-regulation. He continues to evolve the Mastering Harmony Method through individual sessions, group workshops, and practical training programs.
