The Town Herald

The netpaper about Elftowners, by Elftowners, for Elftowners.

Peter Pan Syndrome

Written by [Linderel]



We all know, more or less, the story of Peter Pan; how a young child escaped from this world to the magical one of Never Never Land, there embarking on great adventures, fighting pirates, and never growing older than a pre-adolescent boy. What does this, then, have to do with the topic of phobias and fears, you ask? Everything.

Peter Pan syndrome is, essentially, the fear of growing up, of adulthood. The societies in each stage of a person's life - childhood, adolescence, adulthood and all the sub-categories thereof - have their own sets of rules, and the closer to that third stage one gets, the more complicated these rules seem to become. A child can witness a parent or another close adult dealing with so much grief that he or she will begin to wonder... Why would I ever want to grow up? The responsibilities, the complex relationships, everything will seem impossible and frightening. The child may express a desire to never become an adult, and this wish may manifest itself as a refusal to eat or an excessive need to be held. The problem here, I suppose, is that this behaviour might not even be anything out of the ordinary. If there is a way to tell whether the child truly does suffer a case of the 'syndrome' that will haunt them through the years, I do not know of it. The continued influence of their environment will undoubtedly affect the outcome, whatever that may be. Sometimes - dare I even say, more often than not - the 'syndrome' can peter* out into nothing as the child grows older.

There's the other problem, then. In some cases, this fear, this aversion, never completely fades. It can get easier at times, but will still be lurking in the background, some deep recess of your mind, simply waiting to pounce and once again sink its sharp little teeth into your skin, refusing to be dislodged. And you will think, I was right. Again, the syndrome can manifest itself in a number of ways, all of which can be accounted to something else - depression, eating disorders, rebellion, you name it. No, ladies and gentlemen, I am sad to say that sometimes, you really cannot get rid of our dear friend Peter, and that life is just as stormy as it looked to be through a child's eyes. Some of us, in the end, cannot deal, having had it too hard from the very beginning. But we all try, and survive, and live, in the hope that one day everything will stop being so difficult.

This is life, my friends, and it is painfully real. The syndrome is real. It was never merely a children's story, and never will be. Are you haunted by Peter Pan's shadow, too?






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