Nowadays you can often hear calls for rituals to solve problems: “Relationships with men, parents, and boss are not working out?! It's all about failed initiation! Pay for the procedure and sit with your bare butt in the anthill. We'll start soon." Typically, such experiments are associated with high stress and I wanted to think about its necessity. Let's start with a historical phenomenon. Teenage initiation is a ritual symbolizing the transition to a new stage of life. It was often a truly painful procedure involving tattooing, testing, and even physical abuse. By the way, one bite of a tucandeira ant can reproduce in detail the creation of the world and the entire range of pain in the galaxy. The Satere-Mawe tribe believed that after this the man was able to withstand any difficulties in life. Another reason for the ritual was the usual change in the status/role of a boy/man. Consider this to be a “primitive passport” for access to certain types of activities. Now, there is no need for such initiation, but the concept of initiation has appeared in psychological terms - overcoming the infantile position in adulthood. These are cases where an adult, in many aspects of life, behaves without independence and with a constant eye on elders. Naturally, there were enterprising people who decided to combine these two points into a magical practice that solves all problems. Few people want to be infantile at 30, 40 or 50 years. There are even fewer of those who are ready to make an effort to take responsibility for their lives into their own hands. Therefore, it is easier to subject yourself to one-time torture and, by hitting your head on a tambourine, fall out of a symbolic womb made of sheets as an adult. Feel the phrase: “I was allowed to be an adult.” Do you think this sounds mature? That is, until they tell you this, you will be a child? Yes. Sometimes it is really important for us to hear words about involvement in adult life. For example, I often and completely sincerely tell my clients that I see masculinity, femininity and that very adulthood in them. But every time I back up my words with facts from their life. In other words, the ritual itself says absolutely nothing about a person’s readiness for a new milestone in his life. Initiation is a process that consists of many actions that we take towards healthy autonomy. It’s great when the child wants to erase his childhood drawings from the closet, hangs up a shelf, prepares food, moves out from his parents and, in the good sense of the word, becomes inconvenient for others. This is growing up, and for this you don’t have to prick yourself or emotionally torture yourself. Take care of yourself and simply expand your adulthood with the number of adult actions. Bolotov LeonidPsychologist, sexologist, body therapist