Escape Adultitis Article in Cosmpolitan Magazine

'Escaping Adultitis'

Escaping Adultitis is all about rediscovering the carefree fun, wide-eyed excitement and intense curiosity of childhood, and incorporating it into your adult life.

Glynis Horning wrote:
When last did you laugh – really laugh, from your tummy, till your eyes watered and you almost peed? Children laugh on average 400 times a day; adults, 15 – and in a much more restrained way. It’s a discovery that prompted US cartoonist Jason Kotecki to produce a book, a website and a movement to prevent and treat what he terms ‘adultitis’.


Kotecki defines adultitis as a silent epidemic that slowly erodes our inborn childlike spirit, killing our dreams, curiosity, happiness and hope. As he and his coauthor (now wife) Kim explain in The Escape Plan: A 40-Day Plan To Annihilate The Adultitis In Your Life (JBird Ink), adultitis usually sets in after the age of 21, when you’re weighed down by a job, bills and responsibilities. You catch it by associating with others who have it, ignoring your dreams, caring too much what society thinks, constantly chasing the ‘next big thing’, trying to keep up with the Khumalos, and taking yourself too seriously.


The symptoms are essentially those of stress and depression (see ‘Are you afflicted?’). Left unchecked, these can kill – they increase your risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, cirrhosis (from alcohol abuse), substance-fuelled accidents and suicide, says Durban psychologist Rakhi Beekrum.

I wrote:

When you observe a young child, what do you see?
Moment-by-moment experience of what’s unfolding.
Curiosity; they explore their surroundings with total focus, abandon, using all their senses.
Express their wants and desires without any consideration for others.

What are our primary or basic assumptions as adults?
“Life is hard, a struggle, full of problems, and then we die”. “Adulthood is about responsibilities, sacrifice, pressures, hard work and a denial of pleasure”. To the degree you believe these assumptions to be true, to that degree your mind will try to prove you right, and find evidence to support your assumptions.

Where’s your focus?
“What’s wrong with the world?” or “What’s right with the world?”

I believe balance is the answer. If you don’t look at what you need and just allow things to happen, you can eventually be treated like a doormat, or even worse, a slave. On the other extreme, you can become totally self absorbed and self-indulgent. If you only look at what’s right and ‘good’, you can be in denial about what’s really happening. Someone in your family or team at work will have to play the ‘bad guy’ even if that’s not their natural modus operandi, just to bring things back into balance, and make you ‘see’ the other side.


Steps to finding your way back to honouring ‘the child within”
1. Define what ‘fun’ and ‘pleasure’ means for you. If you don’t know what it is, you won’t recognise it even if it bites you in the… you know what.
[One aspect of this for me would be the surprise element, or something that ‘tickles’ me, whether it is a breathtaking sunset, a quirky comment, paragliding, a beautifully crafted object, an unexpected gift, caress, or hug without ulterior motives, learning to snake-board and falling off a lot, reading up about something that I’m really interested in, or anything that makes me laugh from the centre of my being. In essence this has to do with something ‘new, different, creative’, allowing me to see something in a way I haven’t before. Another aspect would be antici….pation; something to look forward to.]

2. Make time for this and be non-negotiable about it. This does not mean not being flexible as to when you do it, but just about making sure it happens. You owe it to yourself and your family. Proviso; “as long as this is not harmful or life-threatening to yourself and others”, and I’m not talking about extreme sports here, if that’s what gives you ‘kicks’ then “go for it!” (Any form of abusive behaviour is not on this list; drugs, gambling, etc.).

3. Acknowledge yourself for doing it, and enjoy it as your ‘treat’ when you do engage with it. If you do this you will be adding to your ‘me, me inner child’ bank balance, which will give you much more patience, tolerance, and everything else for the rest of your interactions with others, be they kids, family, clan, parents, etc. If this should become a habit and you do not acknowledge it as a ‘treat’, it will no longer have the same value.

4. Don’t knock yourself and others out if you don’t do it. Learn from your experience and find a creative way to get your needs met, as well as the needs of others in your life.

These were the notes I gave her to complete the article.