We cannot just ignore the bad thing that happened to us once. It will not go anywhere and will not cease to be bad. And will influence us. But we can do something else: in our power to change the present.
How psychotherapy helps in real relationships? I am often asked this question. Sometimes it seems to the client that it only gets worse. For example, when, after several meetings with a psychotherapist, he goes to relatives and, under the banner of a radical clarification of relations, spreads the little understanding that they had to the puffs. And then wonders what he does wrong.
Everyday logic says that if strong feelings are discovered, then they must be expressed, moreover, to the person with whom they are associated. But everyday logic differs from psychotherapeutic. If at the age of five, parents did not buy us a toy car, it is not enough to quarrel with parents now to get rid of the feeling of their worthlessness. It is not enough to even buy a real car. Why?
Because mental reality is arranged in a special way. Firstly, it consists not of events as such, but of our interpretations of these events. Secondly, it is inhabited by « internal objects ». These are traces of our relations with significant people, a kind of storage, which contains all the hopes and disappointment related to them.
Our anger, irritation, disgust, resentment and other unpleasant feelings are more likely to be directed at internal objects than living people. That is why there is no need to present his experiences the latter.
But what to do with feelings from the past, if we still experience them? There is another way – to look for the answer to the question what message they carry and what we can change for ourselves now.
For years, the accumulated voltage gradually came to naught, and it became clear that the present is not determined by the past, but is created here and now
Once a 29-year-old man turned to me. At first glance, Yuri gave the impression of a very developed person who is physically and intellectually. He was engaged in karate and bodybuilding to be courageous, and then went into the teaching work to increase social status – all his life he moved from one achievement to another in the hope of catching his father’s approving gaze. But the success of the son were indifferent to.
A lot of anger was revealed for the unsatisfied thirst for recognition, and Yuri’s first motivation was to “avenge” his father for a warped life, which he said to me. I suggested surviving this emotion not through reacting, but with the help of research.
We turned to the childhood of Yuri: the boy needed his father and was angry, not getting attention. But it was impossible to show anger, so she seemed to froze and accompanied him unchanged all his future life, breaking away from the situation in which it arose.
In our work, we returned her to the origins, and Yuri lived again his feelings. They turned out to be diverse: along with anger “thawed” sadness, fear, disappointment.
After some time, he was surprised to find that the desire to take revenge disappeared, and it turned out that you could talk about cars with your father, go fishing ..
For years, the accumulated voltage gradually came to naught, and it became clear that the present is not determined by the past, but is created here and now.
