“We couldn’t cope with the mortgage and lost the apartment.” “I will never have a child.” “My disease cannot be cured”… It is unbearably difficult for many to admit the bitter truth. After all, this would mean giving up what is dear to us, submitting to fate, right? It turns out the opposite is true.
We encounter a weighty “no” even in childhood, when we realize that we cannot always get what we want, influence another person, change the situation. Growing up, we gradually part with the fantasy of our own omnipotence, but not completely.
This illusion allows us to feel at least relative control over our lives, to feel competent and efficient. And therefore the meeting with the cruel reality unsettles.
Black holes
The death of a loved one, betrayal, illness, natural disaster or financial collapse … When we face a disaster, we acutely experience impotence, fear, pain, guilt, and we are not ready to put up with what happened. Someone unconsciously tries to deny what is happening, someone in a fit of hatred begins a fruitless struggle with the windmills, and someone freezes and stops feeling anything. Alas, none of these reactions is able to solve the problem.
“What we have repressed turns into energetically charged black holes in reality, and their energy constantly keeps us in suspense,” explains existential psychotherapist Svetlana Krivtsova. – Feelings of pain and hatred do not allow us to live freely. They block, cut off a whole part of life, not allowing to think and speak on certain topics. All forces are spent on avoiding this hole. There can be only one way out – by an effort of will, turn yourself in that direction and see: what is it? How is it that we are so afraid of? Maybe it’s not so scary?
The work of sorrow
We often hear, “If I accept this, then I’ve given up.” But acceptance is not synonymous with agreement or approval.
“Accept” means to bring the unbearable into your life and allow it to be closer to you, Svetlana Krivtsova notes. – First of all, you just need to say to yourself: yes, it is. “I will never have a child of my own,” a woman or a man may say at some point. And this recognition will launch in them a powerful process of sadness, mourning for the jewel that is passing away.”
Emotionally living through the loss – grieving for a dream that will not come true, regretting the plans that did not come true, we give ourselves warmth, care, and in this close contact with ourselves we find the resources to endure pain.
“And then gradually we begin to realize that what I love can be lived, but in a different form,” continues the psychotherapist. “And now we face another task: to separate those givens that cannot be changed from those values that no one can take away from us.”
If I can’t be a mother/father, does that mean I’ll never experience being maternal or paternal in myself? Not at all. I can adopt a child, become a nanny, teacher, aunt or uncle to my nephews.
“Accepting the loss, I do not refuse to look for what I need,” reminds Svetlana Krivtsova. — I’m redirecting the search in the other direction. So acceptance is not humility. We can say that this is the highest form of resistance to fate.
Never anyway
“Because of the pandemic, I had to move in with my elderly mother to take care of her,” says Tatyana, 45. – And between us immediately sparkled, as in youth: irritation, quarrels. I always missed her support, but I had a childish hope smoldering in me: the day would come and everything would change. And now I realized: no, it won’t change, my mother will never love me. ” The truth has been revealed, but living with this discovery is not easy.
“Here, the same, very big, work is required to separate the unrealizable from the possible,” confirms Svetlana Krivtsova. – Mom cannot be changed, she is the way she is, and cannot give what I need (warmth, attention).
But it is thanks to my mother (paradox!) that I begin to understand what I needed from her – say, such close relationships in which there is not only cooperation, but also sympathy, understanding, the opportunity to be weak. What my mother had to give, I begin to look for in a partner or friend. I get something valuable – clarity about what I really need.
When we understand where to put our attention, our being expands. We continue to feel pain and sadness. But we begin to treat them differently, let them be and learn to live with them.
Based on this acceptance, on knowledge of how life works, on everything that is predictable – even the change of seasons – we gradually find an inner balance in the face of what happened: “I can be near this, it does not destroy me. I again trust the world, I don’t get discouraged, I don’t look for the guilty, I don’t curse God, fate because they robbed me. I survived this disaster. And now I can move on.”
Everything comes to an end
Vladimir Baskakov, body-oriented psychotherapist, thanatotherapist
Children grow up, friends move away, the body grows old… The inevitability of change leads to the thought of the inevitability of death, and it is unbearable. How to take it? We can learn a lot from the body if we see in it a friend and adviser, and not a traitor who betrays weaknesses.
Pay attention: inhalation and exhalation follow each other. You can hold your breath, but the longer we do not breathe, the more difficult it is to restore its rhythm later. The periods of sleep and wakefulness also follow each other.
If we accept our natural needs, then we establish a connection with our body and through it – with our nature, we feel like a part of the universe, subject to cyclic rhythms. Change, like death, is a natural condition of our existence.