It’s time to grow up: how we change our lives

What kind of inner work does each of us have to do in order to survive certain events, usually difficult ones, and restore the lost peace of mind? What path do we need to take in order to grow up and become wiser?

Its stages are described by the concept of four worlds. It explains how changing our views of external and internal phenomena helps to gain stability. The concept was proposed by the Russian psychologist Fedor Vasilyuk, and his student, psychologist Anna Lebedeva, explains the logic of each of these types of worldview.

four worlds

1. The first life world is infantile (its prototype is infantile existence). Here the person is arranged quite simply, and the world seems to her also very simple.

A person with such a worldview strives for momentary satisfaction of a need that does not require efforts and expectations. His world is light and consistent, which means that the emergence of a more or less complex situation that requires reflection and experience causes severe stress, which can be overcome by entering the next space of understanding of the world.

2. Realistic world (externally difficult and simple internally). In it, the personality already recognizes that the external world is difficult, that there are many things in it that need to be taken into account and overcome. But even here, not everything is smooth — the desire to achieve a particular goal can meet with an insurmountable obstacle, and then a person experiences strong frustration.

How to deal with it? Accept that the world around us will not meet our desires, but we can do something with ourselves, with our attitude to the situation, to people, to the task. We begin to think — do we need this goal at all, is this victory really so valuable? This is how our internal complexity grows and at the same time the difficulty of the external world decreases — it is clear again: “Who is it easy now?”.

Having asked a question about values, a person finds himself in a new logic of life.

3. Value world (internally complex and externally easy). It would seem that everything is fine — a person has values, they allow him to regulate the number of tasks and the level of stress, to cope with the impossibility of achieving something, reducing the subjective value of these plans or people. But here a new problem arises.

At some point, it turns out that our values ​​can come into conflict with each other. We need to make a choice, but we cannot, because the alternatives are subjectively important and meaningful.

If the choice is experienced by us as very serious and concerns existential issues, then sooner or later we have to admit that life is very complicated, as well as ourselves.

This is how the space of a new life world is formed.

4. Creative world (internally difficult and externally difficult). Here all questions are resolved by creating new ways to live and choose. The logic of reasoning in this world is the author’s — «I myself am the reason for my situation», «I can find a way out», «I can compose my own way».

In the creative world, a person is constantly aware of its complexity and inconsistency. He does not use labels or templates to explain himself, other people or situations.

Here, the will is an important tool for coping with the difficulty of the world, it helps to free oneself from the oppression of the struggle of motives and realize one’s life plan. Each of us has our own trajectory of movement within the life worlds.

As a rule, they are consistently cultivated — from infantile to valuable as a person grows up. And in the future, when we reach a certain maturity, all these worlds are present in us at the same time, and, depending on a particular life situation, we can react to it in different ways, using the logics of different life worlds.

breaking point

The transition between worlds occurs at the moment when the usual understanding of reality breaks down, ceases to explain what is happening.

Let’s look at the example of a relationship in a pair, how it can be. “Let’s imagine that I live in a simple infantile life world and aim at getting pleasure,” says Anna Lebedeva. — I have a loved one, and we are good together. But at some point, these relationships cease to bring joy: a conflict or some kind of stressful situation has arisen.

My partner hurt me, offended me, accused me of something. I feel alone, abandoned, in pain and devastation. First, I try to get my partner to love and please me like before. But it turns out that he is not going to do this or just leaves.

Willy-nilly, I have to admit that I cannot influence the situation. And now I have a choice:

1. I can just leave this person, showing that I don’t really need him. In this case, I will not change my life world. And in the next relationship, I will act and behave in exactly the same way.

2. If this person is very dear to me, I will naturally come to the need to reckon with the fact that the world is not going to serve my momentary desires and that other people have some other views.

In this case, I complicate my understanding of other people and the outside world in general.

I go out into the space of rationalistic logic, make concessions, and we continue to communicate.

What might happen next?

“Suppose a young man reacts to my concessions like this: I still don’t want to be with you, you disappointed me, we are breaking up,” Anna Lebedeva hypothesizes. — I feel frustration because I can not achieve the goal that I have set for myself, despite the fact that I have complicated the understanding of the world and accepted its inexplicability.

A person creates a new obstacle for me, and it again works against us being together, feeling joy and pleasure. So I get into the next world, where I have to complicate my own personality.

There is nothing else left but to decide the question: I need this person, whether he is valuable to me or not. And the understanding that I don’t need this person (suppose) makes it easier to part with him and continue to live.

But the question of the Other’s value to me, as well as my own values, now becomes very important.

So, I ended up in the valuable world. I know that I myself am not an ordinary person, and I do not fully understand who I need. Suddenly my ex-partner comes back and says: “I was wrong. Let’s start over.»

I have already learned to be alone, and I seem to be doing well. The memory of his departure is still alive, I am afraid to go into it again, although I still love him. So I am faced with an internal conflict: trust him again or be left alone. How to figure it out?

In order to make this difficult choice, it is necessary to admit that we are all complex and fickle, something in us is changing. And this opened opportunity can be realized only if we both believe that we can be together.

“I need to take responsibility for the fact that I can influence this story,” explains Anna Lebedeva. — Having accepted this person back, I can really try to build relationships somehow in a new way, taking into account all the previous mistakes.

And, perhaps, here you can turn to some kind of creativity. Try to describe it in poetry, in a diary, draw it, play on stage — that is, go beyond this situation, look from the side and thereby master it.

And finally, if we unwind further, suppose at some point I lose this person again, now forever. He marries another, and we will never be united as one.

So we fall into a crisis, being inside this difficult world, alone with a complex self.

The result may be a different meaning to the story. We are trying to understand: what did life want to tell us? Why did she confront us with such irresistibility? What should we take away from this for the future?

The past cannot be returned, but we are waiting for new meetings that can again take us through these worlds. And we think: what is all this for? Maybe I can’t survive something and therefore, as they often say, I “attract” to myself certain circumstances, repeating stories.

It was in helping to promote the client’s experience that Fedor Efimovich saw the essence of psychotherapy (understanding psychotherapy), the essence of our change, growth. After all, only having survived the situation to the end, I can change entirely, thereby changing my own life.

Source: Fyodor Vasilyuk’s book «The Psychology of Experience» (Moscow University Press, 1984).