Contents
“Nobody tells us how couples work, we enter relationships blindly”
Couple
The psychologist Victoria Cadarso publishes “The inner child finds love”, in which she talks about the importance of accepting ourselves in order to be able to love
The psychologist Victoria Cadarso She does so many things in her day-to-day life that listing them in detail would become complicated: she performs therapies, writes books, gives lectures … but it is easier to summarize it in her words: what she seeks is «to help all people, offering them information and the training necessary for them to take advantage of their immense potential and regain balance in a short period of time.
With his new book “The inner child finds love” (Palmyra), addresses one of her specialties: couples. Relationships are incredibly complex, and learning to recognize the root of problems is the key to starting to solve them. And although it hurts us to admit it, many times these are born of ourselves. We spoke with
the author about this, about our inner child and how we manage the past, and how we end up creating harmful dynamics that we are often not aware of.
What are we talking about when we refer to our “inner child”?
The concept is a metaphor to explain something that is inside us. It could be made up of three parts: our authentic being, that part that we have and that connects with our most spiritual part; our “wounded inner child”; and the representation of all the potential that we have to develop. These three things are the inner child. And this is more or less damaged depending on the disagreement that has occurred in our childhood between what we needed and what our Parents. When older is disagreement, the greater the wound. Then we began to use defense mechanisms, to a greater or lesser extent. This inner child is a metaphor that represents everything that we have unfinished in our life, not our desires, but our needs.
In our relationships as a couple, what role does the unconscious play, these wounds from the past that you talk about?
If we were fully aware of everything that happens to us since we are little, we would not bear the pain. Therefore, when we are children we are more unconscious: if you are a child and are aware of things, we would not survive. Our body and mind are prepared to gradually acquire consciousness. Therefore, although it is not ideal, we have some defense mechanisms against pain and they are unconscious. If they hurt me and I deny it, I dissociate myself from that pain, I think it is not so much damage. Then it goes into the unconscious and as we develop, it comes out into the conscious, but it may not come out until well into the years.
We all have trauma to a greater or lesser extent, it can even be something cumulative and you may come to think that it is normal. But this, in reality, what it does is create a lack, and we seek to fill it even though we are not aware of it. We are left with a feeling of dissatisfaction inside, and we try to solve it; We transfer it to our relationships, that search, first with our friends and then with our partners.
He says it from the cover of his book, “Why must we fall in love with ourselves in order to have love for others?
When you fall in love with yourself, appreciate yourself and take care of yourself, you don’t need someone to treat you well: when they do, it is like a gift. But when you need someone to love you, you become dependent; it’s a anxious attachment and that is not healthy love, it is not even love, it is just attachment. We have to work on these parts that have remained unfinished within us, learning to love ourselves and appreciate ourselves so as not to need others, because if not, we become drug addicts. Although the songs and poetry talk about “I can’t live without”, they do us a disservice, because this is not healthy: it is a unhealthy infatuation; To be good with others, we must be good with ourselves.
Apart from liking ourselves, is self-esteem the key to liking others?
The number one factor that generates attraction is seeing someone who has self-esteem, who feels safe, because this is a magnet. A part of us is always attracted to the most confident person, not the most beautiful. There are people who are not pretty, but have a great Trust themselves, and “take people out of the street.” If you work on feeling good about yourself, people are attracted to people who are “fine”; many take it as an apprenticeship, “if a person is so confident and feels so good, I can do it too.”
He speaks of several phases in a relationship, and the first change experienced is the fading of infatuation. How can we cope, manage it?
Every process has phases. In this case, the first thing is to realize: if the crush is lost you have to be aware of it. In falling in love you only see the beautiful, and when this phase passes you enter another phase: that of everything that we have not realized. It is important to be aware when it happens to us. I wish we all knew how couples work, but no one tells us, we enter into relationships blindly and we experience many, many disappointments.
The second phase, when we are aware of what is happening, is face the conflict. When the cocktail of hormones disappears, and you see what there is and you think what the person you have fallen in love with is like, and perhaps not what you thought, a process of acceptance arrives: we are all human and we all have our “things” . This is the time to see if we are looking for something in the other person that they cannot give us. We must understand how we feel, release the emotions that hurt us, the fear of not getting what we think we need and work these beliefs to free ourselves from them and see the other as a person, who, like us, has problems and difficulties.
So, should we open up, with our problems, to fix them, and help the other to fix them?
Each blow leaves you a wound, and therefore, each time you start a new relationship you go with more fear. This fear has to be worked on, otherwise you start repeating patterns, and you always hang out with the same type of person. In some ways, it is an act of responsibility to fix your problems before embarking on a relationship.
Even so, human beings live in society, and therefore we need others. We need to feel appreciated and loved, and it’s okay to need it, but not to the point where it has to be an obligation for the other. Our partner does not have to make up for our deficiencies, if he does not support us in the path that we undertake to solve them.
What are the foundations of a healthy relationship?
A healthy relationship It is a conscious relationship, it is a relationship with good communication, because you can talk about your fears, desires, deficiencies and needs, always knowing that the other does not have the obligation to supply them, but listens and supports you. A relationship with a couple is that I lean on you and you can lean on me, it is a reciprocal relationship where there is no dominance for one and submission for the other, but it is a relationship in which together we are more than two, because that relationship It’s kind of a base that we can both lean on, because we’re both trying to make the relationship work. We are watering and nurturing this relationship day by day.
You have to know that a relationship is a society in which we are both going to be better off if we both collaborate, if we both function as equals, if we both communicate and tell each other what needs and desires we have, we listen and support each other. . But to do this we must be aware of everything that is involved. We have the tendency, when something feels wrong, to throw the blame off. This happens because for at least 18 years, we are dependent on our parents, and we think that we do not have choice, and this remains so, so engraved that we think it is the same with the person we are. We are always holding the other accountable, and what we have to learn is to hold ourselves accountable.