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Love and hate are the two most powerful emotions. Sometimes they are so intricately intertwined that it is difficult to understand the true causes by which they are caused. Psychotherapist Ekaterina Mikhailova helps a young woman sort out her feelings for her loved ones.
Alexandra, 23 years old
“I didn’t know my father, since I was seven years old I have been living with my stepfather. This is a terrible person! What a pity that my mother and my brother have such a husband and father!”
Ekaterina Mikhailova
In your letter, Alexandra, the task is very precisely set: “not to build life through the prism of relations with him” – with my mother’s hated husband. You understand that it is not about him, no matter how bad he may be, but about the disproportionately large place that he occupies in your thoughts and feelings. You are getting married and leaving soon. Let’s “sit down on the track” and see what’s left behind.
To make it easier, it is important to let go of your mother and say goodbye to the hope of proving to her that you are “better” than her husband and she needs you.
Here, for example, mom. It seems to me that you have long forbidden yourself to be angry with her, directing all your anger and mortal resentment to your stepfather. The child cannot afford to break contact with the only close adult. But with adult eyes, something else is seen: with her non-intervention, mother informed you that her husband is more important to her than everyone and everything, and you must cope on your own and not upset her with your sobs after his insulting antics. They have been together for many years, they now have a child – my mother really chose such a man and such a life. And you can’t do anything about it.
I should stop treating my mother like a little girl who doesn’t understand what she’s doing. And you continue to fight for her, as at the age of seven, when you tried to prevent their union. This keeps you in a hopeless rage – as you feel it, at your stepfather … To make it easier, it is important to let your mother go and say goodbye to her hope to prove that you are “better” than her husband and she needs you. For now, it’s like you’re facing that family, and your back is to your own life. Turn around, Alexandra. It’s time.
About expert
Ekaterina Mikhailova — coach, business trainer, consultant, professor at Moscow State Pedagogical University and the Higher School of Economics, member of the board of directors of the International Association for Group Psychotherapy and Group Processes (IAGP). Vice President of the Psychodrama Association (Russia).