Bored among the bustle and routine of the real world, we are happy to plunge into dreams and fantasies. How does this affect our self-image – and how to come to terms with reality and preserve the richness of the imagination?
Why does everything ordinary, everyday, “like everyone else” irritates me, and the unusual fascinates me? I can’t figure out if this is good or bad. I like to feel different, and I hate to hear that you have to be like everyone else. I remember watching the mystical TV series Twin Peaks at the age of 11. I watched TV and most of all wanted to get there – in this small town. It seemed to me more interesting than the landscape outside the window. Maybe I’m just running away from reality? How to come to terms with reality and maintain your vision of the world?
Andrey, 32 years old
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- Gestalt therapy: touching reality
Larisa Kharlanova, psychologist:
“Hello Andrei! I do not agree that you have to be like everyone else – you just have to be the way you are. Don’t seem “more” or “less” than who you are today. It is important how you live, what kind of relationship you have with people, what reinforces the feeling of extraordinaryness, are you trying at someone’s expense, belittling someone’s dignity, to consider yourself different?
I wonder what kind of dreams you have? Sometimes people live rather ordinary lives, limit the use of their talents, and, moreover, realize themselves far below their capabilities; at the same time, they can have absolutely heroic dreams, and in them they themselves see themselves as rescuers and saviors of the world and people. Sometimes things are not limited only to fantasies – such a phenomenon as “narcissistic expansion” is known (it can be quite harmless in homeopathic doses), when people are friends, for example, only with people who have high achievements, and thus seem to add “feathers” to themselves in the tail.”
I think a middle ground is needed; see how your real achievements correlate with your fantasies, is your real activity paralyzed by the fact that it is difficult or impossible for you to achieve the level of functioning that you attribute to yourself in fantasies? Are you losing friends because of this habit of being a little “not here” and not what they see? Does anyone have the same expectations for you that you have for yourself?”