One day it comes. I want to drastically change my life: get a divorce, run away from my hometown to distant lands, quit my job and open my own business … But what is behind this? What are the real reasons for wanting to change everything? And how to understand whether such desires are constructive or harmful?
Sometimes there is a real need for change. And behind the desire to change everything is something more than anxiety and a desire to escape from responsibility and accumulated mistakes: it is possible that our true “I” is speaking.
28-year-old Maria worked at a local TV channel and lived with a young man, when it suddenly occurred to her: she wants to make music! There were no prospects for such activities in her hometown. “My friend thought the idea was crazy, and I didn’t want to give it up,” she recalls, “so I left alone. I confess that later I regretted my decision more than once, but decided not to return. Now I’m a bass player in a small band…”.
What is it, a whim or a serious choice?
follow fate
You need to follow your destiny, says psychoanalyst Juliette Allais: “Lacan called this special impulse that makes us alive desire. It leads us to the path that is ours.” Our vocation is in the very heart of life energy, joy, motivation. It is like an inner light that makes us shine, shine in a chosen area. “When we move away from it, we kind of go out,” continues the psychoanalyst. “I would suggest thinking about this lack of appetite for life.”
There are families in which the concept of vocation is valued and encouraged. And others, where “people don’t do that”, “it’s not serious”, “it’s impossible”. The manifestation of family loyalty sometimes obstructs the path to ourselves. But estrangement from one’s own uniqueness can lead to depression.
“We should listen to what is trying to bring us back to ourselves: a feeling of general unhappiness, meetings that are perceived as signs, a feeling when it hurts in the heart if we see a joyful person or read a book that awakens incomprehensible nostalgia. Following your calling is not always comfortable. But if we turn away from it, we can pay dearly for it, ”concludes Juliette Allais.
Where to go?
Family psychologist Svetlana Loseva shares her story: a woman who dreamed of a new love came to her for a consultation.
– I want to go to America, get married, have children and live on the ocean.
What ocean do you want to live on? — said the psychologist.
– I did not get that…
America is washed by two oceans. On what shore do you see your family life?
– Yes? – the client who dreamed of America was surprised. I didn’t think so deeply.
Later it turned out that behind the dream of love and the ocean was the desire to leave her parental home at any cost, where she was uncomfortable. There are many such stories. Svetlana Loseva explains that in an attempt to change lives, many are guided not by the desire for new horizons, but by the desire to escape.
We may expect displeasure and even condemnation of former acquaintances who are accustomed to seeing us in the old role.
“They run away from dissatisfaction with life, from the total control of their parents, from living conditions, from a usurper husband, from a hysterical wife … At the same time, clients themselves may think that they are running towards something: a higher salary, better living conditions, new love … But often they are not ready for the inevitable difficulties that will have to be overcome by creating new conditions and environment for themselves.
In addition to material and everyday challenges, we may expect displeasure and even condemnation of former acquaintances who are accustomed to seeing us in the old role.
Svetlana Loseva talks about a seminar that took place at the Medical Academy: “We, psychologists, talked with students, and nine out of ten said that they were studying to be a doctor because their parents wanted it that way. That is, young people do the will of mom and dad, and not their own, they study because they pay big money and they feel sorry for both their parents and money. For the time being. And rethinking life can manifest itself as a rebellion, ”the family psychologist notes.
Find a resource
The conflict between what others want us to be and what we, consciously or unconsciously, would like for ourselves creates tension. Having broken through, it can be expressed in the desire to destroy everything familiar “to the ground”.
“Wishing to change a situation that causes discomfort, we often endanger our entire way of life. Whereas a more attentive attitude to our feelings would help us not to reach the boiling point and make changes in specific directions, ”says Svetlana Loseva. True, the changes themselves and their scale do not always depend on us …
Irina was 48 years old when her husband left her. The shock was so strong that she decided to drastically change her life. “I was just not able to go to work. Alimony for two teenagers allowed to hold on. And I, in order not to cry all day, began to make woolen hares, as sad and lonely as me. Six months later, a lot of them accumulated, I put their “portraits” on social networks, and, to my surprise, there were buyers for them, ”recalls Irina.
Today she is 52, and we can already say that she has succeeded: to switch from five-day work to homework, spend much more time with children and realize her hobby, which now does not take time, but brings money. On the other hand, her income has halved. However, Irina has no regrets.
Sooner or later
It is believed that it is common for a young person to look for “where it is better”, but at a more respectable age it is worth calming down, not making sudden movements. There is logic in this: the more we gain, the more we risk losing.
In Runet, “grandmother Lena” is widely known – Elena Erkhova from Krasnoyarsk. All her life she dreamed of seeing the world, but she worked hard and did not have time to travel. And yet she fulfilled her dream – at the age of 85, “grandmother Lena” went to see the world. Soon she became famous: her publications on Instagram collected thousands of “likes”, she was invited to TV shows. She has visited many countries, including the Dominican Republic, Italy, Israel, Thailand, Vietnam.
Grandmother Lena recently passed away at the age of 91, but the last few years of her life have been amazing and eventful.
You can follow your dream even at the age of 85, but then there will be too little left for real life.
So it’s never too late to find yourself. “The meeting with our real desires, following the call of the heart can be associated with the fact that we are aware of the finiteness of life and decide to do what we have always wanted, even if we are not completely ready,” says psychologist Anna Milova. Finiteness, mortality is one of the existential givens, an integral part of human existence in the world. While we are young, it may seem that we have an ocean of time ahead of us, and in order to start something new, we need a lot of courage and meetings with our own imperfection, the strength to take responsibility, including for possible failures.
When we realize that we are finite (for example, facing our own aging or going through the loss of loved ones), there is a determination to fulfill true desires, and not wait for the right hour. Because if you wait, you can never wait, the best moment and ideal conditions may never come.
Hearing the call of the heart, we do not get rid of fear (for example, whether our plans will work out), but we still take risks and follow our dreams, because if we do not do it now, then we may never decide.
And yet, it is probably better not to wait for a pension in order to fulfill wishes. If we really always dreamed of changing the profession of an accountant to felting hares out of wool, perhaps we should not delay this and wait for crises that will push for a radical change in profession. You can follow your dream at the age of 85, but then there will be too little left for real life. What if you start right now?
Change: safety precautions
Starting over is exciting. But how to maintain control, not to get lost when emotions are surging and insistently require changes? Gestalt therapist Ashe Garrido shared “safety precautions”.
You need to allow yourself to accept temporary uncertainty and be in it, while at the same time providing yourself with sufficient comfort. Any crisis is a situation when the old methods do not work, and new ones have not yet been discovered. This is a situation of high uncertainty. It is very difficult to carry it.
“There is nothing worse than waiting and catching up” – just about that. The brain is always trying to “complete the figure”, to complete the incomprehensible to understandable, with which it is known how to communicate. And often, when we find ourselves in such a situation, we experience tension and try to relieve it – to do at least something to add clarity. Anything, however wrong, leading to trouble, but ending uncertainty.
In fact, it is worth acting counterintuitively. Don’t fight uncertainty, let it be. Observe yourself, carefully look and listen to what is happening inside. Ensure your comfort: adequate sleep, walks, pleasant activities. Remind yourself that worrying now is a natural phenomenon, not a signal that everything is lost. These are just attempts of the brain to orient in new, changed conditions.
Our brain is a tireless worker, it is looking for new ways, it processes a lot of information from the inside and outside. And he will find a way out, the main thing is not to drive horses. Attention to oneself and to the world around, a warm attitude towards oneself, patience, warmth and tenderness give a large amount of internal resources and help to notice external resources.
You can try new activities, like new dishes when there are a lot of them on the table. Little by little, slowly, listening to the sensations. In the end, you will want to return to something again and again, meanings that were simply inaccessible before will be revealed. Everything will happen in due time and as it should.