Do you feel like things are always going in your favor? Again, I didn’t get a promising project at work, because of traffic jams I missed my plane, and on a long-awaited vacation I suddenly fell ill. Psychologist Marina Myaus explains what lies behind the phenomenon of chronic bad luck.
Escape from reality
“A husband can stumble out of the blue, get hurt while slicing bread, and even his equipment breaks down,” Arina admits. “At work, he is an excellent specialist, but in everyday life he is inattentive — hence a series of constant failures.”
“As soon as the situation allows you to relax, the person returns to the usual absent-mindedness. Such behavior is often associated with emotional and physical violence in the family, especially if it was unpredictable, explains psychotherapist Marina Myaus. — The child could not do anything that violated the prohibitions of adults, but the parents still vented the accumulated aggression on him. For the same event, punishment could either be applied or not. Because of this inconsistency, the child has formed a habit of detachment from the seeming dangerous reality, the desire to escape into the illusory world of fantasies.
Get attention
“It all started at school and continued at the institute, where I always came across the only ticket, the questions of which I knew the worst,” says Mikhail. — Now it can be difficult for me to speak convincingly at work meetings, as my colleagues do. They are entrusted with projects for which I have done all the preliminary work.”
An important condition for turning the tide is to try to understand your internal benefit.
“Sometimes we do everything to ensure that the situation is not in our favor,” says the psychologist. — A person can unconsciously sabotage the circumstances that promise him success. In this case, refusing to speak at meetings, having ideas in reserve that others will then use. So in us the fear of becoming successful, often triggered in the parental family, can speak. From childhood, a child was forced to do what he was not interested in, they demanded high results in studies, and were blamed for any failures. Growing up, such a person unconsciously creates situations in which he is unsuccessful, symbolically punishing his parents by destroying their expectations.
Another scenario is also possible, in which a teenager is persuaded to “look at things realistically” and value in life not a risky movement forward, but guaranteed stability. Avoiding success, a person again convinces himself of what his parents told him. This gives rise to anxiety and at the same time a bitter feeling that it was not possible to realize dreams.
How to get out of the circle of bad luck?
The most important condition for turning the tide is to try to understand your internal benefit. Are you afraid that success and well-being will put up a wall between you and your loved ones? Does an attitude of perpetual bad luck buy sympathy and attention? Think about why you single out only negative episodes, not noticing the obviously good that life gives. The fear that we will have to pay for a joyful sense of self with a series of failures can make us eventually and emotionally rob our lives.