Today I want to tell you one secret that only psychotherapists and those of their clients know who are successfully moving towards finding themselves in a new status - in the status of a happy, harmonious personality, in which everything, no matter what he planned, everything turns out the way he wanted …
I said that this secret is known to those who communicate with psychotherapists or read books written by the best of them … Although not … Some clients of psychotherapists, no matter how many sessions they go through, no matter how many books they read, still do not understand this secret, no matter how you tell them about it in different words. So, their time to figure it out on their own has not yet come. After all, this is the only way to understand the most important things - you have to reach everything really important yourself.
This "main secret of psychotherapy", which I will tell you about, sounds like a paradox and is therefore confusing. But the most true truths - they always or almost always sound exactly like a paradox.
Let's first remember what a paradox is.
The paradox (from the ancient Greek - "unexpected" or "strange") is a correct judgment or a situation that takes place in reality, which, despite the fact that they are true and real, have no logical explanation and sound discouraging.
A paradox is most often called a statement, one that disagrees with the generally accepted opinion and at first (superficial) glance looks like an unreasonable nonsense.
The most famous author of the most paradoxical (and most true) statements was the famous English writer - Oscar Wilde. He was even called that - Prince Paradox …
Here are some of his paradoxical aphorisms. Immerse yourself in the beauty of this unique genre in order to fully appreciate the main paradox of psychotherapy, the main dish that I am in no hurry to serve.
Promotional video:
Oscar Wilde said:
“I'm not young enough to know everything”;
“I have an unassuming taste: the very best is enough for me”;
“Women have amazingly sharp eyes: they see everything but the most obvious”;
“To be natural is this, you know … posture”;
"Only a superficial person judges people not by their appearance";
"I will believe anything as long as it is completely incredible."
So, here it is - the main paradox of psychotherapy:
Accepting yourself is the beginning of change.
You can reformulate it like this (quite in Wilde's way):
"Unwillingness to change yourself is the beginning of positive changes in yourself"
The meaning of this truth, clothed in the form of a paradox, is that as long as you want to change, because you don’t like yourself, you will change and will not start, there will be no time.
You will not begin to change precisely because the thoughts that “I am somehow different” are all the same old thoughts, the old - wrong thinking, draining the brain and taking away strength.
A person who does not like himself spends all his energy, all his health and resources on what psychologists call the term "building psychological defenses."
These are the typical psychological defenses built by people who are dissatisfied with themselves and therefore suffer from a guilt complex or simply from low self-esteem. Such a person:
He constantly justifies himself, fusses, spends his strength, lies;
He hides his "face" from others, hiding true character traits and habits, which is very troublesome and difficult;
Or, on the contrary, he spends all his strength and the last remnants of his reputation on even more protrusion, exaggeration of his "bad" features, in order to annoy those who once did not accept him from anger and despair. Once having done something "wrong", he is now trying to "grow" to a real monster in order to take revenge for sure on those who recorded him as a monster ahead of time;
He compensates for his “shortcomings” by engaging in some kind of third-party “good” activity, very stormy and exhausting and not at all interesting to him, if he digs deeply - he makes a “wrong” career, destroys his health in the most banal workaholism, builds an “ideal family” that he does not need, for years enduring next to an unloved spouse.
He sucks up to those around him, sacrifices himself to strangers or his own relatives, who are already choking on his "help" so that they do not notice his "shortcomings" or treat them more condescendingly;
He allows himself to be lectured and pushed around by himself - to those who saw through his dissatisfaction with himself and takes advantage of his feelings of guilt with might and main.
Do you recognize yourself or someone you know in at least one of these portrait sketches?
Before you is a picture of the typical life of typical people. Now you perfectly understand the meaning of this paradox:
"Accepting oneself is the beginning of change."
After all, positive changes require from us not only physical strength, energy, money and time. The most important thing that they require is our light and wonderful disposition of spirit, with which we must set off on a new (and certainly not easy) path for ourselves. They demand optimism and joy on our face. And where to get all of the above for a person who does not accept himself as he is?
Self-rejection is a wish for death (albeit subconscious). And how can you combine such two oppositely directed wishes at the same time: a wish for yourself death and a wish for yourself happiness in a new status?
A real-life example of how this psychotherapy paradox works.
You've probably heard that overweight people do not buy themselves a lot of fashionable and beautiful clothes, because "they are going to lose weight, and that's when they buy fashionable and beautiful clothes for themselves."
And you've probably heard that by reasoning in this way, they are making a big mistake. Because people who are so fat will never lose weight.
This is how this paradox works in life!
Fat people begin to rapidly lose weight and reduce volumes, generally come into the desired shape only when they begin to lovingly dress themselves as they are right now.
Not to wear overalls and ugly unawareness, but to come up with an exclusive wardrobe just for your current weight …
Why is this happening? Psychotherapists and psychiatrists - they know, but they are silent, laughing quietly into a mustache …
Author: Elena Nazarenko