When Hope Doesn't Heal

Video: When Hope Doesn't Heal

Video: When Hope Doesn't Heal
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When Hope Doesn't Heal
When Hope Doesn't Heal
Anonim

Give up hope everyone who enters here …

Dante "Divine Comedy"

Someday we'll have to give up hope for a better past

Irwin Yalom

The ancient legend of Pandora's box says that Pandora was a woman created by Zeus to punish people for the fact that Prometheus stole fire for them. All the gods generously endowed the woman with beauty, an amazing voice, beautiful clothes. After marrying his brother Prometheus, Pandora gave birth to a daughter. Once Zeus presented Pandora's husband with a vessel in which all human vices, misfortunes and diseases were enclosed. Curious Pandora, despite her husband's warnings, opened the vessel and released all the misfortunes out. Frightened, she slammed the lid, but it was too late - all the misfortunes scattered around the world, and only hope remained at the bottom of the vessel. And, according to legend, since then people began to suffer and live in poverty, having no hope for a better life.

It would seem, what does this legend have to do with psychological work?

Nevertheless, I periodically tell this legend to my clients. And, in my opinion, it contains a very important and wise message. Many interpret the legend in this way - hope remained at the bottom of the vessel, and people were left without hope for a better life. But what is interesting is that hope was in the same vessel with human misfortunes and misfortunes. Indeed, sometimes it turns out that, in order to start living further, it is necessary to part with this "misfortune" - hope. First of all, the hope that, for example, your past or someone else's, or something can be changed.

Grown children hope that someday their parents will understand how much wood they have broken, and parents with sadistic tendencies will suddenly ask for forgiveness and start treating their children differently; someone hopes that the unfaithful spouse will urgently repent and return, and understand what treasure he has lost … Many hope to finally one day receive from loved ones that love and care that they were not given in childhood. Someone hopes for a miraculous healing - whether oneself and goes to healers, or their loved ones, who, for example, suffer from mental illness, and, without doing anything and hoping for a miracle, is wasting time … And these are the very hopes that do not heal.

These hopes support a person in the illusion that someday something will change somewhere and justice will be restored. That after someone, for example, who abused you in childhood, asks for your forgiveness, suddenly it will immediately become easier to live and breathe. Or that you can go back in time and come up with other relationships between parents, between brothers and sisters, and finally peace of mind will be restored. And these are all false hopes.

Sometimes I do an art therapy exercise with my clients called "The Magic Wand". The person is invited to fantasize - if he had a magic wand, what would it be? What is it made of, how did he get it, where does he keep it, in what situations could she help him? Usually this exercise shows the way out to the resources that a person needs at the moment. Then you need to draw this magic wand. And here's what I noticed. It happens that a person very schematically draws a magic wand, but then carefully draws what exactly he would conjure with it. And, as a rule, these drawings reflect the hope for the best past that will never come, about which Irvin Yalom spoke. "My magic wand would conjure that I had a complete and close-knit family in my childhood", "My wand would conjure so that my father would not leave the family", "My magic wand would conjure so that in the past I would never be beaten by my stepfather", “My magic wand would have conjured so that my brother would not get sick” … And here we see that people are not talking about their resources. They talk about situations that can never be corrected, that can only be taken for granted - yes, in my childhood and in my past it was like this. I may yearn for the fact that it was not good there, but it will not work to change something in the past. Because otherwise, all resources will be spent on fruitless regrets and fantasies, and not on doing something about it now in reality.

I sometimes say to such clients: “You know, even the great magicians in fairy tales cannot change the past” (remember at least the same Harry Potter, who, possessing magic, could not return his parents). If you chase a mirage in the desert, in which you see an oasis with water, you can finally lose all your strength. But you can understand - yes, I am in the desert, and this is a mirage, and you need to get together to find water where it really is. It is not in the mirage. Likewise, in a false hope, there is no strength and resources to go further.

And here's what is surprising. As soon as a person allows himself to understand that it is better to stop hoping and give up hope, then, having burned out for something that has not happened in his life, healing suddenly begins. When we recognize that our pain is real, and the hope for a better past is an illusion, then we begin to work with real pain. And they begin to take concrete steps towards changes in reality, and not in fantasies.

Another epigraph to this article was the famous words of Dante from The Divine Comedy: "Give up hope, everyone who enters here." These words were inscribed above the entrance to hell. Alexander Lowen, a famous psychotherapist who worked with the body, believed that hell and purgatory are our unconscious, where a lot of pain and suppressed feelings are hidden from ourselves. And a psychotherapist, like Virgil's guide in Dante's work, can help a person who seeks help to pass through these circles of hell. The process of self-discovery is very similar to this path, and the client's hell consists of despair, panic, anger, humiliation and other feelings that have been suppressed for a long time in order to survive.

And again I draw your attention to the fact that the inscription on the gates of hell says that you need to give up hope before deciding on this road. Perhaps because hope may continue to harbor the illusion that "none of this happened, or it was not with me, or it seemed to me, or one day it will be possible to go back and fix everything." If the one who entered this gate took hope with him, he would probably stay there forever.

Of course, there are moments in which hope supports us and gives us strength to live on. But that hope that does not heal, let it stay where it should be - at the bottom of Pandora's vessel.

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