UNDERSTAND YOURSELF AND YOU WILL UNDERSTAND THE WHOLE WORLD

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

"Understand yourself and you will understand the whole world" - the well-known promising recommendation of ancient philosophers in fact becomes difficult for many to implement, and for many it is simply unrealistic.

Why is this happening?

Because we understand ourselves through the prism of the views of other people. We have our first experience in infancy, looking into the eyes of our mother. It is from this glance that for the first time we learn for ourselves - whether we are desirable, whether we are loved and receive the first knowledge about ourselves.

Then we recognize ourselves through the attitude of our father to us, then - all the other significant people in our life …

At that point in life coordinates, where a person realizes that he is lost in other people's landmarks, it is already very difficult for him to feel his own attitude towards himself and understanding of himself, since it is always formed by others, their desires, their views.

… “I have no desires,” “I cannot build a relationship,” “I don’t know how to manage my emotions,” “I don’t know what I want,” “I don’t understand myself,” “I want to understand - WHO am I? …

With such and similar complaints and questions, hundreds of people turn to psychologists with a request to help them. These women have tried all their lives to be good daughters, wives, colleagues and mothers. But for some reason, their personal life is bursting at the seams.

Women and men who come to a psychologist are already old enough to understand that the problem is not in those who leave them, not in those who force them to suppress their emotions, and not in those who impose their desires on them. They know that the root of their problems lies within them. And he appeared a long time ago.

“When I was little, my mother's mood was constantly changing - from bad to good, from good to bad. I was a small but smart girl and, in order not to fall under my mother's hot hand, I had to guess her mood and behave in accordance with it. When she was angry - to be invisible, not irritating her, when she was tired - quiet and affectionate, when in a good mood - smiling and cheerful. I had to be a chameleon who guesses the mood of my mother and dyes in a color suitable for this mood. Even now I skillfully adjust to the mood of others, but I don’t know what I want myself.”

“As a child, my mother used to say that we should always do business. You can't mess around. I learned early to clean the house and help in the garden. It was necessary to study at school only for the fives, and then do business. This was the order established by the parents. I dreamed of playing with dolls for a long time, but I had to do business. Even reading, according to my mother, was idleness. Until now, when I read it, I feel like I'm messing around. Now I have to be constantly busy with something, but I do not understand - why do I need it?"

Hundreds of examples can be cited. Life stories are different for everyone, but the essence of the problem is the same. Many women, like men, for many years unconsciously live according to the instructions and rules written for them by other people: first by their parents, later by teachers and leaders. They live according to someone else's landmarks, according to someone else's "recipes for happiness." But the moment comes when it comes to understanding that

OWN LIFE REMAINS UNPROPOSED AND EVEN UNBEGUNNED

Recently, a client of mine said about her daily life: “I got the impression that I was real as if it receded into the background. And life is being lived differently - one that everyone should like and please everyone all the time. Now I have a feeling that life is passing me by, past me that - real”.

What's the bottom line?

Tired of chasing the ghostly image of "Good for All" over the years begins to weigh down. To be a comfortable daughter, obedient wife, correct mother, executive employee - such a heavy burden puts more and more pressure on the shoulders.

An unsettled personal life, constant doubts about everything, suppression of emotions and repression of desires, and accordingly neuroses, poor health, problem weight, hormonal imbalance, chronic gastritis and otolaryngitis - this is the price people pay for their convenience for others.

It’s a paradox, but while there is an unconscious desire to be “Good for others”, there is always not enough time for oneself. And this means that your own inner world remains unknown and unsolved. And hence the lack of their own desires, the inability to find a professional vocation, the difficulties of building strong and stable relationships, a lack of understanding of the meaning of their actions, and of life in general.

How to be?

When you realize that your own life remains unlived, you want to change something. But what and how?

To learn again to live according to other people's books and rules, to hope for random happiness or to wait for life itself to begin to change over time?

Starting from the age of 30 and closer to 40, the hope finally melts that someone knows you better than yourself and that everything will change by itself without your participation.

“I feel that I have the answers to all my questions inside, the main thing is to be able to hear and understand them,” admits a young woman who came with the problem of lack of desires after several sessions of analytical psychotherapy. And she's right.

After all, the fact that parents and close people actually dress a child with their view of the world at an early age, and he lives with this for many years, does not mean that he does not have his own view inside. It's just that his own perception of the world and his own desires, possible protests against the imposed cannot be realized by him at that time and, accordingly, cannot be put into speech, formulated and presented to the world and those around him. They, these own views, are packaged in unnamed images and symbols. And they are stored for the time being deep in the unconscious.

Thus, our unconscious for many years becomes a repository of repressed secrets about ourselves. Learning to understand the language of your own unconscious is not an easy task. But its solution opens the door to the world of answers to many other previously incomprehensible questions about their internal conflicts, about the causes of their neuroses and diseases, about understanding their true essence, their intentions.

Psychoanalytic therapy makes it possible to touch your unconscious on the basis of your own images and symbols.

“I always need to be good for others, but what I really want - I don't know. I have to carry out other people's tasks - AND I AM NOT AT THIS TIME. I WANT TO APPEAR IN MY LIFE!.

It is with such insights that psychoanalytic therapy begins to reveal one's own desires, one's own identification, and understanding one's own meaning and purpose of life.

And, therefore, your own conscious life

After all, as the ancient sages said: "Understand yourself and you will understand the whole world."

And what about your understanding of YOURSELF?