2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
A beautiful, thin, thin, almost transparent girl is dancing an unprecedented dance. She then runs out to the middle of the hall, then hides in a corner, while being afraid to raise her eyes to the other participants in the training. "If you could name your dance, what would it be called?" - I ask her. “I am” - the girl answers almost in a whisper and with difficulty holding back tears … It seems, just a little bit more, and she will dissolve in the air from the horror that arose from the fact that she even dared to say about it.
The group performs an art therapy exercise. Participants draw their masks and then take turns talking about them. “This mask is about the fact that I don't live. And I so want to be! - says another participant and bursts into tears, then begins to apologize for his tears and, it seems, is ready to burn with shame that he spoke at all … At the same time, the participant is more than a successful person there, outside the training hall, and, probably, many of those around him and the people envious of him would be surprised to learn that he, with all the attributes of a successful person, still does not feel his right to exist …
We all have the most important, the most, so to speak, basic need - the need to be. The need for confirmation that we just are. And we can get this confirmation only through another, that's how it works. A child who has barely learned to crawl looks at his mother and expects from her - no, not praise, not approval or disapproval of his actions. He expects to be simply recognized - to recognize the right to his existence. “Look at me, send me a signal so that I understand that I am, I exist” - these are the most important words that he could say if he could … yourself and your right to exist.
A child does not need to be judged in the very first years of his life. He is already happy with what he is doing - he got up, walked, learned to stack the cubes on top of each other, ran, learned to ride a bicycle, even a three-wheeled one. “Look at me!” - he sends a signal to his most beloved people. Instead, he receives an evaluating look: “Well done, at last he did something” or “I could have done better” … And now, over time, the child is no longer looking for confirmation of what he is, but for approval: “I did it well? You like?" and together with these begins to lose the sense of ourselves … When, instead of recognizing our existence, we receive an assessment in the earliest childhood, then over time we begin to believe that it is the assessment that will confirm our right to be. What a cruel delusion … Often such children grow up to be perfectionists who are constantly unhappy with what they do, because they are used to receiving an assessment from their parents instead of the message "I am, and I have the right to do so." And if an adult is most and most often concerned about what others think of him, it is most likely that this recognition in the right to existence was not enough for him.
But this is not so bad. A sufficiently loving parent, even if he mixes approval and recognition, still gives the feeling that the child has a right to live and exist and be loved.
The scariest message that a child can “give” is the “don't live” message. "It would be better if you weren't there!", "It would be better if I had an abortion", "All children are like children, and you …" be endless)”, physical, sexual violence is what contributes to the strengthening of the feeling“I have no right to be”. But without satisfying this need - the need to be - everything else ceases to make sense. Successful, prestigious work, family, moments of happiness - often a person whose need to be is not satisfied, believes that he received all this somehow by chance, not thanks to his efforts, but some incomprehensible coincidence of circumstances, because after all it seems and no, and therefore he has no right to do so. And, accordingly, he does not know how to enjoy it either …
“I liked the way you danced so much,” they say to the girl who danced and cried and called her dance “I am”. The girl's face brightens. "Is this what you would like to hear?" I ask. After a little thought, she replies: "You know, I just would like to be told: you exist …".
You are. Are you alive. You deserve to be. When we didn’t receive these messages as children, it can be very difficult later in adulthood. And often it is these messages - not explicit, non-verbal, elusive - that turn out to be the most healing in the client-psychotherapist relationship.
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