Let Me Go

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

What you choose is really

not that important.

It is in the very act

choice and contains

the essence of the changes …

Of all human vices

the worst is cowardice …

M. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita"

This article will focus on the situation of codependent relationships in which one of the participants in the couple - the client - realizes and experiences at the same time the severity of such relationships and desire to change them on the one hand, and inability to change anything - with another. He is already “ripe” enough to understand the impossibility of “living like this”, but at the same time he cannot decide to take an independent step and turns to a therapist for professional help. The request most often sounds like the impossibility of making a choice.

How is this experienced by the client?

The client is constantly and unsuccessfully trying to solve for himself the problem - "leave or stay?", Which for him is fundamentally unsolvable. None of the answer options suits him.

The impossibility to "continue to live like this" manifests itself in the client's feeling that:

- you live with the wrong person;

- you don't live your life

And those relationships that you have are “strangling”, do not allow you to breathe deeply …

And the life you live is devoid of joy, fullness of sensations.

And sometimes, if not often, there are fantasies that I would like to have a different relationship and a different life …

The desire to change something in your relationship and in life encounters a lot of resistance.

The burden of duty and guilt before the partner constantly presses and numerous fears loom on the horizon - "what if this happens?" The set of fears is usually universal and most often includes the following:

• How to live on?
• How to start a new life?
• Will I be able to?
• What if something doesn't work out?
• Will not the new life be a continuation of the previous one?
• Will I regret this decision?
• What will other people say?

This usually happens when, in a codependent relationship, one of the partners begins to grow and his independent self begins to "germinate" and this self has its own content - modalities (I want, I think, I can), as well as sensitivity and boundaries.

It is sad that all this appears so late (at the age of 30-40-50) and it is joyful that it appears at all. Situations are not uncommon when a person, having lived his life, realizes that he was never born as a separate I (was there a boy …?). But life has already been lived, and nothing can be changed.

And here I would honestly admit to myself and my partner that, unfortunately, these relations have exhausted themselves and everyone will continue to follow their own path of life, but this is extremely rare. But it takes courage! Courage to be yourself. The courage to be honest with oneself and with the Other. Hold, on the one hand, fears (discussed above), feelings of duty and guilt towards a partner, on the other - old, habitual, and already automatic ways of contact and, in general, a formed, stable picture of the world and one's own I.

And in this contradictory state of hanging on the scales of choice, the client comes to the therapist.

Therapy

The main challenge for the therapist is not to make a choice for the client

Although clients will try in every possible way to get at least a hint from the therapist. The client, trapped in the need to choose, will involve the therapist in this process, delegating his powers to him. The therapist in this matter should avoid the temptation to influence the choice of the client, even being sincerely sure of the correctness of this or that position.

What then can the therapist do?

- to clarify in detail and thoroughly together with the client the current situation;

- consider all the pros and cons of both alternatives;

- carefully study and analyze all kinds of obstacles that prevent you from making a choice. As such, most often there are numerous fears, feelings of guilt, duty, shame.

- in the situation under consideration, the choice is made, as a rule, between two poles: I want and must. All sorts of experiments with creating a situation of opportunity to be and experience different experiences in each of the alternative poles will be appropriate here. (Imagine that you have made a choice of this option. Come to this place, listen to yourself, how do you like it? What if you choose another option? How will your life change in the first and second cases?);

- to consider the current situation of “no choice” as a passive choice of the client not to change anything;

- it is important to accept and support the client in any choice.

The difficulty here is that they are actually trying to get away from the wrong person. A partner in such a relationship, which, in fact, is complementary, is loaded with functions that are a priori unusual for him. (see more about this here) and here)

The needs that the partners in marriage loaded each other with do not refer to partnerships at all, but to parental needs. And myself message, ultimately - "Let me go!" - in fact, it is also childish. The expectation that someone else will do something for you is infantile. And attempts to present the situation in such a way that someone does not allow you to live, interferes, does not let go also leave the realm of reality.

Yes, the Other can hold back, threaten, frighten, manipulate in every possible way, but this is possible only when he feels that the partner is not ready. He reads this uncertainty, unpreparedness of the partner and feels the power over him. We can say that a partner who wants freedom on a conscious level says "Let me go", while his other message, more often an unconscious one, sounds like "Hold me!"

It is easy to verify this. One has only to start supporting the client in one of the options of choice, as he immediately begins to defend the opposite.

So it’s not something else! More precisely, not only in it. And since the other does not come to therapy, then perhaps this is not his problem.

Here we are dealing with a psychological game, a kind of a kind of dance of partners, the duration of which can be indefinitely long. Exploring the content of this kind of relationship, you inevitably come across their repetition, as if the partners are running in a circle. Such circles can continue throughout life and their life will consist of them. Unless, of course, someone matures and realizes their role in this dance and stops playing.

Examples:

In my therapeutic practice, there were clients who, for many years of their lives, could not make any choice. A 45-year-old man, let's call him S., has been trying to leave the family for 10 years. He started an affair on the side, after a while his wife found out about it. This was not difficult, as he regularly left evidence of his connection. Then the question of choice became acute for him - his wife rolled up a scandal, threatened to kick him out, he “chose” his wife, she forgave him and so on until his next betrayal. At the time of his coming to the therapist, he had already done 4 laps. As a result of therapy, the man managed to "grow up" and make his choice. As far as I know, he is quite happy and does not regret it.

Sometimes the partner trying to break out of the relationship of the spouse chooses a strategy for himself not to notice such his actions. A 36-year-old woman N. constantly “tossed” evidence of her infidelities, her husband “did not notice” them. Her provocations became more and more obvious - her husband strengthened his defense - he began to interpret them as he liked, just not as facts of treason. The situation at the time of her arrival for therapy became anecdotal. Remember: the husband comes home late, all stained with lipstick. And to the question of his wife, "Where have you been?", He answers - "Darling, think of something, you are smart with me."

It is important to understand that the deepest problem of the client is not that he cannot choose in this particular situation, but in general in his fundamental inability to make independent and responsible choices in his life. I would even say that his problem is the inability to take responsibility for himself.

Consequently, the therapist should not support the “bad other” version, but rather try to bring the client into awareness of his contribution to this kind of relationship.

I think that it is in the choice itself that the essence of the changes for the client is contained. And here the matter is not even in the correctness-erroneousness of the choice. A person who made his own choice and took responsibility for this step is already a different person!

The choice of this or that alternative, in fact, is not so important.

The choice here is not made between me and another, but between me and me

• Between me waiting for someone else to allow you to live the way you want it, to allow you to be yourself, and me who will allow the experience that he has the right to be what he is!
• Between me expecting evaluation from another and eagerly seeking recognition from him, and me who knows his own worth.
• Between me trying to be what the other wants to see you, and me accepting himself as he is.

This formulation of the question transfers the problem of choice from interpersonal plane to plane existential.

For some reason I remembered the poems that my supervisor Abramova Galina Sergeevna wrote and presented to me on the day of my dissertation defense.

Old keys

The door will tremble …

and the walls will echo

Oscillation to the noise of footsteps….

The key is in the lock, it must turn

A quiet home for voices to wake up

Shake off your shackles …

The door will tremble …

but the key is stuck rusty, The hand will slip from the effort.

Turning left and right

but it doesn't work. Slyly

Look at the hinges of the old castle.

The door will tremble …., but the key is already powerless, Closed with a patina seal.

How much was spent, effort, …

Here we once mowed the grass, You can't count the versts behind.

The door will tremble …

hand will stroke her, Shadows will run across the jamb

The neighbor's cat will come to the fence, Someone (me?) Will sigh, sit at the house

And he will support his cheek with his hand …