A Familiar Devil Is Better Than An Unfamiliar Angel

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

Getting into a difficult situation, sometimes, a person does not see a way out. In the interweaving of his beliefs, attitudes, views, there is no acceptable solution. “I don’t know what to do”, “We parted, and I can’t do anything, I just cry”, “I see no point in why I live.” The reality has changed: the beloved has left, there are problems at work, there is no money, the future is scary. Life is spinning out of control. Anxiety grows, thoughts go in a circle. First, an attempt to rethink a new, feverish search, then the strength is running out, apathy, a depressive state. It looks like a room locked from the inside with a lost key to the lock. In another time and in a different state, he would have found a way out, but strong emotions block acceptance and search.

The brain is so arranged that it comes up with the most tragic scenarios, trying to hedge, because it is more difficult to cope with the unexpected. Endless "what if …" paint pictures of a personal apocalypse. It remains only to get under the blanket, curl up in a ball and wait for its onset, anyway there is no strength anymore. The space of one's own ideas about the world becomes a cage, a small room with poor lighting, filled with shadows of fear. So the movements of the fingers, illuminated by the lamp, appear on the wall as monsters. The projection of shadows on the wall of consciousness makes even a harmless thought terrible: "what if …". The dramatic scenes end with a poignant "everything is very bad!"

To somehow cope, first of all they look for reasons: "why, for what!". A good example is the death of a loved one. The feeling of guilt accompanies suffering: if I had done something in due time, I would have been alive. I would like to streamline reality, return control to the realm of uncertainty, in which you feel yourself in a free flight into the abyss, there is nothing to cling to. Free fall is worse than any monster. The reason will bring back at least some ground underfoot.

When an anxious person gets up on the right foot, it becomes calmer. He does not whistle, because there will be no money, he does not greet over the threshold, he does not do a lot of things, or vice versa, he does, increasing the regulation of his own life. Black cats, broken mirrors, conspiracy theories, and more. This is how he is saved from anxiety. In general, the safest place is the prison. There is a strict order, strong walls, food on schedule. Following rituals and superstitions, a person builds his own, visible only to him, concrete walls, protecting himself, virtually of course. This is how fear avoidance manifests itself. The more fears, the more restrictions, the fewer opportunities. Your own cell is ready, over time, the space in it only becomes smaller.

When, together with a client, I begin to explore the rational side of his fear, he usually does it reluctantly: "I understand that this is not so scary …". Our thinking is conservative, it always follows the path of least resistance, this is the path of repetition. A familiar devil is better than an unfamiliar angel. The once formed look, the way of perception requires less energy and is safe, using it, a person survived,. Change is energy-intensive and unsettling. They give rise to unpleasant emotions. Feelings press on the pedals, and the consciousness in the passenger seat only observes the process, giving advice that is rarely listened to. Each of us has our own exclusive path from reaction to action. Someone is rational, through reflections, after which there is an experience, and then feeling and action: "Oh, but from this side I did not think!". Someone is closer to images and representations: "I'm under the impression …". But always awareness and action is accompanied by an experience that changes the attitude towards the problem.

The belief that superstitions and rituals can influence reality is called magical thinking. For an anxious person, it only works in the direction of limitations. When a person is good, he does not fixate on this state, when it is bad, then it is perceived as something more important, serious. According to A. A. Ukhtomsky's definition, a dominant arises - a focus of excitation in the brain and throughout the nervous system. Thoughts revolve around an unpleasant event or situation, and it is very difficult to do something about it. Direct advice doesn't work. He is in a fixed state, essentially a trance, into which he has immersed himself. A client comes to a psychologist in the grip of his limitations. It is necessary to withdraw, to find a different look. Fantasy can take you to unknown distances and times, expanding the idea of your capabilities. Let us recall the flight of Bulgakov's Margarita or the smile of the Cheshire cat. All this is also, in a certain sense, magical thinking, but its vector is different, it liberates. A metaphor, an association, a fleeting pleasant memory can trigger this process.

A familiar devil is better than an unfamiliar angel. This is an appeal to the unconscious. From a rational point of view, the phrase is meaningless, but it is a metaphor, and we immediately understand what it is about. The fear of the unknown, of change becomes obvious without long explanations. This is half the battle. Correction can be started with the same language. Margarita, on a night flight to a party of otherworldly characters, experienced liberation from the inner shackles of everyday life. The scale of the problems suddenly changed, they turned out to be minor and insignificant. Alice in Wonderland literally changed in size, and the world around us also changed, you cannot see the same from different points of view. In addition to talking in an adult way, I try, together with the client, to create his personal fairy tale, in which he becomes a gulliver. Reality and imagination intersect and an experience is born that provides a much needed resource.

Some therapy techniques use the client's identification with fragments of their own fantasies. According to F. Pearl, this allows us to appropriate alienated personality traits. In dreams, what we see is also directly related to experiences and has to do with the manifestation of our feelings, possibly unconscious. We associate with ourselves the traits of people we like, characters from films or books. This helps to mobilize oneself, to awaken the dormant resources of the psyche in order to cope with this or that task or trouble. Great things are seen at a distance, says folk wisdom. To look wider, this is already in a new way. Anxiety is always associated with the future, another important parameter is time. We do not accept its irreversibility badly, trying to stop it. But, unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, there is no freeze frame button on this remote control.

You need wings to fly. They can be found at home, however, you can fly this way. Everyone, at least once, flew in a dream, so much so that it was breathtaking. It takes strength to adapt. There is an unknown angel in any problem. It is scary to decide on a divorce, freedom beckons, but scary. Familiar devil … maybe already tired of my husband, and it's scary to live like this all my life, but he is familiar, understandable. And there, and there is fear, and you need a cream, smeared with which, you gain wings that will allow you to fly, leaving doubts. It is possible and simply, remembering the feeling of flight, entering the image in which you have already been once. Who will win, devil or angel, unfamiliar freedom or familiar routine. The choice depends on the state of the person, today it is determined by a set of thoughts scrolled many times, tomorrow it may be different, the psyche is multidimensional. It's time to listen to yourself, look for opportunities for magical transformations in your country of feelings. And now, already a flight, so much so that it takes your breath away.