What Prevents You From Taking Life As A Gift?

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

Many people see life as a duty. This topic has already been discussed by me in the article Life - is it a duty or a gift? How to make a person perceive his life as a gift? And the following was born an exercise … I invite the client to imagine life as a debt and as a gift, then therapy takes place depending on the images suggested by the client's psyche. In this article, I offer a first example of working with this technique. I will publish a second example a little later. Practical example. The client is in long-term therapy. Permission from her to publish is received. - What image appears on the saying: "Life is a gift"? - Gift box. Big, beautiful, tied with a ribbon.

- What image appears on the saying: "Life is a duty"?

- I see an unkempt plot of land with a burnt house on it. This is a picture of our "dacha" from my childhood.

Associations: corvee, quitrent, forced labor. As a child, my parents forced us to work on this site: the heat, mosquitoes, neighbors' children play in the sun, and my sister and I pluck weeds, carry water, water. And I feel that it is impossible otherwise, my parents will be unhappy, I have to tear my veins. - And what is the image of the phrase: “you have to tear the veins”? - Dry hands and tendons, separated from hands. Hands grab the gift box, and the wires twine it. - Who owns the phrase: “you have to tear the veins”? “I don’t know, no one said that. - Let me imagine the "master" of this phrase. - I see a woman who lived for a long time, apparently, even under serfdom. She is forty years old, like me now, but she looks very tortured, tired. Her hands are dry with swollen veins. Her life consists of hard work and endless childbirth.

- Ask what she wants? - She replies that she has no desires. “Let her express all her feelings. Allowing the figures that have arisen in the imagination to perform this or that action, we give this permission to ourselves, since the images are a manifestation of our unconscious. In real life, we cannot give permission to ancestors, bosses - those who are hierarchically superior to us. This will be a violation of the hierarchy. You can give permissions to images. Images are a product of our unconscious, there are no senior and junior, bosses and subordinates. The person who created them controls the images. The client himself is the master of all his images. - The woman begins to sing a sad song. This is her usual way of avoiding problems and not hearing what she does not want to hear. - Repeat again that a woman can express all her feelings. She looks at the peas scattered on the floor, wants to pick them up, but instead starts crying. She lies on the floor among the peas and sobs inconsolably. He wants to get rid of life. For her, this is a burden, she does not see a gap. “Let her see the“light”in life. - She says that she always wanted to read, her father did not allow her to learn to read and write, he said that this was not a woman's business. “Let her learn to read. - She is holding a book in her hands, she is interested, smiles. She wants to study, she has aptitude for mathematics.

- Let her learn and realize all her abilities. - I see how she draws graphs, what she does in the laboratory. She enjoys her activities. - What is happening now with the image of the gift? - Hands and veins flew off the gift, and the ribbon disappeared. Allowing the image of a woman - the progenitor to realize desires, in fact, the client gives this permission to herself. And then one of the restrictions on accepting life as a gift is removed. But, this limitation is not the only one. - I see a little rag in a gift box - a shaggy creature, it grimaces, turns into Sonya's sister. My sister appeared a year after my birth, at the end of December. Mom always said that she was a New Year's gift for me and the whole family. Now I see that my sister is hiding something behind her back. Yes, she stole my present! Indeed, with her appearance, as if I had lost the right to my life, the love of my parents. Everything passed on to her. “Let your sister see her own life as a gift. - Another gift box tied with a ribbon appears. The sister rushes to her. She leaves me my gift. This is a necklace made of gold and adorned with precious stones.

I understand that this piece belongs to me. I put on the necklace. I feel beautiful, feminine, significant. We are all born valuable, each with its own “necklace”. But then, in the process of growing up, we seem to forget that life is a gift. Someone takes our "necklace", or we ourselves refuse it, we begin to feel unworthy of life, owing to our parents for having received life. The opportunity to live turns into a lifelong debt to parents, and sometimes to the whole world. Psychotherapy helps to return what belongs to us from the moment of birth, the gift called LIFE.