2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
Sometimes it is rather unclear to people that one of the important factors of satisfaction with life is the realization that I have chosen this life for myself. I want to say right away that the main reference of this article is to the Karpman triangle (rescuer - victim - aggressor), to the dynamics of victim - aggressor. The purpose of this article is to try to find a way out of the "hopelessness - rage - guilt" cycle.
The right to give oneself a choice is associated with a certain flexibility of consciousness, the ability to see options. Unfortunately, when a stressful situation comes along, for most of us it seems like a corridor leading in only one direction. This is especially true for people who are accustomed to relying on rigid structures. Rigid structures are a kind of picture of the world that a person builds for himself without realizing that everything can go wrong. For example, we gave birth to a baby, he will be good and obedient, we will send him to kindergarten, then to school, and there he will study well, because dad and mom, for example, doctors of science, and all our relatives are the smartest people, academicians. And a child is born, for example, a disobedient fidget, for example, with some learning difficulties, and this terrifies the family. Because there was a clear picture of why all this was needed and how it would all be, and there was no other scenario for the development of events, it was unthinkable. In the family, there is parental irritation directed at the child and at each other - why? We are hostages of circumstances! We were enslaved by this situation. We want to break out of it, change it, but we don't know how. It seems to us that everything is crumbling. Although the point in this case is the invariant attitude that everything should be this way and not otherwise. The established order becomes more important than the relationship, because it was the established order and values of this family that provided a certain sense of security and the inviolability of the world.
The same feeling of catastrophe, growing into uncontrollable anger, is familiar to many religious families, in which suddenly one of its members refuses to practice the religion adopted in the family. This is generally characteristic of any culture, manifesting itself, for example, in xenophobia. It happens that there is some kind of dogma, and its violation leads to the feeling that something, previously unshakable, providing such an important sense of stability, suddenly swayed. This is a very hard, painful feeling. For the sake of returning a sense of stability, a person is ready for anything, even for murder (for example, attitude towards homosexuals or the chastity of a woman necessary before marriage is often the cause of violence in some societies).
The more strictly we build the world around us, the more rigid ideas we create - the more we are exposed to the risk of constant irritation. The more the person next to us is inclined to form such ideas, the more we risk falling into the field of violent discontent. Having created a stable idea about something, we need to protect it from the attacks of the real world. And the world will certainly encroach on. And a paradox happens: on the one hand, our rigid structures that we have created protect us. On the other hand, they are also a constant source of our tension. Of course, human consciousness itself requires support and clear ideas. But this is not about that.
In a relationship, how often do you think you’re sick of it all, but you don’t end the relationship? Children get tired, spouses are bored, use everything, shamelessly use your resources? And nothing can be changed! What mood arises from these thoughts? Isn't there a feeling of hopelessness and unhappiness? The feeling of lack of control over the situation, bondage, that someone decides for me and instead of me - this is the feeling of a victim.
In this situation, it doesn't matter what happens in reality. What is important is what is felt in the inner reality: if a person constantly feels himself a hostage of circumstances, that he did not choose this life, that it is imposed on him, and he cannot do anything about it - he has the only way out here - in aggression towards himself or towards others. It is not just that one of the stages of "grief work", when a person tries to cope with a loss, after the stages of denial and trading, is anger. The person realizes that it is not in his power to change the situation and falls into a rage, then enters the stage of deep sadness, followed by the stage of acceptance.
In ordinary life of a person who, according to his own feelings, is constantly in bondage, irritation is also constantly present. Relatives, by the way, may not even guess that this gloomy, irritable person, whom everyone is afraid of, because they do not know at what moment you can get an outburst of anger from him, inside feels like a poor cat, locked in despair. It is not at all necessary that the objective situation is such. The fact is that he feels this way. The fact is that he had a different picture of this life. Or he wants to do something completely different. And those around them, often not knowing this at all, are slave owners, although, most likely, they also feel like victims … What follows from all this? A lot of mindfulness work follows. What did I choose and what did I not choose? Are my expectations adequate? Was the planned development of events possible? Why am I still here? If suddenly all this disappears from my life, will it really get better?
The problem is that we are reliably sheltered from such work by our own fear of our own thoughts. It is easier to walk around in irritation and feel in bondage than to realize what is the cause of this irritation and fear. Because the first thought regarding the current circumstances of your life will be - "I don't want to live like this!" But it may be impossible not to want to live like this for some reason. The second thought, if it comes to her, is that there is a great contribution of mine to what is happening to me. It can be very painful to understand this. Sometimes we hear advice that if we cannot change the situation, we must change our attitude towards it. But this beautiful phrase does not offer a recipe and does not warn that in order to change the attitude towards the situation, you need to work a lot with awareness of yourself in this situation. And making your own choice.
