Growth Problems In Life And Therapy

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

Many problems do not solve, they just outgrow … (c)

You go to cut wood - and you will see only stumps …

V. Tsoi

As a therapist, I have always been interested in the following questions:

How and by what means does the client change in the course of therapy?

What changes can occur in the client's personality during therapy?

Why are some clients able to change themselves and their lives with the help of therapy, while others do not stand it and leave therapy?

Here are some of my thoughts on these questions.

In therapy, perhaps the most important task is to switch the client from rely on others, wait for others to give you something, do something for you, self-reliance … This task is most relevant in the treatment of relationship-dependent clients, or so-called co-dependent clients.

We are all, in one way or another, dependent on others, but for co-dependent people this quality prevents them from living and being with others. The other for the addict remains the object that makes his life meaningful, since the addict remains in his development a small child desperately in need of the Other.

Such a childish position manifests itself in helplessness before the world and, as a consequence, in clinging to the Other.

In this regard, the goal of therapy for these types of clients becomes their psychological maturation, one of the criteria of which is the appearance in the client of the experience that he can change something in his life, make a choice. And it is not at all necessary to change something at the moment of your life, the main thing is that there is a feeling that you in principle, you can change something (change jobs, leave a destructive relationship, etc.). The very appearance of this experience brings a person out of a state of hopelessness and instills optimism.

You can expect all your life from someone that he will do something for / for you … You can expect this from the world as a whole, that it owes you something and wait, wait, wait … This gives rise to a strong dependence on the Other and lack of freedom. It seems like other people (first of all, close ones), the world will not let you go to waste (they will not leave you hungry, they will not put you on the street), but on the other hand they will be something do for you instead of you and usually not the way you want it. And then all that remains is to wait and take what they give. Wait for something to be given, but or what you need, and so much?

As a rule, it is unlikely. This state of affairs gives rise to a feeling of injustice and endless resentment against the world and Others. Here the metaphor about the driver and the passenger comes to mind. Who are you, who do you feel in life - a driver or a passenger? Who has the steering wheel in their hands? If you have, then you can choose the route, time and place of stops, etc., if the steering wheel is in the hands of the Other, then you have to be content with how you are being taken and where.

In therapy, parallel processes take place, the same as in life. The client in therapy builds up his usual relationship with his therapist - he is determined to take and wait from him - new information, advice, support … But here's the difficulty - no matter how hard the therapist tries - he will not be able to satisfy the client. It's just that he is not able to assimilate what he has received and make it his experience, function, new quality of I.

And then there comes a moment when the client begins to understand that nothing happens in therapy and in life, and at best he is indignant and makes claims to the therapist. In this case, the therapist (and the client as well) has a chance to bring the therapy to a successful conclusion. The client, with the help of the therapist, will be able to realize the similarity of what is happening in therapy and in life, to understand how he stops himself, turning aggression into resentment, avoiding risks and choices, preferring to take an “expectant” childish position and be in illusions about himself, others and the world. Illusions associated with the expectation that the world and others owe him, - to give or do something for him.

Awareness and manifestation of aggression towards the therapist allows the client to get an important experience, namely the experience that:

- there is nothing wrong with showing aggression;

- you can and even need to show it;

- you will not be punished for it.

It is very important here for the therapist not to fall into reaction himself, but to treat such behavior of the client calmly, not scolding him for it, but even, on the contrary, encouraging and supporting. Through the manifestation of aggression towards the therapist, the client has the possibility of disappointment in him, and, consequently, the chance to meet with him the real, not idealized, and with the real world. So through the experience of disappointment, maturation occurs, a switch from external resources to internal ones. I wrote about the importance of disappointment in my article "Illusions of Reality or the Experience of Disappointment"

This is a very difficult moment in therapy for both the client and the therapist. Often the client, and sometimes the therapist, does not run the risk of “going into this hot spot” by not withstanding its stress. As a result, the client simply stops therapy, devaluing both the therapy and the therapist, or only the therapist, and turns to the next one - more knowledgeable, experienced. But this is the road to nowhere or running in circles.

This is how, unfortunately, many therapies are completed. For these clients it does not become obvious that what they do in therapy and with the therapist repeats their life - they expect the therapist to do something for them, get nothing, devalue and leave.

Changes in therapy and life do not come immediately. For a long time, a new quality is ripening in the personality - in developmental psychology this is called a neoplasm. Change always occurs in leaps and bounds - long-term quantitative changes prepare the system for a rapid leap to a new quality. This process is individual and poorly predictable and controllable. Just like a child who had crawled before and tried to stand, holding on to the crib, will suddenly suddenly run away, so the client will suddenly feel that what had hindered him earlier (doubts, fears, uncertainty) at once disappeared and will be surprised - "How could I not see this / could not ???".

The problem is always a derivative of the situation and personality. In this regard, we can fully speak of the subjectivity of the problem. Not every problem is perceived by different people as such, the same situations can be perceived by different people as problematic or not.

I like the expression - "Many problems do not solve, they outgrow". The personality “grows up” and the problem that was previously relevant to it ceases to be perceived by it as such. And then what seemed insurmountable for a person falls into the zone of his actual capabilities and no longer seems so. As it is sung in one of the songs of Viktor Tsoi "You will go to cut wood, and you will only see the stumps …"

And the objective world does not change at the same time, and other people do not change, but at the same time everything changes, as the perception of the world changes. As a result, the picture of the World, the picture of the Other and the picture of I. And the most important thing is that the client has an experience authorship of their own life, the ability to make I-choices and make I-efforts!