How to survive a divorce
Eight years ago, I experienced a tragedy that psychologists equate with the loss of a close relative – divorce. In my case, it didn’t work out to part with the world and be friends with families. The parting was accompanied by mutual reproaches, loud curses, “hardcore” drugs and the hospital – amid stress, I lost weight up to 42 kg with an increase of 170 and thundered into the neurosis department. And three weeks later I came out of there, supporting treacherously hanging jeans, and trying to fall, showing those around my bony buttocks, and began to think how to live on.
After the divorce, I left myself a noble property: thin legs, sunken cheeks, complete disorientation in space and lack of a plan for life. And the “disturbing suitcase” also includes an unfinished medical institute with an unfulfilled unloved profession and a couple of things that fit into a shopping bag.
It was a period of complete hopelessness. So that nothing would remind me of the unexpectedly passed away love, I packed my things and moved to another city. No plan, no work experience and no idea how, on what and where I will live.
I will not go into the details of my hardships and hardships, but I will say one thing: the talent for delivering good content helped me very quickly find a job – an IT company took me with arms and legs to sculpt texts about cleaning water bodies from blue-green algae.
Together with the work experience that began unexpectedly at the age of 26, there appeared a rented apartment, a basic wardrobe, and fat on an exhausted butt. There was only one problem at that time – mental suffering over a painful, exhausting relationship, in which my ex-husband and I endlessly changed the roles of the victim, persecutor and rescuer.
There were two ways out of this situation: 1) choose the most painless way to commit suicide, 2) find for yourself a mental healer who prescribes magic pills for mental pain that breaks ribs. I chose the second option. So they started asking me out on dates twice a week. True, in a very interesting place – a room with a couch, where everyone wants to “talk about it.”
How to choose the right therapy
I came to Vladlen (that was the name of the healer of souls) with one request “erase him from the memory”. There was no question of childhood grievances, fears, or total dislike for oneself. Flopping into a chair, she immediately declared: “I don’t plan to stay with you. Quickly cure me from heartache and let’s say goodbye by completing the gestalt or whatever. ” To this the therapist smiled indulgently and replied: “I warn you right away: it will be hard and unpleasant. At the stage of resistance to therapy, you will start skipping sessions, coming up with endless reasons against. The most common: no money, no time, I got sick, I’m taking the cat to the vet. Does not work! I’ll find you anyway, keep that in mind. ”
Ok, cap, I’m ready to dive!
And now a small lyrical digression: why did I choose Gestalt therapy? Everything is simple here – the philosophy of this direction in psychotherapy proposed by Perls is close to me. Its basis is the principle: a view of the world as a process, and a person as a wanderer seeking himself. And one more thought: if nothing interferes with a person, he will certainly be happy. And he can be hindered by his own fears, resentments, unfinished situations in the past, internal dialogues and other “demons” with which they fight in the sessions. The task of such therapy is to find the place of interrupted contacts and complete what was begun, restoring the balance of events.
The first thing Vladlen suggested to me to do was to take off the helmet of my own righteousness and begin to doubt, abandoning the role of a person who knows “how to do it.” This task turned out to be difficult. Nature has awarded me with a stubborn character: my opinion is also wrong. And even mentally accepting the fact that I might be wrong seemed almost an impossible mission.
During the session, replaying various situations, I transferred to the psychotherapist all my stereotypes, labels, and models of behavioral scenarios written in my head. Vladlen had to play different roles: ex-husband, mother and that aunt from the store who climbed out of line. We spoke as if it were really happening. Sometimes he made me cry, sometimes there was a desire to beat him, sometimes – to laugh.
At about the fourth session, what Vladlen had warned me about happened: I had a sharp “stomach ache” and “ran out” of money for therapy. After 10 calls and a statement, “low-income discounts” had to give up and get back on track. And he really turned out to be true.
Gestalt therapy has four points of support: awareness, which means experiencing oneself in contact, the principle of reality, “here and now”, dialogue. I would like to tell you about the latter separately.
Gestalt therapy has no morality, lecture or politics. There are no value judgments in it, and, sitting down on a cactus, you can safely say “b … t”, and not “oh, what a bad luck.” Its main function is to return oneself to a person and get rid of the principles imposed on parents and society, having become acquainted with their needs, their dreams, their goals.
I managed to look differently at the concepts of “good” and “bad”, at people and their actions, at the stereotypes of the rule, which for some reason everyone should know. This opened up a whole world for me – one in which I and my desires are, and not the need to be good for everyone. I went to individual therapy for a year, and then another year to group therapy, but that’s a completely different story.
Epilogue
Today I can confidently say that Gestalt therapy is life changing! Six months later, I did what I dreamed of since the fifth grade – I entered the Institute of Journalism, believing in my own strength (and this is 10 years after graduating from the gymnasium, without tutors and other assistants). It was so inspiring that it gave strength to the next step. I took and got a job in one of the best advertising agencies in the country, not even admitting that I was not too good for him. Vladlen also helped me forget about childhood grievances and understand why I chose such a problematic partner and painful relationship as my companion. I look at the world with completely different eyes: not a frightened girl who owes something to someone, but a confident lady who does not depend on someone else’s opinion.