What Does Psychotherapy Do To Us? - The Quality Of Life

All people are different, including clients of psychotherapists. There are no two alike destinies and characters. The queries you have to work on are also unique. The psychotherapist improvises and adjusts his tools and techniques for each specific task. Nevertheless, it can be assumed that the “healer of the human soul” has in his bosom a certain image, an idea of a healthy, fully functioning personality sparkling with joy. The client should strive for this ideal in the course of solving his problems. What does the road to the beautiful distant look like?

Living in silence

Unfortunately, the path to a magical land where a person lives well with himself can be long and thorny. Many people are at the mercy of dogmas, learned from childhood from parents, school teachers and TV presenters. Strict principles dividing all phenomena of life into right and wrong, good and bad, squeeze the human soul. The inner world turns into a music box with a predetermined repertoire and a limited sound range. How many sounds, rhythms, timbres are not used! Any improvisation remains outside of such a box! Sadly, sometimes people don't even think about how they can live differently. They do not admit that a peremptory blockade of life experience can be a problem for them.

But something clicked loudly against the background of a familiar melody. Maybe a friend's apt word sounded, or there was a big family quarrel, or maybe a sudden illness. And the understanding comes that it is still impossible to continue living, the help of a competent person is needed. At this moment, the most important thing is trusting contact. The success of the entire enterprise depends on the personality and qualifications of the person who undertakes to open your music box, clean its mechanism, and expand the melodic range. If, once deciding to turn to a psychotherapist, you are unhappy with him, do not give up: continue looking for your person with whom you will be warm and safe.

Wonderful duet

If contact is established and the specialist knows what he is doing, a miracle will gradually begin to unfold. The client gets a completely new experience in life: they listen to him, do not blame him for "indecent" confessions, show a sincere interest in his feelings! It is so unusual for many people to feel kind curiosity about themselves that this alone is enough to change their views on themselves and the world around them. Thanks to the skillfully expressed acceptance on the part of the psychotherapist, the client gradually frees up and begins to explore with interest what cunning contradictions have lived inside him all his conscious life and how many emotions are hidden between the gears in his dusty casket.

New wave

At first, talking about these contradictions and newly discovered feelings is difficult. Much continues to seem shameful and abnormal, but that softness and malleability of judgments already appears, in which a person can admit that he was wrong in some long-term life decisions, volitional or unconscious. Or, at least, he will see that he has outgrown these old attitudes and is ready to try on a slightly larger consciousness.

The therapist's ability to see the essence of the client and the deep foundations of his personality helps the person to hear his own voice. But the music of the soul can sound even without well-calibrated mechanisms, into which we are packed all our lives. How long it takes is difficult to say, because each person moves at their own pace. Much depends on how often sounds were actually extracted from the music box and how tightly its factory turned. Someone will need four or five sessions to discover in themselves long-asleep experiences, while someone will come to revelations about themselves only after a year of regular meetings. To help yourself along the way, keep notes, draw sketches - let these be the marks by which you can track your own progress.

Symphony of the soul

The realization that comes over time that I can be wider, freer, brighter than before, inspires real changes. At this stage of work, unexpected and sometimes inexplicable pieces of the inner world begin to break through to freedom, as if against the will of the client, but that is why it is more interesting. What else was hiding inside me all this time?

Simultaneously with this feeling of the possibilities of inner freedom comes an understanding of responsibility for what kind of person I can become. It depends only on the client whether he decides to transfer his discoveries and experience of unusual communication with a psychotherapist into his real life, and therefore, whether he can actually change. Aerobatics is to admit that different melodies that sometimes dissonant in my head, condemn each other and prevent making healthy decisions - these are all I, different parts of me, and they are all needed for some reason and help me in life.

Room for improvisation

Finally, the moment comes when the client can express all emotions freely. At the same time, no desires and fears frighten him and are presented only as separate notes of the complex polyphony of the soul. The body, feelings and thoughts are felt so sharply that it is simply impossible to unnecessarily strain or infringe on what is necessary and pleasant right now.

A person makes decisions based on what is really good for him, and not on what he was once taught. He is able to see different options for what one could become, and chooses the option that best answers the question "Who am I?" This state of mind, fortunately, is not so rare. The image that is waiting in the wings of a psychotherapist is a person who feels free and boldly expresses himself. When this long-awaited moment of self-acceptance comes, the logical decision is to end work with the therapist. With everything that awaits the client ahead, he will already be able to cope himself.