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have been taught by our mass-culture that someone will do something for their wellbeing. They expect that someone will solve their problems, give advice, sympathize with them, write a prescription or judge their offenders. However, if we agree that a person subconsciously created the situation they are in, there should be other ways to help them deal with the consequences of this situation. What would be helpful is activating their internal resources, so that they could deal with the situation all by themselves. This means giving them a rod, not a fish – that’s the way they can become mature, independent and self-sufficient.

      When I ask my client a question on what the doctors said, I would like to hear her version of the story, so that I understand how she interacts with people. There is one and the same strategy underlying her interactions with people and interactions with her own body. If this strategy is not efficient, she could change it, and then – and only then – do both her interactions with people and her symptoms change.

      “Don’t see any obstacles”

      Take responsibility for the things that are coming to you from fate. You can find the principle and learn something, and you can do this in every aspect of your life.

Ruediger Dahlke

      I explained this to Marina and the rest of the group as well as I could, and she agreed to investigate her symptom. I asked her to tell about it in her own words, not medical terms, or – still better – show. Marina told that an egg won’t come out of the ovary, that is why it cannot be fertilized and go down to the uterus. Marina asked all members of the group to stand in a circle representing an ovary, and she was an egg inside this circle. She easily broke through latched hands of the group members and came out. Then I asked her to show the rest. She just “jumped” to the uterus. I was surprised at how that was even possible. Then she remembered that she had to go through the tube first, so she arranged the people and went through. She took some group members to make a uterus, chose a midwife and “was born”. Nothing about that was difficult. I was surprised and told her:

      – I don’t see any reasons why you cannot get pregnant. Look for yourself: the egg came out of the ovary, no problem after this either…

      – Well, yes…

      – Let’s play this again, what if we missed something?

      We played the scene again – no problems this time either. Then I asked her to choose a stand-in for herself and watch the scene from outside. Marina, one hand on her hip and the other touching her chin, frowned at the scene as her stand-in broke through the vicious circle.

      – Marina, what part of your life does this scene remind you of?

      She pondered a while and then answered:

      – This reminds me of my relationships with my mom. She overprotects me. It is difficult for me to get through my mother’s restrictions.

      – Chose someone to play the role of your mother and tell her this.

      We played a scene where Marina talks to her mother that she feels fear and anger, when she controls her grownup daughter, but her feelings weren’t expressed as eagerly as one might have expected. Obviously, this wasn’t anger. To intensify her feelings I offered to play a fantasy scene and chose someone to play the role of her own child. This was just it: her eyes watered immediately. Marina felt overwhelming bitterness when she projected her relationships with her mother to her future relationships with her unborn child. Marina said that the baby was a girl, so both scenes – her dialogue with her mother and with her daughter were the same.

      Without even realizing it, the first thing Marina told her daughter that she would take care and protect her, so that she wouldn’t get hurt. The group laughed at this – it was amazing how the mother’s pattern of behavior that made Marina suffer was precisely mirrored in her relationships with her daughter, I suggested exchanging roles. When Marina felt like a little girl overprotected by her mother, she felt like protesting and rebelling: “I don’t want this!” – “And what do you want?” – “I just want to be loved!”

      Marina barely moved when she was watching stands-in playing this same scene from outside. I asked her if she wanted to change something in the scene. She answered that she wanted mother and daughter to give each other a hug. Stands-in were relieved to do so, later they said that this was exactly what they wanted to do themselves.

      – And now try on the roles of the mother and of the baby and experience how close they are.

      At the end of the session Marina took all the roles off the group members. When she came back the next day, she shared a story. She was staying at some friends of hers who had a two-year-old daughter. Once, when the girl fell down, Marias startled so abruptly that she actually scared the girl whose parents were more relaxed about her falling down. So the girl avoided Marina. However, when Marina stayed at her friends after our psychodrama session, the girl suddenly changed her attitude towards her: she sat in her lap for the whole evening playing with her. I joked about it:

      – See, if you can tempt other people’s children into coming to you now, one day you will “tempt” your own baby into coming to you!

      “It’s hard to get through”: commentary

      – Hi, mom, I’m coming home. Should I buy anything?

      – Yes, buy your own apartment and move the hell away from my house!

Internet meme

      So, what happened during marina’s session? I believe that subconsciously a person interacts both with people and inanimate things according to a pattern. This means that if Marina’s mother controlled her daughter, Marina learned that this was the way to interact with people, this is why she controls her close ones. And she does the same to her own body. If we take her phrase “An egg won’t come out of the ovary”, and replace the word egg with Marina’s name, we’ll get that Marina herself won’t come out of the boundaries once set by her mother.

      Now, when the reason the interaction fails is clear, it’s time to do the hard thing – to change one’s behavior. In Marina’s case it is necessary for her to grow up, and cross the boundaries, cross the metaphorical threshold, and let her future children cross the threshold as well. There are several such “thresholds” in our lives: egg comes out of the ovary, embryo comes out of the uterus, child comes out of their parents’ care and out of their home, soul comes out of the body… These are the great transitions, and it is really difficult and scary to go beyond into the unknown. We will get back to that.

      “It is hard to get through”: post scriptum

      The disease represents your unfulfilled longing. So, above all else, use your illness to set yourself free to do what you have always wanted to do.

Barbara Ann Brennan

      We had this session when Marina was thirty four. Now she is thirty-seven, and many things changed over the years. When I wrote this down it’s was just as if I knew that I would need these notes for this book. Now it’s funny to read the words about crossing the threshold. Step by step Marina came to be independent. A year ago she made her own workshop for participants of a psychotherapy retreat and when she came back she started her own business – her beloved brainchild.

      Finally, her third bold step was to question her own marriage that lasted more than ten years, but still had not resulted in having children. Marina decided to leave – she rented an apartment and moved away from her husband – literary crossed the threshold! She said she wanted to live alone for a while and try to understand who she was, what it was that she wanted, what she could do. She found the apartment for just a penny after one phone call – some friends of hers were going away for a long period of time and asked her to watch over

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