My little one (he’s ten years old) the other day gave me a scandal out of the blue. You see, I promised to take him to school, and then I had the audacity to change my mind. Even the fact that, having assessed the extent of my son’s disappointment, I backed down did not save the situation: okay, they say, if that’s what you want, I’ll accompany you. “I don’t need you to accompany me “through the barrier” (well, that is, against my will)!” - the son cursed. - “You will be offended, angry!” And even: “I don’t want to ruin your plans!” That’s when it dawned on me. “Do you feel sorry for me?” - I ask the raging angry little man. - Imagine, yes! – he declares belligerently. And, having miraculously calmed down (and really, why yell at me if you already feel so sorry for me?), he was puzzled: “How did you find out? But in general, it’s a common thing.” Each of us experiences some feelings easier, others more difficult. The child didn’t seem to like feeling sorry for me, and he was angry at me for tricking him into pity. At the same time, he was aware of his anger, but his pity for me was not so much. We all hide our feelings from ourselves in different ways. We can ignore the “primary” feelings like this for those that arise next (it won’t necessarily be anger; it could be shame, fear, something else). We can experience two opposite feelings (love and anger, as a classic example), but “allow” ourselves only one, “hiding” the second. We can, while experiencing a true feeling, distort its addressee (for example, we blame someone other than the one we are really guilty of, or not for what we are most guilty of). And so on - there are many ways not to experience what you don’t want to experience. The result, as a rule, is almost the same. If we ignore our feelings in one way or another, we have to ignore the impulse to action, the desire associated with it. I think everyone is familiar with the unpleasant state of dissatisfaction with the outward appearance of “everything is fine,” something like “I want something, what I don’t know, and who I know, I don’t want.” I think each of us has been in a supposedly insoluble situation in which he, with tenacity worthy of better use, achieved something - and, perhaps, successfully achieved it - and still did not receive anything “worthwhile”. Yes, this is understandable, because the order “bring something, I don’t know what” is more suitable for fairy tales than for real life. However, no matter how you ignore the desire, by itself it will grow rather than dissolve. This means that sooner or later we will still have to face this desire, only already increased several times. And the sensations will be noticeably stronger, and efforts to “put everything in order” will be required many times more. But not every avoided experience turns out to be so unpleasant that it makes sense to “hide” it at all. In the recent scandal story, this is exactly what happened. Having discovered his pity for me, the cub calmed down: it turned out that the pity was quite tolerable, even more pleasant than the feeling “something is wrong with me” that had previously bothered him. And, unexpectedly for the little man himself, any scenario turned out to be acceptable. Such “hide and seek”».