To very broadly generalize, there are only two types of client request: 1) Help me understand the main problem (key pattern) and solve it 2) Help me learn to live comfortably with a problem (justify key pattern) so as not to change anything much in life. “So that everything would be and nothing would happen to me for it” Probably, I should have written the sequence of requests in reverse. A client coming to a psychologist for the first time rarely thinks that the cause of the problem is in some of his key patterns (a recurring element of behavior, thinking , emotional response). Rather, he is sure that the problem exists on its own. How can I force myself to stop arguing with my husband’s relatives? How can I get rid of my reluctance to go to work? How can I start meeting worthy men (women)? How can I get rid of love addiction? How to force your husband to get a job? How to motivate your child to study? How to stop paying attention to quarrels with parents? Etc. The answer, as a rule, is the same - CHANGE YOURSELF, GROW: BECOME MORE MATURE How to change? If you describe the client’s image in pictures, then often the image of the problem is autonomous: it exists, as it were, on its own. But this is not so. The image of the problem already contains a piece of the client’s unconscious. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the image of a grumpy mother-in-law or a callous mother, or indifferent colleagues. Or something else. This image carries information about the beliefs of the client himself. Strange, but it often seems to a person that he perceives reality objectively. A sort of illusion that he knows how things really are. What he “KNOWS”, what other people think about him, how often and with what emotions, how they will behave in a given situation, etc. One part of the population is sure that they are “professional readers of thoughts and intentions” and certainly “they know the truth.” The second part of the population, on the contrary, is not sure of anything and doubts everything, convinced by the first half that they “know the truth.” And since the truth of the first half does not coincide with the internal feelings of the second half, the second half doubts even more. They grasp at a psychologist (psychotherapist) like the last straw: they say - here he is an arbitrator - he will judge everyone, “he will punish the innocent”, “he will reward the uninvolved” "But the psychologist can only help the client develop his own mature position, a position based on self-understanding and self-trust. The psychologist can help the client amnesty his own condemned parts of the personality imprisoned in the unconscious and learn to cooperate with them. Can help to become more holistic and aware. A psychologist can help a client stop being a hostage to their own key patterns: become aware of them, learn to track them and allow themselves to react in a variety of ways, experiencing feedback with pleasure and curiosity (and not with fear and distrust of life) Key pattern. What kind of animal is this? And how to calculate it? In all these troubles there are repeating elements. Situations and people change, but this element remains. For example, a person’s desire for others to guess and anticipate his needs. Or a lack of self-confidence and the active reluctance of the inner child to grow up. Sometimes, fear of the uncertainty of the future. Etc. It happens that a key pattern mimics different forms during a consultation with a psychologist. So, for example, the need for approval will sculpt a kind of “ideal client” - the way the psychologist thinks the client might like him. The “guess my desires” pattern will lead to requests like: “my husband doesn’t love me” and you (psychologist) too. The “I won’t succeed” pattern will lead to the constant devaluation of any results and the failure of everything that, at first glance, started out so well. When meeting the key pattern face to face, it cannot be perceived as a sentence. It is important to remember: this is a scenario, a stable element of a game in which a person has become involved, having stoppedrealize: who is the screenwriter, who is the actor, and who is the director. Sometimes, I suggest my clients to hunt for their key patterns: to observe what scenario they are acting out and why they are doing it. Not everyone likes such a hunt, as those who are used to scenarios have their own charm - FAMILITY, and therefore relative SAFETY (predictability) What is so valuable about this key pattern? The main value of the key pattern is protection from changes. Protection from devaluation of the client’s familiar world and familiar reality. Our mind, wanting to be consistent, cannot allow a person to admit to himself that for “twenty” years of his life he was wrong in terms of his own well-being. What value is there in learning to exist over the years with the problem instead of solving it? And it’s simple - the solution to a problem is always going beyond the zone of certainty and predictability of the result (going beyond the comfort zone). And here the question of basic trust in the world immediately arises. Leaving the zone of certainty is scary. To whom should we shift the responsibility for not doing this? There - in territory X - there is a lot of things that we don’t know how to do, that we don’t know how to handle, and that we are incompetent at. There we are students and our “ego” (a rigid system of identifications and ideas about the world) suffers from micro and macro cracks. For the brave and courageous It is not for nothing that they say that the self-realization of a person as a HUMAN (and not just a biological individual) begins with a magical kick from behind, given life itself. When the size or unbearability of a problem becomes sufficient to overcome the fear of change, a person begins to solve problems. Then he is ready to set out on his own path of self-development, transformation of key patterns and growth. Psychologists, sometimes, with the best intentions, want to send the client to such a journey earlier than he is ready for it. But more often, it happens that the client himself, already ready to grow and solve the problem, prefers the usual methods and the ostrich method. This is where one of the elements of therapy was born, which causes maximum indignation among procrastinating clients (procrastination - postponing for later) - hourly payment. Procrastination also costs money. This is a lesson for both the unconscious and human consciousness. A lesson in how to make the most efficient use of time in working on your key patterns. A person is so unaccustomed to appreciating his inner world and recognizing the importance of its patterns that paying for psychotherapy itself is a feat that many cannot decide on for years. Appreciating your work on changing patterns (working on yourself) in hours and not considering it wasted time is generally a challenge. It’s so common to think that problems in life arise as if on their own. And how unusual it is to notice in this certain patterns and connections with oneself and one’s own patterns (habits of thinking, emotional response, behavior). For a psychologist, there are several indirect criteria for the success of working with a client: 1) The client begins to notice his key patterns and the consequences of their use 2) The client ceases to be afraid of difficulties and the fact that the only stable thing in life is change 3) The client himself formulates ways to solve problems and formulates a request for clarification of the pattern and its transformation, and not for “changing the world” 4) The client ceases to be afraid to talk about feelings openly expresses their needs, asks questions and shares thoughts. Not afraid of condemnation and/or rejection. 5) The client is not afraid of strong emotions, does not try to please the psychologist, please or be “correctly understood”. Ready for discussion and substantiation of my position. As a rule, long-term psychotherapy is aimed at nurturing the client’s severely wounded and very small inner child, who is looking for a loving and caring parent in a psychologist. In this relationship, the psychologist gives the client’s inner child a feeling of support and positive attention, ratifying (confirming) his successes and abilities. It is important not to get stuck herein these roles, since at a certain stage it becomes essential that the client's wise adult come onto the scene and begin the work of moving into the future. A future in which the client is the creator of his own reality, a self-sufficient person. The psychologist cannot (and should not) replace the parent figure for the client, giving him the love and care he has not received: otherwise one addiction will be replaced by another. Dependence on a parent’s assessment will be replaced by dependence on the “love” of a psychologist. Finding a “loving psychologist” may be another way to find a comfortable way to coexist with a problem (instead of solving it). How to understand that a problem has matured to a solution? If a person feels that he has formed a wise person within himself an adult - he is ready to solve any problem. What are the signs to understand that an adult and wise part of the personality has been formed: (I use the criteria that I have already given in another article, but, in my opinion, they are so accurate that it is not superfluous to repeat them)1. The ability to endure and wait2. The ability to ask, openly and honestly state your needs and desires. The ability to argue your question or request without resorting to emotions and manipulation3. The ability to accept refusal. The right of another to tell you “no” without asking him for reasons or justifications. This also gives you the right to say “no” to others, without justifying yourself or explaining yourself to them4. The ability to say “no”, respecting one’s own interests, boundaries, needs, views, values. Without unnecessary excuses and curtsies.5. The ability to make mistakes, accept mistakes and draw conclusions from them, drawing from life experience.6. The ability to distinguish the important and useful from the unimportant and secondary. Set priorities.7. The ability to take responsibility for your own feelings and thoughts. Without blaming others and wanting to correct them. That is: I was not offended, but I was offended. I had the right to ignore your behavior or be offended. I chose to be offended. It is my choice. I chose to be angry. Or vice versa, I chose to “think about good things.” 100% responsibility for feelings and thoughts.8. The ability to forgive, accepting other people as they are. Without the desire to redo or correct them. 9. Taking responsibility for events in your own life without demands or expectations from others. It's none of your business what other people are like. It's your business: what you are like. To be yourself or not to be yourself, to achieve something or wait for help from others, to set goals and go towards them or to be depressed - this is entirely your choice. You can make any choice and will always receive 100% responsibility for it. You have the right to try a variety of life experience strategies. No one has the right to interfere with you, because you are always 100% responsible for the consequences. Even when you ask for advice, you are 100% responsible for the choice: ask for advice, who to ask for advice from, follow or not follow the advice, understand or not understand the advice, clarify or not clarify, etc. 10. The ability to understand the feelings, moods and desires of other people and the ability to respect their needs and their differences from you.11. The ability to reckon with the reality of life processes without idealizing people, illusions and “magical” fantasies12. The ability to foresee the consequences of one’s own actions, thoughts and feelings; take into account the consequences and take responsibility for them13. Awareness: understanding your true motives in relationships with others, the ability to honestly voice these motives, openly declare them, formalizing them in the form of requests and questions to another person. No manipulation.14. The ability to draw specific conclusions from a SPECIFIC situation. Without generalizing experience in the form of “always”, “everywhere”, “everyone”, “never”, “nobody”, “nowhere”15. The ability to be on equal terms: without the need for praise and pity16. The ability to evaluate oneself independently (sustainable self-esteem, independent of the opinions of others), lack of the need to “be liked by everyone”17. The ability to support and encourage yourself independently, without developing dependence on a significant other. PS If a person has at least 12-13 signs out of 17, then he is ready for/