Κατηγορίες
Tag cloud
αυτοκτονία επικοινωνία φόβος εξωτερική εμφάνιση κιλά σωματικό βάρος αποδοχή απομόνωση μοναξιά άγχος πίεση ομοφυλοφιλία σεξουαλική ταυτότητα διάβασμα ανεργία none
Ερώτηση
Dear e-help group,
In retrospect, I realize I failed to focus on the issue that was bothering me most at the time I wrote to you but you helped me organize my thoughts and concerns.
I would like to say that the pill I have taken since then has greatly helped me and I do feel much better than before. I am more balanced, self confident and happier; my anger now is in place, that is, it emerges when it needs to. I am convinced that no psychotherapy would have taken me where I am now although I recognize the benefits it can bring. In fact, I feel that at this point in life I would greatly benefit from psychotherapy.
The problem that motivated my writing to you then has been dormant until this week when my dear cousin came to visit her daughter in the country I live in. I did not mention to you then, but I have another cousin living in the south, 3 hour drive from my place. R. is the cousin I grew up with and who I am fond of; and M. is the other cousin who lives in the same country I live in. R. has arrived to assist her daughter who is about to deliver a baby. The daughter lives relatively close to M. I live far away from both of them [3-4 hours away]. R. met M. through me and grew fond of her. In addition, it is convenient because of the distance. I have been friends with M. for twenty years. In the beginning of our relationship, she was the strong side and I played the role of the weak. I greatly admired her and listened to what she said. However, as I grew up emotionally, I began to realize she was not as strong as she showed. She is highly critical and judgemental and sometimes quite intrusive. She feels she knows all and everything she does is the best. She does not have a relationship with her husband and has developed a parallel life, very available to friends. As I started to get annoyed by her ways, I decided to keep a little distance from her, although I keep in touch, invite her over for weekends once in a while. I worked my relationship with my husband so we are great friends and passion has returned to our relationship. In other words, I am not fragile and emotionally available as I was when I met her. I work hard and love my family. I feel there has developed a strange feeling bt M. and me, competition maybe, something I do not fully understand but she irritates me when she says how great she is. Self appraisal I guess is the same of this. But this is a subject for discussion on its own.
Well, M. was and is the trigger of my jealousy in relation to R. This time R. decided to stay with M. during her stay in the country as R. does not like her daughter's husband. In addition, M. can take her to a spa and give her good life which is very important to R.
I do not understand how a person like me, occupied with work and family, a university teacher, a lovely husband and family, a beautiful house, a senior swimmer at the age of 55, feels so bad about the fact that my dear cousin R. is far and with M.. II am completely unreasonable with this jealousy. Last year I had an argument with R. about this when I tried to explain how I felt. She became angry at me. But later I managed to explain that what I felt came from my child who thinks R. is mine, only my dear sister. I hate M. for that and I am unreasonable, I know. I have decided to keep a low profile and lower my expectations. I do not feel jealous all the time. The feeling comes and goes in waves of bad energy and anger. I must say that R. has tried to soothe my feelings and has said I am the unique soul sister she has and that no one will take my place.
I truly appreciate your help.
Sincerely
S.
In retrospect, I realize I failed to focus on the issue that was bothering me most at the time I wrote to you but you helped me organize my thoughts and concerns.
I would like to say that the pill I have taken since then has greatly helped me and I do feel much better than before. I am more balanced, self confident and happier; my anger now is in place, that is, it emerges when it needs to. I am convinced that no psychotherapy would have taken me where I am now although I recognize the benefits it can bring. In fact, I feel that at this point in life I would greatly benefit from psychotherapy.
The problem that motivated my writing to you then has been dormant until this week when my dear cousin came to visit her daughter in the country I live in. I did not mention to you then, but I have another cousin living in the south, 3 hour drive from my place. R. is the cousin I grew up with and who I am fond of; and M. is the other cousin who lives in the same country I live in. R. has arrived to assist her daughter who is about to deliver a baby. The daughter lives relatively close to M. I live far away from both of them [3-4 hours away]. R. met M. through me and grew fond of her. In addition, it is convenient because of the distance. I have been friends with M. for twenty years. In the beginning of our relationship, she was the strong side and I played the role of the weak. I greatly admired her and listened to what she said. However, as I grew up emotionally, I began to realize she was not as strong as she showed. She is highly critical and judgemental and sometimes quite intrusive. She feels she knows all and everything she does is the best. She does not have a relationship with her husband and has developed a parallel life, very available to friends. As I started to get annoyed by her ways, I decided to keep a little distance from her, although I keep in touch, invite her over for weekends once in a while. I worked my relationship with my husband so we are great friends and passion has returned to our relationship. In other words, I am not fragile and emotionally available as I was when I met her. I work hard and love my family. I feel there has developed a strange feeling bt M. and me, competition maybe, something I do not fully understand but she irritates me when she says how great she is. Self appraisal I guess is the same of this. But this is a subject for discussion on its own.
Well, M. was and is the trigger of my jealousy in relation to R. This time R. decided to stay with M. during her stay in the country as R. does not like her daughter's husband. In addition, M. can take her to a spa and give her good life which is very important to R.
I do not understand how a person like me, occupied with work and family, a university teacher, a lovely husband and family, a beautiful house, a senior swimmer at the age of 55, feels so bad about the fact that my dear cousin R. is far and with M.. II am completely unreasonable with this jealousy. Last year I had an argument with R. about this when I tried to explain how I felt. She became angry at me. But later I managed to explain that what I felt came from my child who thinks R. is mine, only my dear sister. I hate M. for that and I am unreasonable, I know. I have decided to keep a low profile and lower my expectations. I do not feel jealous all the time. The feeling comes and goes in waves of bad energy and anger. I must say that R. has tried to soothe my feelings and has said I am the unique soul sister she has and that no one will take my place.
I truly appreciate your help.
Sincerely
S.
Απάντηση
Dear S,
Thank you very much for your response. This letter seems to be focused on your concern, that in turn helps us understand it better. We are glad that you are pleased with your current medication and that this helped you with controlling your anger. Moreover, from I understood, even though you feel the medication worked at a certain extent you think that psychotherapy would possibly bring further benefits. It is important to mention that e-help does not substitute conventional psychotherapy. This is a mean for individuals to understand more clearly their concerns and to offer basic coping skills or information. I am mentioning this because our response might not properly reflect the complexity of your concern or address it to the extent needed since we do not possess all the information. No matter how in detail a letter is, it cannot paint the whole picture or express in detail the complexity of the emotions one is experiencing.
As mentioned before your second letter focuses more on the problem that is bothering you, such as your relationship with your cousin and your feelings of anger and jealousy towards her. You seem to mention another cousin, M., and your close relationship with her in the past. However from your writing it seems that this relationship changed drastically over the years and that at the present you prefer to keep a distance from her. You start explaining this relationship in detail and how this deteriorated over the years due to her shortcomings. It is important to mention that you cannot change or improve neither the way other individual are nor the way they react towards you. All you can change is the way you react towards them and your perception of them. A clear example of this is taken from REBT (Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy). Let us assume you are walking down a street and across the street you see your cousin. You wave to her but she does not wave back and continues walking past you. This is called the activating event. Your belief could be that she saw you but did not wanted to talk to you or that she is purposely ignoring you. The consequences of this believe could be that you feel hurt that could result in you feeling angry towards her. However, the reality was that she was concerned about something and due to traffic did not see you. As you can see it is not the actions of others that makes us feel and behave in a certain way but our perception of them. Last time we discussed about jealousy and its mechanisms. This time, I would like to discuss about anger and how this can be triggered by other emotions.
Anger needs to be seen as a continuum that ranges from mind irritation to full rage. The biggest difficulty with anger is that people often experience what they perceive as anger without knowing that there are other emotions under their anger. Often the true emotion that is motivating them is fear, pain or helplessness, yet they are only aware of being angry. Thus, tackling anger will only result in addressing a symptom and not the root of the problem. Here are some examples that illustrate when other emotions are being perceived as anger. In traffic one gets angry when the underlying feeling is fear of being involved in an accident or being late to work. Seldom does one realize that one is feeling helpless. When an individual betrays us, we might perceive anger when in fact we feel hurt related to the betrayal. It is important thus to understand the real feeling and emotion we are experiencing. In this way when presenting it to another person he/she will understand it better and communication will be easier. When presenting anger instead of hurt, the person to whom anger is directed to might feel attacked and might attack back or withdraw. This will not solve the problem nor will he/she be aware of the fact that we actually felt hurt. Identifying the true emotion is also important since each emotion requires a different coping strategy thus treating all emotions, as anger will only intensify the problem.
I would like you to stop and consider the underlying feelings and emotions when you experience anger and jealousy towards your cousin. One technique that might help is to keep a journal where to describe the situation when you felt jealous or angry towards your cousin as well as this emotion was triggered by your perception of the events. Try to write sentences using “I”. Thus, for example instead of saying “My cousin made me angry because” say “I felt angry towards my cousin because”. This should help you to better understand the triggers of your emotions and how to cope with them.
Best regards,
Thank you very much for your response. This letter seems to be focused on your concern, that in turn helps us understand it better. We are glad that you are pleased with your current medication and that this helped you with controlling your anger. Moreover, from I understood, even though you feel the medication worked at a certain extent you think that psychotherapy would possibly bring further benefits. It is important to mention that e-help does not substitute conventional psychotherapy. This is a mean for individuals to understand more clearly their concerns and to offer basic coping skills or information. I am mentioning this because our response might not properly reflect the complexity of your concern or address it to the extent needed since we do not possess all the information. No matter how in detail a letter is, it cannot paint the whole picture or express in detail the complexity of the emotions one is experiencing.
As mentioned before your second letter focuses more on the problem that is bothering you, such as your relationship with your cousin and your feelings of anger and jealousy towards her. You seem to mention another cousin, M., and your close relationship with her in the past. However from your writing it seems that this relationship changed drastically over the years and that at the present you prefer to keep a distance from her. You start explaining this relationship in detail and how this deteriorated over the years due to her shortcomings. It is important to mention that you cannot change or improve neither the way other individual are nor the way they react towards you. All you can change is the way you react towards them and your perception of them. A clear example of this is taken from REBT (Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy). Let us assume you are walking down a street and across the street you see your cousin. You wave to her but she does not wave back and continues walking past you. This is called the activating event. Your belief could be that she saw you but did not wanted to talk to you or that she is purposely ignoring you. The consequences of this believe could be that you feel hurt that could result in you feeling angry towards her. However, the reality was that she was concerned about something and due to traffic did not see you. As you can see it is not the actions of others that makes us feel and behave in a certain way but our perception of them. Last time we discussed about jealousy and its mechanisms. This time, I would like to discuss about anger and how this can be triggered by other emotions.
Anger needs to be seen as a continuum that ranges from mind irritation to full rage. The biggest difficulty with anger is that people often experience what they perceive as anger without knowing that there are other emotions under their anger. Often the true emotion that is motivating them is fear, pain or helplessness, yet they are only aware of being angry. Thus, tackling anger will only result in addressing a symptom and not the root of the problem. Here are some examples that illustrate when other emotions are being perceived as anger. In traffic one gets angry when the underlying feeling is fear of being involved in an accident or being late to work. Seldom does one realize that one is feeling helpless. When an individual betrays us, we might perceive anger when in fact we feel hurt related to the betrayal. It is important thus to understand the real feeling and emotion we are experiencing. In this way when presenting it to another person he/she will understand it better and communication will be easier. When presenting anger instead of hurt, the person to whom anger is directed to might feel attacked and might attack back or withdraw. This will not solve the problem nor will he/she be aware of the fact that we actually felt hurt. Identifying the true emotion is also important since each emotion requires a different coping strategy thus treating all emotions, as anger will only intensify the problem.
I would like you to stop and consider the underlying feelings and emotions when you experience anger and jealousy towards your cousin. One technique that might help is to keep a journal where to describe the situation when you felt jealous or angry towards your cousin as well as this emotion was triggered by your perception of the events. Try to write sentences using “I”. Thus, for example instead of saying “My cousin made me angry because” say “I felt angry towards my cousin because”. This should help you to better understand the triggers of your emotions and how to cope with them.
Best regards,