Another year: How to understand that it’s time for you to change - and where to start
2018 ONLY STARTED, and not all of us managed to move away from the series of holidays. Someone rejoices and publishes vigorous posts in the spirit of "What I accomplished in the outgoing year and what I strive for in the new," and for someone the remaining Christmas balls and garlands cause only anguish and the feeling that time is wasted. What if the last year seems dull and bleak and tormented by the feeling that the new one will be the same? And what to do to prevent this?
Constant discontent with life, the feeling that there is only despondency and dullness around are abnormal states, although many believe that this is the "real" life. In many families, children are transmitted precisely this image of adulthood: to do what they don’t like, for money, endure unsatisfying relationships, flatter their superiors, participate in intrigues and endure dreary everyday life from morning to evening.
But this is not true. Human life does not have to be meaningless. If the new year made you think about how you would like to change the order of things - great. Try to imagine that your life may be different - even if so far it's hard to believe in it. This is a common problem in general: we do not believe in something that has not happened in our life before. So, many people cannot imagine a happy relationship without scandals and betrayals, or interesting and at the same time well-paid work, or believe that life can be fascinating and enjoyable - simply because they have never experienced or seen in the immediate environment. . But this does not mean that all these things are unattainable.
In any case, supports an example: someone has already done it before you and succeeded, despite all the difficulties. In whatever area you want to improve your life and whatever you strive for, look for people who have succeeded. It is not necessary to copy their path (this will not work), but it is useful to look for alternative role models, especially if you already thought about the fact that they were not in your family. It’s great if you can find new acquaintances, but celebrities and movie or TV series characters will do — it’s important that there are supporting stories about how things happened in the arsenal.
In talking about change, it is impossible not to touch on the topic of depression - you must first eliminate or cure it, although this step does not exclude other recommendations. How to understand what to ask for help? Psychologists usually answer that if the state of depression is lasting for a month or longer, this is a significant reason to reach a specialist. If you are still in doubt, there are many depressive self-questionnaires on the Internet - we do not recommend self-diagnosis and self-treatment, but they can pay attention to the problem.
One of the simplest and most reliable is Beck's questionnaire: if you score a high score, you should consult a doctor and drink a course of medication if necessary. There are additional questions that may help. How long does the feeling of sadness and dullness last? When did it start? What else happened in your life at this moment? Were there any serious losses - deaths, partings, abandonment of your favorite business, did you stop communicating with friends? Devastation is one of the natural reactions to the loss, but if it goes into depression, it requires medical help.
There are people who answer that they feel already for many years, from youth and adolescence. It usually happens when a person’s childhood was not happy, but traumatic or ended too early (parents died or fell ill, had to take care of younger children, a man ran away from home, and the like). In this case, you also need to contact the specialists: a psychiatrist and a psychologist. Preparations will not solve all problems, but will help to reach a state when it will be possible to cope with them - and a psychologist or psychotherapist will help determine which direction to go next.
Then you can proceed to the analysis of problems. Some already know the reason for the longing, others have to look for it. In the second case, you can think about whether there are people around you whom you envy. Envy, though disapproving, is a very useful feeling: it, like a compass, indicates what is desired. What others have that you would like to have: wealth, good relationships with people, great love and wedding? Or maybe you are jealous of the impression that a person lives an eventful life that he enjoys? There are several common reasons that make life bleak - we talk about them and how to change it.
What to do, if
The feeling that you have no value, you are not important, that you all left or you are not interesting to anyone, very painful and familiar to many people. Traditionally in the culture of women, it is customary to associate it with appearance or the ability to be charming and sociable, for men - financial and career solvency and sometimes popularity. In fact, the features of appearance, character, or value of earnings are rarely the real cause — our consciousness simply chooses the simplest and most convenient explanation for a heavy feeling.
The roots of this condition most often lie in childhood. To research and work on changing it is better with a psychologist or psychotherapist, but there is a list of topics you can think about yourself. Did your parents appreciate you in childhood just like that, and not for any merit? Were you interested in your achievements, abilities and just you as a person, a little person? If not, then who sent the message that you are not needed and are not suitable for anything? Which parent was absent, did not take part in your life - or did it very little? Was there a peer group in which you were accepted as your own? If at some periods (or at all) it was not there, then why?
You can remember and write down specific situations: Mom did not come to the school holiday; dad did not congratulate on his birthday; classmates laughed at your clothes, and there was no one to complain about; parents were so busy divorcing that they did not sympathize with the death of your beloved cat. Does the feeling you then felt seem like you are feeling now when you feel uninteresting, unattractive? Is the children's experience really similar to how people treat you now? Or do you “fall through” in a traumatic situation when you react to some kind of triggers - for example, situations when a close person does not call or speak in an indifferent or tired tone, for misunderstanding and quarrels, for an evening alone and so on?
Are there people in your environment who are interested in you, approve of what you are doing, or just those to whom you are not indifferent? Supporting the environment is very important - everyone needs it. This may be a partner, friends, colleagues, company of acquaintances. Conversely, it is worth being sensitive to the critical environment, people who love to slander, devalue and belittle. It is worth considering what percentage of the first and second people surround you. Everyone deserves to consider himself unique and interesting - and if you are not among those who share this point of view, you should make an effort and create a new social circle.
The lack of close relationships and the inability to build a pair is a perfectly understandable reason for sadness. It is easier and faster to resolve this issue again in the office of a psychologist; his support will be superfluous and at the very beginning of the relationship, if you have not had a couple for a long time, or, for example, if the previous relationship was unhappy, traumatic, and now you are very worried about how things are going
What is worth thinking about if the relationship does not develop over and over again or you cannot meet anyone at all, but would you like to? First, is your life now a space for a new person? There is a temptation to immediately answer "yes" - but the answer is often more complicated. The place for which a partner could claim, often takes the parental family. If you spend all your weekends and holidays with your mother, talk with her every day (not to mention the situation when adults continue to live with their parents), even technically there is not much time and space in your life for romantic dating. Another situation is when the parental opinion, the vision of your life and the norms of the parental family come first. This indicates the absence of psychological space: a partner will claim a certain place in your life - but if he is already occupied by a mom, dad or a clan, then where will he fit?
The current situation may indicate that you are badly hurt by previous relationships and have not yet moved away from the gap. This process often takes not even a year, but several years. A free and lonely person again has a desire for love and care, but the image of a former partner can interfere and make a new couple inaccessible. This is most likely to happen if you continue to correspond with your former partner, see you as friends, regularly visit his or her pages on social networks, think about him or her several times a day in different situations. This state of affairs is called an emotionally incomplete break. In order to overcome it, we need a lot of inner work: gradually let go of a person, recognize that you are no longer together and your paths diverged. You can no longer influence his decisions, ask for anything or expect anything from him, but you are free to build your own, completely separate life.
In our culture there is another myth that prevents many people. He says that relations are supposedly valuable in and of themselves, regardless of their quality, and if you want to improve or stop them when they are not satisfied, these are signs of bad character and selfishness. Those who do this are supposedly left alone and bitterly sorry.
In fact, if you constantly ask yourself if everything is fine with your relationship, think regularly about a break or dream that your partner changes in some significant areas - most likely, something is wrong with the relationship. The red light should definitely catch fire if the partner hits you or your children, threatens, insults verbally, interferes with communication with any other people, restricts access to general finance, medical care or communication facilities. All these are signs of dangerous violent relationships.
Worrying about the fate of your couple is also in those cases where the partner is not interested in your affairs, does not support or criticizes your undertakings, you have lost sex, you do not spend time together and cannot choose classes that interest both of you. It also happens that people have a good time together, but they understand that their long-term goals and plans diverge: they want to live in different cities or countries, lead a fundamentally different lifestyle, they have different views on the birth of children, sex and loyalty, of the couple puts in the first place the parent family, and the second - their own couple. All this requires a fair conversation (often not one) and, possibly, a visit to a family psychologist. It is better not to leave the situation in a suspended state: life is finite and to spend it in unsatisfying relationships, without in any way changing the situation, it is simply insulting.
Unloved work is a serious reason for longing. It is difficult to spend forty or more hours a week, doing things that you don’t appreciate and in which you don’t see the point, and still feel good. There is also a softer alternative - when you generally like an occupation, but you don’t like the team or the administration at all: they don’t appreciate the results of your work, don’t give positive feedback, but only criticize, prevent you from making independent decisions and expressing yourself.
What to do, you decide. But in general, the idea of working only for the sake of money usually fails or life cripples very badly. It is impossible to invest efforts day after day in something you don’t like or even despise. If this happened to you, perhaps it’s time to think about a change of place or even a profession - this is not an easy and long way, but the result pays back the difficulties. Of course, you should not throw everything abruptly, leaving yourself without income and connections. But to make a plan, perhaps even for several years, which in the end will lead you to the desired specialty, is a good option.
It’s harder when a person says: “I’m tired of my current job, but I don’t know what I want to do.” Paradoxically, many people can quietly do something that is disgusting or uninteresting to them, and when it comes to a beloved business, they become oversensitive to any criticism and possible failure. They prefer not to even take on him, or even forget about what they once enjoyed - and so find themselves in unloved work, surrounded by people who are far in spirit. With this question, people often come to the psychologist: they have to dig their own desires for a long time because of the burden of other people's expectations, disappointments and feelings of insolvency.
Suppose (and really hope) that you do not have clinical depression. But the pleasures of life you do not feel, as if that drive, which (you remember!) Was spread in the air five to ten years ago, has left over the years. This is a frequent problem for people of twenty-five or thirty-five years: everything seems to be there and everything is fine, only “somehow, nothing pleases”.
The transition from careless youth to active adulthood, which happens in our society at twenty-five to thirty years, is associated with inevitable disappointments. One has to work a lot, often sacrificing time with friends, a loved one, or some interesting but unpaid classes, which the student body had a lot of time and energy for. Even if the work is favorite, it has more routine than it seemed, and at first money is paid much less than we would like. Many have to adapt to the authorities, remove the ring from the nose, change the style of clothing to the office, or just try to look like a serious person, even if you have deer in purple hats dancing in your heart, as in that meme. Mortgage, the birth of a child, a promotion and a mountain of responsibility, which falls with him, make it necessary to postpone many desirable plans.
Gradually you get used to this routine. Trip around the world? Drop everything and go to India for three months? Open a dance school or a small bakery? What are you, oh! These were children's fantasies. I am the branch director, it is difficult for me to leave for one day a week. Here is the catch. In our youth, we are bold, because there are still few cones and we have no measured sense of reality. Growing up, we acquire valuable skills and abilities - and even criticality, often skepticism and caution, bordering on cowardice. We get used to prune our wings. And if completely young people need to learn to match their claims with real opportunities, then adults often have the opposite task - to learn anew to dream and extract their desires from under the rubble of doubts and routine.
If life has already become relatively stable, you are earning enough, perhaps it is time to slowly remember what your eyes are lit up with. Dancing, riding, traveling? Opportunity to live in several countries? Start your own bissnes? It may be worth starting with small things - those for which you will not have to immediately drop everything and break the old way of life. Gradually, you will come to taste and become bolder, not destroying everything that has been accumulated, but creating new things on this base. And the feeling of adventures will come back to life.
Photo:moji1980 - stock.adobe.com, severija - stock.adobe.com, Mercado Livre