Today I had a revelation… or for the more pretentious psychologist colleagues, let’s say I had an insight. I don’t know how, I don’t know from where, but it popped up in my mind like a pop-up… vuuuuuupppp. But I know why… because yesterday and today I delved deeply into schemas and modes in training, and lately, things keep popping up in my mind. Sometimes it happens after sessions, other times after reading or doing some tasks and notes, sometimes because I stir up some emotions and then memories emerge one after another.
I’m a lover of movies… I love them… in hard times they stood by me, in other hard times they protected me from emotions (yes, yes, I know – detached protector self-soother). I even have clients with whom I build a therapeutic relationship discussing movies. And as I was sitting there, thinking… the armchairs from the living room popped up in my mind. They had leather arms and initially a red fabric (I think) and later my parents gave them a new face, they were comfortable, and there was always a fight for one of the armchairs – just one, the other was always taken by mom. And I remembered that some of the nicest and most liberating moments I felt were when we both sat on one armchair in front of the television and watched movies… good, heavy, profound movies that we understood and when that didn’t happen, mom explained them to me, from Russian films to long-awaited American films… don’t laugh, we even commented on Dallas from those armchairs.
If I devour books and watch movies it’s because I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember, and they’ve always been associated with pure pleasure. It didn’t matter how stressful school was or how many “musts” that demanding voice threw at me, it didn’t matter if “someone” hadn’t called or if I was sad – I always relaxed on the armchair watching good movies, and I realized that the pleasure came more from our connection, the two of us commenting on movies and trying to remember where we had seen the actors or who directed the movie and what other movies had they directed or who had composed the music. Woaw… There’s a memory of me as a rather “content child” and with a need fulfilled, a natural need to feel pleasure without stress and rather relaxed.
Wait… rewind… I started with the soft and fluffy armchair, I continued with mom and me in the armchair, enjoying movies and competing in a form of cinetrivia… happy… today I had a revelation… I was (also) a happy child, only I hadn’t remembered it yet.