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Friday 21 April 2017

Relationship is a journey - Ask your counsellor Q&A column

[This column written by me was published in the Deccan Herald Education pages on April 20th, 2017]


Dear Madam,
I am a teenager and I like playing video games. My friends spend at least one hour every day on this during holidays. I play for about half an hour. My parents get angry whenever they see me playing on the mobile. They feel that such games are addictive. At times, even I feel that what I am doing is not right and that I am wasting time. Still, I am not able to restrict myself. Will it affect my behavior and studies? Please guide.
Rakesh

Dear Rakesh,
Technology can be addictive and a lot has been written about it. It is now becoming quite a big problem for young people. However, if you are mindful of it, and are able to limit yourself to 30 minutes a day, and are also able to pull yourself away from it when there are other more pressing needs, then it is okay.

It should not be controlling you — you should be controlling yourself. You should be able to focus and prioritize other more important things when the need arises.

It is okay to enjoy and relax during your vacation and 30 minutes a day does not seem too much, however, it is important for you to be able to self-monitor and not lose your control over your mind to be able to pull away from it when the need arises. Good luck!

Dear Madam, 
I am struggling to overcome love failure. Though I try to forget my girlfriend, I am not able to do so. It is affecting my studies too. Please help me.
Adarsh

Dear Adarsh,
I think it will be very helpful for you to see a counsellor who will be able to help you gain new perspectives on what you are experiencing. It may be helpful for you to not call it a love failure, but rather a relationship that did not work out. Failure is a very loaded word and implies that you made some mistakes or did something wrong. Whereas in reality, that may not be the case — it may just be that the chemistry didn’t work, or you both had different expectations out of the relationship.

A relationship is not a battle that you win or lose, it is a journey that you undertake with another person. And in a journey there is no success or failure, just a path and a direction.

People come into our lives at different points in our journey and stay a while. No one is with you in your journey for the whole distance, except for yourself. All the best.

Dear Madam,
I have written my Class 10 exams and anxious about results. I studied hard for one year and did well in the exams. But I am not confident. My parents have supported me a lot during my studies. I don’t want to let them down. 
Anjali 

Dear Anjali,
Your exam results are just an external objective assessment of your performance. The more important assessment is your own internal subjective assessment of the effort you put in and the learning you gained in the process. That is the key thing. Your exams are not something you need to do well at to keep your parents happy. Your exams are something you should put in your best effort for if you want to for yourself, and you believe it is important for your future.

You should do the best you can to achieve your potential, for yourself – not something you should try and maximise only to keep your parents happy.

Keeping your parents happy can be a by-product of your performance, but must not be the goal of your performance, or even a goal in itself. If you can honestly tell
yourself that you put in your best effort that is all that matters. Your success in life is not dependent on your marks, and your parents’ happiness also should not
be dependent on your marks. Good luck!

Dear Madam,
My son is in Class 7. Earlier he was regular with homework. Of late, he has grown lazy and doesn’t study at home. When asked, he said that many of his classmates don’t submit the assignments on time and they don’t get any punishment. 

He also said that his classmates mocked him whenever he submitted the assignments and he felt left out. As a result, he feels that there is no point in doing homework. I have discussed this with the teachers. Can you also guide.
Priya

Dear Priya,
I think the issue here is not that your son is missing his work deadlines and therefore, your possible fear, that his performance may get affected. The issue here is building his self-esteem to a point where he can stand up to peer pressure and do what he believes is right, not what is mandated by the peer group.

It is generally very helpful to work with a counsellor to help your son see what is happening and give him tools and techniques to counter the situation, and to develop his own sense of self-worth – not one that is defined by the peer group. All the best.

Saturday 8 April 2017

For, I truly forgive thee...

[My article from Deccan Herald supplement - Living on April 8, 2017]

IT'S OKAY: By holding onto grudges and resentment, you will only hurt yourself.
Forgiveness is often talked about, but little understood. So, what really is forgiveness? It is the letting go of intense past emotions and recognising that you don’t need grudges, resentment, hatred and self-pity. Forgiveness is no longer wanting to punish the people who hurt you, and accepting that nothing you do to punish them will heal you. To put it very simply, forgiveness is moving on. And most importantly, forgiveness is something you do for yourself, not for anyone else.

However, people are often unforgiving, because forgiveness does not come
easily. And the thought of doing it is not easy to accept, because, not forgiving has a positive payoff — the illusion that if that dreadful thing hadn’t happened, your life would have been perfect. It becomes an easy explanation for everything that is wrong with your life.

Why we do it
Not forgiving helps you compensate for the powerlessness you felt when you were hurt. You have the power to keep the person who hurt you locked away in the prison of your mind. You feel powerful because no one can force you to forgive or stop holding a grudge. Not forgiving also protects you from being hurt again by the same person. By keeping the pain alive, you keep your guard up and are always on the lookout for danger. But you should know that this can be debilitating in the long run.

Collecting injustices, holding grudges, and walking around with unresolved and unexpressed anger that is boiling inside you can take a toll on your physical and emotional well-being. They create stress, elevate blood pressure, increase your heart rate and stomach acidity, contributing to ulcers, colitis and arthritis. Your grievances metaphorically hang around your neck, giving you backaches, chest pain, anxiety attacks and migraines.

Forgiveness is not just a formality, but a state of mind that can lift you from mental and physical burdens. It lowers your cortisol level and reduces stress. It also reduces chronic back pain. Some researchers believe there is a strong relationship between being unforgiving and living with persistent pain. Being unforgiving also prevents you from doing and becoming all that you could, and saddles you with addictions and compulsive behaviours, relationship issues, burnouts at the professional level, negativity, ineffective parenting, lethargy, depression, and abusive, violent or suicidal behaviour.

You have difficulty maintaining relationships and become intolerant of others. You become suspicious and hypersensitive and are always ready to start an argument. Your negativity and bitterness alienate and isolate you. This may not be where you wanted to go, but this is always where holding a grudge takes you.

According to Sidney B Simon and Suzanne Simon in their book, Forgiveness: How To Make Peace With Your Past And Get On With Your Life, there are several myths about forgiveness. The most important one being that forgiveness means forgetting. By forgiving the people who hurt you, you do not erase painful past experiences from your memory. Nothing can turn back the clock and remove the unpleasant incidents from your history. Forgiveness will not do that, nor should it. After all, those experiences and the pain they caused, teach you a great deal.

The second myth is that forgiveness means condoning the unforgivable act. By forgiving people who hurt you, you are not saying that what they did was acceptable or not bad. It was bad. But when you forgive, you lessen the impact of the past on your present and future. Forgiveness doesn’t mean you let people off the hook and absolve them of all responsibility for their actions. They are still responsible for what they did and must make peace with their past.

Forgiveness is not about swallowing your true feelings and tolerating people who hurt you. Actually, forgiveness cannot be given half-heartedly and is not a clear-cut one-time decision. You can’t just wake up one morning and decide to forgive someone. It can’t be forced and scheduled. It is what happens naturally as a result of confronting painful past experiences and healing old wounds. While everyone’s journey to forgiveness is unique, it will pass through six stages.

How it unfolds
First, there is denial, where you play down the importance of your painful past and bury your thoughts and feelings about those experiences. Then there is self-blame, where you try to explain what happened as somehow being your fault. If only I had been different or done things differently, that would not have happened, you tell yourself. You then become a victim and recognise that you did not deserve or ask to be hurt. This makes you indignant and you want the people who hurt you to suffer, just as you have. You then become a survivor and recognise that although you were hurt, you did indeed survive. Your painful past took things away from you, but gave you something too.

You become aware of your strengths and start taking an interest in things other than your pain. You start recognising that all things considered, you did the best you could. The final stage is that of integration, when you are able to acknowledge that the people who hurt you may have been the best that they could be, too. That is, just as you are more than your wounds, they must also be more than the inflictors of those wounds. With this knowledge, you can release them from the prison in your mind and reclaim the energy you used to keep them there. You can put the past in perspective, without forgetting it, let go of the pain, and get on with your life, unencumbered by excessive emotional baggage.

So, how do you know if you have truly forgiven someone? If the first thought you have about them is not the hurt they caused you, and you are able to have normal thoughts about the person occasionally, you have probably forgiven the person. Ask yourself if you would help them if you knew they were in trouble, and you were able to offer assistance. Would you in your heart want to see them prosper, or would you still want to see harm come to them? Can you think positive thoughts about this person? Are there good things you can come up with about them? Have you stopped looking for them to fail? If you have truly forgiven someone, then, just like you would for anyone else, you would want them to succeed, or at least do better in life. In short, forgiveness means you have stopped keeping a record of the person’s wrongdoings.

It is important to remember that holding a grudge does not fix anything. The hot coal you hold onto is just burning you, not anything or anyone else. You need to throw it away so that you don’t get burnt. Letting go makes you feel less depressed, makes your relationships become healthier, and improves your self-esteem. All in all, your psychological well-being is positively affected. You need to forgive, for your own sanity.

Akin to sorrow
In some ways, the process of healing through forgiveness is similar to the grieving process. The most significant difference though is that, in this case, the person doesn’t cease to exist. Even though they may be dead now, they didn’t die immediately after they hurt you. And neither did the hope that they will do good by you some day. One of the reasons forgiving is so difficult is that you still expect those who hurt you to someday heal you and make up for that hurt. But this never happens and you get as wounded by these unmet expectations, as by the original hurt.

This pain lives on until you accept the fact that you cannot get your needs met now by the people who did not meet them in the past. But those needs are still valid and you must find new ways to meet them. So, accept that the past is gone and focus on the needs you have now and how you will fulfil them. It is your responsibility to take charge of your own life and make the choices that will enable you to heal and create a new and more productive version of you.

When you begin to make these conscious choices to fulfil your needs and enhance your self-esteem, your healing process leads you towards forgiveness and a better life. You may decide to start therapy, or end self-destructive behaviour. Whatever it is, you are doing it consciously to help yourself heal. And at every crossroad and turning point in this journey, you must reflect on where you are now, where you would rather be, and what is the next bold step you need to take to get there?

Self-reflection forms a very large part of the healing process as you begin to understand where you are now. What are the dead-end streets you have been going down because of the hurt? Have you been sleeping too much, drinking too much, binge eating too much, or keeping yourself too busy? Sometimes, you need to ask yourself a tough question – how does not forgiving serve you? Is what you get from not forgiving truly worth what you have to give up?

A vision of the life you hope to lead, and an image of the person you hope to become help the healing process. Your vision may include punishing the people who hurt you. That is a vision, but it is not a healing vision. A healing vision describes the positive attributes you want to develop and what you want to do as a result of the healing. So, design a healing vision for yourself.

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Any burden becomes lighter when you share it. You do not have to heal all by yourself. You can take the help of a counsellor or any supportive person in your circle. You can also read and learn and become more self-reflective about your own journey and the path you want to take going forward. This is a journey you need to take for yourself, not for anyone else. The person you need to forgive is not a part of this journey.