Virginia satyr how to build yourself and yours. Center for Modern NLP Technologies

Doctor of Psychology

BUT. FROM. Spivakovskaya

Translators: £ AT. Novikov, M. BUT. Makarushkina

SatyrAT.

From 21 How to build yourself and your family: Per. from English: improve. ed - M: Pedagogy-Press, 1992. - 192 p: ill.

ISBN 5-7155-0284-5(CCCP) ISBN 5-7155-0031-5(USA)

The author of the book is the progressive American psychologist V. Satir, the founder of family counseling, the successor of the humanistic direction in psychology, invites the reader to talk about the problems of family life

How to teach to love and be loved, how to look at yourself through the eyes of your children, how to make family relationships humane - this is not a complete range of issues raised by the author. The book is written with sincere love for a person, faith in his creative abilities, with subtle and kind humor.

For a wide range of readers „ 4312000000-063,

005(01)-92

- 83-91

BBC 88.5

ISBN 5-7155-0284-5(CCCP) ISBN 5-7155-0031-5(USA)

publishing house "Pedagogy-Press", 1992

Satyr V. 1

How to build yourself and your family 1

Preface 2

Chapter 1. What does your family look like? four

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4 How We Speak and How We Listen 13

Chapter 5 Communication Patterns 21

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8 Systems: Open or Closed? 35

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11 Your Family Map 49

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14. Elements of a Family Life Project 65

Chapter 15

Chapter 16 family ties 80

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

The world starts at home. (Afterword to the Russian edition) 96

Foreword

I was five years old when I decided that I would definitely become a children's detective. Then I vaguely imagined what this work would be like, but I distinctly felt that there was something in the family that was hard to see right away without delving deeply into the world of human relations, a world full of mysterious mysteries, often hidden from view.

Now, after so many years, having worked with thousands of families, I am convinced that most of these mysteries have not been solved. The work taught me a lot, opened up new opportunities and prospects for further discoveries. Now it is quite clear to me that the family is a microcosm of the whole world. To understand him, it is enough to know the family. Manifestations of power, intimacy, independence, trust, communication skills that exist in it are the key to unraveling many phenomena of life. If we want to change the world, we need to change the family.

Family life is like an iceberg. Most people see only a small surface of it and delude themselves into thinking they see it in its entirety. Some guess that the iceberg is somewhat larger, but do not know what exactly its invisible part is. Not knowing all the intricacies of family life, you can direct it in a dangerous course.

Like the movements of an experienced sailor, who must take into account the shape and size of the hidden part of the iceberg in order for the ship to safely pass on the intended course, the life of the family depends on how much it understands, realizes and takes into account the feelings, needs, intentions, motives and thoughts of each of its members. , and they are often hidden precisely in the underwater part, obscured from us by everyday events, familiar words, actions and deeds.

I sincerely believe that today, when humanity is penetrating into the microcosm of the atom and into the gigantic expanses of intergalactic astronomy, it is possible to make significant progress in understanding an equally important question: what happens when one person communicates and interacts with another? I believe that in a thousand years, historians will define our time as the beginning of a new era, when every person becomes truly humane.

I thought for a long time about what humanity is, what kind of person can be called a humanist. A humanist is, in my opinion, one who understands, appreciates and develops his body, his body, himself, considers himself beautiful and the right people; one who is realistic and honest with himself and others; able to take a conscious and deliberate risk; strives for excellence and competence in the field in which he is engaged, looking for new ways in life and changing the situation, if necessary; he is not afraid of change; ready to give up the habitual, if it is expedient and prevents him and other people from correcting mistakes, if this is harmful.

As a result, a person becomes truly physically healthy, his life is filled with love, kindness, becomes natural, creative, permeated with deep feelings, personal responsibility. He stands firmly on the ground, is able to deeply love, fight difficulties and overcome them. He is equally capable of being gentle and tough, thoughtfully and consciously approaches his actions and, as a result, achieves his intended goals.

In my work with families, I have found that all the successes and failures in raising a new person are associated with four basic psychological phenomena.

Firstly, these are the feelings and thoughts of a person in relation to himself, I call them self-esteem.

Secondly, these are the ways in which people transmit various information to each other, share experiences and thoughts, I call these methods of communication.

Thirdly, these are the rules that people adhere to and follow in their lives. They make up a kind of totality, which I call the family system.

Fourthly, these are the methods by which the family carries out its relations with other social institutions, I call them social relations.

It doesn’t matter what specifically prompted the family to turn to a specialist for psychological help: the wife’s infidelity or the husband’s depression, the deviant, illegal behavior of the son or the daughter’s neurosis - the important thing is that the process of influence in all cases can be identical. To reduce or eliminate family pain, it is necessary to find the key to understanding each of the four phenomena listed above.

With all the variety of problems, a family in pain is always characterized by: low self-esteem, undirected, confused, unclear, largely unrealistic and dishonest communications; rigid, inert, stereotyped, inhumane, unhelpful and unduly life-limiting rules of conduct; social ties, either providing peace in the family, or filled with fear and threat.

I am happy to meet problem-free and mature families; some of them became so after a certain psychological work, which made it possible to reveal their inherent potential. Mature families are characterized by the following qualities: high self-esteem; immediate, direct, clear and honest communications; the rules in these families are mobile, humane, oriented towards acceptance, and family members are capable of change; social ties are open and full of positive attitudes and hopes.

Such changes in the family occur as a result of painstaking work and mutual interest of all its members.

No matter where the surgeon learns his skill, in any case he is able to operate on every person, since the anatomical structure is basically the same. Working with families, problematic and prosperous on most of the continents of the Earth, I came to the conclusion that in all families: everyone evaluates themselves in one way or another - positively or negatively, the main question is how exactly?

A person communicates, establishes connections with others, main question in how he does it and what results he achieves in the end.

He follows certain rules in his life, it is important to understand what these rules are and how successfully a person uses them.

All of the above can be found in any family where there are parents who raise children until they become adults, in single-parent families where one parent raises children after the death of the other, divorce or imprisonment, in families with foster children or children from previous marriages in which the parents or one of them is not the birth father or mother of the child. The same is observed in the lives of children brought up in state institutions. Nowadays children grow up in different family structures.

Of course, each of the listed types of families has its own specific features, and we will dwell on them later. However, the same psychological components are basic for family life: self-esteem, communications, rules and social ties.

Relations in the family are those threads, bonds, connections that unite people into a single whole. We will analyze their various components, and I hope this will help you better understand the structure of your family, find ways to renew relationships with loved ones. This will give you the opportunity to experience the joy of working together, of communicating in your “family team”.

As you read this book, you will sometimes be asked to do some exercises that will give you the knowledge of how you should act in a given situation when communicating with other people. I ask you to try to complete all the suggested exercises, even if they seem primitive and stupid to you. Doing them will help you ensure that the situation in your family becomes less anxious and more psychologically mature. The more family members who participate in this work, the greater your success will be. You know perfectly well that it is difficult to learn to swim standing on the shore, you can learn to swim only on the water.

If you are not sure that your family members will agree to work with you, I can advise you to feel in your heart what exactly you would like to ask them for, and make your request very simple and very direct. If you are truly determined to work together and believe that it will bring results, then the request will sound very attractive, and your loved ones will want to help you. Ask them: “Would you like to participate with me in an experiment that might be interesting and useful for us?” - such a question will set them up for a positive decision as much as possible.

Remember that threats, demands, orders always lead to the opposite of what we want.

I watched a lot of tragedies that happened in different families. Each of them deeply touched me, penetrated into the soul. With the help of this book, I want to ease the pain of those families that I will never be able to meet. Moreover, I hope to prevent the difficulties that may await our children in the future. Of course, one cannot completely exclude pain from human life. There are two types of it: one - associated with the awareness of the problem; the second, which we experience when we are suppressed or blamed. And if the first pain cannot be avoided, then the second one in our life may not be. We can direct our efforts towards fixing what is changeable and finding the best ways to coexist with what cannot be changed.

Lord, give me the patience to accept what I cannot change,

Give me the strength to change what I can change And give me the wisdom to learn to tell the one from the other.

Reynold Neighborough

You better not say it. While reading this book, maybe you will experience both pains, remember something unpleasant, sad or difficult. New knowledge about yourself and how to take responsibility on your shoulders will surely bring difficult and difficult experiences.

However, if, when you close the book, you discover new possibilities and strengths in yourself and see new paths that your family can take, I believe that the task will be completed.

Center modern NLP technologies- one of the most respected educational institutions in its field. For more than 20 years, the NLP Center has been successfully operating and offering its services in the field of neuro-linguistic programming, as well as Ericksonian hypnosis. In the center of modern NLP technologies, certification courses are waiting for you in all possible NLP disciplines: “NLP Practitioner”, “NLP Master” and "NLP Trainer". The center also regularly conducts the course "Erickson's hypnosis", after which students receive international certificates. Such certificates are issued to all graduates of the center who have successfully completed the chosen course.

During the learning process, our NLP Center invariably uses the most modern, new NLP technologies;
The hosts of our courses are professionals, authors of books on neurolinguistic programming and unique models NLP;
The vast experience of our trainers allows us to make the learning process not only amazingly effective, but also insanely interesting;
Training always covers all the necessary information, which is provided for by the full programs of the Interregional Association of Centers NLP;
The classes take into account all the individual expectations and requests of the participants;
The practicality of using neurolinguistic programming techniques is put at the forefront in the courses of our NLP center. Ease of use of NLP Everyday life is the main objective of education.

Other NLP centers very different from our center is that the programs NLP and Ericksonian hypnosis have a pronounced applied character. More precisely, our NLP programs are focused on the practical real use of acquired knowledge and skills, as well as on solving problems in any area of life: business problems, personal relationships, tasks personal growth. Not all NLP centers are ready to offer such an applied focus of courses.

Our NLP Center gives you an absolute guarantee that the courses contain all the necessary and additional elements provided by the programs of the Interregional Association NLP centers. Due to the fact that in our center training NLP always takes place using the latest NLP technologies based on confinement simulation, the effectiveness of training in our center is an order of magnitude higher than others can offer NLP centers, and this allows students to master a much larger amount of material, spending much less time on learning.

Neuro-linguistic programming ( NLP), in exactly the same way as a huge number of other areas, began its path to development by looking for opportunities to find out how successful individuals achieve this success. NLP its main task was to identify the structure of success, the visual structure of mastery. NLP has every reason to believe that if there is at least one person who knows how to do something certain, then another person is able to learn it. It is this structure of experience that we strive to highlight NLP so that a person has the opportunity to teach the desired skill to himself and others. This is the main task NLP. And NLP strives to ensure that this training was truly masterful, so that even experts could not detect the difference between what was done by a newly trained student and a professional master.

The Interregional Association of NLP Centers is headed by its president - Timur Vladimirovich Gagin, who is a trainer NLP international class, developer of a fundamentally new system modeling technology, author of numerous books on NLP, doctor of psychology, professor.

Absolutely all the leading NLP courses of our center have a higher education (and often more than one), tremendous experience in both individual counseling and group classes, plus each one has significant experience in practical business and leadership. The applied orientation of the NLP programs and the Ericksonian hypnosis program of our center distinguishes it from the services that others can offer. NLP centers. The programs involve the analysis of specific real problems proposed by course participants, and the solution of these problems using techniques NLP and Ericksonian hypnosis. Tasks can relate to any area of life - personal growth, business tasks, self-development.

For those who want to explore the field NLP in more detail and from unusual angles, our NLP center offers a number of specialized author's trainings. Such trainings are recommended for visiting both those who have been successfully practicing NLP or hypnosis for a long time, and those who are far from this topic, but are happy to comprehend new horizons for themselves.

phrase "neuro-linguistic programming" (sometimes used without a hyphen, which is not a mistake), or abbreviated NLP derived from the English "Neuro-linguistic programming" and is a set of techniques, models, and operating principles that can be applied as a personality development approach that uses the modeling of effective mental and behavioral strategies.

We offer you a wide range of books, articles and real stories about tricks neuro-linguistic programming and how to use it in everyday life.

As for Erickson's hypnosis, it is based on the use of the natural, inherent in all people, without exception, the ability to plunge into an involuntary trance. This state has a beneficial effect on a person, because it is trance that allows the human unconscious to actively get involved in the work and help its owner achieve his goals. Right hemispheric resources are most clearly revealed in a trance, intuition, the ability to be creative and solve various life problems and business tasks are activated.

AT modern world Ericksonian hypnosis is popular in many areas of human activity at once. After all, Ericksonian hypnosis is a universal tool that everyone can use because of their needs. The most popular way to use Ericksonian hypnosis is self-hypnosis - in other words, restoring mental and physical strength, getting rid of pain and unpleasant experiences, bringing oneself into a good mood, etc. The most talented hypnotists with experience manage to master various hypnotic phenomena, such as, for example , change in the course of time, the discovery of previously unknown reserves of the body. One way or another, Ericksonian hypnosis allows a person to learn how to use those hidden abilities that previously existed only in his imagination.

A person who masterfully masters any skill (speaking in front of an audience, driving a car, building a personal life, writing articles or stories, making money, treating people, drawing pictures, composing music, or something else) can teach this to other people. After all, if someone once did something, then the other person can not only repeat, but also perform it as masterly as the master himself.

For those who are interested in the most detailed information about NLP techniques and methods, we recommend the NLP Articles section of our website. We draw your attention to the fact that articles only allow you to get acquainted with some theoretical information, but are by no means capable of instilling any stable skills. You will not become a good judoka without a real trainer and you will not be able to confidently snowboard just by reading a book with instructions for this sport, only the practical classes of our NLP center will allow you to learn real NLP skills and do it in an interesting, effective and easy way.

Doctor of Psychology

BUT. FROM. Spivakovskaya

Translators: £ AT. Novikov, M. BUT. Makarushkina

Satyr AT.

From 21 How to build yourself and your family: Per. from English: improve. ed - M: Pedagogy-Press, 1992. - 192 p: ill.

How to teach to love and be loved, how to look at yourself through the eyes of your children, how to make family relationships humane - this is far from full circle questions raised by the author. The book is written with sincere love for a person, faith in his creative abilities, with subtle and kind humor.

For a wide range readers „ 4312000000-063,

005(01)-92

- 83-91

BBC 88.5

ISBN 5-7155-0284-5(CCCP) ISBN 5-7155-0031-5(USA)

publishing house "Pedagogy-Press", 1992

Satyr V. 1

How to build yourself and your family 1

Preface 2

Chapter 1. What does your family look like? four

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4 How We Speak and How We Listen 13

Chapter 5 Communication Patterns 21

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8 Systems: Open or Closed? 35

Chapter 9

Chapter 10 Special Families 43

Chapter 11 Your Family Map 49

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14. Elements of a Family Life Project 65

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

The world starts at home. (Afterword to the Russian edition) 97

Foreword

I was five years old when I decided that I would definitely become a children's detective. Then I vaguely imagined what this work would be like, but I distinctly felt that there was something in the family that was difficult to see right away without delving deeply into the world of human relations, a world full of mysterious mysteries, often hidden from the eyes.

I sincerely believe that today, when humanity is penetrating into the microcosm of the atom and into the gigantic expanses of intergalactic astronomy, it is possible to make significant progress in understanding an equally important question: what happens when one person communicates and interacts with another? I believe that in a thousand years historians will define our time as the beginning new era when each person becomes truly humane.

I thought for a long time about what humanity is, what kind of person can be called a humanist. A humanist is, in my opinion, one who understands, appreciates and develops his body, his body, himself, considers himself beautiful and necessary to people; one who is realistic and honest with himself and others; able to take a conscious and deliberate risk; strives for excellence and competence in the field in which he is engaged, looking for new ways in life and changing the situation, if necessary; he is not afraid of change; ready to give up the habitual, if it is expedient and prevents him and other people from correcting mistakes, if this is harmful.

The Center for Contemporary NLP Technologies is one of the most respected educational institutions in its field. For more than 20 years, the NLP Center has been successfully operating and offering its services in the field of neuro-linguistic programming, as well as Ericksonian hypnosis. In the center of modern NLP technologies, certification courses are waiting for you in all possible NLP disciplines: “NLP Practitioner”, “NLP Master” and "NLP Trainer". The center also regularly conducts the course "Erickson's hypnosis", after which students receive international certificates. Such certificates are issued to all graduates of the center who have successfully completed the chosen course.

During the learning process, our NLP Center invariably uses the most modern, new NLP technologies;
The hosts of our courses are professionals, authors of books on neurolinguistic programming and unique models NLP;
The vast experience of our trainers allows us to make the learning process not only amazingly effective, but also insanely interesting;
Training always covers all the necessary information, which is provided for by the full programs of the Interregional Association of Centers NLP;
The classes take into account all the individual expectations and requests of the participants;
The practicality of using neurolinguistic programming techniques is put at the forefront in the courses of our NLP center. Ease of use of NLP in everyday life is the main goal of training.

Other NLP centers very different from our center is that the programs NLP and Ericksonian hypnosis have a pronounced applied character. To put it more precisely, our NLP programs are focused on the practical real use of acquired knowledge and skills, as well as on solving problems in any area of life: business problems, personal relationships, personal growth problems. Not all NLP centers are ready to offer such an applied focus of courses.

Our NLP Center gives you an absolute guarantee that the courses contain all the necessary and additional elements provided by the programs of the Interregional Association of NLP Centers. Due to the fact that in our center training NLP always takes place using the latest NLP technologies based on confinement simulation, the effectiveness of training in our center is an order of magnitude higher than others can offer NLP centers, and this allows students to master a much larger amount of material, spending much less time on learning.

We offer you a wide range of books, articles and real stories about tricks. neuro-linguistic programming and how to use it in everyday life.

In the modern world, Ericksonian hypnosis is popular in many areas of human activity at once. After all, Ericksonian hypnosis is a universal tool that everyone can use because of their needs. The most popular way to use Ericksonian hypnosis is self-hypnosis - in other words, restoring mental and physical strength, getting rid of pain and unpleasant experiences, bringing oneself into a good mood, etc. The most talented hypnotists with experience manage to master various hypnotic phenomena, such as, for example , change in the course of time, the discovery of previously unknown reserves of the body. One way or another, Ericksonian hypnosis allows a person to learn how to use those hidden abilities that previously existed only in his imagination.

Foreword

I was five years old when I decided that I would definitely become a children's detective. Then I vaguely imagined what this work would be like, but I clearly felt that there is something in the family that is difficult to see right away without delving deeply into the world. human relations, a world full of mysterious mysteries, often hidden from view.

I thought for a long time about what humanity is, what kind of person can be called a humanist. A humanist is, in my opinion, one who understands, appreciates and develops his body, his body, himself, considers himself beautiful and necessary to people; one who is realistic and honest with himself and others; able to take a conscious and deliberate risk; strives for excellence and competence in the field in which he is engaged, looking for new ways in life and changing the situation, if necessary; he is not afraid of change; ready to give up the habitual, if it is expedient and prevents him and other people from correcting mistakes, if this is harmful.

In my work with families, I have found that all the successes and failures in raising a new person are associated with four basic psychological phenomena.

Firstly, these are the feelings and thoughts of a person in relation to himself, I call them self-esteem.

Secondly, these are the ways in which people transmit various information to each other, share experiences and thoughts, I call these methods of communication.

Thirdly, these are the rules that people adhere to and follow in their lives. They make up a kind of totality, which I call the family system.

Fourthly, these are the methods by which the family carries out its relations with other social institutions, I call them social relations.

It doesn’t matter what specifically prompted the family to turn to a specialist for psychological help: the wife’s infidelity or the husband’s depression, the son’s deviant, illegal behavior or the daughter’s neurosis — the important thing is that the process of influence in all cases can be identical. To reduce or eliminate family pain, it is necessary to find the key to understanding each of the four phenomena listed above.

Such changes in the family occur as a result of painstaking work and mutual interest of all its members.

A person communicates, establishes connections with others, the main question is how he does it and what results he achieves in the end.

He follows certain rules in his life, it is important to understand what these rules are and how successfully a person uses them.

All of the above can be found in any family where there are parents who raise children until they become adults, in single-parent families where one parent raises children after the death of the other, divorce or imprisonment, in families with foster children or children from previous marriages in which the parents or one of them is not the birth father or mother of the child. The same is observed in the lives of children brought up in public institutions. Nowadays children grow up in different family structures.

Relationships in the family are those threads, bonds, ties that unite people into a single whole. We will analyze their various components, and I hope this will help you better understand the structure of your family, find ways to renew relationships with loved ones. This will give you the opportunity to experience the joy of working together, of communicating in your “family team”.

Remember that threats, demands, orders always lead to the opposite of what we want.

I watched a lot of tragedies that happened in different families. Each of them deeply touched me, penetrated into the soul. With the help of this book, I want to ease the pain of those families that I will never be able to meet. Moreover, I hope to prevent the difficulties that may await our children in the future. Of course, one cannot completely exclude pain from human life. There are two types of it: one is associated with the awareness of the problem; the second, which we experience when we are suppressed or blamed. And if the first pain cannot be avoided, then the second one in our life may not be. We can direct our efforts towards correcting what is changeable and finding best ways coexistence with what cannot be changed.

Lord, give me the patience to accept what I cannot change,
Give me the strength to change what I can change And give me the wisdom to learn to tell the one from the other.

Reynold Neighborough

However, if, when you close the book, you discover new possibilities and strengths in yourself and see new paths that your family can take, I believe that the task will be completed.

Chapter 1. What does your family look like?

How well do you live now in your family? In those families with whom I had to work, this issue was almost never raised. Living together, people take for granted that everyone is happy. If there is no obvious conflict in the family, it is assumed that everyone is satisfied with the current situation. I think that many of the family members do not even dare to ask themselves this question. They put up with a life that seems more or less successful to them, and do not assume that the family situation can be changed at all.

Do you feel like you are living with friends, with people you like and respect, with people who respect and love you? This question usually causes bewilderment: "Hmm ... I never thought about it, this is my own family" - as if family members are somehow different from all other people!

Is it interesting and pleasant to be a member of your family? Indeed, there are many families whose members believe that life in their home is more pleasant and more interesting than anywhere else. But many people for many years, day after day, live in families that are unpleasant to them. Such people perceive their family as a battlefield or an unbearable, heavy burden.

If you answer “Yes” to all three questions, then I am sure that your family can be called mature and harmonious. If you answered “No” or “Not always”, you most likely live in a family that has certain difficulties and problems. This does not mean that your family is bad. This only says that your family members are not very happy and have not learned to truly love and appreciate each other.

Having met hundreds of families, I realized that there are, as it were, two types of families: a mature family and a problem family. Each mature family lives its own special and unique life, although you can find a lot in common in how relationships are built in such families. Problem families, regardless of the nature of the problems, also have a lot in common in their lives. Therefore, I would like to offer you some generalized description of each of these two types of families. Of course, these generalizations cannot reflect all the specific features of the life of each family, but it is possible that in some of the descriptions you will more or less accurately see something that will remind you of your own family life. You feel the atmosphere of a troubled family very quickly. As soon as I get into such a family, I immediately begin to experience particular inconvenience and discomfort. Sometimes I feel cold, as if everyone was in the cold: family members are extremely polite to each other, and everyone is very sad. Sometimes I feel like I'm teetering on a steep peak and can't seem to get into a stable position. Or it can be a feeling of heaviness and tension, which happens before a thunderstorm, when rain and thunder can break out at any moment. Sometimes the family atmosphere is full of secrecy, as if you are in the headquarters of a spy commander in chief. Sometimes I get really sad for no apparent reason. I understand that this happens because all the sources of life are blocked.

When I find myself in one of these situations, my body instantly gives a special reaction. I begin to feel nauseous, my shoulders droop, my back feels stiff, and my head hurts. I wonder if the members of this family feel every day the same way I feel now. Later, when we get to know each other better and people begin to talk about themselves and their families, about their feelings and experiences, I am convinced that this is true. Every day they experience the same thing that I felt when I first met their family. Re-experiencing these feelings over and over again while working with various problem families, I understood why people who do not work out get sick so often. family life. Their body just reacts very humanly to the inhuman atmosphere in which they live.

You may find strange and surprising reactions that I have described. I want to note that the somatic reaction of each person to the people around him is extremely individual and, moreover, it is not always realized. Most of us with age learn not to notice these sensations, and some people switch off so well that they completely cease to be aware of the reactions of their body, cannot establish a connection between their sensations and various sensations. external events, cannot understand their cause and sources. Years later, such people may develop some kind of somatic disease, but they cannot understand the reasons for this disease. As a psychotherapist, I had to learn to fix these feelings in myself and find similar reactions in my clients' bodies. Somatic signals help me to understand everything that is happening. I hope that this book will help you learn to recognize such important signs that the body gives us. The first step towards change is understanding what is really going on.

In troubled families, people's faces and bodies speak of their suffering. Their bodies are stiff and tense or hunched awkwardly. Their faces appear gloomy, sullen, or sad, or may be expressionless, like masks. Eyes look at the floor, they do not see other people. It seems that they not only do not see, but also do not hear. Their voices sound harsh and creaky or almost inaudible.

It is difficult to notice at least some manifestations of friendly disposition between the members of these families, where no one will ever smile. It seems that these people live with each other solely out of duty. Sometimes I was able to notice glimmers of light from one of the family members, but all attempts to defuse the situation ran into dull resistance. Humor in such families often turns into irony, sarcasm or even ridicule. Adults are so busy, because they endlessly dictate to children and each other what should and should not be done, that they simply do not have the opportunity for joyful communication. It is not uncommon for members of troubled families to be genuinely amazed that one can enjoy each other's company.

When I meet dysfunctional families, I always ask myself: how do these people manage to survive in such an atmosphere? I found that in some families, people simply avoid each other: they are so immersed in their work or in some other business outside the home that they communicate less and less with their loved ones. It's very simple - to live with someone under the same roof and not see each other for days.

It is very difficult for me to work with such families. I see hopelessness, helplessness, loneliness. I feel the bravado in trying to hide from myself and others the true state of affairs, a bravado that can eventually destroy a person. In some families, people cling to the slightest hope, they may yell, find fault with each other, harass their neighbors. In others, people give up and carry their cross for years, suffering or bringing suffering to their relatives. I would never have taken on these families if I hadn't been convinced that they can change, and many of them do. The family can become the place where everyone will find love, understanding and support, even if life outside the home is not very successful. In the family, you can relax and gain strength in order to feel more confident in the world around you. But for millions of dysfunctional families, all this is more like a fairy tale.

In our urbanized and industrialized world, social institutions should be economical, practical, efficient, but for the most part they are inhumane. Almost everyone experiences a certain amount of pressure from interacting with inhumane social institutions; we feel humiliated or unequal, restricted or rejected. For people living in troubled families who live in inhuman conditions in their own home, these difficulties are especially difficult.

Nobody wants a life like this, and people live that way only because they don't know how to change it all.

Now stop reading for five minutes and think about those families that you know well ... Maybe they will remind you of the problem families described? Were there any signs of problems in the family in which you grew up: coldness and soullessness, overcorrectness and mystery, chaos and confusion? What is the family you live in? Have you discovered any problems in your family that you did not notice before?

Mature families have a completely different atmosphere! As soon as I get there, I feel naturalness, honesty and love. I feel that my soul, heart and mind are in perfect harmony with each other. The people around me express their love and respect for each other.

I feel that if I lived in such a family, they would always listen to me, and I would listen to others with interest, they would begin to reckon with me, and I would reckon with others, I could openly show my joy and pain, and talking about the failure, I was not afraid that I would be ridiculed, because everyone in my family understands that along with the risk, with trying something new in life, there will definitely be mistakes that mean that I grow and develop. I would feel complete person: loved, highly valued, needed surrounded by people who expect love, recognition and respect from me. It would be easy for me to relate to life with humor, to laugh and joke when it is appropriate.

In prosperous families, it is easy to see and hear manifestations of a special vitality. People living happily with each other even look special. Their movements are free and graceful, their facial expressions are peaceful. People look at each other, not through each other or at the floor; they are sincere and natural in their relationship with each other. Children, even infants, in such families look spontaneous and friendly, and all other family members treat them with respect as full-fledged individuals.

The house in which such a family lives is filled with light and bright colors. It is truly a place for people to live, designed for joy and pleasure.

When there is calm in the family, it is peaceful calm, and not disturbing silence or silence from fear, this is not a warning silence. When there is a storm in the house, this is a sign of some very important, significant activity, and not an attempt to shout down everyone else. Each member of the family is sure that at home he can be heard. If now for some reason the family is not up to him, he understands perfectly well that the matter is precisely in the lack of time, and not in the lack of love.

People in such families are happy to touch each other, while openly expressing their feelings, completely regardless of age. Proofs of love and care are not limited to just taking out the trash, cooking, or making a living. People show their love by talking openly with each other and listening very carefully, they can be direct, open and honest, they can be who they are and enjoy the fact that they can be together.

Members of a mature family feel so free with each other that they are not shy about talking about their feelings. Everything they feel can be expressed - disappointment, fear, pain, anger, criticism, as well as a joke and praise. If it happens that the father is in a bad mood for some reason, the son can frankly say: “Hey, father, you are not in a good mood today.” He is not afraid that in response he will hear a cry: “Who allowed you to speak with your father in such a tone!” Instead, the father will amiably say, "Yeah, I feel like I'm out of shape today, I've had a hell of a day." To this his son may reply: “It is good that you told me about it, father. And then I thought that you were angry with me for something.

A mature family is capable of productive and coordinated planning of its life, however, if something in the plan is violated, it can calmly accept and appreciate these changes. Members of a mature family are able to react without panic to various life situations. For example, suppose a child breaks a cup. In a troubled family, this episode may end with a half-hour lecture, spanking, the child in tears will be escorted to his room. In a mature family, one of the parents is likely to remark, “Johnny, you broke your cup. You didn't cut yourself? You will clean everything yourself, take a broom and a rag, wipe the puddle and collect the fragments. I'll give you a glass." If a parent later notices that the child is holding the cup carelessly or incorrectly, they may say, “I think the cup broke because you didn’t hold it with both hands.” Thus, this incident will be used as an opportunity to educate the child, which will increase his self-esteem, and not turn into a punishment that will put the child's self-worth in question. In a mature family, it is clearly seen that human life and people's feelings are the most important thing, much more important than anything else.

Parents perceive themselves as inspirational leaders, not authoritarian leaders. They see their task in teaching children to remain human in any life situation. They are ready to communicate negative assessments to their children as well as positive ones, they are ready to be upset, angry, upset just like having fun and rejoice ... Their behavior does not diverge from words.

In problem families, everything happens the other way around: parents urge children not to offend or upset each other, while they themselves spank or beat them for not saying “please” or impolitely responding to a remark.

Parents are only human; they do not automatically become caregivers the moment their child is born. They learn the important truth that a good teacher knows how to choose the appropriate situation and time to talk to the child when he is really ready to listen to the parent. When a child behaves incorrectly, the father or mother tries to understand the reason for such behavior and shows maximum attention, trying to help him with his support. It becomes easier for the child to overcome his fear and guilt, which greatly strengthens the position of the parents.

Not so long ago, I witnessed how skillfully and very humanely a mother from a mature, harmonious family coped with a conflict situation. When she saw that her sons, five and six years old, were fighting, she calmly parted them, taking each by the hand, and sat down so that one boy was sitting to her left, and another to her right. Still holding their hands, she asked each to tell her what had happened, and listened attentively to both of them in turn. Asking the boys questions, she gradually restored the cause of the conflict: the five-year-old brother took a coin from the six-year-old's purse. As the guys talked about their grievances, she helped them re-establish contact with each other, return the coin to its true owner, and reconcile. The guys got a good lesson in constructive problem solving.

Parents in mature families know that initially children cannot be bad. If a child behaves badly, it only means that there is a misunderstanding between him and his parents, or that the child's self-esteem has dropped dangerously. Such parents know that you can only learn anything if you have high self-esteem and you feel that others also evaluate you positively. Therefore, they never react to the behavior of their children in a way that humiliates their dignity. Even if something in a child's actions can be changed by punishment or humiliation, this will not yet be the true result. Real change cannot be achieved so quickly and easily.

When a child needs to be corrected, and all children need it from time to time, mature parents ask about what is going on, listen to them, try to better understand and delve into their experiences, taking into account the child's natural desire to learn new things and be good. All this helps to be successful educators. Yes, and children learn from the example of adults, repeating what they do.

Family life is perhaps the most hard kind activities in the world. Family relations are reminiscent of the organization of the joint activities of two enterprises that have combined their efforts to produce a single product. When a grown woman and a grown man raise a child together from infancy to adulthood, they face every challenge humanity has ever known. Parents from mature families understand that problems will definitely arise, if only because life itself will set them, but they will always look for creative solutions to emerging problems. In contrast, troubled families try to devote all their energy to a hopeless attempt to live in such a way that they do not have problems at all. When problems arise, and they cannot but arise, it turns out that the possibilities for solving them have already been exhausted.

Mature families differ from problem families in that parents believe that change is inevitable—children move from one stage of development to another, and adults never stop in their development and constantly move from one state to another. After all, the world around us is constantly changing. Adults accept change as an integral part of being, try to use it creatively in their lives in order to make the family more mature.

Have you ever thought about what a mature family is? Can you think of times when your own family acted in a mature way? Try to remember how you felt and how you felt in those moments. How often do such moments occur in your family?

Some people will probably laugh at my descriptions of a mature family, or think that it is impossible to organize life and relationships in every family in this way. I want to tell them that I have had the fortunate opportunity to see many such families, and I assure you - this is actually quite real! The human soul is always drawn to love.

My other critics will probably notice that the stress and toil of day-to-day work in production leaves little room for spending much time and effort on family relationships. To this question, I will answer this way: well-established family relationships are a matter of survival, a matter of paramount vital importance.

Dysfunctional families give rise to dysfunctional people with low self-esteem, which pushes them to crime, turns into mental illness, alcoholism, drug addiction, poverty and other social problems. If we make every effort to make the family a place where a person can receive a real humanistic education, we will provide ourselves with a safer and more humane world around. The family can become a place for the formation of true people. Each of us is a discovery, each of us is unique.

All people in whose hands power and authority have ever been children. How they use their opportunities depends largely on what they learned in childhood in their family. If you help a dysfunctional family become mature, and suggest a mature one how to be even more harmonious, the humanistic potential of members of such families will increase significantly and, together with them, will penetrate into the government, schools, enterprises and organizations - in a word, into all social institutions that affect the quality of our life. .

I am convinced that every troubled family can become mature. Most of the reasons for the troubles of such families lie in the personal experience of each family member, the experience that he acquired during his life. And since this experience is the result of learning, you can learn to live differently. The only question is how to do it.

First, you need to acknowledge that your family is indeed dysfunctional at times.

Secondly, you must forgive yourself for past mistakes and change your life, knowing full well that it is possible to live differently, not the way it has been before.

Thirdly, it is necessary to decide on the need to change the situation.

Fourth, take the first steps towards these changes.

Once you clearly see your family's problems, you will realize that everything you did before was the best thing you could ever do then. There's no point in starting new life with self-accusation or reproaches against loved ones.

However, I have also met people who have consistently low self-worth. They are always waiting for ridicule, deceit, humiliation, insults from the people around them. Ultimately, they become victims. Expecting a threat, such people, as a rule, get exactly that. Protecting themselves, they hide behind a wall of distrust and plunge into a painful state of loneliness and isolation. Separating from other people, they become apathetic, lethargic, indifferent both to themselves and to everything that surrounds them. It is very difficult for such people to see, hear, understand others, think clearly and make independent decisions, therefore they either humiliate themselves in front of others, completely and blindly obey them, or rudely and arbitrarily suppress other people. They build psychological barriers within themselves.

Such people are characterized by constant fear - a constant companion of mistrust and loneliness. Fear binds and blinds a person, prevents him from finding new solutions to his own life problems. Instead, fear pushes a person to self-defense. (Fear is always the anticipation of something unpleasant in the future. I have noticed that as soon as a person expresses a willingness to understand what he is afraid of in the present, his former fear disappears.)

A person with low self-esteem is not only gripped by fears, but he also accumulates experience of failure, mistakes, defeats, and gradually begins to feel completely hopeless. “I am a complete failure, otherwise all these terrible things would not have happened to me,” he often tells himself. Some people save themselves by starting to drink, take drugs, or otherwise try to avoid responsibility.

The essence of the matter is that the true sources of your family's problems remained, as it were, invisible to all of you, to all your loved ones, and not because someone refused to see them, but because you all did not know where to look, or were accustomed to perceive life in such a way that it was simply impossible to see anything.

You need special "mind glasses" or special "mental magnifying glasses" with which you can see, or maybe see for the first time, the causes of your family difficulties.

As you read this book, from time to time you will pick up these "glasses" and look right where you are. real reasons your problems, to understand what can lead to happiness or grief for your family ship.

So the first thing we need to get a good look at is self-esteem.

Chapter 2

It is not so easy to define what self-esteem is: self-esteem is an attitude and feeling towards oneself, a person's idea of himself. Self-esteem is manifested in the behavior of each of us.

When I was a little girl, I lived on a farm in Wisconsin. On the back porch of the house stood a huge black cauldron, its round sides glittering in the sun and standing on three legs. My mother cooked her special soup in the cauldron, so for part of the year there was soup in the cauldron. In the midst of threshing, we filled the cauldron with stew. At other times of the year, my father kept flower bulbs in it. We all called this cauldron the cauldron of three "s" (that is, the cauldron of three contents). Anyone who wanted to use this cauldron should have asked: what is it now filled with? How full is it?

Many years later, when people told me about themselves, about whether they feel their life is full or empty, whether they have a feeling of being useless or internally broken, I thought about this old cauldron.

Once I had a family at the reception, and its members could not explain to each other how they felt, then I remembered this black cauldron and told them about it. Soon, family members began to talk about their individual "cauldrons"—whether they had feelings of confidence or loneliness, shame or hopelessness. Then they told me about how this metaphor helped them.

Using this simple way, many of my patients are able to say what they found it very difficult to say. A father, for example, might say, "My cauldron is full today." And his relatives will understand that he feels as if standing on top of a mountain, that he is full of energy, feels good and cheerful, and is confident in his significance for others. Or the son will say: "My cauldron is empty." This is said when he feels that no one needs him, when he feels tired, uninteresting, offended, unable to love. It can also mean that not everything is fine with him, he is forced to put up with what he has, and cannot even complain.

Of course, "cauldron" is too prosaic a word. To some, it may seem inappropriate. However, many scientific concepts The words used by professional psychologists to measure self-esteem sound completely lifeless, they look emasculated and sterile. It is sometimes easier for families to express their feelings and sensations using the term “cauldron”, with the help of this metaphor it is easier to understand other people.

Having enriched their vocabulary with such terminology, people suddenly feel free and light, because this simple way of expressing their inner state allows them to overcome the taboo imposed by etiquette and culture on expressing true feelings. For example, a wife who doubts whether she can tell her husband about feelings of loneliness, rejection, longing, now, using the term "cauldron", openly says: "Don't bother me now - my cauldron is all dirty!"

So, in this book, when I use the word cauldron, I mean self-worth or self-esteem; these terms are interchangeable. (If you like some other joke words, use them.) I have already said that every person somehow evaluates himself - positively or negatively. Anyone can ask themselves: what is my self-esteem now? What prevails in it - good or bad?

Self-esteem is the ability of a person to honestly, lovingly and worthily evaluate themselves. The one who is loved is open to the new. Our bodily shells do not differ from each other. Over many years of counseling children, doing psychotherapy for families of different economic and social levels, meeting people with completely different lifestyles, I became convinced that the most important thing that happens inside each person and between people is self-esteem, a personal “cauldron” everyone.

A person whose self-esteem is high creates around him an atmosphere of honesty, responsibility, compassion, love. Such a person feels important and necessary, he feels that the world has become better because he exists in it. He trusts himself, but is able to ask for help from others in difficult times, but he is sure that he is always able to make independent decisions, to make deliberate actions. Only by feeling his own high value, a person is able to see, accept and respect the high value of other people. A person with high self-esteem inspires confidence and hope. He does not use rules that are contrary to his feelings. At the same time, he does not go on about his experiences. He is able to make a choice. And his intellect helps him in this.

He feels his high significance constantly, all the time. Of course, sometimes, when life sets difficult tasks for him, when a state of temporary fatigue arises, when problems suddenly increase and require their solution, when life forces you to make great efforts simultaneously in many directions, the self-esteem of such a person may decrease. However, he perceives this temporary feeling as a natural result of the crisis that has arisen. This crisis may be the beginning of some new opportunities. It is clear that during a crisis one does not feel the best, but a person with high self-esteem does not hide from difficulties, knowing that he will overcome them and maintain his integrity.

Feeling inferior is not the same as feeling low in self-worth. In fact, the second of these feelings means that you are experiencing some unwanted experiences and are trying to behave as if they did not exist at all. You need to have a high enough self-esteem to accept the experience of failure.

It is also important to remember that people with high self-esteem can also feel inferior. However, because of this, they do not consider themselves hopeless and do not pretend that they do not feel anything like that. They also do not pass on their experiences to others. It's natural to feel out of shape from time to time. It makes a big difference whether you are fooling yourself into saying that everything is fine or admitting that there are tough times that you need to get through. I would like to draw your attention to this process of overcoming difficulties.

Feeling inadequate and not admitting it is deceiving yourself and others. By denying your feelings in this way, you begin to underestimate yourself. Everything else that happens to us is often the result of such an attitude towards ourselves. As long as it's just an attitude, let's try to change it.

Now relax for a minute. Close your eyes, focus on your feelings. What do you feel? What happened to you or what is happening at this moment? How do you react to what is happening? How do you feel about your reaction? If you feel tight, relax your body and follow your breath. Now open your eyes. You must feel empowered.

This simple exercise will help you feel more confident: within a few moments, you can change your state. This will give stability to your position and make your mind clearer.

Now invite your family members to participate in another activity. Choose a partner and tell each other how you feel (“Now I feel a little scared, constrained, confused, happy,” etc.). After listening, each simply thanks the other, without giving any assessments.

Now that you've heard about everyone's feelings, you've gotten to know your partner better.

Try to do this exercise as often as possible with people you trust.

Now tell each other about what helps you feel at your best, and what, on the contrary, reduces faith in yourself. As a result, new perspectives may open up in front of you in relationships with people with whom you have lived all these years. You will feel how you have become a little closer friend friend. Take a more realistic look at yourself and your family. When you have finished this exercise, allow yourself to tell what happened to you just now.

The child enters the world without a past, without any ideas about how to behave, without criteria for self-esteem. He is forced to focus on the experience of the people around him, on the assessments that they give him as a person. For the first five or six years, he forms his self-esteem almost exclusively on the basis of information. Which is received in the family. Then he goes to school and other factors begin to influence him, but the role of the family is still very important. External factors, as a rule, reinforce the high or low self-esteem that the child has acquired at home: a self-confident teenager copes with any setbacks both at school and among the home; a child with low self-esteem, despite all his successes, is constantly tormented by doubts. One small mistake is enough for him to cross out all previous successes.

Every word, facial expression, gesture, intonation, timbre and volume of the voice, touch and actions of the parents carry messages to the child about his self-worth. Alas, most parents do not even realize exactly what meaning is contained in these messages to their child. For example, three year old presents her mother with a bouquet of flowers, and mother takes the bouquet with the words: “Where did you get them?” At the same time, her smile, voice, intonation say: “What wonderful flowers you brought me! Where do such lovely flowers grow? Such a motherly message increases the self-esteem of the child. But the situation may turn out differently. Mom will say: "How cute!" And then he will add: “Did you happen to pick these flowers in our neighbor’s garden?” The child will understand that he is considered capable of committing a not entirely worthy act. Naturally, such a statement is unlikely to contribute to the formation of a high self-esteem of the baby.

What kind of self-esteem in children and adults is formed by your family, you can find out from the following small experiment.

In the evening, when the whole family gathers for dinner, try to feel what happens to you when you are approached by other family members. Of course, there will be many remarks that will not cause you any reaction. However, perhaps to your surprise, you will notice that even such a request as “Pass the potatoes, please!” Will cause you a sense of self-worth or humiliation, depending on the tone, facial expression of the interlocutor. And also from what time it was pronounced. Maybe you yourself were going to say something and you were interrupted, expressing by this complete indifference to your intentions.

It is also important how you treat yourself. If your self-esteem is high, then you have a choice of answers from several options. However, if you are unsure of yourself, you will feel that your options are very limited.

As lunch approaches the middle, look at the situation differently. Listen to what you yourself say to your loved ones. Try to put yourself in their shoes and imagine how they feel when you talk to them the way you normally would. Do you help your loved ones feel that they have your respect and love?

Tell them about your experiment the next day. Now invite your family members to take part in our game. Read this chapter aloud before starting the experiment. And after dinner, discuss what you noticed and felt.

A sense of self-worth can only be formed in an atmosphere where all individual differences are accepted, where love is expressed openly, where mistakes serve to gain new experience, where communication is frank and trusting, and rules of conduct do not turn into frozen dogmas, where personal responsibility and honesty of each - an integral part of relationships. This is the atmosphere of the same mature family that we talked about above. It is not surprising that children in such a family feel needed and loved, grow up healthy and smart.

On the contrary, children from dysfunctional families are often helpless, they grow up in an atmosphere of strict rules, criticism, constantly waiting for punishment and do not have the opportunity to feel personally responsible for anything. These guys are at high risk. destructive behavior in relation to themselves or to other people; their inner potential remains untapped. If this concerns your children, I hope now you will try to help them reach their potential.

Similar differences in self-esteem appear among adult family members. If the family does not affect an adult’s self-image (although, of course, this also happens), then the parents’ self-esteem greatly affects what type of family they will create: parents with high self-esteem are more likely to form a harmonious family, parents with low self-esteem are more likely to create dysfunctional family. The system of relations in the family depends on the architects of the family building - the parents.

My many years of experience completely assured me that all the pains of a person, his problems, and sometimes an unacceptably ugly life and even crimes are all the result of low self-esteem, which people could neither realize nor change.

In order to better understand what high or low self-esteem is, let's conduct a small experiment.

Let's try to remember those moments in your life when your mood rose. Maybe you remember the day your boss told you about your success or maybe a promotion, or maybe you put on a beautiful new dress and received a lot of compliments, or maybe you managed to help your child cope with difficulties in school? Try to remember the sensations, feelings and experiences these days, and you will understand what it means to feel highly self-worth.

Can you think of other situations when you made some kind of mistake or made a serious mistake, maybe you were terribly angry with your boss or work colleagues, or maybe you felt completely powerless over the situation in the family or could not correct your behavior in any way your children? Try to return to the feelings that you experienced, remember them, even if these memories bring you some pain. Then you will understand what it means to feel of little value, what it means to experience low self-esteem.

After many years of working with families, I realized that I cannot shame or blame parents, no matter how stupid or destructive their actions may be. I only help them feel responsible for the consequences of their actions and learn to behave differently. This, in my opinion, is the first step towards improving the entire family situation.

Fortunately for all of us, there are ways to improve a person's self-esteem at any age, because self-esteem comes from learning. The formation of self-esteem occurs constantly throughout a person's life. Therefore, while he is alive, it is never too late to do this.

And now I would like to formulate the most main idea of my book: “There is always hope that your life can change, because in every moment you learn something new.”

The essence of human life is that a person is in constant motion, he develops and changes throughout his life. The older we get, the harder it is for us to change, the longer the development process takes, but knowing that all people change is the first step. And while not all of us are good learners, we are all teachable!

So, a declaration of my self-worth.

I am me.

There is no one in the whole world exactly like me.

There are people who are somewhat like me, but there is no one exactly like me.

Therefore, everything that comes from me is truly mine, because it was I who chose it.

Everything that is in me belongs to me: my body, including everything it does; my consciousness, including all my thoughts and plans; my eyes, including all the images they can see; my feelings, whatever they may be - anxiety, pleasure, tension, love, irritation, joy; my mouth and all the words that it can utter, whether polite, affectionate or rude, right or wrong; my voice, loud or soft; all my actions directed to other people or to myself.

I own all my fantasies, my dreams, all my hopes and my fears.

All my victories and successes belong to me. All my failures and mistakes.

All this belongs to me. And so I can get to know myself very closely. I can love myself and make friends with myself. And I can make everything in me promote my interests.

I know that something in me puzzles me, and there is something in me that I do not know. But because I am friends with myself and love myself, I can carefully and patiently discover in myself the sources of what puzzles me, and learn more and more different things about myself.

Everything I see and feel, everything I say and do, everything I think and feel in this moment, - it is mine. And this allows me to know exactly where I am and who I am at the moment.

When I look into my past, look at what I saw and felt, what I said and what I did, how I thought and how I felt, I see that I am not quite satisfied. I can discard what seems inappropriate, and keep what seems very necessary, and discover something new in myself.

I can see, hear, feel, think, speak and act. I have everything to be close to other people, to be productive, to bring meaning and order to the world of things and people around me.

I belong to myself, and therefore I can build myself.

I am I, and I am wonderful!

Chapter 3

The purpose of this chapter is to interest you in yourself and awaken in you the desire to live a fulfilling human life and strengthen truly human relationships.

I would like to draw your attention to how different parts of your Self operate so that you are once again convinced of what treasure you own. People are surprisingly well-tailored.

To begin with, let's imagine that you perceive the world with the help of special glasses that have eight lenses. Each of them reflects an important part of your Self. I will call these lenses:

Your body reflects the physical part of you.

Your thoughts reflect your intellect.

Your feelings reflect your emotional sphere.

Your _feelings - reflect the work of your senses: eyes, ears, skin, tongue, nose.

Your relationships reflect your ability to interact with different people.

Your environment is space, time, atmosphere, color, sound and temperature, i.e. the factors of existence of your Self.

Your food is the liquid and solid foods you eat.

Your soul is the spiritual part of your Self.

Through the first lens you see your body with all its parts and organs. If you have never seen what the human body is made of, and most of us have never seen it, find a good anatomical atlas and look at the drawings that show bones, muscles, internal organs and all body systems: blood circulation, respiratory and nervous systems.

Now relate all this to your own body. Are you listening to your body's needs? Your body can tell you if you are hungry, or tired, or maybe too stressed.

The second lens reflects your intellect, cognitive abilities and the capabilities of your brain. Thanks to the cognitive, rational part of you, you can get answers to questions like: “How can I learn new things? How can I analyze the situation and solve various problems?” We are only at the very beginning of understanding how our brain works and functions.

Our emotions and feelings are reflected through the third lens. How free are you to recognize and accept your feelings? What limits do you place on your own emotions and experiences? How do you express your feelings? Can you be friendly to them, because a lot depends on how you treat them? All feelings are human. They bring originality, color and sharpness into our life. Without emotions, we would all be robots. They reflect your current state. Your feelings about emotional experiences reflect the connection between your self-image and your emotional self.

The fourth lens gives you an idea of how you feel. What is the physical condition of your sense organs? How freely do you allow yourself to see, hear, smell, taste and tactile sensations? What restrictions have you placed on your senses? Can you drop these restrictions?

When we were children, many of us were taught that only strictly defined things can be seen, heard, touched. Often this ended with the fact that we did not fully use our senses. If we fully accept our sensations and emotions, freely use our senses, we expand the range of our connections with the world and significantly enrich ourselves. We need a lot of sensory stimuli in order to listen carefully to what our senses are telling us.

The fifth lens reflects how your relationships develop with people. They are formed in the process of communication. How do you rate the quality of the various relationships that develop between you and other people? How do you use your power and authority? Maybe you try not to show them and prefer to be a victim? Or maybe you use them to become a dictator? Can you use your strength and power to harmonize relationships with others and yourself, taking the position of a reasonable leader? In other words, are you using your power to help and support others and yourself, or to keep everyone at bay? Can you team up with your family members or other people to work together? How are you doing with a sense of humor, do you like to joke, do you have enough good mood to make your own life and the lives of other people easier and happier? Remember, humor and love have the greatest healing power.

The sixth lens tells you what you are eating. What do you feed and drink your body? Do you understand that in order for him to be fed, you need good food? Recent studies have shown that there is a direct relationship between how a person eats and how he feels.

The seventh lens reflects the environment in which you live. It focuses your attention on sounds, sights, objects, temperature and light, air quality, and the characteristics of the space in which you live and work. Each of the factors affects your life. For example, the quantity and quality of light has a significant impact on your health. We understand the connection between color, sounds, music and what happens in our body.

The eighth lens reflects the spiritual connections of our Self, our relationship to the source of life. How do you perceive your life? Are you proud of her? Are there manifestations of the spiritual principle in your daily life?

Each of these eight parts of our Self plays a role and can be considered separately. However, none of them work independently. At every moment in time they interact with each other.

The figure shows all eight parts of our Self in the form of separate circles. All these circles gather in the center and form what is called your Self.

Imagine that each circle has its own color. You can even make them. You just need to cut out eight circles from multi-colored paper.

Place all these circles on a piece of paper inside one circle. This is all the magic pattern of your Self. Look at it carefully and think about how familiar you are with all its elements and how you use them in your life.

Until recently, the idea of the interconnection of various parts of our self was out of the medical field. Then doctors drew attention to the fact that, for example, the development of an ulcer is often provoked by a disharmonious relationship between the mind and emotions. This led to the emergence of a new direction in medicine, called psychosomatic. Further development The ideas underlying the psychosomatic direction made it possible to formulate the following conclusion: health can be ensured by harmony between all parts of the human self.

This is a very important conclusion. Now we come to the conclusion that all eight parts of our Self influence each other. We just need to learn as much as we can about how this happens. True, today we are only developing a methodology that will allow us to understand all this. For example, we can already trace the influence of bad thoughts on the chemical processes in our body.

Try to find out as much about yourself as possible. You will discover huge world new knowledge. There is a lot of talk these days about stress and its negative effects on the body, mind, and emotions. Now that you know about all these relationships, you will be able to better explain certain reactions in your body and understand what is happening to you.

As we learn more about ourselves, taking care of maintaining and developing our health becomes paramount. In order to be physically healthy and feel the fullness of life, we must:

1. Give attention to your body, love it, take care of it and develop it through exercise.

2. Develop your intellect by learning new things and surrounding yourself with things that stimulate our mental activity: books, work, communication with other people, attending special courses.

3. Be able to manage your feelings.

4. Develop our senses, learn how to take care of the senses, use them as the path of life, connecting our inner and outer world.

5. Learn to harmoniously solve all sorts of problems, successfully overcome conflict situations, develop honest and healthy relationships with people.

6. To study our physical needs and learn how to satisfy them. Remember, each human body is unique: for one, for example, strawberries are a pleasure, for another - disgusting.

7. Create a comfortable space for yourself from sounds, light, color, heat, air in order to feel most comfortable in it.

8. To develop in oneself the ability to feel the pulse of life, belonging to the Universe, to fully open and manifest oneself.

Paying attention to our health in general, taking care of it, we will eventually begin to live a more whole, harmonious and happy life. Perhaps the reward for this will be the establishment of closer ties between us and our planet. Today we live in the shadow of nuclear missiles and installations that could end all life on Earth.

Not so long ago, in one of the television programs, I saw footage in which first they showed nuclear missiles, and after some time the landing of a spacecraft. In form they were very similar, but in their goals they were fundamentally different from each other. Nuclear weapons bring death and annihilation, a spaceship is the discovery of something new.

We humans should bless the amazing possibilities of our body. Therefore, we must carefully use the opportunities given to us. I believe that our energy, intellect, knowledge, will, love will allow us to make the right choice in favor of progress. By truly knowing and understanding ourselves, we can reach the heights of human nature.

Chapter 4. How We Speak and How We Listen

Communication can be compared to a huge umbrella under which everything that happens between people is hidden. Communication is one of the most important factors that reflect the nature of the relationship of each person with other people and fix what happens to him in the world around him.

Our ability to survive, to establish close relationships with others, our idea of the meaning of life, fidelity to our own ideals - all this largely depends on how we behave in communication with other people.

This is a multifaceted process. It can be considered, for example, as a special measuring device with which people determine the value of each other. At the same time, it is a tool that allows you to change the self-esteem of each of us. By communicating, people exchange information.

Every child comes into the world with no idea about himself, how to interact with other people, or what a the world. All this the child learns by communicating with people who are responsible for him from the first day of his birth.

By the age of five, each person masters a huge number various ways and types of communication. By this age, a person has an idea of what should be expected from others, what can be done and what cannot be done. While some special important events life will not question these ideas, we are actually guided by them throughout our lives.

Is it possible to change the type of communication if we want to. To do this, you must first analyze what elements this process consists of. A person reacts to what happens in the process of communication, like a movie camera that also records sound. The brain registers pictures and sounds, everything that happens between me and you, here and now.

This is how we communicate. We look at each other, your feelings reflect information about me, my appearance, the sounds that I make, my smell, and if you touch me, you feel my reaction to you. At this point, your brain interprets all this based on your past experiences, especially those that have been obtained in the course of communication with parents and other people, based on what you have learned from books, and depending on how able you are to perceive information, sent by your senses. Depending on this, you feel calm or tense.

The same thing is happening to me at this time. I also see, hear, feel something, think about something. I also have past experiences, values and expectations. In fact, you don’t know what I feel, what my past experience, my values are, you don’t know how my body reacts to you. You can only guess or imagine something, and the same thing happens to me. While our guesses and fantasies have not been confirmed or refuted, they play the role of so-called facts and in this incarnation often become a source of misunderstanding and errors.

To understand what information the sense organs send us in the process of communication, what our consciousness tells us, what we feel, let's consider such a situation. I am next to you; you are a man. I think: “He is looking inward, this person must be deep in thought” or “He has long hair, he must be a hippie.” To understand the meaning of what I have seen, I turn to my experience and knowledge, and what I say to myself affects me, causing certain feelings about you and myself even before we exchange words.

Women's Portal Flero

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Foreword

Foreword

Chapter 1. What does your family look like?

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4. How We Speak and How We Listen

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