Irvin Yalom: How to approach a true

Irvin Yalom reveals the secret of how to come true and to answer the question "Who am I?"

Many people experience excessive stress when threatened, their career or any other attributes. In fact, they believe: "I am my career" or "I got my sex appeal".

 



 

The therapist seems to be saying to them: "No, you are not your career, you – not your splendid body, you are not your mother, or father, or wise old man, or eternal nurse. You – is you, the "I" - your essence. Surround it with the line: more, what remains outside is not you. These other things can disappear, and you will continue to exist."

Alas, such self-evident exhortations as all self-evident exhortations are rarely effective catalysts for change. Therapists are looking for ways to increase the effectiveness of his appeal. One method I used with both groups of cancer patients, and in the educational process.

 





 

It's a structured exercise in disidentification. The procedure is simple and takes approximately thirty to forty – five minutes. The exercise is conducted in a peaceful atmosphere. I ask the participants on cards to give eight important answers to the question: "Who am I?" Then invite them to view your eight answers and arrange them in order of importance and centrality: the nearest to the center of their being answers to put down more than peripheral to them above.

Then please focus on the top-most card and to think about how they would feel about abandoning this attribute. After two or three minutes (some mild signal such as a bell, is the least distracting) please go to the next card and so on until they get rid of all eight attributes.

I recommend after that to help participants to re-integrate these qualities by doing the whole procedure in the opposite direction. This simple exercise causes the strongest emotions. published

 

 

Author: Irvin Yalom, from the book "Existential psychotherapy"P. S. And remember, just changing your mind — together we change the world! ©

Source: yalom.ru/irvin-yalom-kak-otvetit-na-vopros-kto-ya/