Destiny, Choices and Stuff

A person chooses for him- or her self that alternative in a dichotomized construct through which he or she anticipates the greater possibility for extension and definition of his or her system.


An odd constructivist (George Kelly's) way to tell that we are the ones choosing among the alternatives that which helps us to have better predictions of what is about to happen and therefore, we are the ones responsible for the choices we make. (Personal Construct Psychology, Choice Corollary) I guess I should explain what is the construct and why it is dichotomized, but since I am dedicating my post to the matter of CHOICE rather than theory of personal constructs, I will dare to omit the explanation, although I have started with the citation narrowly connected to the theory. Sorry.

In case you like the stories about everything being God's will, product of destiny, luck, coincidence, I suppose that my blog post will come as annoying. So, don't read it.

Why have I started my blog post with that sentence?
For us enrolled into psychotherapy courses, the unnecessary usage of theory in a real life is almost a habit. It's how we tend to practice and review what we study. And frankly, this sentence to me is one of the eye-opening points in theory that made me accept the responsibility for the things happening in my life.
We tend to see ourselves often as the victims of circumstances, toys tossed around in the game of destiny and often without any control of what is going on with our lives. However, even the standpoint of accepting that we cannot establish any control of our lives is a choice in one's understanding of the world. The alternative could be that he gets in touch with his own incapability to make sense of what's happening to him.
The way we understand life, the way we act in our lives (or choices not to act) are very much dependent on our way of construing. Construing is making sense of something, is understanding.

One can argue and say, how can cancer be a choice? How can living in poverty be a choice? I could accept the comment and add, those are not the matter of choice, but the attitude towards both is.
In many of the life's crucial moments, so far, I was quite aware of what I was choosing. Sometimes even the illogical decisions made perfect sense to me, and even though they were considered crazy, irrational to many, they were clear to me. Our thinking isn't irrational. It has it's own internal logic.
So...

Not sending the application for some program you liked is bad, but it is better than dealing with what comes after you realize that you are accepted and that many things around you need to change.

Breaking up with the guy with whom the future is pretty much safe, so to tell, guaranteed and pleasant is much easier than living with a fact that you have settled although you believed that there is more to love than what you have already.

Entering the argument when it is quite obvious that you will be penalized is a more acceptable choice than the one to stand back and think of yourself as a coward.

Different actions link to what's crucially important to people. The highest instances in one's personal conceptions of his personality are not the matters easily sacrificed. So, whatever we do, we choose to defend them. We make our choices accordingly.
Think of your own choices? What were the alternatives?
What were you testing with your choice?

In every behavior there is a hypothesis. Behind the hypothesis, there is a certain conception, preconception of how things function. There is a certain focus on some variables.
Instead of blaming the confounding variables which interrupted your experiment, consider yourself as the part of it who actively contributed by posing certain conditions. See what were your choices, what were the conditions you set up to test your hypothesis.
What are the theories you can't give up on?

Blame it on the ocean

You know that feeling when you dream of a man, a man who is everything you ever wanted and needed, everything that you feel your heart has been craving for, everything your mind was conceiving through years and years of the repetitive fairy-tale-reading....? Well, the odds that you are going to meet such man are...hm, how big? 1 in a million? 

However, even if everything goes against the odds and you somehow bump into that guy, your illusion bubble is sure to pop at some point when you figure out that he is not the one you have been looking for actually and that what you thought your ideal man was is not the ideal match for you... But, if we assume that even that does not happen and the guy survives the rigorous tryouts that girls are prone to subtly organize and there still is some kind of a barrier that you cannot be together, than you are, well, screwed. Pardon my French. Yeah, I forgot to say that if we assume, in addition to all that has been previously said, that he is crazy about you, then you are double screwed. Again, excuse me. 

So, here is a man I think is Mr Right for me. I am mad about him, he's mad about me. And he is in another country. The country I loved almost as much as my own. Dammit. Destiny has a fun way of playing around.

 

Anyhow, I didn't start this post to whine... although I feel like whining all the time....

As usual, I have no idea why I started it. I guess to process this crazy bunch of wild feeling burning up inside me, shaking me to the very core.

I cannot help but realize how much of you is at stake once you really love another. Once you dare to commit, your entire world on the shore is depending on the strength of the waves in the ocean of your emotional life. Your stability depends on whether you are prepared for the risk or not. When the inconsistency, instability, wild nature of the ocean becomes too much to handle, you can always move to the continental part. However, with no doubt, you will be missing the view, the air, the uncertainty and that wonderful feeling when you are in it.

So, I'm deciding to risk. To wait, because I have been dwelling in the safe long enough to appreciate that risk can lead to change and that the change itself is life. 

I'm waiting for the one I have been waiting for so long. 

I'm sitting on the shore, playing with the sand and waiting. My heart is full of the emotion I cannot articulate well because it shouldn't be articulated. It should be demonstrated. So I'm waiting patiently, for a hug, for a kiss.

Those who are in a long-distance relationship know the taste of the plastic quite well, for they have kissed laptop screens numerous times. My beautiful man once said that strong teams must play with difficult terms... Though I wish the world was fair and we all had our lives tuned to the same level of difficulty, I must agree that only truly strong ones can survive being so far away and yet keeping their love intact...if not even stronger by each passing day. 

His art is to make me fall in love with him each day all over again.

What's another month...or two, or three? Or a year? Well, it's a lot when you love someone. However, at the same time- it's nothing much you know he's worth it. And he surely is.

Σε αγαπω μωρο μου...And I'm not giving up.

Good girl gone bad

People say that there is no good girl gone bad. Just the bad one found out.

I doubt.

I believe that all of us possess different sides and there is no person who is entirely "good"or "bad". Different sides emerge in different situations. Many modern psychological theories have abandoned the narrative about the integral personality since, in this ever changing world, we are taking different roles and testing the effects of different behaviors. We are all in a way fragmented just by playing different roles in the society. This world is a theater with so many stages on which we put on the shows. This is not a negative thing. Imagine if you were completely the same person at your job, in your home,with your husbands and wives (boyfriends and girlfriends) and your bosses, colleagues, professors...

However, we are quick to make judgements about a person, just by extracting some of the actions from a wide range of them, finding arbitrarily something in common for those actions and sticking a label to a person, disregarding everything else. We are quick to put labels, but slow in thinking what we are doing by labeling. One sees what the one wants to see. No matter how hard we try, we can never remove ourselves from the picture we're observing. What we can do is simply being aware that we are a part of it and that our perception of a picture is influenced by our subjectivity.

What a person might be from your point of view is not what it could be for someone else. Therefore, don't be too quick to judge and place your perspective above all other people's perspectives.

I cannot think of a person who hasn't been a "victim" of someone's judgements at some point. Instead of judging ourselves, we should always bear in mind that we are a human beings prone to making all sorts of mistakes. Of course, we shouldn't use that thought to make up excuses, but to accept ourselves and take responsibility. Sometimes those actions might perfectly match to who you feel you are, sometimes they won't. You are a constantly changing human being. Those who never made mistakes have never tried anything new. Every mistake is a chance to learn. If you learn something new from it, it should not even be regarded as a mistake. That would not be fair to the experience it carries along.

As future psychologists, we are taught to look at one's actions as experiments through which they are testing something relevant, important for them. If someone provoked you on purpose, aiming to test you, he must have conducted some kind of his own experiment seeking for validation of his hypothesis. There must be something that one want to prove to himself through that. We are mostly biased and we love to see that we are being "right" about something or someone. So, the one who tested you will seek for validation that he was right. He will look for things which can support his theory, although you surely have much more in you than "a bad friend", "a traitor", "a whore", "a liar", "a cheater", "a bimbo" or whatever he's trying to prove to himself that you are. Willing to prove himself right, he'll misinterpret, misunderstand, he'll twist and turn the data, extract partially what he thinks is relevant. Everything to fit the theory. 

"...Primitive people pray for rain and when it eventually falls, they believe that it was their prayers what "caused" the rain. (All) People enjoy simple explanations.... the same goes for personality theories." - Albert Ellis

Whenever you catch yourself testing your hypothesis on someone, ask yourself whether there is even a small chance you're doing injustice to that person. You might wake up couple of years later to find out that you've been a jerk.

When someone labels you, you cannot help but at least for a moment step down from being angry, upset, hurt, and ask yourself : "Am I really what that person says I am?" Even if for a second you might feel like you are, remember that there is so much of you that other person disregarded. Even if a certain behavior was for judgement, you as a whole aren't. In every religion, it is the sin that is condemned, not a person.

I am a human being. And I make mistakes. I experiment. I test my own hypothesis. We all do. 

 Bad girl. Good girl.

I can be both. Depends when. Depends why. And surely, it depends on what you want to see in me. :)

If you have doubts why a person does what it does, ask. No psychotherapist, psychiatrist or psychologist can give you a better answer than that person. Ask, and you might find out. 

When the "one you want" becomes the "one you want to be with"

A couple of months ago, I started one of my usual mornings with a cup of coffee and one of the videos from TED (www.ted.com). For some reason, I typed "love" in the "search" box. I thought it would be a nice way to start off a day. I was absently sipping my coffee and looking at the laptop monitor when among search results popped a lecture from Helen Fisher "Why we love, why we cheat?". Intrigued by its title, I instantly knew had to watch it. What was it about? Well, Helen Fisher presented her own findings about three brain centers which regulate the feeling of attachment, romantic love and familiar to everybody, the sex drive. She described attachment as the sense of calm and security you can feel for long term partners; romantic love as the obsession of early love and the sex drive as the intolerable nervous itch. Despite having different functions, they are all connected through the neurotransmitter dopamine. When its level in brain rises during  sexual excitement and orgasms as its culmination, it activates the other two centers- the one of romantic love and attachment. That is why sometimes we can quickly evolve from not feeling anything but excitement towards feeling in love. That's why we sometimes tend to have passion and love all mixed up and impossible to differentiate. Of course, the moment we fall in love with a person, we become very sensitive towards who is he/she being with. It then becomes an intense craving to be with that person, not only sexually but emotionally as well.

Why have I started my blog post by sharing this quite an informative video? :) Well, I was wondering how do we manage to stop that mechanism? Can the "one we want" stay "the one we want" and not the "one we desperately crave to be with"? 

I guess that all of us have at some point crossed the line. And probably, got hurt for the feelings have not been mutual. Is it possible to stay on the surface and never dive in and explore? I am the type of person who always looks for a hint...for a smile, a look, a tender word... anything that could indicate that there might be something more than what a person intentionally tries to show you. A great friend of mine told me not to be afraid to show what I feel as well. "You get what you give", she said. But what if I mess everything up by doing what I feel that I need to do?

We all have our own visions of fairy tales even though it can sometimes seem like some people just aren't capable of creating one of their own. Those people you may identify as cold-blooded, always indifferent towards love who promiscuously experiment as if they never can get emotionally attached to anything but their own impulses and thoughts. The way we construe our fairy tales are, however different.

What I always try to do is to understand the way somebody else construes a fairy tale. Maybe we are both looking for the same present, just put in different boxes and decorated with different bows. Once we unpack what we want, we might figure out what we want from a relationship with that person.

Society puts an enormous pressure on how our relationships should look like. It is, in a way, "normal" to have certain obligations towards the one you are with. It would be weird to talk to someone every day and to have the most amazing conversations, to kiss and hug whenever you see each other (if not even something more), to always look forward to seeing him/her and yet, not to accept being in a relationship with him/her. It is as if  entering relationship meant accepting imprisonment. What became so terrifying about being in a relationship? It is as if we can no longer have fun without that pressure of not knowing where we are going with that kind of a relationship.

What I do agree with though, is that this sort of fun can be a minefield. When someone else takes our place in the life of the person that we used to have fun with and when we start feeling replaced it might be THEN that we'll realize that all we needed was to hold on to that person and don't let her/him go. We'll feel sad, disappointed and hurt.

And we'll realize that there was more to it than just fun. 

Then we will be ready to accept the fear and move on. We'll than realize that we care much more than we fear. 

When it comes to the "one you want", you should ask yourself what is it that you can get from that person? Don't let the dopamine do its thing :) If you see that you are no longer floating on the surface- take a dive of faith :) Explore. Discover. Don't miss the chance.

Thank God that we are so complicated. Otherwise my profession wouldn't make sense.

But sometimes, I wish things were just... simple.

Order. Control. And other illusions.

My mind has been in a chaotic state lately.

Don't worry, I am not cracking up, I have just been so busy that I started to cherish every ounce of free time available. 

I remember clearly what a friend of mine told me many years ago when my mom was heavily criticizing me for not tidying up my room. "A tidy room is a reflection of a chaotic mind."

Other then using this quote as a defense guard against the attacks of all the invaders of my creative chaos (aka mom and dad), I never really thought it was true. I was lazy to put everything on its place and honestly, whenever I had free time, I felt like it is so much better to use it on something more productive, like reading, painting, playing basketball, going out etc. That was pretty much it. 

However, this morning I woke up and felt completely overwhelmed by all of those things written down in my schedule for today. And suddenly, I felt like cleaning my room. It was chaotic. Just like my mind was. So, I started with making the bed, putting clothes back in the closets, stashing books which were on a pile on the chair, back in the drawers where they actually belong... 

Suddenly, what used to feel like nuisance felt like a sedative.

When I was finally done, I sat and wondered: What was it in cleaning that made me feel so at ease? I stared at my perfectly clean room ....And then .....it hit me- what I have been craving for days now is nothing else but- control... A feeling that something I am doing is completely under my control. Dependent upon my will. That I was the one pulling the strings.

  Right, control, that's it!

Everything I had planned for today threatened to come with a certain level of uncertainty that it would be unsuccessfully finished, if finished at all. The undefined outcome of what I needed to do today still wasn't changing the fact that things need to be done. And doing something without a clear idea whether it will succeed or not for me was tough to handle. There were too many things that I had out of my control. So what I needed is - control.

That made me think about OCD, a disorder we hear so much about as future psychologists. I remembered that compulsive behaviour that they manifest is also a way to keep things in order. To control. To be in control. If you insist on putting a fork exactly 2 cm away from a plate, it's not like fork is going to stand and oppose to being treated so rigidly. :) So- the whole thing is about control.

Apparently, it is not just those with OCD that have a problem with control.

We run towards certainty in our own individual ways. Someone tides the room, someone jogs, someone draws, someone smokes, someone works. Someone writes blog posts. Someone studies, someone slacks persistently. And we all try to demonstrate to ourselves how IT IS POSSIBLE to have something under control. Consciously or unconsciously.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Funny is how hard it is for us to float in instability.

One of the basic things we have learned in Developmental Psych course is that humans are born with just  two basic fears: with a fear of loud noises and a fear of falling. Since the day we are born, we crave to be with both feet on the ground. Physically, but symbolically as well. We need a support from beneath. Something firm enough to stick on, stick to, something that keeps us from falling and getting injured. We crave to posses something that ensures our stability.
Of course, such thing is unattainable in life.

However, there are two things we can do: 

1. we can create illusions of order and control, and 
2. we can let our perception be fooled by them.

After all.... Illusion is the first of all pleasures. :)

Stepping into the unknown

If we were to imagine a Break-up as a homicide of something that is (or could be/ could have been) love, I reckon that among the suspects on the list we could find Jealousy, Betrayal, Misunderstandings, Character Difference ... However, if that list was mine, in almost all of the cases, the main suspect would be my construct of a Fairy Tale vs. No relationship at all. 
Like in Jessie J's song, "when I am nervous, I have this thing, I talk too much...", I say all different kinds of  things that scare people away, although my only goal in those conversations I so obsessively insist on, is to be honest, to communicate, to be open and to clarify to myself what other person is thinking in order to prevent further misunderstandings. It surprises me repeatedly  how I, in so many occasions, despite being a future psychologist who talks so much about problems of emotional stability and about being mature enough to endure the difficulties and struggles, go back on my own words and act like a 15-year-old. I don't articulate my thoughts properly, I burst into tears whenever I stumble upon something that might be hard to say. And then I go excusing myself for being emotional, which makes me even more vulnerable. And then I just look plain stupid and childish. I can teach and preach about assertive behavior for hours if you need me to, I can demonstrate it perfectly anytime... except when I really need to be assertive and communicate without ...you know, losing it. :)

But, I am who I am. Goofy and silly. Overly emotional. Many times hurt. With bunch of bruises which you might not see.
Previous relationships affect us, no matter how much we tend to forget about them. They make us more or less tolerant, more prone to reacting negatively, more open or more introverted... they affect us on multiple basis. 

Being a future psychologist isn't helpful. Quite the opposite. We are often pulled into a trap of interpreting what is not even symbolical. We attach meanings to what is meaningless. And then we look like psychos. :) But what I have learned is that it is important to step up and fight for your own feelings. I have learned the tough way that you need to sometimes put yourself first and say what's bothering you before exhausting all of your energy supply. Having experience isn't helpful either. Nobody should endure the consequences of our previous mistakes. We should train ourselves to treat each person with which we are in a relationship as if we were in a relationship for the first time ever. Like we are falling in love for the first time ever. Like we have never been hurt before. We should train ourselves to approach to that person with undivided attention. We should enter every relationship all patched up and healed. That's how it should be.

Getting into a new relationship means giving yourself a permission to feel again. 

I wish there was some kind of insurance policy when stepping into the strange jungle of what might become love. I wish we could go surfing in the unknown, just enjoying the waves, the breeze, the sun, the thrill, without worrying whether some big evil shark will suddenly show itself beneath us... But all I can do is wish, because the whole point of being able to step bravely into the unfamiliar is to accept the fact that being scared is okay, that being vulnerable is okay... That putting your guard down is okay.
We just need to be emotionally mature to know when is the time to do it.
You'll never know what will happen next. Don't be afraid to step into the unknown.

 No regrets. 

No instructions. Just love.

Blame it all on capitalism. 

It has managed to interfere in one sphere of human relationships that I believed it could never interfere. It has transformed the concept of love.

We choose a prospective candidate on the market, we sign the relationship contract and pay a certain arbitrarily set price for it. What do we get from it? An unfinished product that requires a lot of care. And, of course, as every other product it has an expiration date. It is either used up too quickly, or is too fragile that it breaks quickly. To rationalize the fact that we are paying for that kind of uncertainty, we cautiously handle the situation. Professionally, with little or no emotion. 

Relationships nowadays require a manual. Instructions with all of the DOs and DON'Ts. Instructions saying what you are supposed and what you are not supposed to do.

You are not supposed to call him more than once daily. Do not express your emotions.

Do not show jealousy at any cost, he'll think you're a psycho.  Do not call him before he texts you in the morning. " I miss you" notes are strictly forbidden. Keep him at unease. Make sure that he never knows what you are about to do next. Stay untouchable. 

...

I guess playing love games just isn't my thing. It is not that I am not able to play them. Anybody can play them. However, if I start playing them, they just become GAMES with no LOVE. Should we lose love at the cost of playing the game?

Who are we playing for? Who are we playing against?

By playing games, have we managed to lose LOVE? Or have we transformed into something that I no longer recognize as love?  In basketball, many of my coaches insisted on defense as a crucial instance of our game. If love is a game, like basketball, does that mean that our guard needs to always be on set? Love used to be one sphere for me in which I can be vulnerable. In the time when fragility and sensitiveness are not to be used in relationships, when can we let our guards down? When will the constant game one-on-one be over? 

Does dropping the ball end the game or a relationship? 

I find this crap exhausting. Unbearable. As I have said, games aren't really my thing.

Call me silly but I will stick to the construct of love that I already have. 

Unconditional, breathtakingly intense, creatively silly, unbelievably inspiring, authentically beautiful...

I am not giving up on it. Neither should you.

Write your own story. With no manuals. With your heart.