Secrets of a Happy Home

When the young American psychotherapist Virginia Satir developed and began to apply the method of psychological correction of the whole family 31 years ago, her approach to psychotherapeutic treatment was often taken hostile. She "broke" for centuries the "doctor-patient" relationship that had been forming, having built a new chain "doctor-the whole family".Today it already seems natural: if a "difficult" child grows up in a family, then "not only" himself, but the whole family "is to blame" for this.

Recently, the director of the California Individual Training Center Virginia Satir visited the Soviet Union.

- Virginia, with what family problems did you encounter? And how do you solve them? The situation neither the first look is very convincing: an outsider comes and solves all internal, private problems.

- Family problems are the same all over the world. The conflicts of "fathers and children" have become aggravated, there is no mutual understanding between adults in the family, alcoholism and drug addiction are common.

All the troubles of the family begin with the fact that very few people know how to really listen to the interlocutor. It is easier to brush off the baby, get rid of the joke from a teenager, most "explode" at last. Everyone is hammered into his shell, but we must get him out of there. To make personal problems known to everyone else is to take the first step towards overcoming them.

Because of alcoholism in the family, women often come to me. And first of all I try to understand them: are there enough hardness in them to start a fight for a husband or son, do they have a lot of spiritual strength, do they have friends, hobbies? That is, I try to imagine what my ally is. And it happens that I feel, but I am convinced: this woman can not cope with those huge obligations that impose on her the decision to combat the drunkenness of her husband or son. And then I advise you to go to specialized centers to combat alcoholism, where other methods of treatment are used, rather than psychotherapeutic.

Or, for example, I got a fifteen-year-old girl. Severe depression, the idea of ​​suicide. .. You could diagnose and pass it on to psychiatrists. But I began to delve into the circumstances of her life. It turns out that her father and mother are deaf. She hears, communicates with parents gestures and notes. There are seven children in the family, five are younger girls, so she is obliged to serve not only the suffering mother and father, but also the brother and sisters. It seemed to her that her parents had made her a servant, a slave, a puppet, and she did not trust them at all. Was exhausted. I invited her to think about another look at the situation. About that, parents, and the whole family, depend on it. That she is the central figure, helps everyone, facilitating an already difficult existence. In short, I turned the problem over and it disappeared.

There was a case, a happy family approached me: my father was an engineer, my mother was a teacher. Their 13-year-old son was robbing cars. After talking with the boy, I felt in him a tremendous energy, which he simply did not know where to throw out."How did it happen? You are only 13 years old, and you managed to rob 13 cars and never got caught! "- I admired. The whole family stared at me blankly. And I summarized: "Rejoice, your family has not grown a rascal, but a great engineer! It is only necessary to change the area of ​​application of forces. "And, you know, this boy became a famous engineer afterwards! He wrote to me that when I said those words, they all seemed to open their eyes. My task was to reveal what is behind the robbery of cars, and not boring repeat for the hundredth time: stealing is not good, you'll go to jail.

- What techniques do you use in your work?

- I widely use the method of family sculpture: with the help of movement, the location of family members in certain poses, I show them the true balance of power, the real feelings that they feel for each other. The non-verbal( subconscious) level of consciousness becomes verbal. People begin to understand more, express their own emotions more actively. Thanks to this, the situation in the family is stabilized.

For example, in one family, most of the relatives' claims were in one way or another connected with the mother - a nervous woman, capricious, terrorizing everyone. Of course, she herself did not want anything bad about herself. I "blinded" one of them with a large sculptural group, where the real situation was demonstrated by gestures and disposition of the figures. My mother was in the center, her indignant, offended husband, children rested. And this woman saw that only from her depends the happiness of the family. Then I started a separate long-term work with her: how to overcome the habit of tyranny, whims, how to learn to listen to relatives.

I also use the role exchange method: the father becomes the son, the mother is the daughter, etc. We play various standard household situations. For example, the son stayed after school, did not have time to open his mouth to explain the delay, as his father had already slapped him. Naturally, the boy was offended, withdrawn, and harbored vexation. And the thing was that they were unexpectedly detained in school after school, and he could not warn his parents. When the father is in the place of the youngest and suddenly gets a slap in the face, he very quickly comes to the idea of ​​the preference for a peaceful explanation of the relationship.

I try to prove by the method of empathic feeling: all members of the family are equal, they are all good, they all represent the same value, for everyone is a human being. In general, this postulate of universal equality in the family, about the equivalence of each for me is the starting point in life and in my work.

- Do you know the secret of a happy family?

- It's very simple!- Virginia smiles. - Any family can be happy if it has mutual understanding, trust, help each other. In an ideal family, everyone loves and respects each other, regardless of tastes and beliefs, rising above personal attachments. There can be as many children as you want in the family, but before deciding on the next child, you need to think carefully: are you able to provide him with a comfortable existence in both material and spiritual sense? Family planning is one of the important moments in its existence.