Fix

It broke my heart and made me sad as a father told me how angry his daughters were with him, whom he had not seen in a long time, because of a decision he had made a long time ago. He told me: when you are a father, it is inevitable to make mistakes.

It is true that this often happens during life: we make decisions that affect others and we do not meet their expectations. Children get angry with parents and vice versa because they receive something unexpected from the other party. This creates anger and eventually resentment. For years we punish this other party with certain actions because our expectations are betrayed. Sometimes, these types of situations do not allow other forms of relationship between parents and children. Time passes, our parents get old, get sick, die and in some cases we never resolve these disagreements. I think what saddened me about the initial story was knowing that he made that decision out of love, thinking that it would be the best for them. As Oscar Wilde said: often, with the best intentions, we get the worst results.

Jose Luis Sampedro, in his book Writing is Living, explains how he became a writer. Throughout the book he recounts many anecdotes related to how he started reading and later writing. I will use one of them to tell you something.

Sampedro was born in Barcelona although from a very young age due to his father's work he went to live in Tangier. In the twenties of the last century, this city was very international, people from many different countries inhabited it. The children in the school had different mother tongues, celebrated several national holidays and the weekly school break was divided between the holy days of three religions: Catholic, Jewish and Muslim. According to Sampedro, at that time the three beliefs coexisted peacefully. When there was a Christian festival, all the children from the school would come. Also with Muslim and Jewish celebrations.

In 1925, when he was eight years old, his parents thought that the Tangier school had certain limitations and that it would be better for Sampedro as a child to go with his aunt that autumn to live in Zaragoza. In the end they decided that he would go in the summer so that he could enjoy a vacation in the countryside, specifically in Cihuela, province of Soria. Sampedro recounts that when he arrived in Castile, “…it was like arriving in the Middle Ages. They had just installed the electric light and they only turned it on for a while at dusk.” He came from Tangier with its hectic nightlife and in Cihuela his aunts and their servants locked themselves in a room when it rained to burn candles and pray to Santa Bárbara. In the book he writes: “…it was a clash of civilizations for an 8-year-old boy even though it was not fashionable to talk about childhood traumas.” "This change caused me to become a writer", since he took refuge in reading.

Later he comments about himself "... the child interprets that brutal change from Tangier to Cihuela as a rejection by his parents, as if his parents had sent him there for lack of affection, to get rid of him, as I have already explained. quite the opposite.", "... I experienced such a feeling of abandonment and orphanhood that I found myself completely devastated.", "... despite being a well-treated child and loved by everyone, I felt a lack of affection.", "... I I felt alone, very alone, in the most absolute solitude.”

Some people can probably identify with this account. In therapy, we actually encounter similar situations. Decisions that are born from love, of what is believed to be best for a son or daughter and that provoke in them feelings of anger, sadness and loneliness. What hurts sometimes doesn't let us see further. It is as if we can only see this part of the story of our parent-child relationships. It does not mean that in therapy we try to appease the anger or sadness that we feel. We do not lower the volume of these emotions but we give them a place, a space so that they can be recognized, expressed, lived and accepted.

Many times we think that the ideal is to control emotions and we think that the right thing to control them is not to feel. This action requires a lot of effort and also causes us dissatisfaction. This occurs because each emotion brings with it a need that needs to be met. If the emotion is not met, the need is not satisfied either. Acknowledging what we feel helps us to know where we are, to accept that this is the situation and it can be a period to find out what we need, in short to listen to and care for ourselves. Sometimes, it is in this type of vital experiences that we will find "something" that gives meaning to our existence. Sampedro gets passionate about reading, enjoys reading and relieves the pain he feels. What was born as a resource to adapt to that situation -in Gestalt therapy we call this creative adjustment- years later it would be useful for his profession as a writer. It is this moment of great impact where a resource is cultivated that in the future will serve to give meaning to your life. In some way, he can even feel grateful to his parents, to the experience. Thanks to this fact and probably to many more that he finds his hobby and profession.

It is not easy to "stay" in an emotion, especially if it is what we call "negative". In Gestalt therapy we understand that emotions are neither good nor bad, they are not positive or negative, but they simply are and they inform us of something. I will leave what they tell us for another text.

We live in a world in which it is promoted that we have to always be well, happy at all costs. Nobody likes to feel angry, sad or afraid, but there are situations in life that inevitably provoke these emotions. We think that if we are sad we will cry all our lives. However, paradoxically when we remain in the emotions we can discover other aspects, nuances, other sensations, other emotions, resources and abilities that we have. As in Sampedro's story, the fact of acknowledging years later that he felt lonely, being aware of his sadness, allowed him to move forward and realize that what happened did not happen for the reasons he thought. He was able to realize his resources and understand that the decision his parents made was born with the best of intentions. It was an act of love.