András Feldmár: I could hardly hear what I said because of the adrenaline

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András Feldmár: I could hardly hear what I said because of the adrenaline
András Feldmár: I could hardly hear what I said because of the adrenaline
Anonim

I didn't dare approach a single woman until I was thirty years old, then I decided, I'm going to try - András Feldmár outlined a very personal example of how his mother cursed him and how he first overcame his fears

article-type-interju
article-type-interju

The psychotherapist living in Canada visited our country, and before his lectures we talked with him about, among other things, what happiness is, where depression comes from, and how to experience the greatest possible orgasm.

In the spring, at a conversation held on the occasion of the publication of his book Freedom, Love, he said that it is always difficult for him to participate in a journalistic conversation, because it may turn out that he was wrong in what he thought. Doesn't routine make such situations easier?

I don't want to do my work out of routine. I do not assume that anyone who comes to me is in any way similar to someone I have already had. The beginning of pigeonholing and prejudice is when you walk in my door and I think: this is a young woman who is such and such. Because then you have to be the way I see you, but I don't see you that clearly. If I can see you clearly, I will say that no one has eyes like you and no mind like you.

And of course I can be wrong, I am wrong all the time. But the only way I know that is to say what I believe, and you say it's not so. My patient always teaches me. If I were to teach, I would be terribly bored.

What was the last thing you learned from a patient?

Recently, a young man came to me who cannot go into restaurants and public places because he is afraid of seeing his own reflection. If he goes into a toilet where there is a mirror, he breaks it, even if his hand is bleeding. If I were to look at the literature, I would find theories, but I don't care, because I want this man to teach me why this is.

Until now, he taught me that when he was a child, his father used to beat him hard when he was drunk, sometimes he woke up to find his father hitting him. And now, at about 35 years old, he resembles the image of his father as he saw him as a child. Seeing his reflection, he regresses and does everything to make his father disappear.

How can you avoid breaking mirrors?

It would be a good solution if he could feel what kind of calamity once befell him and mourn his childhood. Trauma can be helped by going back to the place where someone hurt me in a loving relationship. You don't have to relive it, you just have to feel it and realize that it is a final loss. This boy has to cry because his father robbed him of his childhood.

Some people don't help themselves even if they know how. It's like not everyone wants to be happy.

But I think everyone wants it. My master, R. D. Laing was a Scottish presbyter. Their catechism is something like Why are we here on Earth? To praise God. Anyone who is not happy is a heretic, blasphemes God, claims that he did the creation wrong. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's flow concept is about happiness not being a direct goal, but a side effect of being involved in what I do with all my capacity, energy and faith. If I drive a race car and go too slow, I can think about dinner, if I go too fast, I die. But if I go so fast that I don't die, but I don't have time to think, that's flow and a good formula for being happy.

If someone stays in a situation that is not good for them, it is often not because they don't want to be happy, but because they are afraid that there is nothing better. In Hungary, the mentality that you have to survive is especially characteristic. If there is a war, there is an earthquake, you have to endure things, but if there is peace, you just have to live. This is characteristic of Hungarians because throughout history they often had to arrange themselves for survival.

Survival reminds me, what do you think about the predictions for 2012? It's fashionable to think about what will happen in the world when the Mayan calendar ends

I think this is stupid, the world will always end. The 2012 theories are projections of our relationship with death. Buddhists say that only one thing is certain: death, but we do not know when it will come. Therefore, the most important question is how to live. I think the only way to live is that every moment is critical, every moment is important, and I participate in every moment. It's bad if you think you're going to do it.

Even in the nineties, he talked about how he saw that people were constantly waiting for something, but waiting is the basis of boredom, and boredom leads to death. How do you think you can do everything at this moment?

You only have to do what is right now. We are talking now, so make sure that if you want to ask something, you dare to ask it. And I have to be careful to say everything I know. If one of us has a desire or an idea, it must be brave enough to say it. Because if not, it might never happen. If we say it, it's not certain that it will happen, but we did what makes this moment a critical moment.

How to train for courage?

With practice. When my mother cursed me that I was so ugly and stupid that there would be no woman who would love me, she only loves me because she is biologically my mother, then I believed it. He told me this many times when I was 14-16 years old, and I didn't dare approach a woman and tell her I like you until I was thirty. let's drink a coffee, maybe go to bed. When I was thirty, I decided to try anyway. The first woman said: I already thought you were sandy, that you didn't talk to me until now, and that night we were already in the same bed. When the second woman also reacted positively to me, I thought for the first time that maybe my mother was not right. Since then, I don't believe anything they say, but I decided to find out from my own experience.

Of course, before I asked the woman if she wanted to spend time with me, my heart was in my throat, my hands were sweating, I had diarrhea, the adrenaline was working in me so much that I could hardly hear what I said. I was filled with fear in exactly the same way with the second woman. It was better than the third one, because I was able to cross the threshold of fear.

photos: marquez

Interesting that he thought his mother was wrong. Most people blame themselves with the first thought that if it works for me, why didn't I do it earlier?

I was rather glad that I didn't do it later. I have had people in therapy who wasted ten years of their lives because they were under some kind of hypnosis that their parents put them into. Many times they didn't want to wake up because they were afraid, they were ashamed because if it was possible for them to wake up, why didn't they wake up earlier? Sometimes people continue their messed up life because if they can change it, then the question will be why they didn't do it earlier? I think that if I only realize something ten minutes before I die and then change it, it's already worth it.

When was the last time you took the hard way?

I always try that. It would be easiest for me to read at home and avoid situations where a few hundred people are listening to what I say. I always try to go into the opposite of this comfort, because then I always get closer to the fact that no matter how many people are looking at me and listening to what I say, I will still behave as I do now. The best pianist does the same during the performance as he does alone when he practices.

It was good practice in the spring, when Kriszta Tereskova and I did public therapy on IBS. He was surprisingly present and it made it easier for me to be with him as if it were just the two of us. Of course, we both knew they were watching, but we tried to be ourselves.

This is based on a story. An opera singer goes on a date with a black man who is a porn star, but she doesn't know. After dinner, the guy says that there is a nice room at the back of the restaurant, let's go in there. There is a beautiful plush bed in the room, where they start making love. Suddenly the woman notices and sees that everyone who was in the restaurant has gathered around them. At first he gets really angry and wants to go home, then he realizes that he has to shut out the world so he doesn't mind being watched. At that time, she paid close attention to the man, his movements, his smell, his touches, and she will have an orgasm as great as never before. I was thinking about this story.

He said earlier that he and Tereskova considered it important to be themselves. How do you know if this was successful?

If I can be spontaneous and honest, I don't sort through my thoughts, I speak without a censor. There is a Lois Malle film: My dinner with Andre. It didn't have a script, it was about two actors, Andre Gregory and Wally Shawn, sitting in a restaurant and talking. In the old days, when people could be themselves, an actor's job was to be anyone. Now, when everyone is acting, the job of a good actor is to be yourself without shame.

Why were people able to be themselves in the past, and why can't they now?

In the past you could be a character, but now you have to wear a uniform. If I were a young man and I didn't dress, think, or talk like the others, I would be out of the game. We have to learn how to play ourselves to be successful. You have to play the father, the husband, the colleague, the boss. The depression, of which there is more and more, comes from the fact that if I have to play too many things and I can't be myself, then my life will be hopeless. Then I'll be stuck in a 24/7 soap opera. This is not always easy to recognize either.

I want to return to an old idea again. He said people get sick because they tolerate too much. How do we recognize where the limit is?

Don't tolerate it, that's the best. In his stress research, János Selye biologically proved that if a person is under persistent stress, they either have to fight to break out, or run away, or ask for help. If neither happens, or is ineffective, you get sick. If something hurts you in a relationship, you have to tell the other person to stop doing it because it hurts me. If he does it again, you tell him again that I already asked you not to do this. If he does it a third time, it's best to fire him.

At the beginning of the interview, it was about what he learned from his most recent male patient. At the end, I ask you to recall what you learned from a woman recently

I recently visited a woman who has two small sons. When the woman wanted to talk to me, first one and then the other son wanted her attention. The mother said to leave you alone now, ask your grandmother to take care of you. I watched what was happening. What happened was that the children nagged her until the woman apologized to me and started taking care of her children. That's when I realized that this is the best way for a mother to teach her children not to take her seriously. If you do this, in a few years you will see a psychologist that your children's willfulness is unmanageable.

It's not always so easy to be consistent

Of course. A short word needs to be practiced. It sounds like this: n-e-m.

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