Through years of counseling experience, a pattern has emerged that most visitors’ underlying problems share a common characteristic: they are very dissatisfied with their relationships, or lack of them. Many of the visitors’ problems are caused by their inability to relate and approach people and to build good relationships. They are obsessed with their own misery and unhappiness, rarely consider the ways they choose to behave, rarely intentionally exercise their ability to relate to people, and are even less aware of the reasons for the formation of their behavioral habits.
Xue Min (pseudonym), 26, came to me for counseling because she was very distressed by the loss of her boyfriend and wanted to get him back. In the consultation, I learned that she has poor interpersonal relationships, she likes and relies on her boyfriend, and on the one hand, she always wants to win him over by pleasing him, and on the other hand, she gets hysterical once he doesn’t do what she wants. Her main states of expression are as follows:
1. She has never had good friends in her life;
2. She has low self-esteem and extreme self-denial;
3. Exceptionally controlling: everything must be done according to one’s wishes or else one loses one’s temper and sulks;
7. A pronounced tendency to perfectionism;
8. Avoidance and withdrawal from interactions with others;
9. Impatience and constant complaining;
10. Extreme paranoia in viewing problems.
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From Xue Min’s childhood experience, we learned that when she was a child, her parents were very strict and stereotypical, not allowing her to play outside and often locking her in the house when her parents went to work. The company’s main goal is to provide a platform for the development of a new generation of companies that will be able to provide the best possible service to their customers.
Psychology believes that people need relationships, that finding relationships is the driving force of life, and that we are meant to be ourselves, so to speak, through relationships. The ability to handle relationships is honed in childhood encounters with people. Xue Min lacked this exercise early in life, and at the same time, her pattern of interaction with her parents was non-benign, causing her to always have problems whenever she interacted with people later in life, making relationships terrible and never having friends in her life.
She was scolded and beaten when she didn’t do what her parents wanted her to do, and her parents often accused her of being “stupid like a pig. We often know ourselves through our parents’ evaluations, which are like mirrors, and we see what “I” look like in the mirror and how we see ourselves, forming a sense of self. The way Xue Min interacted with her parents led to her extremely low self-perception, resulting in low self-esteem and an extremely self-denying personality. In counseling, I asked Xue Min to cite her strengths, and she naturally replied, “Teacher, I don’t have any strengths at all!” The reason is that her parents are used to blaming Xue Min, saying that she can’t do this or that, and her mother is also used to thinking the worst of everything.
Xue Min has been very eager to receive affirmation from her parents since she was a child, but unfortunately her parents have never given it. What a person hopes to get in childhood but does not get will form a deficiency in the subconscious mind, and that person will give a lifetime of energy and cost to pursue this deficiency later in life. On the one hand, she wants to be evaluated positively by others, for example, she caters to her boyfriend and others in a pleasing way, on the other hand, she is very afraid of negative evaluation by others, which is manifested by avoiding and retreating from interactions with others, and her heart is full of “fear “
Xue Min’s childhood experiences have given her a natural internal psychological logic: Only if I am good in all aspects will others look up to me. This psychological logic can lead to perfectionist tendencies. The company’s main goal is to provide a better solution to the problem of the problem of the problem. The influence of her parents’ personality makes Xue Min, like her parents, extremely paranoid, short-tempered and complaining. The company’s main goal is to provide the best possible service to its customers.
Next, we had three counseling sessions, the main purpose of which was to make her understand herself correctly and to become aware of her interpersonal style and its root causes. During the counseling, I kept conveying some ideas: although we are products of the past, we are not victims of the past; the only person we can control is ourselves; no matter how bad things are, there is always hope. In this way, it increases Xue Min’s sense of inner strength and strengthens her determination to change.
In subsequent counseling sessions, we focused on the improvement of her interpersonal skills. For example, learning to empathize, learning to listen, learning to praise others, learning to tolerate and accept others, getting used to sharing with others, not rejecting and ridiculing others, not trying to control others, stop complaining, taking responsibility for her actions, handling things with flexibility, not being stubborn, being the master of her emotions, and taking an interest in things that interest others …… Xue Min I have come to understand that in order to change my destiny, I need to improve the way I interact with people, and it is important to improve my ability to interact with people, meeting their needs and giving them “good feelings” is the key.
Through nearly six months of counseling, Xue Min learned to evaluate the quality of her own behavior, to make more effective choices about her behavior, and to improve her interpersonal status significantly. Although counseling did not allow her to get her boyfriend back, Xue Min has a whole new understanding of the matter, and more importantly, Xue Min’s interpersonal skills continue to improve. I believe that in the near future, she will be able to find the right intended person and develop a good relationship status through herself.