Fear of depressive symptoms and psychotherapy

What Should I Do About Depression?

The real concern people understand. As they understand the fake interest. As well as the supposed interest with which you cover your own needs and not the needs of the other. When you are a child and receive false or pretended interest, you slowly develop a sense of unsatisfiedness that leads to symptomatology. If in the first year there are problems in the relationship between the baby and the figure who takes care of him, then the child gets angry with his mother. He gets angry. But there his mom and this, they are one. So the anger goes to the self.

At the Beginning of Life

In the beginning it is the dependence of the baby on the figure who takes care of it. He doesn’t love there. It just depends. This means he’s afraid he’s going to die and he’s hooked. Real love, the most mature, is about gratitude. Gratitude means that I feel inclined to thank you for what you have given me. This occurs at around 8 months of age. However, if gratitude appears, this means that things are going well and that there are no particular problems in the relationship between the baby and the mother figure.

Deprivation Means Not Giving

Most don’t give. So gratitude is rare. Especially in Greece it is also considered nonsense. Because as a people we are more paranoid, distrustful, etc. so what gratitude are we talking about? Also, gratitude is confused with something else. When you give, what do you give? For the other or for you? For you. This is not giving. This means “I use you to cover myself”. It’s narcissistic. Most relationships are like that. Which makes sense, of course, but it has nothing to do with gratitude. So anger comes out. It is not easy to accept that one has thought aggressively about loved ones. Most of us hide it from ourselves but it comes in dreams, misdeeds, detours of speech, daily fantasy, etc. In fantasy we must allow such thoughts to be unleashed there. Otherwise we become aggressive. We hit, curse, break the rules, disrespect others. That’s why imagination exists. To be able to receive these psychic charges and discharge them there. This is what happens when we do not know our desires and cannot bear them. But they are going to surface. And we suppress them because we don’t consider them ours. We criticize them and feel hatred when we see someone having such a similar desire. But we can know our desires when we find out how much envy we have hidden well inside us since our childhood. Otherwise we are in deep depression. The opposite is gratitude.

Gratitude Is Already Love

Gratitude comes if and when the feeling of “Thank you, now I want to give back to you what you gave me” is created. If you’ve been taken advantage of, that’s what you’ll give back. If you’ve taken care, that’s what you’ll give back. If you have been deprived, that is what you will give back. If you collect anger, then when you grow up you say what the religious law also says: “you gave a knife, you will receive a knife”. A two-year-old who angrily throws his toys on the floor is deprived of the first year without a doubt. You have no need for anger if you are well. You will handle it differently. If you’re a little good you might get frustrated about something, you’ll cry a little, but you know you can cry with your mom or your dad. Here we say, you are a whole man, a whole woman, we make it a dance, a song, we don’t talk about it, we pass it by. We suppress the depression that is normal in order to be well. If depression comes out and expresses itself, then there is no need to become depressed. He can just live his life relatively happily and facing the difficulties we all face in life without demands, grumbling or particularly complaining.

The Important First Months

In the first three months of life we go through the autistic phase. It’s us for us. After 3-6 months is the symbiotic phase where we are together as one but I am not separate. The omnipotence that the infant has with its mother is necessary and normal. Over time it declines later in childhood. In marriage especially but also in general in intimate and very close relationships these are reactivated without us realizing it. The binary orbit is present. There you make the other ideal. “Ideality” is a concept that shows us that within ourselves we cannot see the other. When you actually see someone, you get good and bad things. One who tends to see things ideally is definitely looking for parents. This is childish behavior.

The Immature Ideal Idea For Relationships

So in the “ideal” relationship, we are completely blind. I don’t see you but what I wish I had and never had. And so the only way to have it is to make you ideal. But no one is perfect, nor can they be. Only in infant life is this true and should it be true. There it must and everything is ideal because the forming self needs to interact with the “other” in order to be created and later to be able to separate from the helper self offered by its mom. If this generosity is not given generously, then a deprivation is created that as an adult one tries to make up for through substitutes or by believing that one has been wronged. He gets angry. He hates. He wants to destroy. And because the other half is idealized (he doesn’t touch it, she’s the deified mom) he takes the anger out on himself. So depression is self-destructive, guilt-ridden and punitive.

Healing Is A Great Reparation

So in therapy, the patient relives from the beginning all the repetitions he does, with the difference that he doesn’t just relive them, but finds the roots and feels them. He reproduces them in his relationship with the therapist, and the therapist who receives these projections does not repeat the same traumas. So a fix is made there. Again and again. One does not understand things in therapy logically. The process is emotional. You experience life as your true self and not as the fake one you created to protect yourself. This is how the self comes to life and can make relationships that are neither punitive nor guilty. Relationships that begin and place gratitude as a fundamental element and accept gratitude also as a giving from the other side.

*Republication of the article is prohibited without the written permission of the author

The process of psychotherapy requires commitment, dedication and is only for those who seriously see that they need to change their lives. If you are thinking of starting this journey, call me at 211 71 51 801 to make an appointment and see together how I can help you

Mixalis Paterakis
Psychologist Psychotherapist
University of Indianapolis – University of Middlesex
I accept by appointment
Karneadou 37 Kolonaki (Next to Evangelismos)
Tel: 211 71 51 801
www.mixalispaterakis.gr
www.psychotherapy.net.gr