I am going to remind us about the learnings from the covid pandemic and the main learning being the attitude to deal with uncertainty and isolation. So, we realised our tremendous potential to adapt and protect ourselves from not only the virus but other perils like inflation, recession layoffs break ups, divorces. Because we realised that we had a bigger objective than all these problems, protecting our breath, our lives.
I protected myself by blocking daily news and information about death toll due to the virus. I had no news about how many died worrying that covid will happen to them or has happened to them! I had seen the effects of “dramatization” of news, on people’s mind. I knew some who died not from the virus but from panic and fear coming from their view about what the virus can do.
Today world over there is a new virus and in fact it is the biggest after effect of the covid virus. It may cause severe loneliness, substance abuse, friendships and marriages to break down. Its nicely concealed under the name of individuality. The new virus is selfishness or self-centredness. The dictionary definition of being concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself, seeking or concentrating on one’s own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others.
The focus is so much on one own self that I have serious doubts and concern about relationships now and in the future.
In my counselling practice where I see couples coming with one major complaint “He/she is not emotionally available” For God’s sake, how can anybody be emotionally available when he/she is struggling to manage his/her own. So, in couples in relationships today I see mostly two self-centred people mistaking their sexual chemistry or God knows some biology in any geography thanks to the internet, for an authentic connection which soon spirals downwards. The whole essence of the relationship is misunderstood today. An interpersonal relationship refers to the association, connection, interaction, and bond between two or more people who could have common struggles and who communicate and listen to each other genuinely without judgement. This is followed by action, consistency and responsibility for a long period. This results in trust that the pics on the Instagram, can’t break.
In couples I mostly see nowadays women vocalizing and exaggerating the faults of their male partners and refusing to introspect their irrationality in any situation. The sad part is mostly the women draw their inferences from quarreling parents, social media and information overload of women rights.
While the female gender is supposed to be more resilient then men, they seem to be using their strengths not in constructing bonds or relationships but breaking them impulsively based on their judgements and self-centeredness and many times vanity or false pride.
In Rational emotive behavioral therapy we talk about irrational (not useful , impractical) core beliefs like people rating (constantly judging and analyzing the other people’s behavior) and demandingness ( he must behave the way I want him to) and low frustration tolerance (if he doesn’t talk or behave in the way I want its awful and I can’t stand it)
Hence therapy for relationship of such couples is offered by understanding who amongst the two is more irrational and imbalanced.
Therapy revolves around making both individuals work more on self-love and accept that selfishness could be the key factor for the fragility of their relationship.
So, in conclusion the need of the hour is to examine your own beliefs resulting in aggressive selfishness rather than calm assertiveness as a mindset
Next blog I am going to talk about self-love!