Dora Prangajiska: It's never too late to change your life

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Dora Prangajiska: It's never too late to change your life
Dora Prangajiska: It's never too late to change your life
Anonim

Dora Prangadzhiyska is a psycho-physical therapist, specializing in Neo-Reichian analytical psychotherapy. Until four years ago, she worked in the state administration and, losing her job when one of the governments changed, she ended up in an almost depressed state on the therapy couch as a client of Madeleine Algaffari. Today, she is her assistant and is sincerely grateful for the many difficult moments in her life, because she is convinced that for everything good that happens to us, we have already paid for it in the past.

Mrs Prangadzhiyska, your life started with difficulties, tell us a little more about them

- I was given up for adoption right after I was born. Before I started doing psychotherapy, I never considered that such an event has a defining significance for a person's character and is a leading factor throughout his life. During the first months of his life, the child identifies with the mother - he does not understand that these are different things and separation from her is a separation of a whole, which the newborn experiences as death.

Early deprivation (separation from the mother) causes powerful trauma in the baby,

related to the fear of rejection and abandonment. And no matter how early it was adopted, it carries this trauma throughout its life, and it reflects on relationships with those around it. This wound remains in the body memory and unconsciously the people who have experienced it avoid situations of rejection and abandonment in the next stages of their lives.

How does this early trauma affect the lives of abandoned children?

- Adopted children unconsciously build a false SELF. In order to protect themselves from being abandoned again, they become extremely kind and responsive, wanting and trying to please everyone, because behind this is hidden the paralyzing fear of rejection. These children seem to lose the ability to express their feelings, especially negative ones. All this striving to be better than the bad baby that momma abandoned takes a huge amount of energy.

The feeling of unconditional love does not exist in adopted children

They do not know love "Despite" but love "Because" - they do not believe that they will be loved, even though they are sometimes naughty and wrong, but because they are good and diligent. That is why all their energy is directed not to disappoint, to please, to give themselves. Another part of the adopted children behaves rejectingly, but this is again provoked by their insane fear of rejection, and in this way they test the world whether it really loves them, even though they are bad.

How did you deal with this trauma and its consequences?

- I divide my life into two stages – before I started personal therapy and after. In people who are given up for adoption, as well as those who have had a physically or emotionally absent mother until the end of the first year, the conviction is sealed

I don't deserve it, because once they abandoned me, then I don't deserve it

This person throughout his life has difficulty showing weakness, asking for help, submitting, but with trust and true humility, not resignation. Self-esteem is extremely low, and he seeks salvation in the intellect, which will never leave him, and much that he achieves intellectually helps him overcome that great emptiness associated with "I am not worthy." In the process of therapy, I learned to love myself, trust myself and others more and more, ask for help and believe more and more that I deserve it.

Before I started my personal therapy, I didn't want to know anything about my biological parents, I was an offended child, even though I was 40, and I was convinced that these were people I didn't care about unless they were me sought throughout my 40-year life. However, this is a rational explanation, a product of the mind, which serves to protect against the dominant fear of repeated rejection, which for adoptees is extremely frightening. Today, not only do I not blame them, but I feel gratitude for being on this earth and breathing because of them.

How is your life going after adoption?

- I was adopted and lived in Lukovit. My parents were very ordinary people who gave me a lot in terms of their understanding and I appreciate that very much. However, my father was an alcoholic and beat my mother in front of me sometimes. I have never seen myself as a victim, but today I realize how much damage it does to a child's psyche. Children who grew up in dysfunctional families with alcoholism and violence experience four basic feelings about what is happening, and these are guilt, fear, anger and shame, and they accompany them throughout their lives.

My mother died when I was 20 years old and shortly after that my father brought home a woman who had ten children living in different homes. They came at different times and our house became a place that no longer felt like home. For many years I was both offended and angry with him, I felt guilty for being angry with him, until I realized that the strength is in being able to forgive the parent and understand that this is his resource and when you separate with the accusations against him, only then do you grow up and become a mature adult.

And your interest in psychotherapy?

- I always wanted to study psychology, but for various reasons it didn't work out. Then I had an explanation, today I now know that it did not happen simply because then I was not yet ready for this choice, because psychotherapy is not just a profession, but a path that requires emotional and spiritual maturity. I worked in one of our ministries and when one of the governments changed, I lost my job. Then I was extremely angry with the headmistress at the time, but today I realize how much she helped me, because by pushing me from the edge of the abyss, she made me meet myself, believe in myself, go on a completely new path and turn a an extremely daring and daring dream in reality. I am grateful to Madeleine for accompanying me and helping me in this growth. At 40, I made a huge change with myself and with my life, and I really want to inspire faith in women of that age who sit in the office across from me and think that after 40 life is a monotonous existence. I wish they believed that

every part of life they are given can be a brand new beginning

To let their children grow up, to turn the focus to themselves, to believe in the qualities that each one of us brings, in the inexhaustible potential and our own capabilities. Yes, I'm convinced and I'm proof that it's never too late to change your life and find what gives new meaning to the world around you and makes you happy.

"Unity of opposites - earth and sky, fire and water, land and sea, love and hate… Dualism is part of our lives, but nothing can exist without its opposite".

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