We are the desire for life, a desire that we are entitled to have until our last moment...
Dimitris Karagiannis
Article on the site https://justanumber.gr/dimitris-karagiannis-epithy/
To truly work on yourself, you must take responsibility for your existence.
There are many questions about man… There is illness, there is decay, there is death and each of us has to think about what can give meaning to our life, what can be truly worthwhile. We, as Existential Systemic Psychotherapists, work in three times: past, future and present. From this point of view, in psychotherapy, in order to essentially work on yourself –in contrast to all the superficial psychotherapy methods that are in vogue today - you should take responsibility for your existence. This means thinking about your past, searching for the beginning of your life, the way you were in your paternal family. Then, seeing and deciding whether your life will be a linear continuation in relation to the past - whether, that is, only your childhood will define you or whether, knowing the limitations, but also the possibilities that you "inherited" from your past, you can see where you want your life to go and thus, in the future, decide for yourself about its meaning, take responsibility for decisions. The issue of responsibility is very important in our existential systemic view.
We live in a world where diversity is allowed, but not the osmosis of difference.
The systemic approach moves away from the linear concept of cause and effect and examines interactions at all levels. In other words, it sees man as a bio-psycho-social entity that evolves based on the elements that shape him, not only at the beginning of his life, but at every moment. Even at an advanced age, therefore, lifestyle affects the brain and the biological state. Today, we know that the brain is a tool that evolves and reacts depending on how we use it. At the same time, today there is this wound in our culture - to which I refer in particular in my recent book "Hidden Psychic Beauty" - that has led us to live in an A-society, in which we do not have a substantial participation in each other's lives. In other words, we live in a world in which diversity is allowed, but not the osmosis of the different. Therefore, what prevails is fragmentation. Personal and professional life are separated, as if we only have roles, which we may play well, but which do not have continuity and consistency in our wholeness, which is very painful. That is why older people, when they lose some of these roles, such as when their children leave home or retire or are left without their partner, feel that they no longer have their identity. This happens in the context of fragmentation and, therefore, it is good to know that our entity as people and as elements of society exists only in "being related" and never individually.
People who have advanced in age carry stories of endurance, loss, love and forgiveness.
Often when people grow older they become more rigid as, as physical deterioration progresses and the question of death becomes more and more urgent, they feel a thwarting of dreams that they did not have time to live and then perhaps a bitterness emerges. Physical pain also becomes mental. Furthermore, while in traditional societies the elderly were very important because they knew many things, today they are recorded as picturesque – as people of the last century, of a past civilization and, therefore, younger people have nothing to learn from them, especially since artificial intelligence knows everything. In reality, however, people who have advanced in age carry stories of endurance, loss, love and forgiveness and, therefore, have managed crises, failures, upheavals and have learned what is worthwhile and what is not. Because, wisdom is born through processed wounds. From this point of view, there are no good and bad experiences, but experiences that we have or have not processed. Otherwise, we live in a society that worships youth and fears old age and in which the elderly become invisible because their advice is often outdated. The point, however, is not to update the advice of the elderly, but to express the tenderness that over time they are able to express. A very “childish” tenderness, freed from roles and duties, which allows them to behave very well towards their grandchildren. And their advice may be tiring, boring, and even aggressive at times, but their wishes are always welcome and timely and much more important than the best advice. In other words, it is as if they are telling young people that, “no matter how many difficulties you have gone through, I have gone through them too. I know what you are, the world is not lost, continue what you are doing and you will succeed…”. When an older person can offer this to the younger, then it is not just a source of wisdom, but a spiritual oasis. It is truly a blessing to have such a person in our time – a person who surrounds others, not with directions and advice, but with his wishes and with a look of acceptance and trust. But a trust that means that he has worked through his own issues, has evaluated successes and failures and has seen what is truly important and what is unimportant. This is a valuable gift for the younger.
If we don't go to psychotherapy, seeking justification
Sometimes people hesitate to start such a process at an older age. When I started practicing my profession, and according to the traditional psychoanalysis that everything is to blame for childhood, a person over 40 could not enter psychotherapy. It was considered a done deal, that is, that things in his life have been formed and defined and cannot be changed – something that I dealt with in particular in my book “Does Man Change?” And of course, people change, certainly for the worse if we refer exclusively to physical deterioration. But when we decide to do so, then the mental changes are shocking. I do not claim that these necessarily concern characterological elements. If, for example, a person has learned to defend themselves since childhood by being abrupt, they will not cease to be so, but this attitude will contain a strong element of care for the other and will be interpreted more as tender embarrassment than as aggression. My experience with older people who enter therapy is shocking. First of all, they can tell you their lives in a condensed form in a very short time and briefly review and assess them. If, of course, they have learned to believe that everything is always the fault of others, they will not easily take it back. I once asked a priest what people confess at the end of their lives, and he replied that they refer to how good they were and how right they did everything. In other words, in the face of the fear of death, they construct a myth that they want to be justified. But this cannot be good either. So if we go to psychotherapy, asking for justification and we want them to tell us things the way they want, then I recommend that they turn to artificial intelligence, which will tell them exactly what they want to hear.
Time can also be a moment
Genuine psychotherapy, however, offers the possibility of repentance, not in the sense of crushing and flattening, but by truly changing your mind – thus freeing yourself from these situations that have weighed you down for years. Speaking, even at the end of life, as a very elderly person with terminal cancer told me, it is as if tons of weight are lifted from you. He may have had a difficult life and not done everything right, but reflecting and taking responsibility for his actions was a great gift of life for him. Psychotherapy at an older age can have a very positive effect. To determine this, we see whether the person remains in the same position, defends his own faults and blames others or, on the contrary, continues to live in a "grateful" way, now having the ability to record all the beauty that exists in the world, to accept and enjoy the gift of life and to be able, until his last breath, to say thank you for this gift. And then, it ceases to matter so much how close he may be to the end or how much the body hurts. Because, even then, there is time to make this inner journey. Time can be a moment. As we grow older, time loses the meaning it had before, it is not calculated with the plans and dreams of younger ages. An older person, troubled by the passage of time, will see a child jumping around and feel discomfort. The child's laughter will be a torture that will remind him of everything he no longer lacks, will make him jealous that he will not jump again and will cause him anger, recording the child's attitude as an annoyance. So, such a person, no matter how many years he has ahead of him, may not be able to see his life differently, while someone else may remember himself as a child and allow his soul to jump! This means that, with psychotherapy, something has changed in the processing of the experience. A narcissist, therefore, will not change no matter how much time he has. Otherwise, even through a sadness, a loss, through loneliness, all of this can be worked on.
A healing gaze will not cover us up to hide all that we are ashamed of.
This is also the story of hidden psychic beauty. On the one hand, there is our dark self – all the instincts, the urges, the phobias, all that we are ashamed of and that make us hesitate to touch ourselves and see it deeply because we tremble that, if they come to the surface, our dark self will bring us to our knees and we will not be able to bear it. But if there is a healing gaze – even the gaze of one of our own people – that will not look at us suspiciously, that will not cover us up to hide all that we are ashamed of and afraid to analyze, but will bring them to the surface, saying that our dark self is not the end, then the way opens before us. And this, I insist, is the revolution that, in the field of psychology, I did not dare to assume could happen, as we ended up in Freud's unconscious and dark self. This chapter was valuable because it also brought our unconscious side to the surface. I say, however, that our self does not end at its dark point. We may have committed crimes, omissions or failures in our lives, but our self does not end there. It has another beauty underneath. So if we insist on dwelling bitterly on injustices, mistakes and failures, then we will never go to the deepest layer beneath our dark self, where the core of our psychic beauty lies.
There are people who can become very important through how they care and take care of others.
Sociability is one of the tools that can work to help a person uncover the deepest layer that exists beneath their dark self. Even the people who make things difficult for us are ultimately the ones who will give us the opportunity to see our own difficulties. It is very important not to close ourselves off, waiting for others to come to us and enlighten us – just as it is very important what you do in Just a Number, where I noticed that you also include the concept of volunteering. This is exactly what volunteering is: I leave my individuality and my problems and, as I serve and care for others, suddenly I become important. Because a person can endure pain, poverty, difficulties, but it is very difficult for him to endure not being important. So there are those who can become very important in the way in which they care and take care of others – and when you take care of others, you do good to yourself.
Ultimately, how is mental beauty superior to mental balance?
Mental balance is an effort that is not real. It is like trying to put income and expenses on a spreadsheet, an excel, and balance them, for example, you try not to get angry so that bad things don't happen, not to be sad but in the end you are neither happy nor living excitingly. But we cannot lose the ability to live the exciting, it has to do with how we decide our life to be: that is, now that spring is starting to arrive, we will see the flower in the field and we will feel at that moment a heartbeat, as if it were our first love. It is to live until our last moment as intensely as little children live in the summer! Let our soul continue to yearn, let time flow and not notice it and not let the ticking of the clock sound torturously. Therefore, spiritual beauty is not an "American thing," of the type of taking the 7 steps that will lead us to it, but a life decision that says - as I insist - that we are not our failures, we are not our mistakes, we are not our fears, we are not our anxieties. We are this desire for life, a desire that we are entitled to have until the last moment, a desire that says that I have to rejoice and not just be pleased, because in pain, in difficulties, in decay, pleasure loses its power, while joy, in the form of fullness, in the form of the people you loved and still love, can serve you and accompany you until your last breath.
CV
Dimitris Karagiannis MD, PhD, is a Child Psychiatrist, Existential Systemic Psychotherapist for couples, groups and families. He is a trainer and supervisor of psychotherapists. He is also an Assistant Professor at Frederick University, Nicosia, Cyprus, specializing in Family Therapy and a Doctor of Philosophy at Democritus University of Alexandroupolis. He has taught and is teaching in Postgraduate University programs in Mental Health at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, the University of West Attica and the University of Thessaly.
He is also the scientific director of the Psychotherapeutic and Educational Institute "ANTISTIXI", which trains mental health specialists in Psychotherapy, as well as a founding member and first vice-president of the Child Psychiatric Society of Greece. President of the Hellenic Federation of Systemic Therapy and Family Therapy Societies (ETHOS). Founding member and former general secretary of the Hellenic Society of Systemic Therapy ELESYTH. Founding member of the Hellenic Society of Systemic Thinking and Family Psychotherapy EESKEPSO. Member of the European Family Therapy Association (EFTA).
In the past, among many others, he served as Director of the Child Mental Health Center, Scientific Director of the Medical Pedagogical Station of Fthiotida, Member of the National Public Health Council ESYDY for Psychiatric issues. Member of the Board of Directors of KETHEA, Scientific Manager of the European Community Program for Training of Volunteer Core Staff. Professor of Postgraduate Training at the Marasleion Academy and more.
Dimitris Karagiannis is, finally, the author of the important psychological essays: "Cracks and Touches" 11the edition, "The injustice that hurts" 31the edition, "Love or Nothing" 29the edition, "Does Man Change?" 23the edition and "Hidden Mental Beauty" 6th edition (Armos publications). In this capacity, he has also participated in many collective books.
"COUNTERPOINT"
The therapeutic and educational Institute "Antistixi" was created by child psychiatrists and psychotherapists Dimitris and Eleni Karagiannis and is staffed with experienced and competent associates - Mental Health specialists and with a foundation of respect for the uniqueness of the human person and his personal history. Its goals are, in addition to addressing dysfunction, to highlight the wealth, strength and health that exists in every living system.
The Institute's therapeutic function is aimed at families, couples and individuals and provides the opportunity to choose the appropriate treatment that is appropriate for each case.
The therapeutic intervention approaches the existential issues of the human existence, highlighting the significance of taking personal responsibility and forming functional relationships.
The educational function is aimed at graduate professionals, Mental Health specialists (psychiatrists, child psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers) who wish to specialize in Existential Systemic Psychotherapy.
