This is a story of Aadya, 26 years old, who came to see me for a therapy session in 2013. She had been taking medicines for a depression for last 6 months. Her depression was mild, and she was doing well in her life through medicines.
Aadya got married at 21 and got divorced within a year. Her in-laws didn’t like her, they considered her from low economic and social background, kept asking her for dowry indirectly, by forcing her to persuade her parents to invest in her husband’s business. They made her to do all the household chores. Her husband was also not supportive of her. He was never abusive towards her both verbally or physically, but didn’t never sided her against his parents. However he was fully aware of her bride’s situation at his house.
Aadya’s relationship was turning out to be an emotional stress for her. She had no one to turn for help. Her family was supportive but she wasn’t ready to ask them help. She started believing that it will take her time to make place in her in-laws and husband’s heart but it never happened!
Aadya rebelled against her parents to marry Vishal. In hindsight, she thinks ‘Why did she rebel’? Her parents have judged her husband’s family and their interests correctly and were asking their daughter to think through the decision but her rebellious self REFUSED to listen to them.
Aadya thought she was in love with Vishal. He was the third guy she was meeting for arranged marriage. The first two guys have refused to marry her. Vishal was interested in her and she didn’t want to lose the opportunity this time. In sessions, it was quite clear that she felt rejected on the first two occasions and didn’t want to let go of this third guy. This feeling prompted her to take decisions readily and overlooking the pros-cons or so called ‘FLAGS’.
She couldn’t retort to her own parents for help because of the guilt of going against them. This added to her initial feelings of helplessness and sadness and which later turned into depression.
Aadya has always thought of herself as an adorable person. She confessed that being rejected was unacceptable for her. She is the youngest sibling, both her elder brother and a sister are happily married. Being the youngest, she has always very demanding and rigid, and her demands were always met after some initial arguments with the family. During her childhood, she use to often complain about her siblings getting being favored by parents. For her marriage too, she had argued furiously with her parents that they didn’t know what is right for her and have no knowledge about what today’s children want from life. Her expectations and beliefs made her blind to any rational judgment. Her behavior with her parents and siblings had also been a major factor in shaping her personality and temperament.
She accepted that her personality contributes to her false decisions and judgments.
After her marriage, she was very excited for the most awaited event in her life. She was focused on her career too but during her stay at in-laws, she couldn’t give time to that. Her dooming career and her in-laws behavior towards her made her face the reality. Her dreams for a happy and successful marriage were crushed, all her expectations turned against her. She became highly depressed and was finally taken to a psychiatrist. She was given medicines which helped her to come out of depression. Her family ,who loved their daughter unconditionally intervened and helped her divorce Vishal.
After her divorce, she pursued her education, completed B Ed and M Ed and is currently working as a teacher. Just 6 months ago after discussing about her past circumstances in a friend group, she got depressed again and ruminated a lot about her past. She was put on medicines again and got relieved in 2 weeks.
She was sent to me for therapy as she wanted to plan for a better future and not get into depression again. I told her that what was lacking in previous treatments was psychotherapy. She was earlier only given medicines which helped her to come out of sadness for an immediate relief, but unless our past decisions and experiences are reinterpreted in a new light, it is usually difficult to lessen the emotional burden that our past carries. She could suppress the past, and move on but whatever injustice has happened to her, that couldn’t be relieved through medicines. That’s why her past became alive again and she got into depression. She remembered the pain all over again.
I motivated her to think of her past as a phase where she was less mature to take wise decisions. Her personality features were also probed to see how much they have contributed to her temperament and ability in taking decisions. I tried to probe deeper into her relations with parents but she didn’t come up with much details, which seemed like a defense that she was putting for herself as she has always held herself guilty.
Our relations with parents do effect our temperaments. Also, I told her in-laws had been unfair to her. She cannot undo her past, but she can see how unjust people value material gains over everything else. Its not just her in-laws family but there are many more similar families out there. Not only with her, such couples are not mutually respectable to each other too. By closely looking at their inner style of behaviors, we can easily expect to see that they are dysfunctional people and need counseling too.
Aadya has been leading normal healthy life now. She met Aditya a year back and they have been going out. They plan to get married at the end of 2014. Aditya is caring and supportive, he knows about her past and visits doctors with her. I assessed her current state of relationship with her partner and it is perfect in every possible way. She is happy with her decision this time, she has taken her own time to consider Aditya for marriage. She is feeling stronger and hopeful this time.
The only thing I wanted her to focus on was the possible state of relation after marriage. She said that she doesn’t not fight with her partner. I told her its not about fights, its about the way we relate to our partners, fights are just an extreme. I asked her if there is anything she felt disappointed in her current relationship? Does she feel some old patterns of her thinking interfering in her current relationship? Does she feels that sometimes her needs are not fully appreciated by her partner in the way she wants? Does she not like some of her partner’s behaviors? Is she overlooking some things which might disturb her later? There were many other questions that I put for her and surprisingly she agreed on 50% of them.
We always carry our past with us, some wounds may get healed but we carry the scars. We humans are dynamic beings, we keep changing in situations. I was not asking her to question her decision, rather I wanted her to analyze the every possible side which she might be suppressing in the hope of a happy and successful marriage. If earlier she suppressed other’s viewpoints, she might be suppressing her own doubts this time. She had just become more passive this time. Feelings of past failures in relationships, her submissive nature at her in-laws’ home was an indicator that she submits too much to external circumstances and this time, she was even more cautious. So it was important to reshuffle the mind to look for something that she might be suppressing deep down her conscious awareness in order to have a happy life. She was at a stage of further healing of self.
She told me about her over-demanding nature in her current relation. She said Aditya treats her like a child (he is 32, 6 years elder to her), loves her demanding nature and gives her the required attention. I told her this is her long held wish fulfilled, carried from family to fiancee. But she admitted she doesn’t want to be like this anymore. She wants to behave like a mature person.
She does get upset when he is not available. She doesn’t get angry but prefers not to talk to him for a day. He then tries convince her and they patch up. She said that these behaviors were present since childhood, earlier she use to keep herself in her room without eating anything for a day when her parents didn’t agree to her demand. I told her about the need to change these patterns as they may harm her mental health later. This behavior makes one needy, frustrated and stubborn. We discussed about different areas of her personality, her ways of getting her needs fulfilled in relationships, about her temperament and also the things that bother her about her friend and acquaintance.
She needed some personality modification and develop new ways of relating herself to people. How we understand ourselves, how we manage our own thinking and emotions determines how our relationships will be.
Note: This story is based on one of the cases handled by Tarun Verma, clinical psychologist.
