Читать книгу Not pregnant yet? You bet! - Римма Ефимкина - Страница 2

There are many reasons why people can’t have children. According to the dominant in our society materialistic point of view on childbirth the issue is of purely technical nature and can be fixed like fixing a car. However, cases described in this book show that these issues have psychological reasons. And they can be fixed if we see the meaning of what is going on and understand it. Usually, if we do, any medical interventions become unnecessary.

I own a whole collection of babies’ photos born by “infertile” women as a result of our both individual and group psychotherapy meetings. I’m really proud of my collection. Besides, it is a piece of “evidence” proving that psychotherapy works. “Impartial” doctors diagnosed these women with fertility issues. The diagnosis included infertility, missed miscarriage, repeated miscarriage. These were numerous sad stories from very different women of childbearing age. And all of them had a happy ending.

It’s not such a wonder after all, when you know how to work with psychosomatic health issues. The main thing here is to listen attentively to their stories. I listen to a woman telling me about her symptoms, I watch for non-verbal cues, I observe if what she says matches what she does, and look for mismatches, inconsistency, incongruence. These are signs of internal conflict that is represented on the physical level in the form of blockage in the body. Catharsis is what happens when we find blocking mindset and replace it with activating mindset. Grateful for this, the body starts working as Nature and God intended it to. When I say God here, I don’t imply religious, but metaphorical meaning of this word – the Creator. If God made humans in his image and likeness, in this case everyone can be a creator. Any woman is a creator, because she can create people in the image and likeness of herself.

In this book I tell more than thirty stories of my clients. At times I quote my colleagues’ cases and observations, works of fiction, as well as women’s discussions of these issues on the Internet to illustrate my interpretation of a particular case. What I would like to show with the help of these stories is how holistic approach – which says we are whole mentally, emotionally and physically – works in childbirth.

I did not mean to dedicate this book to childbirth alone, because it is just one aspect of psychosomatic health issues. However, subconsciously I knew it was going to be a book, otherwise why would I write down by memory all these psychotherapy sessions each time I came back from my workshops? And now I opened my folder titled “Infertility” and read through the stories I had collected over 15 years of psychotherapy practice. Most of the woman became mothers and gave birth. It’s time my child – this very book – saw the light.

As I was writing this book there were numerous synchronous events that helped me ponder over the subject I was writing about. For example, the beginning and the end of the first draft coincided with the beginning of pregnancy and the due date of out five-year-old Siamese cat Kate. Very much to everyone surprise it gave birth to three black kittens. Although their father was a white blue-eyed cat named Deposit. I guess this can be interpreted as “man plans, God laughs” and regardless of what my initial plan for the book had been it turned out to be not quite as “white” as I thought it would.

Another synchronicity blast came from the women whose stories comprise this book: they reappeared in my life after being absent for several years, so I could discuss their stories and ask for permission to publish their cases with their names changed. Most of them were very enthusiastic about my idea of the book, and I’m very grateful for that. My sincere gratitude goes to all of you – for your courage to share your story with me and the readers of my book. This book would not exist if it wasn’t for you, you are its part and parcel!”

I couldn’t help but try to have fun and include humorous Internet memes as epigraphs, because they convey the meaning in a creative humorous way. Besides, I singled out blocking and activating mindsets and put it at the end of each story, as they sum up the essence of each session. They are easy to understand even if you have no special training in psychology and they are useful just as they are.