Therapeutic vignette There are situations in a session when it seems to you that the therapist is looking at you somehow disapprovingly or is not listening to you at all. You somehow react to this. An “enlightened” client will speak directly about feelings and may even understand that these are his own fantasies and projections. The newcomer will decide that the therapist is cold, and may not come to such a psychologist again. Or maybe he will also somehow indicate his emotions. And so you tell the therapist that he is looking at you somehow “wrong”: bored or distant. That you find yourself in front of a wall. And an adequate (assuming that you have an adequate) therapist will be happy to explore this place. He will probably ask: “What is it like there, in front of this wall? What is it like, what are you like?” And you will answer: “It’s a cold wall of ice.” And you feel fear, pressure, constraint in front of her, you cannot even tell the story that you were just about to tell. This ice wall radiates contempt for you, disgust, and kills you. And next to her you see a little boy or a little girl, deadened and powerless. And then you can suddenly remember some story from your childhood, from school, how you were bullied and everyone laughed. And you couldn't do anything and just left silently. Or about how your father (or mother) at home said something to you with contempt. Many years have passed - but this long-forgotten story unexpectedly comes to mind here, at the session, in the context of the fact that the therapist looks somehow “wrong.” And at some point in the session, an insight occurs: “Yes, it’s me ) - this wall! It’s me who destroys everything around me with the coldness of contempt!” At the same time, that unfortunate boy (or girl) is you too. You are both a “wall” and a “child.” “How is it for him, describe with verbs. Verbs are our everything,” the therapist may say. And you describe: “He (s) is getting colder, deader. He (s) is afraid.” And he (she) becomes sorry. And the ice melts. And you want the wall (and who is hiding behind this metaphor?) to hug him. You stand, turning away from her and as if saying: “Oh, you, what have you done to me...”. But the wall just melts and doesn't hug you. And you are sad and waiting, drooping and lonely. “What’s next?” - the therapist will ask you. And then, in order to live, you had to stop feeling sorry for yourself and, straightening your shoulders, “sticking a pin into yourself”, so as not to bend over and cry from powerlessness and humiliation, go through life. And so gradually you yourself turned into that very wall. That dragon from myth that cannot be defeated. Remember this cartoon? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBVv5CVgf-wBut maybe in your loneliness one day they will tell you, when you offend someone: “Help me understand you.” And something will prick you, and the ice, as in the fairy tale about Kai and Gerda, will melt, and a piece of ice will fall out of your eye. And then they will tell you: “Now you have seen me.” What does this mean? I saw another, I saw his pain. And, probably, you will cry - because life passed in these ices, behind this wall of alienation, behind the wall that helped you live. But that was not life - but its imitation. And this will not yet be healing, but a step towards it.