On the occasion of the interactive speech “A journey is life”, which she will give today, Monday, October 7 (at 19:00) in Patras, in the hall of the Educational Association of Greek Ladies, the psychotherapist-author Neli Byzantiadou talks to “P” about her self-titled book, which will be available for sale with a portion of the proceeds going to The Flame, about her psychotherapy and challenges, gender and child abuse, about the benefits of her own life journeys.
-When did your relationship with the science of Psychotherapy begin and what does it mean to you?
My relationship with psychotherapy began shortly before 2000 when I decided to enter individual psychotherapy myself and soon after continue my further education in the field of mental health sciences choosing Psychodrama as the model I wanted to learn and train in.
My contact with psychotherapy, both as a patient and as a psychotherapist, turned out to be extremely interesting and extremely helpful for my personal development. I dare say that I divide my life into two long periods. In the first period that preceded this contact and in the second that followed.
-What are the biggest challenges you face?
The daily life of a psychotherapist is full of challenges and findings that never cease to surprise us. Every person who visits my office to ask for help has their own story. And this story he carries and narrates with greater or lesser ease. Each story is unique and therefore interesting.
The biggest challenges for me are to be able first of all to be open and listen to what the client tells me without projecting my own needs or my own memories of personal experiences onto him. A second challenge is to be able to be supportive without losing the ability to reflect what I see and believe the client needs to hear in order to be helped. Another challenge is to respect the strengths and limitations of the other by going with him/her as far as he/she can go. Finally, a big challenge is to inspire confidence and to show by my own example that self-care is a supreme duty.
-You count eight books. What drew you to communicating with readers and what is your goal?
I count eight books and I want to believe that I will continue to count many more as the ideas I have are countless and endless. Through these books I tried to communicate knowledge and experiences to people to make their journey in the world of self-awareness and personal development easier. There is no greater reward than hearing or reading a comment from someone I didn’t know before who shares with me information from his life or thoughts he had while reading one of my books. I find it moving that what they read make pictures and tell me that through simple language they managed to understand concepts or decode phenomena that happen in their lives.
-You are coming to Patras with your book “Life is a journey”. From what inner need of yours did it arise?
My book Life is a Journey is one of my favorites, if I can distinguish more and less favorites. I would rather say that this is a book that was written in a few hours during a difficult period of my life and it was definitely a supportive framework for me in a phase where I wanted to express myself and get out thoughts and feelings. So with this need I will address the public of Patras. With the need to share thoughts and feelings, to trigger stimuli and provide food for people to think about what they will see and hear and what exactly the life journey they will see unfold on stage says about their own story .
-Your heroes, a traveler and her best friend, an agent, a bus driver and a hotelier. What do these five faces symbolize?
The traveler is the central character of this book and is definitely the person I hope and invite the audience to identify with. Let each and every one imagine himself/herself in her place. To start his/her life journey.
A best friend is a supportive figure that could refer to a person in our life (eg parent, partner, friend) or a part of us that is always there to support us in the difficulties we will encounter.
The agent is the man who organizes the journey of our life and who gives the guidelines for the success of this undertaking. Who has truly been in this position in our lives? A parent, a teacher, a mentor or perhaps ourselves?
The bus driver is the person we trust and let him drive us either because we don’t know how to get to our destination or because we just want to rest. In my mind the bus driver and the passenger can be two people in a relationship who share responsibilities and responsibilities for the benefit of the relationship itself.
Finally, the hotelier is the person who gives space in his life and in his heart to host us for a short or long time. He is the man who knows how to speak into us and how to make the complicated simple.
-Your heroine is called upon to make a difficult decision. Why are you leaving the dilemma hanging? What did you want to “whisper” to the readers?
My goal is for the readers to find the answers within themselves and give them themselves. This is exactly what I do with my clients. I don’t make decisions for them and I don’t solve their problems. I light paths, posit scenarios, let alternatives float, and trust their ability to decide what’s best for them in the given moment. So even if someone really wants something, he should consider the circumstances and see if they are ripe to favor the realization of his desire. It is not enough just to want something badly. He must be able to claim it and support it.
-Instinct. Is he a good driver or not in such cases?
Instinct can often prove a wise guide. The first impression, for example, of an acquaintance is also the one to which we return after many journeys. The red flags and warning signs we ignore are the ones that ultimately come true. By no means does it mean that we should only follow our gut but it is good to include it.
-Why do we find it difficult to effectively communicate with each other, Mrs. Byzantiadou, and we allow ourselves to be led astray by anger, feuds, and misunderstandings?
The truth is that even if we think we are not communicating with those around us, communication exists and is there. It may be poor, problematic or unsatisfactory but it exists and this is because it is impossible not to have communication between two or more people when they are in the same space. Even silence is a form of communication. So let’s ask ourselves why we don’t communicate as we would like to communicate in order to be satisfied. There are several reasons which I summarize as follows:
- We are insensitive to other people’s feelings, that is, we do not accept other people’s feelings when they express them
- We are highly critical of what the other person says, causing them to feel that we are invalidating them and to stop trusting us
- We read minds, that is, we guess what the other person is trying to tell us without listening to what they are actually sharing with us
- We create problems instead of aiming for solutions
- We make absolute statements using the words ‘never’ and ‘always’
- We do not assume responsibility for misunderstandings that arise in our communication
- We make blows below the waist.
-As a systemic couple counsellor, and due to the unimaginable cases of sexual violence that come to light, almost daily, who do you consider to be the source of the evil?
I am incredibly saddened by the outburst of violence and deeply troubled. Several decades ago I dealt with the issue of domestic violence by identifying several causes behind the appearance of violent and abusive behavior. Not much has changed since then. There are not a few relationships that turn into an arena of violence. Violence is used to impose on each other, to threaten the partner’s self-esteem and shake the sense of security.
The perception of women as an object or property without rights has a racial and biblical history that extends to the present day. The phenomenon of violence against women is a major social problem. Many attempts have been made to interpret this phenomenon by experts and the causes of its appearance are grouped into two main categories: on the one hand we have the psychological causes linked to the personality characteristics of the perpetrator and the victim and on the other we have the social ones. In other words, the abuse of women in a romantic/partnership relationship stems from the very position of women in a patriarchal society and is the consequence of the different relationship that men and women develop with violence as masculinity means for many a demonstration of physical strength and imposition on the female sex.
Let’s not forget that women are systematically taught, from childhood, that their personal value and autonomy does not depend so much on their own abilities as on the impression they make on men due to their physical beauty. Somehow they learn to be passive and not have control over everything that happens to them. Having been trained to be second, women enter a relationship with the opposite sex already having a serious psychological disadvantage, which reappears before them as an obstacle they have to overcome in order to continue their personal life path.
-Violence between minors is also unthinkable. When children grow up in dysfunctional environments, with incompetent, dodgy parents, is there salvation for them?
From childhood, man is socialized in such a way that he turns against violence. However, the family environment on the one hand and the social environment on the other train the child to use violence. There are many parents who impose punishments on their children believing that in this way they will regulate and control their behavior better. Controlling behavior with punishments is almost doomed as it addresses the effects rather than the motivations/causes of the problem behavior. This is how man learns from childhood to be violent. Let us not forget that aggression leads to further aggression and violence only begets violence.
Therefore, in order for there to be salvation, the parents must first realize their contribution to the vicious cycle of violence and take the responsibility they have. Only if and when the parents mirror something healthy, will the child be able to internalize it.
-Your own journeys through the labyrinthine roads of the human soul, what “gifts” have they given you on a personal level;
Through my own life paths and travel, which I continue to do with great gusto, I have learned to respect myself by prioritizing my needs and not feeling bad about it. I learned to set boundaries believing that a secure relationship accepts ‘no’ without risking or falling apart. I learned to recognize my worth without demanding that others do it for me. I learned to see behind what is seen but also to be content with the fact that sometimes what is seen does not hide anything else and does not need analysis. I learned to enjoy the ‘here and now’ of my life while continuing to dream of what is to come.
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