Asha and Roger have been married for 10 years now. They fell in love while they were working together and finally got married. They have a lovely 8 years old daughter, Sara.
Like most Indian women, Asha thinks Roger is very dominating and tries to control her every action. She believes her husband wants to have the final say in every discussion. She feels neglected and worthless. With this thought building up in her mind for years, now it has reached to a point where she is considering seeking divorce from Roger.
She decides to approach our expert and discuss the issue before she files for divorce. Expert asks her to imagine Roger and herself together and describe her imagination. She finds it strange but finally closes her eyes and starts thinking. She imagines they are sitting in the house, Roger is on couch and she is on chair. Roger’s image is bigger and more focused whereas her own image is blurred and smaller. She is able to describe everything about Roger with much more clarity and detail than about herself.
Why is her imagination like this? Why are they not equal?
Even without having Roger around, she fears him.
Our expert advised her to practice one simple thing, make herself more focused and bigger in her imagination. She kept practicing that multiple times and was able to achieve atleast equality in her imagination. Now when she thinks of Roger and herself together , she sees herself being focused and bigger; Roger as the blurred one. This little photo-shop effect to her imagination led to change a lot of things. She finds Roger less intimidating by now!
Few days after overcoming the dominating image of Roger in her visualization, she enters into a debate with Roger. They were getting their bathroom done, Roger wanted the wall colors to be light green and she wanted it to be blue. Roger made a statement that the walls will be green and that’s final. This time because she has overcome the ferocious image of Roger, she manged to speak her thoughts aloud in front of him. She was assertive and said both Sara and herself want it to be blue and that’s the way it should be. She felt really happy that she was able to say something in front of her husband. However, after making this statement she was so nervous that she went and slept.
After waking up she gathers courage to speak to Roger. Roger was in shock but happy that her wife had put forth her thoughts. Asha on the other hand, was feeling guilty. She revisited the expert and thanked him.
Our expert says one thing. Noone can treat you in a way that you don’t want to be treated. Your feelings are based on how one perceives the truth. The truth is subjective and it’s ones interpretation of the event. If you can photoshop your feelings in hindsight, it will make you feel better and will give you the courage to assert and discuss with the person who made you feel bad.
Note: This is based on real life cases handled by Dr Jacob Raju. We have changed the names to maintain annonymity.