Saying Dear Self

I share my experience of watching, “Dear Zindagi” with two key questions, “How is it for me to watch a movie where an artist plays a role of psychotherapist? What does such a script mean to me as an audience as well as a psychotherapist?”

As an audience the movie was able to,

1. convey that its ok to meet the brain doctors for ones well being
2. Normalise the act of taking professional help in learning and handling emotional reactions
3. Encourage taking counseling or psychotherapy support while encountering relational issues

As a therapist I am appreciative of the following perspectives given in the movie

1. Chair theory, a metaphor used to find the right partner
2. Story to choose the easy path rather than the difficult one especially when one is not prepared for the journey
3. Respecting all emotions like envy, jealousy, insecurity, anger, sadness and love with equanimity
4. Finding happy memories of childhood with parents or parental figures

One of the key therapeutic interventions in the movie was the heroine Kaira’s fear of committing herself in a relationship and her insecurity in feeling closeness and trust in relationships. This fear stemms from her childhood experience of abandonment by her parents. Her unconscious way to cope with the fear of rejection was by saying a bye to the other person before the other may say a bye to her. The therapist Jug (Jehangir Khan) suggests, “why not say a bye to the fear of abandonment instead of saying bye to people” who are willing relate with her.

As a psychotherapist I would like to add another perspective to this idea of saying bye to the fear of abandonment is, “Saying Hello to the fear of abandonment” This means developing

1. A friendship with repressed emotions
2. Understanding the longings of childhood and current needs through the surfacing emotions
3. Using the grownup resources to take responsibility in handing the emotions independently as well as with the conscious choice of dependency

To add to the movie Dear Zindagi, psychotherapy can be a journey to use our past limitation as a brick in the present for building future possibilities. When we integrate ourselves with the past and present continuum our perspective to life will be, “All was, is and will be well”. For me, Psychotherapy is a journey where one gains the perspective to say hello to dear self and “Saying Dear Self, is saying Dear Zindagi”.