In the current economic climate, there are many people who are in difficulty with their mortgage repayments and run the risk of losing their homes. It can be a very stressful, difficult time as couples and individuals try to live their everyday lives with often huge financial burden weighing heavily on them.
Here at Counselling Connections, this got us thinking about how the idea or threat of losing one’s home affects us and the meaning we attribute to our houses. Home is somewhere we retreat to relax and unwind. Behind these four walls we can be ourselves, removing the mask we often show to the world. It is our necessary safe place. There is no doubt having such a place helps us to maintain a healthy lifestyle both physically and psychologically.
We can pour a lot of ourselves, our time and energy into the décor of our houses trying to make them look and feel right. Hence one’s home can become an extension of oneself and when these emotional ties are threatened through the possibility of this being taken away, it can feel like our very person is being attacked.
Historically, one’s home was a statement of social class and here in Ireland the residue of eviction by wealthy landowners has been passed down unconsciously to subsequent generations. To own a piece of land on which your house was built meant you were somehow in control, no one could remove you from your own house. This eliminated the awful pain inflicted on families who were thrown out of their homes at short notice and left with nothing. In recent times this threat has been resurrected with the banks issuing letters of warning of legal proceedings should one default on mortgage repayments.
A recent view from the window of a plane coming into Dublin to land helped to put some perspective on the housing situation. Monopoly houses streamlined to fit into confined areas seemed insignificant from the air, that is, from a different perspective. While in no way minimising the threat of losing one’s home, an alternative might be to look at it in a different way, in order to help us to cope. This can be true of all problems and stresses that we may feel trapped by. When we have exhausted all practical avenues, it can be of help to try to take a ‘bird’s eye view’. Sometimes it is hard for us to see things clearly when we are ‘in it’, so to speak. It can take an objective view to really help us see how we can change the way we feel by changing the way we view certain situations. Psychotherapy can help you to do this. In therapy as counsellors we firstly try to see and feel things from our client’s perspective in order to understand what their life is like and the problems they face. The next step is to help our clients form new perspectives in order to facilitate real change.
There’s no doubt we all get caught up in material things, some of which are necessary and basic. However we need to be careful that we don’t get so caught up that we lose our sense of what really matters. For example, in relation to the current housing situation it can help to remember that a particular house does not define you; rather it is you who defines it. It is your presence in the house, your energy poured into it that makes it what it is. If this is true then that energy can be reclaimed and reinvested somewhere else if you so wish. You can be in control from the inside amidst crisis on the outside by changing your perspective and focusing on what really matters.