Inquiries about a choice are one of the common reasons for turning to a psychologist. And we are usually talking about serious life choices. Fateful. Stay with your wife or divorce and go to your mistress, or divorce and live alone? Have an abortion or give birth to a child? Which of the two men should you marry? If your partner does not want or cannot have children, share a childless fate with him or leave with the understanding of the risk that a new relationship may not be created? Should you take in an adopted child or remain childless? Should you change your profession in adulthood or somehow work until retirement? Emigrate or stay in your homeland? Take out a mortgage and stay in a job you don’t like, or quit and continue to rent housing? How to resolve the issue of providing care and support for a disabled parent? The list can be continued for a long time. All these decisions assume that life, depending on the choice made, will take some fundamentally different path. Fateful decisions can also be divided on the basis of reversibility. For example, the decision to get married still assumes that it will be possible to get a divorce. But, now, an abortion is already irreversible, and it will not be possible to change the decision later. Making an irreversible choice can be even more difficult. Why, when you need to make a fateful choice, go to a psychologist? And how can a psychologist help with such requests? Obviously, the psychologist will not be able to make a decision for the client. The psychologist also does not have the right to push the client to any decision. The work of a psychologist with such requests is to provide, organize a space for research so that the client can understood myself more accurately. Came to have a deep understanding of his own desires and motives. A person makes decisions based on the predictions he makes. It happens that these forecasts are not realized, or are realized only partially. And then the task is to bring these forecasts into the light as much as possible and consider them. What happens if...? What will happen if...? There is room for the mind to work. And there is room for the soul to work. It becomes important for clients to understand that any decision will have to pay a price. There may be different components to this price. This means time, money and effort. There is also an emotional cost. What feelings are most likely to be experienced when one or another option is accepted and implemented? When the emotional cost becomes clearer, the decision is made easier. Ultimately, a person always chooses emotions and feelings. Another important understanding is that refusing to make a choice (there are situations when this is possible) is also a decision. This is also a choice - not to choose. And it has its own price - a person will choose life in the face of circumstances and other people. And also, when you work with requests about choice, you help a person understand that we make fateful choices without knowing the future. Strength is needed to withstand this uncertainty. Working with a psychologist helps a person find these resources within himself - to choose, knowing that the results of the choice will appear only when it is made. I’ll share one more idea that helps me work with selection requests. Any decision must mature. Fully. Working with a psychologist can contribute to ripening, just as earth, water and sun contribute to the ripening of fruits. But the tree itself gives the fruit. What does working with requests about choice require from a psychologist? Understanding that the client will bear all responsibility for his choice. This understanding well discourages the temptation to give advice. And the understanding that the result of good work on such a request is not at all a decision made by the client directly during the consultation or after several consultations. This understanding allows you to work on request, without showing anxiety, impatience, or irritation towards the client who was delayed in a situation of choice. Colleague psychologists, student psychologists! I invite you to the program “Systemic Family Therapy and Counseling” 2024-2026. Anniversary 10th set. Start on September 21-22. Retraining diploma. In person. Ekaterinburg.