The Cobbler's Hollow Shoes

Text written by: Hana Fific, Gestalt and EMDR psychotherapist

Zürich, 24.06.2021.

You know the one about the cobbler's shoes having holes?

So it was somewhat like that with me. Admittedly, my shoes were clearly full of holes long before I became a cobbler.

In the professional circle of psychologists there is a joke that one does not become a psychologist for others but for oneself. Nothing is absolute, not even this fact, and neither excludes the other, so someone can become a psychologist to help both themselves and others.

For me it started, it seems, very early. I remember that already as a child I felt I did not belong, just like that, in some general sense of the word. In my environment only we did not have our own house and kept moving, only I was the only child, only my dad drank, and so on. At music school only I came from the other side of the Una, in English I was the youngest, always and everywhere the shortest... I did not like my name and I experienced my face as 'faceless', 'expressionless'. That is how I defined it back then.

Outwardly, as I hear it, I was a good, desirable and clever child, and later a successful young woman whose place some would wish to have. Inwardly I was in constant struggle. (Without intending to mention diagnoses, case histories and phenomena, I briefly describe my experience of my inner world.)

The need for psychological support appeared early, so perhaps my experience with one wonderful Split psychologist (Dr. Juraj Žarković) also marked me and showed me how healing contact with a suitable professional and person can be.

The following year I wanted to enrol in psychology at the University of Sarajevo. At 17, on the concrete in Bihać, looking at the full summer moon through a ring my Emina had given me for that purpose, I made a wish.

It did not come true. It remained smouldering while I made wonderful digressions of my life. After I had taken care of the rest, I enrolled in Gestalt therapy training in Sarajevo. The inner struggle also got its own stage and took on Gestalt concepts such as introjects, unfinished business, deflection, retroflection, projection & co.

Depression was not the term that explained my state in Sanela's room in Armaganuša, where many met their souls again. For that there are psychiatrists. From the first, mild, to the third or fourth (who would keep track), severe, almost 20 years have passed. It sounds paradoxical that in those 20 years I undoubtedly 'grew', enriched my being and nourished my soul with rich contacts in my surroundings. Venturing into the new, experimenting, not being afraid of life, new experiences, mistakes, even pain and suffering, starting work on myself through psychotherapy, working on conscious being in the here and now... All this gives depth and meaning to our being.

Through training, my namesake and I would gladly joke after some difficult or bad experiences: never mind, it will come in handy in our work with clients. Because, as one mentor passed on to us, only a wounded therapist heals. Neither this nor the above is absolute truth. Yet, as a client myself, I often felt that the therapist 'doesn't get me and what do I even have to talk about'.

And finally, one more story, which may or may not have to do with the topic. 😊

In a village a man fell from a pear tree and broke everything. Villagers come to visit him, but as each one arrives, his wife announces them from the door, and he asks: Did he fall from the pear tree? If not, don't let him in. And so the villagers went back confused. One even said that it was not from a pear tree but from an apple tree, but it's the same. And he would be turned away ...

Until the next blog, stay healthy and take care of yourself.