Diana Miron
From: Bucharest Born on: 2 May 1968 Occupation: PsychologistWhen I think at Diana comes into my mind the picture of a beautiful woman, comfortable sitting on the couch, which through an intimate gesture of elegance, I would find out later – also practical, treats hers lips with a gloss – Radiant Seventeen, number 51. I pass into the room with the feeling that I was interrupting a ritual, so focused and personal was the way she chose to live that moment.
Diana Miron is an intentional psychotherapist since ever and one who has just launched herself in this profession at the age of 40, a rather rebellious adult, as she says, amusingly reminding of the child’s “Wisdom of the earth” she once was. And I like her assumed rebellion, her atypical attitude, sprinkled with sympathetic interjections.
I asked her if there is a mentor in the psychological landscape and she responded enthusiastically to me that yes, no doubt. Her name is Valentina Neacsu. She was my teacher in college, including masters courses, and I followed all of her personal development modules, initially because I wanted to learn more about myself, solving and understanding some aspects, and then I wanted to learn how to do it, how to be the moderator, but all the time because I liked it. I respect her, I love her, and even now, when some cosmic doubling comes to my mind, she receives my call. I phone her and ask, “What do you think about …? “
She responds to my curiosities with enthusiasm and attention to details, probably a quality of her job, but certainly also one of her personality. She tells me how she makes notes during her therapy, how she gathers information for what she’s going to do, and creates contexts for her patients.
The person who comes into the therapy room is like a cord pulled out of his chest and held in the palm of your hand. So vulnerable it is. Those who come to the sessions must not be protected from truth and reality, we do not have to fight for them, but we must have respect and consideration for their courage to come and expose. Until a therapeutic relationship is created, which is a process during the sessions, we are, at first, second, third discussion, just two foreigners, in which the therapist is sure of herself, is not moved or touched, and he is the vulnerable who comes and expresses his fears and failures. It has to be appreciated and respected very much to ensure that person that you will not hurt him in his moments of vulnerability, that he is safe. This is the only way in which the relationship can be formed – with the confidence that he has someone neutral in front of him, whom he can speak freely.
I avoid to give people the information, because most of the time, what is too easy will be treated the same. Keep him on the road, but do not give him the answers directly, because you do not do a favor. You make the seemingly service to shorten the therapy, but if it does not come through personal labor, it’s taken lightly or not even taken into account. Something else is when you realize that … it is your work and revelation there.
I think a person who helps others to know themselves, understand and overcome problems is a very powerful person and I tell her: How do you see the power in yourself because you are a strong one, right?
Oh, I think I’m … yes! To me the power means to believe that whatever happens, you can rebuild yourself.
It consists in learning the magic words “please,” “forgive me,” “I was wrong,” “I love you,” “I need help,” “I’m afraid.” Whenever I say it, I become emotional, I like those words, I love them, I want people to know them and to use them. Only by using them we can see their value.
Power is to work on your pride, to diminish it, it does not mean power, but fear, it is a knot of fears that we paint with gold and put it on a pedestal.
Power means you do not want to do it all alone, appreciate the team, the partnership.
Power is to ask when you do not know.
Power means respect for the other.
The work of being strong never ends, it is a route – your life and everything you learn, as I have previously said, is a delight, a pleasure, a victory.
The personal and complex definition of the power she shared with me is likely to make you nod, because these are aspects ignored by many of us in our tumultuous trajectories and too hurried to the objective, whatever it may be, but completely true. I do not know if we ignore them or we do not even know about their existence. Speaking of consciousness, to become aware of their own fears is the hardest for homo sapiens.
Do not think that Diana has no fears, thinking that she has already put it on the paper and overcome them. She confirmed that always will appear new ones, and in her life has aroused fears concerning age stages of his 17-year-old son, being afraid of drugs, of the group’s influence on the teen psyche, and that she did not have active 15 years ago the fear of old age, a thought that sometimes shakes it, but when there is order in mind and soul, not that there is no fear, but it is easier for you to manage and realize that it is natural.
Diana is a human of processes, because her present activity involves an evolution with her patients, but also because she likes the seashore, seeing the sun falling and going and feeling how the temperature changes. Her memories are not just snapshots, but a certain dynamic of things, even if she is assisting and not necessarily taking part of it.
MS: How was your childhood?
My childhood has two antagonistic sides that coexisted, and if I look at myself, the person I am now, I would say they did not coexist very badly.
My family was a very organized, ordered family. I was lucky to live in a family where there were no ugly words, disputes or abuses. I had no such thing in the house, owing them enormously because they created this environment.
On the other hand, I did not enjoy the closeness that I would have wanted from my mother. My mother was and still is a person very centered on herself – she needs it, she has to, so the world is spinning around her. It was so in my childhood, I did not know then how to explain it, but I felt it. She was just someone with rules, with limits, with sanctions, with not being done. I felt neglected, only present when something must be asked for me, to be demanded – notes, results, behaviors of some kind. When I had to receive something, it was thinner. Instead, suffocating love came from grandmother, mother of my mother, who was absolutely wonderful, as centered on her and only on her, was and is my mother, so “decentralized” and giver to all, altogether, it was grandmother.
My mother’s attitude obviously produced frustrations, materialized in the process of personal development and the decision to become a psychologist. I thank to my mother, for sure she was the catalyst, one of the reasons why I did what I did. So from a bad thing for child Diana, a really good thing came out, I would say, for Diana, the adult.
MS: But do you think your mother was so because that was her way of being or were there certain events that forced her to be in this way?
I think it was her way of being. Being a single child, my grandmother probably had given to her and only to her everything, but was also her way of being, she worked them out – we all do that. We process what we receive in our own way, according to our needs, by the way we integrate reality – and the way my mother integrates reality is too much around herself. We all integrate it around our own person, we have no other way, but my mom was too much “me” or maybe only “me”.
MS: In your presentation fragment on the site of the clinic, you wrote that more than a profession was born from your own suffering and your own questions – the joy of showing that it is possible was born. What have you lived that guided you so strongly in this direction? How did these questions sound like?
Questions are existential questions, which I think everyone has, however simple and uneducated it would be. Formulated more simply, or more intellectual, more philosophical, complex, deep, everyone has. I was referring to that kind of questions.
But there were a few things that marked me and whom I cannot say thank you for having happened, but I can tell that at least they were not in vain. First of all, the part of my childhood, because I experienced dissatisfaction with the way I felt my child soul was managed, by the excess of rigor, order and restriction. Then it was a very negative event in my life, when my first loved one – in the full sense of the word – with whom I was going to marry, committed suicide. It hurt me badly, worse than I can tell you, which pushed me quite out of the rails. I am convinced there is an angel and there is God, because if I did not have my angel, I would not be here now.
I repaired myself, even if it took me a long time and I went step by step with life, learning to live with the memory of what it was, and with the sadness of what it could be and it was not. This is an situation that can lead you easily to psychology. (she says it laughing) It’s dramatic enough to scramble into you and make you stop. Shortly after, I did my therapy, because I realized that if I did not do that, it would be impossible for me to function “in parameters.”
Hard it was, my dear, but there are many miracles in life that we can do with our minds and which we can learn we can do, one of these miracles is to be able to understand that from anything, from any situation, however traumatic it may be, including someone’s death, you can get something good. Making it so that the loss is not in vain. For me it was the fact that I reviewed my life, I went through a therapy that lasted for almost 3 years and I wanted to make myself a psychologist. Desire was forever, but it was confirmed, it decided in me that this is – sometime, somehow, that’s what I will do.
MS: What are three most important things you learned from the people in your therapy room?
Things I learned, not in the sense that they were new, but they got a very profound meaning for me, is confidentiality – first of all.
MS: And do you apply it outside the job?
Yeah, I’m “silent”. That’s how I’m as person, I’m head of the line.
MS: Even if sometimes it helps someone?
This is something else. If is a helpful piece of information, I can send it, but only on the right channel, creating a context, a relational one. But I think 3 times before.
MS: Being able to create contexts seems very useful in life.
Yeah, but you have to be careful. You have to avoid to take the therapist home, to not be stolen by the desire of wanting to do good to your loved ones, because you can’t, you do not owe it, it’s not your task. You only do bad to you, but also to them, altering relationships and mixing roles. You’re doing more harm than good. That does not mean you cannot do something, you can only breathe a little and sit for a moment – you do not save anyone, we just save ourselves if we know what to do with us and our lives. With others we fail, they save themselves or not. That does not mean not to apply the principles.
MS: Privacy and … what else?
Respect for suffering, for the needs of the other – I want to speak them in capital letters, so important these are.
Not to judge people, not to label, not to think that I know it!! To look when people in my life, and often happens, have bad behaviors with me or others, gossip, have envy, have jealousy, have heavy words and make sure that I do see in these facts, only facts, trying to understand that behind these is suffering, unhappiness, failure or something else.
In other words, for me it means that I choose to think that people are fundamentally good and that it is something that happened to them or did not happen to them that led to unpleasant behaviors and feelings. So is better to not judge. There are bad people, I’m not going to say that all people are absolutely good, but I think fundamentally they are. And being a bad man is an exceptional state, and the rest of the things people do are the result of unconscious, unfulfilled misfortunes.
MS: What comfort means to you?
Well, let’s first define comfort. The comfort for me is material and emotional.
The first is to like where I live, to enjoy where I work, to enjoy the car I drive – not just the color, to have that general state of good, not to feel an important need that I cannot satisfy. If I want a yacht for example, that is not called material comfort.
And the emotional one is to have the well-needed state of being able to interact naturally, natural to me and by common sense for others. But also the interaction should give me a state of good. This allows me to enroll in a repetitive loop of expected well-being compared to others and me, of course.
MS: What do you miss?
What a beautiful question. I miss to have time, I miss walking through places where I’ve been, I miss to discover the stuff I’ve long imagined to be there, and I miss to meet with things that I dreamed of. I miss my youth, but I do not miss the immaturity I had. I miss certain experiences that you find harder to produce or harder to expose at a certain age, but I do not miss the immaturity that came with those experiences. I miss pieces of myself and of the others, just pieces.
MS: Have you ever been stuck in your routine without realizing?
Yes, I stuck, but not without realizing, at least not in the last 15 years. That I could not, sometimes because of my helplessness, sometimes for relatively objective reasons, come out as quickly and as well as I would have liked, yes. But not to be conscious of joining the hamster wheel, no.
MS: Where is the limit?
Our lives are composed of more routines, and it is impossible to survive without them, because we get tired and crazy if we have constant stimulants. It just sounds interesting, but when we have this avalanche of stimulants, the ground under our feet runs away, and those who claim otherwise, they have to find the source of desperation regarding the permanent new. Because even the new, like many other very good things, is not good anymore when it’s too much.
MS: What do you think is the worst thing in the world?
Wars in the name of religion, in the name of peace and in the name of freedom. The cruelest thing in the world is – we, the humans. Evil things in the world – what people do. Nature is cruel, if you see a lion-eaten gazelle, you tend to be on the side of the gas and say, “Wow, what a bad lion”, if you see a starving lion dying, say, “It is so sad that a powerful animal is dying.” We are situationally placed on one side or another, but nature has a beauty and a greatness of cruelty and perfection. The only ones who are cruel for free are we, humans, what we do and what we say or what we do not and what we are not saying, because we are not healed inside.
MS: How do you define a healthy couple relationship?
It is a relationship that is being built every day. I define it for myself as less psychologically speaking as: if you love to go home; if you love being at home when you hear the door open and the other enter; if you enjoy eating with the other; if you expect it – reasonably long, not 7 hours, to come to eat together; if you want to go out with him in the city – in two, or if you like it and do not feel embarrassed to go out with him or her in his society or yours; if you feel at ease with him or her anywhere; if you have what to speak at home, in privacy; if there is humor; if we want to do things together and if we do it without going into competition – we come in sometimes, but be aware and just let it go …
MS: When do you say competition what do you mean?
I know better, I do better … or last time I ceased, now you have to … maybe you let it go by 25 times … maybe 125 times … I do not know.
MS: But what will remain from you if you will cease so many times?
Well, it depends what you leave. You have to leave what does not really hurt you. You have to define yourself very well, you have to define very clearly your true needs, which you can express and negotiate. And ignore the others, because you can live without them.
And if I feel I cannot, I should renegotiate again. A healthy relationship is a relationship that can be reasonable and respectfully renegotiable. We change every day, so a healthy relationship is a renegotiating relationship. But, I repeat, reasonably and with respect for the other and for me, renegotiable.
MS: What are your ambitions?
My ambitions are many. But let’s know that ambitions often overlap with our fears. For example, I wish I could leave something behind me because I was afraid of death; I would like to be with someone, as they say, “to know about me”, because I’m afraid of being insignificant. I’d like to say what I want, the ambitions sound a little negative.
MS: Yes, of course.
I want to do the things well, either they are related to family or my personal relationships, but not at all costs, because more and more, I like to relate myself well to me. If I had a choice in making someone happy with my cost, I choose not to do it, but whenever it can be good for both myself and the others, of course it does. I’m happy to do these things, but if I have a choice, I choose myself.
MS: What important things do you think you need to teach your son, what are the permanent aspects to which he always has to relate?
I think the personal model is the most powerful example I can give.
I want to teach him to communicate, to speak when he has something to say and at the same time to be careful about the tone used. Then is the well-done thing – not perfectionist, but with respect for what you do; respect for others; the lesson of empathy – to be able to put on the other’s slippers (but get out of there, not stay in them and mourn together). Empathy does not mean that I’m dominated, controlled, someone’s carpet, but I’m there and I try to understand the interlocutor’s perspective.
Another aspect is the permanent assessment of reality, in the notion of not hurrying with labeling. I want to teach him to always ask the question: What would I do if I were in his place? Few people know this, the more a teenager – he is by definition the belly of the universe, but I try to teach him and he seems to be listening. I want to be aware of the importance of respect for the family and the time spent together, in proportion to his age. I refer to that status of retrieval at certain meals, for example, Sunday morning or Saturday morning, it is important. For us it is a brunch, not a breakfast which we prepare together. It has already become a ritual, each has its own role and contributes to the whole with joy.
To know the truth and to have the courage to say it. To defend his rights with responsibility to others because we are not in savanna, neither lion nor gazelle.
I warn you, if you meet her, Diana Miron is smart, with lack of daily modesty and adorable, even when she is eating a pretzel. Colloquially speaking, she’s cool! And I really want you to know her!
More about her professional activities you can find at Clinica Oana Nicolau.
