Sometimes it is nice when dreams come true. But sometimes it also destroys our hope. What you should know about Paris syndrome
Paris. The city of love. Wherever you look, people go hand in hand. It smells of warm, freshly baked croissants. Street musicians play these typical French chansons, which are known from various films and series. Plus the Eiffel Tower in the background – you just have to see it!
Paris syndrome: dream meets reality
At least some people think that – especially if he has never been there. In fact, Paris is just a big city like many others. In which it rains, stinks of exhaust fumes and rushes people to work and annoyed honking if you walk too slowly on the street. And can bitterly disappoint the tourists who had imagined pure romance. In fact, there are even known cases in which visitors from Japan developed delusions, panic attacks or depression when their dream of Paris was shattered by reality.
At the end of the eighties, the psychiatrist Hiroaki Ota, who worked in France, coined the term "Paris syndrome" in this context, which refers primarily to the disappointment about a vacation destination that he imagined was a paradise. But it doesn't have to be about the city of love or holidays so that we can experience the Paris syndrome firsthand: Every dream carries the risk of disappointing us if it comes true.
Whether it's the weight we wanted to achieve, the raise we had to fight for, or the handbag that we could finally afford to save after four months: we often find that what we thought that we are missing to be happy, that when we have it, we are not happy at all – at least not in the long term. And then suddenly not only is our goal futschikato, but also our hope or dream.
How to protect yourself from Paris syndrome
Does that mean we shouldn't have dreams and goals? Of course not! Goals and dreams give us motivation and meaning, so we should never stop dreaming – and neither can we. However, we should not make our happiness dependent on the fulfillment of a dream, but search in the here and now.
Most of our attention always deserves the things and people that we have and that surround us, not those that we want and that we lack. And we can train that – that is, to focus our happiness on the flowers on the way instead of on the wreath at the goal. For example, by practicing gratitude on a regular basis and focusing our attention on what is positive in our lives.
The good thing about it: if we can do it once and be satisfied with reality without all our desires being fulfilled, we can measure and dream as big as we want and are still immune to Paris syndrome – because our dreams don't have to come true to be happy. The reality then does not have to correspond to our ideas so that we feel comfortable in it, and Paris does not have to be the city of love that smells of croissants so that we can spend a wonderful holiday there. In truth, it is neither reality nor our dreams that we are disappointed with – it is us.
Incidentally, a little tip: If you look at travel and fashion hypes or fitness goals on Instagram for three hours a day, you are actually training the opposite of what was said, i.e. H. to focus on what he lacks. This not only promotes general dissatisfaction, but also increases the susceptibility to Paris syndrome – after all, everything on Instagram always seems nicer than in reality.