2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
Neurosis does not mean being nervous. Symptoms, genesis and cure of the modern neurotic person
Neurosis is the pain and stamp of our time: selfish, fast, when people know a lot technically and live in comfort, but have forgotten how to love. The horror is that, if not the majority, then a very large percentage of people are neurotic. The origin of neurosis is also sad: the traumatic treatment of a person in childhood, as a rule, by his parents.
And the neurotic himself resembles an athlete with excellent inclinations: a leader, a strong man, a kind and deep, intelligent person. But the limbs, they are also possibilities, will and energy potential are atrophied due to parental criticism, coercion, prohibitions and various types of violence: psychological, emotional, physical, and sometimes sexual.
In the excellent short story by science fiction writer Robert Sheckley, "Minimum Man", the protagonist is so unlucky that he decides to commit suicide. But - lo and behold! He was selected for the experiment as … "human minimum". Minimum viable specimen. On an unknown planet, a new robot will do everything for him, and all he has to do is … be what he was all his life - a "minimum", that is, a weak-willed and powerless neurotic. If he survives with the help of a unique robot in a wild planet, then anyone will survive.
The most interesting thing is that the hero masters himself and decides that he can do more: build himself, think for himself, live for himself! And then the robot turns against him - we did not agree so, you must be helpless. As if Stolz began to suppress all Oblomov's ideas. This robot, protecting a person from himself, from maturity, from responsibility, from life - is the best metaphor for neurosis.
Let's give a less colorful definition? Neurosis is the inhibition of personality development due to childhood psychological trauma. A neurotic personality has strange fears and phobias due to illogical thinking, is dependent on close people, is afraid of new things and is afraid of changes, has an external locus of control and weak emotional-volitional activity.
A short list of signs of a neurotic personality
"Only number 1". Desire to be the best and to inspire admiration (neurotic pride).
Miss Excellence. The desire to be perfect (perfectionism), to always look great, to achieve everything easily and immediately (neurotic attitudes).
"I always have to." The harshest demands on oneself and others are to do a lot and perfectly (tyranny "must").
"What will people say." Dependence on external assessment (external locus of control).
"Ok, whatever you say." The habit of accepting the opinions of others (conformity).
"Life is difficult." "Ability" to fail and "get stuck in history" (negative subconscious scenarios).
“Come to the hayloft! The blacksmith is with me. Manipulative games.
"Emelya on the stove and Pike". Atrophied ability to take action to improve one's life.
"Hurray, flu, we are not going to work today!" Secondary benefits from learned helplessness, disease.
"If you love me, then go to the store right now!" Emotional manipulation to provide a sense of security.
"Get out of my life! I can not without you! There was nothing yesterday. " Difficulty with psychological autonomy, emotional closeness, and spontaneity.
The origin of neurosis
The parents did not prepare the neurotic for life, but only traumatized them with screams, scandals, name-calling, ridicule, nagging, demands for absolute obedience and obedience. Parents themselves are usually neurotic personalities: weak, childishly impulsive, unlucky. Consciously they can give correct advice "study well", "earn money" and so on, but subconsciously they show an example of an unsuccessful and unhappy life. And so neurotic pathology is passed on to generations and generations.
For example, a young guy does not work, drinks, constantly experiences strange fears, phobias, gets into trouble. And his parents are the same! Dad drinks, mom works at an unloved job, is afraid to get another job and is even more afraid of starting her own business. She cannot leave her husband, she is afraid of responsibility. It is the government and the "rich" to blame such a family for the troubles, and the main occupation is the inactive pastime in front of the TV.
Neurotic parents often change roles with their children, experiencing the illusion that now the responsibility has disappeared from them - the children are already grown up! They expect financial and often psychological well-being from children, shifting their role to them: to support, help, comfort. And the children themselves are in complete time trouble, because no one taught them to be adults, there was no example and help. Only wine is also added: how can I not help my parents …
The motto of the neurotic personality is "be patient and do nothing." Only a fire will pull him out of the cluttered apartment and force him to re-paste the wallpaper. Well, or condemnation of neighbors, distant relatives. People with neuroses are very dependent on other people's opinions, have no experience in making decisions, even in the smallest things they doubt and are terrified when it is necessary to decide something.
Portrait of a neurotic personality
Lazy, overweight, smoking, drinking, procrastinating, resentful and vulnerable. The neurotic's fears, although they have no ground, form a bizarre kaleidoscope of phobias and thinking errors from “what will they think of me?” And “I have a heart (or any other) attack” to “only thieves and prostitutes get more than a hundred thousand.”
Some of them are: fear of error, fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of judgment, fear of going somewhere, fear of getting close to people, fear of showing emotions, fear of being yourself, fear of living, fear of rejoicing, fear of doing something, fear to change, fear of being alone, fear of being intimate …
And then - all the phobias: agoraphobia, claustrophobia, social phobia and ad infinitum … In the scientific classification (ICD-10 "Neurotic disorders") neuroses are divided according to the main fear: obsessive-compulsive neurosis, cardioneurosis. But the essence is the same. By the way, a neurotic is now sure to go looking for his disorder in the ICD-10, find it and get scared.
The neurotic is programmed to fail. Subconsciously, he will surely ruin success: he will be late, scared, nervous, dislocate his leg. And then he will suffer. In a stressful situation, for example, with a new promising job, the neurotic falls into a scenario state and fails. Yes, “endure” and “failure” are the main vocabulary of the neurotic.
Neurotic individuals act out three types of subconscious negative life scenarios in life (without love, without joy, and without reason). The former do not have a good personal life, because they choose partners who reproduce their childhood neuroses according to a familiar pattern. The latter live in poverty or poverty and will not strike a finger to change something in their life (in their opinion, this is impossible). And the very first failure makes you fold your pens. Mindless scenarios are stories of ridiculous mistakes that get a person into trouble. Things are not going my way…
The neurotic achieves its goals with great difficulty. Easily distracted, procrastinates (procrastinates) better than anyone. It is typical for him to overeat at night or get on credit for a brand new phone. We inspire, amenable to manipulation - on vanity, on praise, which he so lacked then and still lacks now.
A person with neurosis and relationships are another story. He is afraid to get close to people, there is a huge distrust, fears, phobias, hostility. A partner is sought on the principle of compensation for the shortage from the parents: mom or dad. Manipulative games are practiced, sexuality is based on impulses of humiliation. Then there is adhesion to a partner, erasure of personal boundaries, codependency and relationships according to the principle of the "Karpman triangle".
The neurotic person has a special relationship with his aggression. He simply denies it ("I am a kind person, I will not offend a fly"), which is why it accumulates inside and then is projected onto other people. For example, a neurotic person suffering from a social phobia attributes denied internal aggression to casual fellow travelers on the subway: "Why are they whispering so evil about me?" A woman can see simply calculating evil geniuses in loved ones, interpreting their innocent actions as attempts to harm her. A dear, sympathetic colleague, and she criticizes with a smile so that it would be better to move her elbow.
Overcoming neuroses with the help of accelerated personality development in the framework of psychotherapy
What is left for a person with neurosis, especially if he has just read this article and recognized himself with bitterness? Of course, overcoming neurosis is possible. Remembering Sheckley's story, the hero fought off several attacks of a merciless omnipotent robot and survived, having learned to love life and rely on himself. It is quite possible to become, if not a “human maximum” (an authentic person), but an average person without groundless fears, successful in his business, happy in his personal life. Remove the brakes that prevent you from enjoying yourself and achieving your goals - with the help of psychotherapy.
The main idea of overcoming neurosis is to add new psychological knowledge and missing skills to oneself, as well as to correct cognitive impairments. By leaps and bounds to catch up with the "average" classmates - to engage in the accelerated development of personality together with a psychotherapist. And then overtake, because why stop already? Development is very exciting.
A well-thought-out system of psychotherapeutic exercises gives a person new knowledge and corrects negative attitudes, delusions, scenarios received from parents. After such work, the neurotic person receives new behavioral strategies that help to be a more plastic and integrative person, that is, to be able to creatively cope with problems.
A neurotic person has one form of response to one situation in reserve (resentment - silence). The average person, so to speak, an immature personality, has a couple of options (resentment - silence or talking with claims). An authentic person already has 36 response strategies for a situation. Ultimately, this enhances adaptation and leads to success.
Also, progress can be tracked on the personality maturity test. As a percentage, the level of personality development of a person with neurosis fluctuates around 30 percent, 45 percent is an ordinary person, also immature, but no longer shy and inactive as a neurotic person. At a level of 65-70 percent, a person is considered to be already authentic (psychologically mature).
At this level of development, there are already skills to create normal relationships with the opposite sex without manipulative games and negative subconscious scenarios, without codependency and violation of personal boundaries. A person can engage in self-development with a career "coach" (he will be able to set himself skills in practice, and not just listen to the training as a lecture). And he will no longer have the neurotic psychopathology that neurotic parents usually pass on to children in the family. But we are getting ahead of ourselves …
As neurotic researcher Karen Horney wrote, a neurotic may decide to drop fears to meet people. And this is the only true path on which a cure awaits. You can change yourself. It will be scary, painful and hard. But it's worth a try.
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