2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
At some point, the psychologist has to become a destroyer of illusions of the traumatic client - not out of malice and not on purpose. But you have to show that the real world is the real world, and some of your dreams will never be embodied in it. Sorry, I'm very bitter, but some things are simply physically impossible.
And here from the psychotherapist is required resistance to affect (violent manifestation of emotions) and the ability not to leave the raging client alone, but to be present sympathetically. The client may be angry and furious, or he may simply mourn the unfulfilled with all the strength of passion, but it will look frightening.
The traumatic client, as you might guess, is a deeply unhappy and wounded creature. Since childhood, he is accustomed to abuse, lack of support, the need to independently resolve issues for which he is not ready by age and level of maturity (premature separation is about this). He is exhausted and exhausted. And so he gets to the psychotherapist and receives a portion of sincere support and participation. “You are kind and good! - screams a wounded traumatic man, - then now I have to get everything, everything, everything that I have been underdone for decades. And I will get it from you. And the traumatic person puts the burden of claims and unfulfilled expectations on the psychologist for decades. And it requires love, total availability, control and mind reading (yes, yes! Love me the way I want, give me what I need. No, you love me wrong. You say the wrong words, look wrong, wrong smiling!). And if the therapist does not guess (and he does not guess with high chances), the traumatic person becomes angry and angry. And stomps and screams.
Actually, normally, the stage in which the child gets to know the real world had to go through much earlier. When a two-year-old stomps on her parents with tiny feet and is terribly indignant that her beloved mother does not give candy, but, on the contrary, puts her in bed and insists on a boring dream after dinner - it touches. The kid is such a sweetheart, tiny and completely harmless, his anger is so charming. When an adult, hefty uncle or auntie (You don't understand me! I'm not important to you! You are the same as everyone else !!!) is, you know, a frightening sight when an adult hefty uncle or aunt shouts at you and shouts in the office. I know psychologists who simply cannot withstand the client's affect, are frightened by their rage and - someone freezes, depicting a marble statue, someone says empty "correct" words in an attempt to calm down. Traumatic, of course, it does not calm down in the least. The traumatic client is usually accustomed to the fact that his strong feelings are either ignored or outright prohibited (for example, in the parental family it was believed that “there is no need to indulge children's tantrums,” so they forbade the child to show strong negative feelings). Therefore, a traumatic person often grows up with an inner irrational confidence that his negative feelings are terrible and deadly. And that they can hurt and kill directly, yes, yes. Ouch. I seem to have killed the psychologist? …
And one more nuance. The traumatic person of true, healthy love and full-fledged, non-narcissistic acceptance has never seen it before - accordingly, he does not know what it is like. The traumatic only dreamed of the inaccessible: “So someday I will find my Home. There they will always wait for me and love me. ALWAYS. And there I will get everything without which I felt so bad for these years”. Accordingly, to that place and to that person who gives love and acceptance are unrealistic expectations. This person should always be available, understand without words, say exactly what the traumatic person wants to hear, take care of it appropriately (and when I don’t need to - not to meddle with my stupid concern!), Etc. In general, be ideal. Guess what's the catch? There are no ideals. An ideal person was not born on Earth. No, and the psychotherapist is no exception - he sometimes makes mistakes, sometimes misunderstands, and sometimes, on the contrary, climbs with his inappropriate words of support, well, is it really not clear that I want to be alone !!! The phase in which the child is faced with the imperfection of the mother and the fact that she does not always understand him, I repeat, with normal development, a person passes quite early.
By the way, according to the same psychological mechanism, the expectations of, for example, alcoholics and codependents develop: all expectations of a better life are "dumped" into the idea of getting rid of addiction. Everything, choh. So, the wife of an alcoholic is sure: here the husband will be cured of drunkenness, and then we will live! We will travel abroad, we will buy good things, we will invite guests, we will put the children on their feet, we will help our old mother … organize themselves. Here are just Vasenkin's alcoholism, if only to collect it … And the alcoholic himself is sure: if I can handle the vodka, I will immediately find a good job, and there will be plenty of money, and my wife will be affectionate-friendly-beautiful, she is now so rude because I drink … All damn vodka! I can handle vodka - and grief does not matter! Then I can handle everything! And neither the drinker himself nor his devoted wife knows that he will stop drinking - the problem of alcoholism and only alcoholism will be solved. Neither a kind wife nor obedient children will automatically become; good positions and a solid salary will not fall at work, all this needs to be obtained by hard work. But for an alcoholic, all positive expectations are focused on one point: "Here I will quit drinking, and then a wonderful time will come!"
It is the same for a traumatic person. While he, exhausted, is looking for someone who would listen to him and support him in a huge cruel world, it seems to him that it is worth finding a kind person, support, the very House, Where They Always Wait - and the rest of the problems will be solved by themselves. This is not the case.
And this is precisely the difficult moment in psychotherapeutic work with a traumatic client. When you need to show a person that even when he cope with his problem, the guaranteed Golden Age will not come, he will not always be good, and friendship and love will remain only human friendship and love (that is, sometimes finite; I heard from clients- traumatics: "Why should I trust a person, if there is still NO GUARANTEE THAT IS THIS FOREVER ???"). Once-loving spouses get divorced, former friends part; in the end, as Woland said, "a person is suddenly mortal" - that is, there will never be a traumatic person in the country of guaranteed eternal prosperity. I repeat, normally, even in preschool age, a person completes the stage when he sincerely believes in his own absolute immortality and is confident in the boundless, absolute and unchanging kindness of his parents. Growing up, the child outgrows this phase and realizes that the world is not ideal: the mother is good, but she can get angry, punish, and sometimes unjustly offend (but at the same time she will not cease to be the mother herself). An adult traumatic client is forced to lose the illusion of ideality rather painfully (“I have to become ideal and then they will love me infinitely and will never be offended in my life”). And you will not become ideal: no one in the world has succeeded in becoming an ideal, well, you will not be the first. And if you are loved, then a living person will love, but he is imperfect, makes mistakes and can sometimes do you not only good, but also bad. And a meeting with this reality means the death of illusions, and it is difficult and painful.
It somehow reminds me of chickenpox: children get sick with it easily and almost imperceptibly. And if an unvaccinated adult picks up the chickenpox virus, the disease will be extremely painful and even life-threatening. So it is not cheap for an adult traumatic to experience childhood illusions …
But when a traumatic client meets reality, the therapist will almost always be present. He will see both the client's despair and his pain. And he will be able to give him not ideal, endless, guaranteed love and total acceptance - but human sympathy, human support and acceptance of one person by another person. This is not so little, although intoxicated with dreams of ideal total acceptance and support for traumatic people, he still does not believe in this. The collision of dreams with reality will be painful. But, if at this moment there is another living, supportive person nearby - a psychotherapist - then the client has a chance to grow and change.
And this is not so little.
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