YAZHPSYCHOLOGIST Or How Professional Vanity Gets In The Way Of Solving Our Problems

Video: YAZHPSYCHOLOGIST Or How Professional Vanity Gets In The Way Of Solving Our Problems

Video: YAZHPSYCHOLOGIST Or How Professional Vanity Gets In The Way Of Solving Our Problems
Video: Keep Your Beauty Supplies Organized with this Vanity Table and Mirror Set | PBteen 2024, March
YAZHPSYCHOLOGIST Or How Professional Vanity Gets In The Way Of Solving Our Problems
YAZHPSYCHOLOGIST Or How Professional Vanity Gets In The Way Of Solving Our Problems
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Nevertheless, in the public perception, the opinion is being strengthened that a psychologist should not have his own "problems", and if there are any, he must completely solve them and learn to live in something like Zen or Nirvana - without emotions, without " difficult days”, without worry, without pain, without stress. And the saddest thing is that these are not only myths widespread among people far from psychology: very often psychologists themselves fall into the illusion of their own omnipotence. More precisely, having fallen under the charm of the image of a “specialist who has no problems of his own,” they begin to strive for the ideal of a super-wise and super-adaptive human machine, as unattainable as unnecessary.

The American existential psychologist Rollo May once said this best of all: “I asked myself:“What should a person have in order to become a good psychotherapist? the very person who can really help other people in this fabulously long journey of the psychoanalyst? It was clear enough to me that this was not an adaptation or an adaptation - an adaptation that we so naively and so ignorantly talked about as graduate students. I knew that well adapted a person who comes in and sat down to have an interview will not become a good psychotherapist. Adaptation is exactly the same as neurosis, and that is the person's problem."

There is not only something narcissistic in our striving for an “insensitive” ideal - it is also an attempt to defend ourselves with the help of the rational from everything that can unsettle us, from everything that frightens, worries, and torments. But the refusal to come into contact with those contradictions that are inevitable when living your life (and not just being in it), unwillingness to admit your weaknesses, reduce the psychologist's chances for healing and self-improvement. Note that even the “forced” mandatory personal therapy for psychologists is powerless here: many colleagues, turning a blind eye to their own symptoms, are sure that they are undergoing personal therapy for the sake of personal growth, self-improvement, and so on. And, hiding their own symptoms from themselves, guided by shame and fear of facing a sense of powerlessness, they do not tolerate their deepest problems for personal therapy. It is often even more scary to show your weakness and incompetence in front of a therapist colleague, to admit symptoms of depression or neurosis, especially if you have enough knowledge to evaluate the significance of this symptom. As a result, a person can visit his own therapist for years, entertaining him with “safe” from the point of view of his own professional pride, “insights” and discussing with him those problems that a psychologist is “not ashamed” to have. This is done unconsciously: the specialist does not deliberately hide information from his therapist. He hides her from himself. He doesn't want to touch her.

A feeling of professional powerlessness covers such a psychologist at the moment when it becomes impossible to ignore a symptom or problem. Usually at this moment a person experiences "two crises in one": on the one hand, this is normal pain from a collision with something that seems intolerable and frightening, on the other, a professional crisis, reminiscent of narcissistic depression: after all, all this time our psychologist was striving to an unattainable ideal, trying to become a person who cannot have such problems.

There is something deeply vicious and hypocritical about this: we treat the deep conflicts, fears, fantasies and neuroses of our clients with acceptance and non-judgmental understanding, sometimes spending a lot of time to convince them that they should not be ashamed of their problems, that having uncontrollable, frightening, or overwhelming feelings does not make them bad, weak, or unnecessary. But at the same time, we carefully defend ourselves against collision with the same experiences, trying to maintain a "metaposition" in relation to our own life, devaluing or denying our own suffering, refusing to accept that we are just people.

As a child, it seemed to us that parents are omnipotent, omniscient and do not know how to problems. When we were faced with the impotence of parents, with their weaknesses, with their mistakes, we felt horror at our own defenselessness and vulnerability. The same feelings drive our clients: they believe that the people who help them know exactly what to do, have no questions, never make mistakes, and experience neither fear nor pain. And we ourselves, having learned to "adapt" and rationalize, are trying to become such - not only for clients, but also for ourselves. Not seeing symptoms that tell us something that we don't want to admit to ourselves. Don't make mistakes. Completely "understand yourself": that is, not to face uncertainty, ambivalence, weakness, conflicts.

Fear of admitting your own weaknesses is one of the most common and most frightening weaknesses in our profession. We have self-disclosure skills, so we often talk quite frankly about some problems that other people find it difficult to admit, but at the same time we can lie to ourselves and lead ourselves by the nose for years, not wanting to come into contact with something that does not fit with our own self-image, which makes us vulnerable to criticism, which seems to us a reason for condemnation from colleagues. The level of knowledge and work skills help us to deceive ourselves and our supervisors quite effectively: this "elephant in the room" may not be noticed even by the most experienced specialists, so it is not worth expecting that a personal therapist or supervisor will "find" the problem on his own. Just as you should not deceive yourself, thinking that since nothing of this kind in personal therapy aimed at professional growth, nothing "comes out", then you have successfully coped with all your internal contradictions, and you will never face them again.

There is a lot of strength, responsibility and freedom in realizing that despite education, experience, introspection skills and ability to work, you continue to be human. There is a great deal of mercy in treating your inner conflicts and weaknesses with the same acceptance you would treat your patients' symptoms. There is a lot of honesty to be able to admit to yourself that you are not perfect. And there is a lot of wisdom in not devaluing your professional qualities and experience when faced with something unbearable, painful, shameful or overwhelming - in yourself.

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