Why Am I So Shitty Even Though Everything Seems To Be Fine

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

One of the not-so-rare requests of a client during a session with a psychologist may sound like this: "It seems that everything is fine, but something really sucks to me." This formulation looks completely Dostoevsky, but the mysterious Russian soul has absolutely nothing to do with it. The question is, WHAT a person is used to considering "normal" for himself, how he generally defines the criteria for "norms" and what effect this has on his entire daily life.

How do we even understand that some things in our life are “normal”? Let me explain with an example from my own life. In early childhood (up to 6 years old) I went to kindergarten. An ordinary courtyard kindergarten in a residential area. It was very difficult to get a place in it, and, as I understand it, there were not enough educators either. Those who worked in it used very, very strange educational measures. For example, they made you eat everything on your plate, regardless of whether you want to eat it or not. And those who did not finish eating or dug over the portion (like me, for example), they intensified: they simply dumped the second dish into the half-eaten first one. And they didn’t let me leave the table with the wording: “Eat like this until you’ve eaten everything, you’ll sit.” Until now, there is a picture in front of my eyes: a cottage cheese casserole is plopping into an almost completely full plate of borscht, which I have been choking on for half an hour. And sails, cutting borscht, like a small battleship. And I, a little girl who believes in adults, look at this and realize with horror that everything, now I will sit over this mess until my parents pick me up in the evening. Because there is such a lump, I am simply physically unable to vomit. It's disgusting to look at her.

But the adult aunt-educators promised that they would not let me go until I had eaten. And I will never eat this. So I have to sit here forever. Well, in the end, they let me out of the table that time before my mother came (there will be no teachers, in fact, for the sake of me alone, they change the daily routine - games, walks, etc.), but sitting at the table, I did not know this and sincerely believed that yes, this is my fate now - to sit in front of the hated pigs and desperately yearn and suffer. Then, many years later, when I left kindergarten a long time ago (I graduated from school and university), I told my mother about the pedagogical methods of our educators. Not to complain - but, by the way, I had to. Mom was horrified: “What a nightmare they were doing! Why didn't you tell me about it then? " My mother would not have tolerated such treatment of her daughter - she would have come in person and smashed this stupid garden brick by brick. In response, I was just as stunned and said what first came to my mind: “I didn't know that something was wrong here. I thought that it should be so … ". It seems to me that this answer of mine is the key to so many problems that clients come to a psychologist with.

THAT APPEAL TO WHICH A PERSON IS USED IS THE ONLY POSSIBLE AND EVEN NORMAL. The child is accustomed to the fact that every Friday dad comes drunk in the trash, vomits on the stairs and lies down to rest across the communal corridor - well, that's how it should be, but what's so surprising? Dad is tired. Or - a daughter or son will get used to the fact that no one in the family will raise their voices, and raising a grandmother's eyebrow is a sign of something terrible, frightening, before which adults tremble, which means that this is the norm for this social unit. Grandma will be unhappy, offended! Isn't it scary?

If children are beaten in a family, this is also NORMA for the little man. It is so accepted in our country. So that's how it should be. So I deserve it. Didn't the other parents beat you? Well, maybe they weren't there. And they beat me - it means I deserve it. They beat me once. Moreover, he considers the treatment that the child receives as correct and normal in relation to himself. If the mother introduced the child to the fact that “if I hadn’t given birth to you, I would have left this fucking country and lived like people” - it is clear, this is my fault, but the fucking country is a fact; Mom said.

The thought: "Mom got excited, but in fact she loves me and I am for her the most precious thing in the world" at the age of five cannot come to a child's head. Hits - it means I'm bad; did something bad; well, and serves me right. Mom scolds and chases: “I don’t need you like that, live alone” - that means she really wants to throw it out (and not that “she uses a pedagogical method for greater controllability”). The environment in which the child constantly lives is not just a model of the world for him; it is a coordinate system and an idea of the normal, of what it deserves.

Young children generally find it difficult to distinguish reality from exaggeration or fiction. That is why children believe in fairy tales, Santa Claus and babayka. And also in the fact that my mother really "will give someone else's uncle if I behave badly", well, or "I don't need you, live alone now." The child has nothing to compare with yet, he only collects information about this world. Believes in what parents say (and do).

All this happens because the concept of norms is laid down in a child at a very early age, even before school. And changing it is extremely difficult. When a child comes into the world, one of his key tasks is to become a member of society, society. A very small kid, two or three years old, actively masters the language and learns it - even the most difficult languages, with difficult pronunciation, or those where different pitch or intonation gives the word a different meaning. The little man is very strongly motivated to understand what is happening in the world around him, and most of all he wants to integrate into this world, to become a part of it - in order to survive. For a long time, a human baby needs the care and care of adult members of the community, therefore, the assimilation of the norms, rules, attitudes of society is in the most literal sense a matter of survival for the child. And from this point of view, it is safer to integrate into the community as “the last in the hierarchy”, persecuted and spurned, than to be thrown out of the group altogether. Therefore, a small child will learn practically ANY standards of self-treatment. They will beat them every day - yes, that means it is necessary, just do not drive them. They will scold and call names, consider it unsuccessful, crooked, foolish and inept - will accept and believe it; but do they not drive, just scold? This means that the most terrible thing was again avoided; although it will not be very fun, but I will survive!

And this is not a joke at all - about "kick out of the group." The fact is that humanity as a species has lived a long life, and millennia have passed from it precisely in relatively small groups, tribal communities, to be expelled from which could be quite real - for some misdeeds or, for example, a carrier of a fatal disease who could infect fellow tribesmen. And a lonely existence in a not always friendly nature almost always meant hunger and cold death for a child. So the “voice of the ancestors” quietly whispers to the child: “Anything, whatever, just to remain a member of the community of their own kind; REJECTION = DEATH". Rejection by significant people of the community (first of all, by mother and father) is something that the child tries to avoid by all means. Even though taking the blame for everything that happens and gradually learning how bad he is and how badly you can treat him.

By the way, the now fashionable "social confirmation" is from the same opera. Advertisers and marketers are trying to convince: the buyer tends to trust the opinions of other people (for example, those who give a high rating to the advertised product), and the more these advisors look like the buyer, the more he believes their opinion. The roots of this belief in “social confirmation” are the same: the person sees: “the community of people like me believes that object X is a useful thing for survival; probably it is; perhaps it is worth buying it! ". And, you know, paying for the trust of the wrong people with just money and buying an unnecessary gizmo is not the worst thing. But when a child pays with the only thing that he possesses - self-esteem, personality and character formation, opinion about himself - it is much, much more expensive.

And in the work of a psychologist, a large, very large part of the work is not just to listen to the client, but to help him create new boundaries, that is, the attitude: "You can't do this with me." SO. CO. ME. IT IS FORBIDDEN. You can't beat me. Swear abusively. Call a whore and rip my stuff up. Throwing at me with a knife, belt, stick, rubber band, chair leg. It is also impossible to break my arms, legs, ribs. Take and burn my toys. Putting my animals to sleep and not admitting it ("Fluff ran away, probably"). Humiliate and ridicule me in front of relatives, friends, acquaintances, my classmates. You cannot hide important things about me and loved ones (for example, not telling about the year that my grandmother died). You can't deprive me of food. It is impossible to deny me care when I am sick or weak, and much, much more is not allowed. All of the above - I did not come up with it, but at different times the clients told me at the sessions; with them all these things were once done by their parents (mothers, fathers, grandmothers). And, believe me, I sometimes felt a rather frightening feeling when, for example, I expressed doubt to a person that his family was “good, friendly, loving”, since dad regularly severely beat children, and mom diligently pretended not to notice anything … Because the client was sincerely surprised: what's wrong with that? Well, he beat, well, he was bullied. But after all, it was a normal family! Everything else was good! This is not normal, I say emphatically. From a socio-psychological point of view, any attitudes can be called "norms", but some of the norms that are regularly practiced in relation to the weak are wild (according to modern ideas) and cannot be tolerated.

Here's what I want to make a final note. What has happened cannot be changed. The childhood that you had - it already was. As one psychological saying goes: "If you didn't have a bicycle in your childhood, and now you grew up and bought yourself a Bentley, you still didn't have a bicycle in your childhood." … So, many of us (I also, by the way) did not have a "bicycle".

And the attitude towards oneself in the spirit: “I am not worthy not only of a bicycle, but also of a single bicycle wheel” - many have remained with it. And a person walks through life with such a "bicycle-free" attitude, and "does not buy a bicycle" for years - he does not believe that he is worthy of love, happiness, respect, success. And he sincerely feels that everything seems to be "normal", but I somehow really suck. I can't buy a bicycle for myself. Abuse and childish grievances cannot be reversed.

You can help your current self and help you become happier. That is, to change the idea of "norm" and "normal" in relation to oneself. I will not lie, it is long, difficult and not always pleasant in the process. But it might work.