2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
Mental trauma affects a person at different levels of the individual-personal organization, including at the level of the picture of the world. What is meant by the picture of the world in this context?
In English-language terminology there is the phrase "assumptive world", that is, the world of human assumptions about reality. The picture of the world is understood as the totality of his ideas about himself and about external reality, as well as about the relationship between "I" and external reality. These beliefs are called basic beliefs. As applied to trauma, the concept of basic beliefs was developed by the American researcher Ronnie Yanov-Bulman. She described a conceptual system for representing the relationship between man and the world through several basic beliefs.
1. Basic belief about the benevolence / hostility of the world
The first is the belief about the goodwill / hostility of the surrounding world, which reflects the attitude towards the world in terms of good / hostile or good / bad. In general, the inner concept regarding the world of most adults, healthy people who do not suffer from depression or any other disorders, is that there is much more good than bad in the world, that people in general can be trusted, that in difficult situations, as a rule, people ready to help.
This basic belief in the context of the study of trauma is divided into two types: the first is the benevolence / hostility of the personal world, that is, people, and the second is the benevolence / hostility of the non-personal world, that is, nature.
2. Ideas of fairness, self-worth and luc
The second basic belief is the so-called fairness belief. This is a very complex construct, it correlates in different ways with the psychological well-being of a person, but nevertheless, according to the results of research, most people believe that, in general, good and bad events in the world are distributed not by chance, people are able to control what happens to them, life affects on this, and in general, if a person is good and performs mostly good deeds, good events will and should generally occur in his life. Thus, to some extent, the factor of chance is eliminated.
The third basic belief concerns the person's self. This includes the idea of self-worth, that is, how much a person is worthy of love, respect for himself from other people. These are internal, deep structures. Here Yanov-Bulman includes the idea of a person about his ability to control what is happening to him, to control situations in his life, to influence them, to control them, that is, to be, to some extent, the master of his life.
Another belief that contradicts to some extent the previous one is the belief about luck. A person may think that he is weak, incompetent, that he cannot manage his life, but nevertheless he can be lucky in life. If we take healthy adults, then, if we combine all these basic beliefs, their concept sounds like this: “There is much more good than bad in life, and if bad happens, then it happens somewhere on the periphery, on the TV screen, not with me, not next to me and, possibly, with those who did something wrong."
3. Sources of basic beliefs
Where do basic beliefs come from? It is believed - and this is shared by the main theoretical psychological concepts - that these basic ideas about oneself, about the world exist in an infant at a pre-verbal level by about 8 months. The child has deep unconscious ideas about how friendly the world is to him, how ready he is to respond to his needs.
Thus, a small child already has some basis for a basic picture of the world, and during life these foundations may change slightly. But in general, these beliefs are considered to be very stable, in contrast to more superficial beliefs and perceptions. For example, the idea of a person that he is a good professional is, in one way or another, constantly empirically verified, corrected, and its changes do not cause any difficult and serious experiences in us. A system of basic beliefs, if generally positive, provides a person with a sense of relative invulnerability and security.
4. Mental trauma: violation of basic beliefs
When an extreme stressful event occurs that endangers a person's existence, a stable and reliable support - the picture of the world - is disrupted. A person begins to feel in a state of chaos, because the world is no longer benevolent and not worthy of trust, and the person no longer feels so strong, competent, in control of what happens to him, because, as a rule, traumatic events occur suddenly. We cannot say that the picture of the world is crumbling, but it is undergoing serious changes. Further, according to the mechanisms of the formation of new cognitive structures, either assimilation of this event should occur, that is, the event should be inscribed in the picture of the world, or accommodation, that is, a change in the picture of the world for new conditions. Work in the post-traumatic period is to restore the picture of the world.
Recovery does not occur completely, and usually after experiencing a difficult traumatic event in the case of a good outcome and no serious disturbances, the concept of peace sounds like this: is not always the case."
In the post-traumatic period, people tend to look for new meanings and meanings of a traumatic event in order to fit it into the picture of the world. Research results show that people tend to compare themselves with other people who have experienced the same events, but found themselves in a more difficult situation, for example, they also lost their property as a result of a flood, but their losses were great. In general, this helps to fit this traumatic situation into the picture of the world, and people begin to look for new meanings in this situation.
5. Post-traumatic personality growt
Research on post-traumatic personal growth has been underway since the early 1990s. In particular, it was found that after experiencing mental trauma, some people experience serious personal changes towards greater personal maturity and reassessment of values. These changes affect, firstly, the image of "I", that is, after experiencing a catastrophe, a person feels stronger, more worthy and more competent; secondly, there is a change in the philosophy of life, that is, after the trauma, oddly enough, people begin to feel more alive and begin to appreciate what previously seemed insignificant.
The last group of changes after trauma concerns relationships with other people. Thus, a positive change in the image of "I", changes in relationships with other people in the form of greater intimacy, mutual support and a change in life philosophy are areas of growth that we can work on, in particular, in psychocorrection, psychotherapy of trauma.
Author: Maria Padun
PhD in Psychology, Senior Researcher, Laboratory of Psychology of Post-Traumatic Stress, Institute of Psychology, Russian Academy of Sciences, practicing psychologist, psychotherapist
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