"Not A Psychologist Himself." Why Self-Digging Doesn't Help

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

Often we quite easily see the solution to another person's problem, clearly imagine a way out of the situation and wonder: "How can this be incomprehensible?"

And when we find ourselves in our personal situation, we don't see it at all or we don't know how to get out of it. Or, for example, a person condemns a certain behavior, and he does the same.

• These and many other examples can be explained using the concept of "distortion blind spot".

This concept from ophthalmology was adopted and introduced into psychology and psychiatry. A healthy person's eye has an area on the retina that is insensitive to light and is called a blind spot.

Those. the object, falling into the zone of the blind spot of the eye, becomes invisible to a person.

• In psychology, this concept is considered the inability to admit the presence of cognitive distortions.

Simply put, this is when a person stubbornly does not notice something behind himself, in his behavior, in the perception of appearance, in his habits, etc.

A person, falling into his "blind spot", as it were, loses the ability to think, analyze, perceive himself and the situation realistically.

This effect is well described by the proverb: "Look at a straw in someone else's eye, not noticing the log in your own."

• Why do we even fall into such a zone of invisibility?

The reason is traumatic events in a person's life (past, present, forthcoming) or a desire to avoid / prevent such events, as a result of which the protective mechanisms of the psyche are unconsciously triggered.

I will list a few: forgetting, denial, projection, autoaggression, regression, repression, substitution, isolation / alienation.

→ So it turns out that, imperceptibly for himself, a person is, for example, in denial and at the same time tries to resolve his issue by reading various literature, listening and watching webinars, etc.

But there is no result. Because he does not see his problem objectively, he is within the framework of his thinking and uses habitual ways of behavior.

→ This is why books "do not heal". Books inform, develop, give a lot of food for thought, motivate to "move on".

→ Friends and family can empathize and advise based on their experiences and, as mentioned above, through their thinking and habitual ways of behaving.

✓ A psychologist is a specialist with a specialized education who has knowledge of the laws and processes of the human psyche; understands what is happening to you and knows how to work with it objectively and impartially.

By the same principle, people treat their teeth at dentists, appendicitis - at surgeons, etc.

✓ Contacting a specialist reduces the time a person spends in an uncomfortable, difficult situation for him; work on the problem begins faster.

A common situation when people endure circumstances for years before deciding to go to a psychologist.

✓ Each person has their own psychological "blind spot" zone, so psychologists also go to psychologists