Am I Happy?

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

Interview for the magazine "Garlic". Found it by accident)))

Psychological and mental health

So, psychological health is a harmonious and positive state of a person, her thinking and lifestyle. It lies in a person's ability to hear themselves, develop their potential, cope with stress and work productively. Psychological health is inseparable from physical well-being and successful socialization of a person in society.

According to Natalia, it concerns not only "me" in relation to "myself", but also in relation to other people, a person's life in different social environments (in the family, at work, study), It is also determined by how a person feels during rest, in relation to his body, how much he can alternate work and rest. In each of these areas, you can find something that will speak about the well-being or ill-being of the individual.

One of the formulas for psychological health (well-being) is the formula of Sigmund Freud, who said that the main task of therapy is to help a person learn to love and work. Today's psychoanalysts add that not only to love and work, but also to do it with pleasure.

What is the difference between mental health and mental health? There is a phrase: mentally healthy - personally ill … That is, if such a person goes to a psychiatrist, he will not be given any diagnosis, but personally (psychologically) he is unwell. And in some of the areas it will manifest itself. For example, he tries very hard at work, accumulates a huge amount of stress, because he does not find a way to cope with irritation with colleagues, with grievances against his boss. Then he comes home and pours out all the negativity at home: yells at his wife, hits the children. All this can be considered a psychological ill-being of the individual.

Determining a psychologically healthy person

“Psychological health is interconnected with all spheres of life,” the psychologist notes, “but if we“dance”from the personality, then we consider psychologically healthy a person who has a normal perception of reality: he does not have hallucinations, he understands where he is, behaves adequately in every situation: where it is necessary, having fun, where it is necessary to show respect - he shows it, where you need to be responsible - he fulfills his obligations."

The most important characteristic of a psychologically healthy person is choice. He does everything on the basis of his deliberate choices. Unlike an unhealthy person who acts spontaneously or with an eye on someone - real or imagined. (Remember Griboyedov: "Oh! My God! What will Princess Marya Aleksevna say!").

A psychologically successful person can be quite open, honest, sincere in communication, which is why sometimes he is not very pleasant to others. Because, unlike psychologically unhealthy people, he does not resort to manipulations, ingratiations, actions that would cause the desired reaction from the environment.

Let's say a wife says to her husband: “Would you like to take me to the hairdresser? "The manipulating husband will answer:" Yes, dear. " And then he says to her: “Can I go fishing tomorrow? I drove you yesterday. " She agrees.

A healthy husband honestly tells his wife: “Listen, dear, I don’t want to take you to the hairdresser today, I’m watching football. Could you go yourself? "At the same time, he can quite calmly say:" Tomorrow I am going fishing."

Psychologically healthy people are able to establish healthy attachment relationships. We all have attachment traumas growing out of childhood. People who live in a harmonious partnership can heal their wounds and create a family where they will have pleasure, joy, fulfill various needs and fulfill all the goals for which the family is designed.

People with attachment disorders most often form various destructive alliances, where one turns into a persecutor, and the other into a detachment. The most common union of this kind is a stalker woman who wants something from a man, and a man who tries to escape from her by all means. Such marriages can last for years, but they do not give any pleasure to the participants, destroy their psyche, contribute to the emergence of self-doubt, aggression and various self-destruction, which can be expressed through psychosomatic diseases, nervous behavior, and the inability to achieve their goals. Such couples cripple the psyche of their own children. After all, sons and daughters adopt this model and reproduce it in their own family in the future.

A psychologically healthy person is a responsible person. He is responsible for himself, for his plans and actions, for those people who trusted him. If this is a parent, then he is responsible for his children, if the boss is to some extent responsible for his subordinates. He values his personality, his autonomy, while respecting and appreciating other people and their choices.

For example, there is often controversy over who is better: men or women. Or thinking about what the two sexes should be like. A woman, they say, should wear a skirt, be cunning, modest, calm, beautiful, a man - strong, courageous, able to be a breadwinner.

“All this nonsense is human. who do not have a normal level of psychological health, - said Natalya. - Because a healthy person understands that although there are men and women in the world, everyone deserves respect, no one is better or worse. He is not concerned with gender issues at all."

A psychologically healthy person is active, he has an interest in life. Freud's "love and work" is usually realized with him. He has a strategy for overcoming difficulties: both family and professional. This man is not an angel, but he always knows who he is. This is what psychology calls a stable, healthy, mature identity or self-image. Psychologically healthy people usually look for the same. It is quite difficult for them to live with the unhealthy, as well as for an unhealthy person - to coexist next to someone who has various disorders.

A prosperous person, without being offended, takes into account someone else's opinion, may well not prove his own with foam at the mouth. Such a person offers compromises: “You want to go to the theater, and I want to go to football. Shall we go to different places today? Or we will agree: today you go to football with me, and tomorrow I will go to the theater with you."

A mentally healthy person is able to directly state what he wants. He can give in, realize his intention later. He is capable of both sacrificing his time and strength (for example, raising children or supporting a partner in need of help), and refusing sacrifice if there is something important for him.

Codependency is very often a sign of ill health. This is, in fact, one of the troubles of the modern family. We do not know what it means to respect our borders and the borders of our partner, children, employees. If a person is used to living in a codependent system, it is difficult for him to get out of it. He constantly has to guess what the other wants, or be offended if his desires have not been guessed. Such a person often feels guilty because he did something wrong, not what others expected of him.

“Various disorders are getting younger,” notes Natalya Olifirovich not without regret. “If before there were many gross mental pathologies, now every year there are more and more non-gross psychological disorders.”

The family psychologist emphasized that all problems "grow" out of the unhappy family. What the psychological health of a person will be is actually determined even before a person is born.: from whether they were expecting him or not, wanted or did not want, what he was like, how his parents relate to his appearance, how they relate to each other, whether the child was with his mother until three years old or he was given to his grandmother or to kindergarten and etc.

When a person grows up, gets married, his whole family, all his past experience, "stands" behind him. But it is never too late for us to have a good present, to change it here and now.

“Therefore, many people are engaged in their psychological health, going to various trainings for personal growth, development, programs aimed at awareness, to gain new knowledge about the world, about people, about themselves. It is important to do this without fanaticism. There are women and men who boast that they have completed 150 personal development trainings. In fact, they just "pumped" their selfishness and narcissism. The question arises: why did you need to go through so many trainings? Why was one or two not enough?

It is also important to understand: if a psychologically healthy person is addicted to something, he will not force everyone to do the same."

For example, if he becomes a vegetarian, he will not curl his face when he comes to visit and shout that everyone who eats meat should be shot. If he is engaged in some area of psychotherapy, he does not shout that only he knows the truth. If he went to do fitness or yoga, he will not force others to do it and humiliate them by speaking. what only he knew. These are people who are busy with their lives, with their goals. They can be both cordial and sympathetic, and more selfish, but they are definitely not trying to get everyone around them to walk "in step" with them.

Abraham Maslow, a famous humanistic psychotherapist of the last century, believed that a psychologically healthy person is a self-actualizing person … That is, looking for his destiny, his goal. And he believed that there are only one percent of such people on Earth.

“Students of codependent relationships also write that there are only one percent of healthy people with healthy relationships. Perhaps these are the very self-actualizing people that Maslow spoke about."

Although, as Natalya Olifirovich believes, everything is not so pessimistic. In fact, there are many people with a healthy attachment, a stable sense of their "I", quite hearty, deep, wise, aware, choosing, with whom it happens in different ways, but who really understand what they want from life and achieve it. It doesn't matter what such a person does: whether he teaches children music in kindergarten, whether he invents a perpetual motion machine or a cure for AIDS, or simply sweeps the streets. If a person lives in harmony with himself and others, he is happy.

“And when you sometimes look into the eyes of old people who have been herding a flock of sheep all their lives, you admire how such people can be harmonious and content with their lives. how good they have a family, children and grandchildren who respect them. It is then that you understand that psychological health is the factor that allows a person to feel happy, satisfied, cheerful, and experience difficulties. They may grieve, but after a while, having overcome crises and losses, they begin to enjoy life. They can be compassionate, helpful, and accept help. Psychologically healthy people can be very different."

Is discontent the scourge of the sons of men?

Discontent, as the specialist notes, is, unfortunately, a flaw in our upbringing. Because raising us, our parents were constantly comparing with someone: “Tanya got an A, and you got an A”, “Vasya ran a hundred meters faster, but Kolya’s mind is better in physics”. In childhood, we are all very happy, but parents begin to compare us with others, laying the seed of doubt: are we good enough. The most difficult thing is that because of this we practically do not know how to enjoy life and accept with joy and pride what we have already done. Because every time the ghost of the fact that someone did it better looms before our eyes.

Reasonable Japanese, who live much longer than Belarusians, are guided by the principle: do not compare children with each other. They compare the child with himself: "Now you do it better than five years ago." Comparing yourself to yourself, remembering what you had to overcome on the way to your results, you can enjoy. Because you are unique. But as soon as we look at ourselves through the prism of someone else, a collapse sets in.

“There are wonderful words in one of the songs of the Spleen group:“And maybe you didn’t become a star in Hollywood, you don’t go to the podium in your underwear … Well, thank God, I’m not Ricky, not Martin, I didn’t run for the Oscar, the French did not score. " The point is that you are imperfect, I am imperfect, but we both love each other - and this is the most important thing in this world! Does a baby really need achievements: to dump in an even bunch? He needs parental love (as people of any age need it)! And then mom and dad begin to demand something from him, say, they say, I don’t love you, because Vasya ran a hundred meters faster. The child begins to try, then he grows up and begins to devote his whole life to pseudo-achievements: faster, better, stronger. "

The psychologist believes that in fact we are all very simple, and little is enough for us. A pair of sweaters, skirts, warm shoes, normal food would be enough for each of us - and we would be happy. But we live in a consumer society where society constantly forces us to compare ourselves with others.

Love can be obtained with much less effort. It is not so important for the wife: whether the husband earns $ 500 or $ 550. It is more important for her that he come home, kiss her, and ask: “How are you? "Or said:" Listen, what great kids we have! ". And she will be happy. But he comes and itches for a long time, tediously, because for an extra $ 50, he tore all his nerves and veins. And she tries to make dinner as good as possible, because it seems to her that if the dish turns out to be perfect, then her husband will love her more.

What else is important for maintaining mental health?

For psychological health, you need to be able to complete situations: when leaving work, from a partner, from a destructive relationship, to leave. Completion of the gestalt is a very serious matter, Natalya Olifirovich believes. In her opinion, if people knew how to close the doors of the past, to realize what they really want, this would greatly contribute to the health of not only an individual family, but also humanity as a whole.

To become psychologically more prosperous, to cope with their mental difficulties that have accumulated over life, any person needs a person. It is impossible to pull yourself out of the swamp by your hair, as Baron Munchausen did. Therefore, such people organize self-help groups, read books and look for like-minded people, go to study additionally. But they definitely need someone else to mirror their experiences.

“After all, where does pathology come from? I look at another person and he says to me like a mirror: "You are not good enough, you are imperfect." You need to get rid of all internal battles and look at yourself with real eyes. Because, perhaps, before that, all the mirrors were crooked, everything that was said about a person was his distorted reflection. For change, a person needs another, very sane, adequate and supportive person. It can be a partner, a good friend, a psychologist, a wise family member, someone who will help you overcome difficulties and start seeing yourself differently. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to do it on your own. … What has emerged in interaction can only change in interaction - but often with other people."

Some, very persistent and purposeful, may try to study literature, listen to audio lectures in order to change their lives. But still you need someone with whom you can discuss your past experience and try to build a new one. Because often a person alone with himself mentally walks in a circle.

Psychological health is a subtle and ephemeral substrate. This is a rather philosophical question, as opposed to mental health, which psychiatrists diagnose. Mental health is your answer to the question: "Am I happy?" ("Am I living in harmony with myself?", "Am I good in the main areas: family, work, friendship, love?" If most of your answers are “yes,” then most likely you are a psychologically healthy person. And happy too.

Appreciate yourself and others, be grateful to life for every day that is given to you. Remember that there are only two irreversible points: birth and death. Everything else is within man's power to change. Try to experience emotions with the intensity with which you can: if you are happy - rejoice, if you want to be angry - get angry. Because every event must be experienced. And, of course, love. Love is something that can heal us, give us strength and confidence, give meaning and help not just survive - but live with pleasure.