I Teach People To Think Without A Psychologist, As If They Were Talking To A Psychologist

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

When it comes to Roitman in the Internet space, no one remains indifferent. He is known as a provocateur, rule breaker, jester and trickster. The banners of those who shout "down with him" will certainly fly up, and those who shout "he saved my life" will immediately come running. Roitman, on the other hand, will only grin into the beard and both, and will go to do what he considers most important: to talk to people and take care of the family. We talked about how Roitman's texts are created, how they help the psychologist's promotion and how to make sure that they know about you on the Internet.

How did you start blogging and creating all these “she came to me” stories?

- My marketers got me and said: you must write something. I said: "I can't take a pen," and they answered: "You use the keys." This dispute continued for several years without much success. And then they told me: "Okay, here's your secretary, he will call you every day, talk to you and write some text based on this conversation."

We tried to work in this mode, worked for two months, and then he began to write down after me and found that this text did not really need to be edited. And to this day, if I dictate, although I rarely do it, my text is literally written down and sent to me from the very first time, and it does not have to be edited.

It seems to me that this story should be close to speakers who complain that it is difficult for them to write and it is easy for them to speak. Your decision should help overcome this barrier

- Yes, for the phobic component, this is ideal. But there are pros and cons. You see that your text on paper looks no worse than your spoken language. At the same time, speech is your professional activity, which brings you satisfaction and a sense of your own professionalism. But nevertheless, speaking and writing are not synonymous, and you have to correct something, because in writing it does not work the way it does in speech. When I was writing the book, my editor regularly told me: “This piece of text sounds as if you are speaking it. They don't write like that, they just say that. I don’t feel these things, I don’t feel this difference. Therefore, it is necessary to study the translation of oral speech into writing, I have this note, this specific hearing is not yet available.

Does it happen that it is not written? What do you do in moments of creative crisis?

- I have a magic folder where my assistant Asya puts notes made on the basis of my broadcasts, recordings and old articles. Over the years of work, a decent archive has been collected, and she chooses from this array things that touch her and that seem important to her. Incidentally, this is the most interesting therapeutic work for her, and a great help for me.

She writes a piece of lines at 30-40, and puts it in this folder. When I don't know what to write about, I take this idea, drag it into a text editor and start developing it. Therefore, I always have in this folder 6-7 texts of blank-fish in the spirit of "think about this topic." Well, I guess.

And only I published such a text, just from the sketches from this folder. It is about the immorality of a psychologist. I tried to make him scandalous, but so that no one would buy into this scandal.

- Look how interesting. A scandal without a scandal. This paradox, it seems to me, is your personal instrument, your historyI.

- One of my professional haters who comes to argue with me wrote to me: why is everything so sweet on the page? Why doesn't anyone argue with you? And I also wondered what it was connected with. Either this is such a Facebook trick and it shows me to few people, and therefore there are few reactions, or I give out texts that are very smooth, not very controversial, not very … And, I think that we are talking about the latter. And this is very disgusting to me. Because this is about the fact that I have an image of my shore and try not to stick my head out once again so that I do not start an extra scandal. On the other hand, I don't like scandals, I don't see any special meaning in them …

And can, in general, a psychologist be a brawler? Does he qualify for a public scandal?

- Psychologists are different. There are psychologists who organize the workplace: how to sit, how to put a computer, how to measure the load. There are psychologists-psychotherapists, psychologists-image-makers, consultants, coaches … Each of them has its own expectations and requirements.

When I work with a client or in a group, I use a certain state, I play the role of a psychologist-psychotherapist. He does not need fame, he is a mirror - faceless and cold.

But when I live on my page, I am also a psychologist, but also a popularizer of a certain system of ideas, therapeutic literacy, psychological growth, literacy of crisis and anti-crisis thinking. And this is a different role and it has different tools. In this role, my task is to be useful on the one hand, understandable on the other, and interesting on the third.

And, among other things, noticeable?

- Yes, noticeable, controversial, certainly. And I consider this function of mine to be no less, and perhaps even more valuable from the point of view of the world, than my activity as a psychologist-psychotherapist. As a psychologist-psychotherapist, I can pass through myself, my hands, say, 100 cases in a group and another 100 cases in an individual, and that's a lot. And I, as a popularizer, can pass 200 thousand people through one text. For a year, these are millions of views and millions of people. And that's part of my job. Not the most beloved, but truly missionary, she is truly preaching, without pathos and bouncing around. I teach people that the psychologist is not dangerous or not as dangerous as people think. I teach people that a psychologist is not as complicated and abstruse as people think. I teach people to think without a psychologist, as if they are talking to a psychologist.

How does it work, such thinking?

- I teach people that their psychologist lives inside them. And when they work with a psychologist, they see in that psychologist a reflection of their inner psychologist. Otherwise it is pedagogy.

My task, as I understand it, is not to become a teacher in my blog, but to remain a psychologist. I am a teacher in my first education, a psychologist in my second and a clinical psychologist in my third. I understand very well the difference and commonality of these two models. I don’t want to say bad things about the teacher, and I don’t want to say anything super magical about the psychologist. But these are two different facets of the same skill, which are equally important, but completely opposite in their specificity. This is neither good nor bad, but it is important to understand.

For example, a psychologist cannot be hardworking. A teacher must be hardworking. A psychologist cannot be too smart. The teacher should be too smart - he transfers his knowledge. A psychologist cannot be too moral - a teacher must be moral. These are three points that separate the teacher from the psychologist. We do the same thing. And among teachers there are many psychologists who do their job well. You just have to say that one is pedagogy, and the other is psychotherapy. And it's important to separate our functions.

You are a provocateur. This is both in the work and in the text. How and why did you choose this tool? How did he come to you?

- Yes, I chose it deliberately and I use it deliberately. In my opinion, this is a very beautiful trickster model. It allows me to greatly expand the role of a psychologist relative to the traditional one. On the one hand, being with the client, on the other, staying uninvolved.

After all, who is a trickster? The trickster is a jester, a joker. What is a joker card? Surprise card. You can fold it at the lowest value, or you can fold it at the maximum, higher than the trump ace. And the coolest thing is that this is a card that I can fold at the smallest one and break the whole pot. This is a jester.

Simply put, this is a scrapping of the rules

- These are rules that are higher than any rules. Returning to work, the role of a trickster is an opportunity for a psychologist or psychotherapist to make quick interventions that do not provoke resistance, that work for a long time, sent into the future, which the client appropriates as his own. This is a kind of "sleight of hand" that allows you to bypass the resistance and throw in a seed that will grow and bear fruit for a long time and, most likely, unexpectedly. Because it will not be mine, but HIS tree. This is what my ideal psychotherapy looks like.

What is a perfect ad? When you have a billion dollar product and you sell it to one person who needs it and who buys your product without controversy. For me, the ideal psychotherapy - when you say a few words by the way or just shrug your shoulders, a year passes and a person's life simply changes, and when asked, he will be absolutely sure that he just decided to live differently and started. There is no psychologist, no intervention, no interference in his life.

That is, it is, of course, but made so flawlessly, fleetingly that it is tied to the past, present and future at the same time. Yes, this is beautiful psychotherapy. Although some might say it's disgusting.

Why is it suddenly disgusting?

- Did you ask him? Does he agree to this? Psychotherapy differs from media technologies in that it requires a contract. Yes, you can do it in 2 seconds, but you must do it in accordance with the contract if you call yourself a psychotherapist, not a media technologist.

Therefore, this is a decision every time. Am I eligible to intervene? A provocative intervention? If I have a contract, a contract, then yes. It can be quite subtle, it can be an interpretation, it can be just a reflection, it can be an ironic look. If you work accurately enough, if you know how to find yourself for a long time out of the line of fire and outside the client's resistance, all the time behind, if the client does not understand what you want from him, this is a beautiful provocative intervention.

How it works?

- Well, there is a man. He wants to write and if he leaves me full of rage and rage for the fact that instead of talking to him about the path of writing and vocation, I talked to him about his impotence and called him insignificant, and he threw his phone at me, turned around and left, came home and wrote to me about what an asshole I am … And after that I wrote a long text about psychologists who are assholes who are able to take advantage of human suffering. And then he wrote a book on the same topic, and then made it his profession to fight these narcissistic narcissistic gurus and went down in history as a great writer and fighter, and so on …. Then I obviously fulfilled his request, and God forbid all of us to work so elegantly and competently.

Your slogan is "expensive, painful, no guarantees." How did you come to this?

- Good marketing, good advertising is always a compromise between sweet, bitter, sour and spicy. Here is French meat - it is sweet, and sour, and spicy, and all at once. All tastes must be presented. Otherwise, it is a raw material for production - either pepper, or salt, or sugar. Just raw materials. Also, marketing in psychotherapy must be memorable, it must be truthful. It's silly to deceive a client that we will refund your money if you don't become happy. Deceiving yourself is even more stupid.

I also say that a psychologist should be stupid, lazy and immoral. This one is from the same opera. Stupid - because in this case the client will have to think, and even better if he follows my stupidity and starts asking himself stupid questions "What makes you feel good?" “Why is it bad?” … I am lazy because I don’t want to work for a client, it’s pointless and tiring. As long as I work, he has every chance not to work on his own, look at me with admiration and not see what is happening to him. Immoral is quite simple. Beyond morality. Otherwise, I will begin to judge, and this is definitely not for me

My acquaintance with you began with the stories “she came to me”. Do you ever get offended for these stories? Because you told something, but someone thought it was about them?

- I had two or three times that I took stories from open source. A person on his page labeled “for everyone” put the text and I retype it and comment on it. And at the same time since the post, for example, a year has passed and during this year he may have come into conflict with this text. Then, of course, I take it off immediately. I allow myself to use the texts that are in the open source. In all other cases, I ask and they tell me: "Yes, you can use it, just remove your asshole husband." Most often, I generally change significant points: country, gender, etc.

I'll tell you such a thing - believe it or not - and it's true, I don't remember the story in two minutes. I went out, closed the door, and I don't remember any cases, with the exception of very wild stories that you can't tell anyone. Or I remember a detail, but I don't remember who told it, when and where.

What is taboo for you in the profession and what will you definitely never do?

- I have no taboos, except those that exist in ordinary relationships. My relationship with a client is no different from my relationship with someone outside the office. If I say that I don’t work with a client without a request, I don’t communicate with people without a request.

I would also say that I do not live on the basis of a taboo, but on the basis of permission. How I like living, how I like to build relationships, what is valuable to me - this is both about my life and about my work in the office.

Listen, what a difficult question turned out to be. Maybe the most difficult for me. Let's do it this way: how is my relationship in the office different from any other relationship? The only difference is that my time in the office has been bought. Therefore, I am responsible within the framework of the contract for the performance of my party to the contract. Then a taboo is a breach of contract. But, since taboo is not my, not my management tool, as I said, I am still not guided by this. I think that taboo and a psychologist is a bad style, that an oath and a psychologist is a bad idea. The psychologist must be in tune with a certain system of contract, not an oath. Because the oath is about subject-object relations, unequal, when I defend the orphan and the weak from me, the omnipotent by my own corporate ethics, with my oath. Like the Hippocratic oath. Or the Merinda protocol. The contract is about object-object relations. About the relationship of equals. It is very important that the therapist and the client are exhaustively equal in the face of the contract, like the hairdresser and the client, let's say.

Is it difficult for a public person to be wrong, to be wrong?

- It is normal to make mistakes, as well as to live. We have life itself, which allows us to come to a question, to come to an answer, we are alive. The moment we start killing, no doubt, in this place we cease to be human. It's terrible, for me all my life it was the most terrible thing that can be with me or my children. God forbid to be in this place, I am always afraid of this place. Therefore, yes, I am wrong, for me the right to make a mistake is very important. And, in general, I believe that an adult recognizes, accepts, chooses authorship in his life and, in particular, the right to make a mistake. The right to error is important to me. Of course I am wrong. The only thing that insures me is that I keep saying “it seems to me” and I am in the zone of assumptions.

Facebook readers ask you - I don’t know, by the way, why exactly you - how to understand your mission or not and whether it exists at all?

- The dude died. Archangel Gabriel comes out to meet him with keys and seven wings. Meets and says:

- Dude, you lived your life with dignity, did not violate, fulfilled your mission, paradise awaits you with open arms, go to paradise or whatever you are supposed to.

But a strange man got caught, he doesn't go to heaven, he says

- Listen, I have a question for you, I lived a long life, suffered and thought if you were lucky, you would meet me, then finally tell me what my mission was?

- Oh, my God, do you need it? Well look, paradise is open, go.

- Well, that's important to me!

- Are you sure?

- I really wanted to learn all my life, I forgot my name, but I remember about the mission.

- Well, dude, you wanted it yourself. Remember you were 19 or 20 and you were driving from Kiev to Kharkov at night. At night I could not sleep at all and sat in the carriage of the restaurant, and there was a large company nearby, they yelled and had fun. And, remember, some pretty girl turned to you and asked to pass the salt.

- Well, I remember …

- Here!

My short answer is: The essence of what is happening is what is happening. Because you are going to die. And it is very useful to think about this regularly and constantly, otherwise you can already relax and transfer the salt. And continue to live in peace.

Here are some more readers asking us. I met the opinion that a person who has given up his abilities and the realization of talent pays with his health later. I didn’t try, I didn’t try, I was afraid - and all this is reflected in the body, intellect, character. What is better to meet fears and take place or be afraid and not take place?

- Some choice without choice, this always makes me nervous. I always need a story and two or three choices. I always have a decision on an internal and external level. I’m a trickster, I’m a jester, I say - what if you play? Let's play this. Let's play parachute jump. Let's rise and jump. And if we do not jump, then we will rise again, then again …. For the third time we will think - to fly for the third time and not to jump or to fly for the third time to jump or not to fly…. And do it in an easy way, without harassing yourself. We don't always have sex to have children, do we? You can just get pleasure from this fun process. One day, you look and want a child. I think that Alexander the Great, without a long march, reached the neighboring village, then to the neighboring one, to the mountains, he caught a cold somehow, and there is already India, and behind his back is the whole world … Let it be so with you.