Once on the Internet I came across the phrase: "A psychotherapist is a manager of connections with reality." Yes, yes, it is. We are like that. And then, you know, patients sit for years in their illusions, hang projections on others, idealize everything: from themselves to the structure of the world. Then they become disillusioned, displace the traumatic experience with kilograms, go into denial, like the defendants into refusal. We are for realism, authenticity and all kinds of adequacy. And who is not?
Patients themselves complain: “Here, I looked at the world through rose-colored glasses: I wanted to study abroad, get an MBA, marry a rich and sincere man for love, spend my honeymoon in Paris, and what is the result? Rented apartment in Mytishchi, suspicion of alcoholism in the initial stage and a married bald lover for rent. What am I good for? Why live like this?"
And such a patient plunges into prolonged depression. He does not want to wake up in the morning, on weekends he doesn’t want to leave the house. Does not paint, does not fold the sofa. Eats only chips with beer. Doesn't meet anyone. Not looking at curriculum or looking for cheap tickets to Paris. Waggling, despising himself, to hateful work. And he says at the next consultation to the psychotherapist: “There is no chance. Nothing depends on me. I tried, and I did that, and that, but apparently … Not destiny. And the longer she lives like this, the more it is not destiny.
American psychologist Martin Seligman would call this not depression, but learned helplessness. More precisely, he believed that the mechanism of depression and learned helplessness is the same. Seligman conducted a series of famous experiments in which at first the dogs had no chance of avoiding electric shocks, but then, when the chances appeared - the enclosures were opened, and it was possible to escape - the animals did not make any attempts to escape, but lay down on the floor and whined. It was the same with people, only they were not shocked, but offered to solve obviously unsolvable problems for some time, saying: “Well, what are you? It's so easy! After that, the subjects could not cope with even the simplest problem.
In another experiment, to which Seligman was also involved, two groups (one consisted of healthy people, the other from patients with depression) were asked to perform a series of simple tasks. On one condition: the experimenters could secretly intervene to help or hinder the participants. And those after the end of the experiment had to evaluate to what extent they controlled the process, and to what extent nothing depended on them (fate, so to speak). It was assumed that healthy people would assess their capabilities adequately, while depressive ones would underestimate them. The result amazed the scientists: patients assessed their influence and capabilities very accurately, while healthy people significantly overestimated their own contribution to success. Martin Seligman even suspected that moderate depression is a kind of evolutionary adaptation of the psyche that allows you to perceive reality more objectively and frees you from "rose-colored glasses".
But there is one problem. Along with illusions, depression blocks active behavior, reduces the ability to act, and such a realist lies on the couch with a sober and completely useless vision of the situation, while dreamers with high self-esteem buy tickets to Paris for a promotion and get to know their future halves right on the plane. Here is what the psychophysiologist, doctor of medical sciences Vadim Rotenberg writes about this: “Inability to strictly objectively perceive reality, an optimistic view of things and oneself, an overestimated idea of one's own capabilities and the ability to control a situation - these features are inherent in a healthy person because they allow him fight harder and challenge the world more actively despite the lack of a solid, guaranteed chance of winning."
The reader will rightly note: what about disappointment in case of failure? And if there are several failures and under their yoke a person falls ill with learned helplessness, that is, excuse me, depression? Sometimes it happens. Both Seligman and Rothenberg write that resistance to frustration is different for everyone, depending on self-esteem and the style of interpreting failure. But, claiming more, a person always gets at least something. As the saying goes, "I will not catch up, so I will keep warm." And without pretending to anything - most likely depression.
PS Don't throw away your rose-colored glasses at all. Sometimes they come in handy.
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