- Only the dead have no problems ...
(c) my grandmother
- Strange ... * there is, but there is no such word
As children, we were told: “Don't cry. Do not pout. What did you shout? Are you angry? Badly! It's all bad! Good kids don't behave like that."And we obeyed our parents, we believed them. We wanted to be good kids because: “Oh, how kind you are! How we love you! We really, really wanted to be loved, we really needed their love.
We dutifully followed their instructions. We firmly learned that good feelings are good, we are loved and praised for it. And the bad ones... Bad. But where to put this "bad"? If it is in us and constantly climbs out?
And we diligently plugged and shoved our feelings back, stuffed, caulked, closed and continued to be good. We didn’t cry out grief and pain when our body demanded it. When it was painful and embarrassing.
We learned that our outburst of anger upsets mom, mom is called to school, scolded, scolded, and she starts to cry. We are absolutely loving children, and we could not let the loved one cry because of us.
We tolerated anger, we held back anger. We endured the pain, we kept the pain to ourselves. We felt resentment, but we did not show it to anyone, we hid the resentment deep inside.
We learned that our feelings are bad. And they can't be shown. Nobody likes them and nobody needs them. They are scolded for them and they stop loving for them. And we, with our feelings, alas, become unnecessary.
Such as we are - are not needed.Yes. There is no word, but there is oops ...
But let me ask you. What distinguishes the living from the dead? Distinguishes living from non-living?
Right! The ability to feel. Feel the full gamut of your sensations, emotions and feelings.
Feel your feelings.
Forgive our parents, their parents also wandered in the passions of their feelings and did not know how to deal with them. And allow ourselves to be alive.
so
I'm alive? - Yes.
Am I entitled to feel? - Yes.
I have the right to feel the whole gamut of feelings that is inherent in me by nature? - Yes.
Were my parents forbidding me to express my feelings wrong? - Yes.
Are the parents alive? - Yes.
Are parents allowed to make mistakes? - Yes.
There is no division into bad or good feelings? - Yes.
Is there inappropriateness and inability to express your feelings? - Yes.
Is it in my power to learn to recognize, open and heal feelings? - Yes. Yes. Yes.
Spend a sufficient and necessary amount of time on sorting out your blocked feelings (this is one of the manifestations of love and care for yourself).
Unfreeze, unblock your senses. You can finally acknowledge yourself alive.
I am alive and have the right to feel.
I feel that is how nature made me.
How can you reject what was intended and given?
Start with the worst feeling, like being angry or angry. Start with what you dislike the most about yourself. Cowardice? Fear? Resentment?
Heal this feelingsimply recognizingthat you have it. This is 90% healing. Just admit that you have this feeling. And you are not bad, not ugly when you are angry or afraid. You are just alive and feeling.
Imagine feeling as a separate entity that lives in you. By acknowledging, you show respect for a part of yourself and you let the feeling tell you what it wants, what it calls for, what it keeps you from, and what it wants to communicate.
The text is something like this, but you can make a personal appeal to your rejected feeling:
My anger. You are in me. I recognize you and you are my feeling! My feeling of anger. Well, hello, dear. I'm sorry that I shut you in for so long, not recognizing you as a part of me. The part of me that the creator put into me. That which was always inherent in nature, but was rejected by me. My anger, you are and have the right to be, because. I'm alive. Come to me, tell me what you want to tell me, tell me. Why are you to me and how can I be in harmony with you?
Go through all your feelings. Listen to what they tell you. What they always wanted to tell you. You will have insights (write them down in detail and this will be an additional help to your healing) when one or anotherthe feeling was forbidden to you or under the influence of circumstances you suppressed and stopped it in yourself. When and under what circumstances did you find out that you need to lock it up in yourself and not pay attention to it.
***
By the way, do you know what causes alcohol addiction? One of the main reasons? This is a lack of internal strength to survive this or that emotion or range of feelings. Feelings and emotions absorb and capture a person so much that it is easier to suppress and block them in oneself than to live, feel, express, realize and draw the right conclusions.
If in childhood the child had a hard time, and for some reason there was no person nearby who would help to survive these difficulties, sharing the feelings and emotions of the child, explaining what is happening and giving his protection and comfort, the child is forced to block those feelings in himself, to survive who do not yet have resources.
This is how the notorious "freeze" occurs - a complete lack of reaction in traumatic circumstances. Blocking the experience of feelings is not difficult at all, each of us has ever done it: it is enough to tighten those muscles that are associated with their expression. For example, clench your teeth and don't cry!
Sense blocking mechanism
Everyone knows that grief is expressed in tears. Also, everyone knows what to do in order not to cry: you need to clench your teeth tight, tighten the muscles around your eyes, and breathe as shallowly as possible. The shallower the breath, the less access to any feelings at all; complete cessation of breathing, obviously, will lead to the fact that the person will soon feel nothing. For only the dead feel nothing at all. However, confrontation with intolerable feelings often causes difficulties, and even temporary cessation of breathing: they say about it: “I took my breath away from despair / fear / horror / etc.”In fact, such tension is designed to protect a person from emotions and feelings that he (for some reason and often unconsciously) considers unbearable or unacceptable for himself. These feelings often remain unnamed and unrecognized, and, of course, always - unexperienced, which is why they seem to be preserved in the body.
But that's not all: those areas of the body that were tense in order to prevent feelings from escaping, also lose subtle sensitivity, become unable to experience pleasure.
The mechanism for this is simple. Try to clench your hand into a fist and run it over the other hand. Pay attention to the sensations in the clenched hand, describe them for yourself and remember. Was there any pleasure in it? Now open your fist, relax your hand, make it soft - and run it over the same place. Compare feelings. Which one has more fun?
The emergence of bodily blocks
If an adult blocks the experience of feelings once, then this will probably not leave any trace on his appearance. The human psyche is capable of self-healing, and even if he consciously does nothing to experience a blocked feeling, there are still dreams, they help to process daytime impressions.But if you do this from childhood, over and over again, if some of the stresses turn out to be familiar to the psyche ... then in adulthood it can be seen literally with the naked eye. Habitually tense jaws on the cheekbones - this is the price for the fact that "boys do not cry."
The habitually tense shoulders, the neck drawn into them is an attempt to hide from oneself and not feel one's fear. A tight stomach and locked hips are the price you pay for not feeling sexually aroused. Well, and so on.
Most often, such bodily blocks arise even in childhood, when the child’s conscious possibilities for experiencing feelings are still weak: when parents did not come to the rescue, but you cannot cope on your own, “preserving” a dangerous feeling until better times looks like a very reasonable strategy. True, this affects the development of the body, the so-called “muscle shell” appears, which habitually protects from certain feelings, well, yes, we are talking about survival here: better in a shell, but alive.
Fortunately, unlike the body type, which cannot be changed (and it is not necessary, these are your strengths! You need to use and be proud of them) - you can get rid of this muscular shell, restore sensitivity to your own body. This road is not always easy, but it will be mastered by the walking one.
Exploring our own body
This exercise is best done in the shower, for example, where you can explore your entire body without interference. Turn on warm pleasant water, and, directing it to different parts of your body, explore all the richness of their sensations. By doing this, you can speak kindly to the area under study: “I am glad for you, my right shoulder blade, Hey!" - it is not so important what exactly you say, but the intention. It is necessary to ensure the benevolence of self-examination, so that it takes place in an atmosphere of benevolent attention, and not a malicious inspector's check.Notice everything that happens when you examine any area: is there any sensitivity in it at all? You will notice that in different areas the sensitivity is different: somewhere every drop of water is felt, and somewhere only the general pressure or nothing at all is felt.
Notice what and how you specifically feel: only the jets of the soul, or, perhaps, inner pain, tension? How do sensations progress? Perhaps there is a desire to make some kind of movement? What emotions do you experience as you explore different areas? Somewhere there will be pure uncomplicated joy of recognizing your body, and somewhere you may feel irritation, sadness or even fear.
Perhaps, when examining some areas, memories will come up, any images will come to mind - all this (sensations, movements, emotions and memories / images) can be recorded upon exiting the shower, create a map of your body.
Why are these body blocks dangerous?
Because they are the very mechanism that can eventually lead to psychosomatic disorders. Not in a month, and not even in a year... But if year after year you force yourself not to feel and not to react, then sooner or later persistence will be rewarded.But this is not an award worth fighting for.
Repeatedly repeating the same type of situation allows us to speak of a stable behavioral pattern, and this, in turn, leads to the emergence of a motor pattern.
The evolution of the block in the body is as follows. At first, this is a completely foreign structure, which is how it is felt, a person experiences discomfort, spasm or pain, clearly distinguishes the boundaries of the block and is able to imagine it as a foreign object, such as a knife, nail, stone or ice floe.
From a certain moment, the block becomes a symbiont from a foreign one, a person ceases to feel it. This means that the event has been repressed or habituated to it. This is how we get used to circumstances of a personal nature, get used to unbearable situations, endure humiliation and pain in relationships, etc.
Behind a block of this kind, there may be fear or a character trait that a person knows about himself, regards as negative, but is not going to do anything with it, not considering it possible or just getting used to it. In the body, such blocks are felt as a habitual, mild tension, constantly reminding of itself.
If, after a trauma, a person develops a belief or attitude that will later influence his whole life, over time, the blocks are built into the personality system. In addition, as a rule, blocks rarely live alone, preferring to "settle in colonies." Each of them performs its own, strictly defined task, and all together they form "grids" - shaping constructs of the personality.
Blocks are directly related to the nature of the action and the nature of the response, i.e. blocks appear where the blocking of the impulse occurred and do not occupy the first vacant place.
So, if you wanted to speak out, but did not speak out, you will have a specific tension in the neck, larynx, mandible, cheekbones, perilabial area and lips. If you wanted to cry and did not cry, your forehead, cheekbones will tighten, tension will spread to the nasolabial folds, eyes, and compress your chest. If you wanted to abandon the case, but did not refuse, driven by a feeling, your shoulders will ache sadly and your stomach will remind you of yourself.
As a result of receiving the first negative experience of restraint or experience, tension appears, on which a new layer of tension will be superimposed all subsequent times when a person experiences the same thing. Thus, the block is most like a layered pie, where each next layer is associated with a problem similar to the previous one.
Thus, the work of a psychologist with blocks is not just a rough kneading of tense tissues, but the establishment of the reason why they arose and the appeal to it, and in body therapy there is an adequate way to solve all problems.
We are so filled with fear of rejection and claims that we hardly know whether we are deceiving ourselves or trusting ourselves. Most of the time we play roles avoiding contact with our feelings. Unconscious (a set of mental processes and states caused by the phenomenon of reality, the influence of which the subjects are not aware of) fear of rejection does not allow us to build a relationship with a partner that we like. Why are we afraid? And how suppression affects our health own feelings? In this article we will try to answer these questions, for the basis we will take an American psychiatrist and psychotherapist, creator of bioenergy analysis(from the Greek bio - "life" + energeia - "activity" and analysis - "dismemberment", a kind of psychotherapy) A. Lowen.
In this article, it is advisable to rely on the definition of the emotion of fear as a negative emotional state that appears when the subject receives information about a possible threat to his well-being, about a real or imagined danger. Unlike the emotion of suffering caused by direct blocking of the most important needs, a person experiencing the emotion of fear has only a probabilistic forecast of possible trouble and acts on the basis of this (often an insufficiently reliable or exaggerated forecast). For a person as a social being, fear often becomes an obstacle to achieving his goal (K. Izard).
Our feelings manifest themselves in different ways, often we are not even aware of them and do not know how to express them correctly. In many cases, we do not show them at all, but we press and turn them inward, and this is the main cause of psychosomatic disorders. (psychological illness due to psychological factors), the heart, stomach and back suffer, in some cases, the appearance of excess weight. Such a destructive non-manifestation, blocking one's own feelings ( the main type of emotions characteristic of a person, they are innate) And emotions (direct, temporary experience of some feeling) comes from childhood, hiding in adulthood in an impregnable bunker.
In childhood, an attitude to one’s own feelings is formed, until a certain time, when socialization has not yet left its mark, the child sincerely shows his emotions, he freely and easily shares with everyone, then gradually under the influence of the external environment, he learns to restrain his feelings, and sometimes begins to hide emotions even from himself. Let's look at the occurrence of a violation, blocking one's feelings. According to A. Lowen, one of the reasons is the loss of love of one of the child's parents, which leaves an imprint for life.
For example: a mother, due to a lack of strength and time, loaded with some kind of business or the appearance of a second child, does not devote time to the first, and because of this, he feels a longing for the attention of his mother, such inaccessibility leads to the first experience of a “broken heart” in life ". Arises sadness (a state of spiritual bitterness that is caused by separation, a feeling of loneliness, failure to achieve a goal, disappointment, unfulfilled hope. main reason is the loss of something significant for a person) and suppressed, but it remains in the body and is remembered in it.
Such anguish gives rise to the development of a hard chest shell. chest that protects the heart. The child does not understand that his mother has other things to do, he wants to receive his need, and then, subsequently, without losing hope in every possible way, he wants to receive this love and decides to be good, studies well, constantly achieves success, while experiencing guilt ( a combination of feelings of fear, auto-aggression and protection from this internal aggression, which the person imposes on himself as a result of thoughts or actions that violate his internal prohibition. Self-feeling with guilt - “I am bad / bad”, often accompanied by such somatic sensations as muscle tension in various parts of the body, involuntary facial expressions, respiratory failure, increased heart rate, changes in blood pressure, etc. It comes from the unconscious).
A. Lowen in his works writes about the origin of guilt in a child: “.... guilt is born from the assumption that we are unworthy of love until we deserve it with good deeds. The fact that we feel angry towards those who hurt us and hate those who betrayed our love does not make us bad people. Such reactions are biologically natural, so they should be treated as morally acceptable. However, children who are dependent on parents and other adults can be easily convinced that the reality is different. A child who feels that he is not loved thinks that some kind of mistake has occurred, since the thought does not fit in his mind that the mother and father who gave him life could not love him. If he begins to doubt them, it is not difficult for his parents to convince him that it is "bad" when he feels anger or hatred towards them. If "good behavior" guarantees him love, the child will do everything in his power to be "good", along with the suppression of "bad" feelings. Thus, the feeling of guilt programs his behavior for life, forbidding him negative feelings in relation to the body, whom he should love. This causes a state of chronic muscular tension, especially in the upper back. Voltage in muscular system depends on our will, controlled by the ego (according to Freud, it performs executive functions, being an intermediary between the external and internal world), which often acts contrary to the desires of the heart. Fearing rejection, we withdraw the hand that wanted to touch someone and hug someone; lips that would like to kiss or suck (as happens with babies); or we avert the eyes that we would like to watch ..... "
But at the same time, wanting love and recognition, we do everything to attract attention to ourselves, “... hiding behind the facade of narcissism (low self-esteem; compensatory arrogance; anxiety; fear of failure; fear of success; need to always be right; difficulty making decisions; detachment from one's own feelings; need for continuous admiration; fear of intimacy), the goal of which, on the one hand, is to receive approval and admiration, and on the other hand, compensation and denial of internal feelings of inferiority, despair and sadness. A good example of this personality is a man who develops muscles in order to give the impression of strength, masculinity and power. In most cases, the lost child is hiding behind the macho façade. The split between the bodybuilder's appearance and the inner feeling of loneliness splits the inner integration of his personality.
In a culture like ours, oriented mainly towards such values ego(lat. ego - “I”), like power and success, in the personality structure of most people there is a share of narcissism. The main question here is to what extent a person remains in touch with his deep feelings and with his body ... ".
Thus, embellishing our appearance, putting on a mask of confidence and charm, while the heart is in the bunker, we do not even realize that this state of affairs has a very serious consequences for health, as the heart loses its vitality. We all want love but avoid it because we're afraid of rejection unconscious fear closes the way to the heart. Childhood trauma left a deep mark, which makes a barrier to lips that would like to kiss. And eyes that we would like to look at.
In conclusion, we can conclude that we live and accept the false values of the ego, and do not realize it. Perhaps there are a lot of reasons for destructive non-manifestation, blocking one's feelings and emotions, and all of them are individual, connected with personal attitudes, and it is better to work on this in a specialist's office. First of all, we need to realize that the head is not for making money, the genitals are not for entertainment, the heart is not isolated from the head and the satisfaction of the flesh, has not lost touch with the world, but everything is interconnected and functions together. Realizing this, we will be able to control the appearance of the emotion of fear in our soul, and our life will become happier, from the fact that we accept the feeling of love and ourselves as we are. Opening the bunker where they hid their heart to freedom and love.
Bibliography:
- Lowen A. Sex, love and heart: psychotherapy of a heart attack / Per, from English. S. Koleda - M .: Institute of General Humanitarian Research, 2004 - 224 p.
- Lowen A. Psychology of the body: bioenergy analysis of the body / Per. from eng. S. Koleda - M .: Institute for General Humanitarian Research, 2007 - 256s.
- Jaro Stark, Tonn Kay, James Oldheims C 77 Gestalt Therapy Techniques for Everyday: Take the Risk of Being Alive / Per. from eng. Rodred. G.P. Butenko. - M.: Psychotherapy, 2009. - 176 p.
Translated from English, the concept "psychological protection" means a system of regulatory mechanisms in the psyche, which are aimed at eliminating or minimizing negative, traumatic experiences associated with internal or external conflicts, states of anxiety and discomfort.
When does such a need arise? Scientists prove that psychological defense as a reaction occurs when there is a real or imaginary threat to the integrity of the individual, her identity or self-esteem. Ultimately, psychological protection is aimed at maintaining the stability of the self-esteem of the individual, his image of the Self and the image of the world, which is achieved:
Elimination of sources of conflict experiences from consciousness;
Transformation of experiences in such a way as to prevent the emergence of conflict;
The emergence of specific forms of response, behavior that reduce the severity of experiences of threat or intrapersonal conflict.
The founder of the study of psychological defense is Z. Freud, who considered it as a form of resolving the conflict between unconscious drives and internalized social demands and prohibitions. His daughter, Anna Freud, saw in the mechanisms of psychological defense and ways to resolve external conflicts, ways to adapt to the social environment. According to A. Freud, psychological defense mechanisms are the product of individual experience and learning. Thus, psychological defense was considered as a process of perception and transformation of a threatening or conflictogenic object. On this basis, about 20 types of psychological defense mechanisms have been described. The main ones are:
- Crowding out- elimination from consciousness of unacceptable inclinations and experiences;
- jet formation(inversion) - transformation in the mind of the emotional attitude to the object to the exact opposite;
- regression- return to more primitive forms of behavior and thinking;
- identification - unconscious assimilation of a threatening object;
- rationalization - a rational explanation by a person of his desires and actions, the true causes of which are rooted in irrational socially or personally unacceptable inclinations;
- sublimation - transformation of the energy of sexual attraction into socially acceptable forms of activity;
- projection - attributing to other people their own repressed motives, experiences and character traits;
- insulation - blocking negative emotions, ousting from consciousness the connections between emotional experiences and their source.
Psychological protection cannot be unambiguously considered as a useful or harmful phenomenon. It allows you to achieve a more or less stable state of the individual against the background of a destabilizing situation, traumatic experiences and contributes to successful adaptation to these conditions. At the same time, psychological protection does not allow a person to actively influence the cause, the source of the destabilizing situation. In this sense, an alternative to psychological protection can be either real intervention in the situation and its transformation. Either, or self-change, adaptation to the situation due to the transformation of the personality itself. The useful, adaptive effect of psychological defense is more pronounced when the scale of the conflict that threatens the integrity of the individual is relatively small. Exploring this aspect of psychological defense, D.A. Leontiev argues that in case of a significant conflict that requires the elimination of its causes, psychological defense plays a rather negative role, obscuring and reducing its emotional intensity and significance for the individual. Consequently, psychological protection has a limited, auxiliary role at certain stages of conflict situations, but it resolves the conflict and does not transform the personality.