This experienced psychologist publishes 'Take advantage of your life' (La Esfera de los Libros), a book that collects her reflections by tweet to redirect our lives. María Jesús Álava's goal is for people to think for themselves and be less manipulable.
Why this book now It serves to help us deepen our lives. It is written in tweet format, with short reflections. Writing a book based on tweets, is not going easy? What we cannot do is escape to the real world. People spend less and less time reading and they do it in moments. We want to reach young people, who are a type of reader that we are losing a lot. They are not recipes but a stimulus for reflection. We come from having very hard moments. Will we ever be able to overcome the more than 19,000 elderly people killed in the residences? The people who have lived directly, no. They will learn to live with it, but the impotence that creates you is impossible to overcome. It has been such an unfair tragedy that society has failed to really protect their elders or give them the treatment they need. I have interviewed many relatives of victims who felt guilty threefold: for having left their parents in a residence, for not being able to say goodbye and not being able to bury them as God commands. They have a terrible feeling of guilt. Many children think they have sentenced their parents to die. Consistency is living without betraying your values. Has the government acted consistently? The government has lacked transparent communication. In 9/11 I was tired of saying that they stopped putting so many images of Atocha and of how the trains had been because it was supplying a feeling of stress and anxiety in people. In this case, what people have lacked is to really know the reality, to know closely those deaths and the tragedy of the health personnel. If you steal it, you end up creating confusion. And there has been a lack of authentic leadership that had to be scientific and never political. Politicians in a circumstance like this should always be at the service of scientists. There has been an attempt to hide the deaths. EL MUNDO was criticized for putting on its cover the photo of the coffins in the Ice Palace. You can not anesthetize the population because then it will not react from consciousness, but from stunning. Are you noticing an increase in the demand for psychological consultations? There were three or four weeks in which there were hardly any calls because people were anesthetized by the pandemic. But, in the last three weeks, we are living like a hurricane. It is being tremendous. Confinement has helped us discover things about the people around us that we did not know. We have many cases of infidelity of people who saw their partners skip confinement to see others or simply that, being 24 hours together, they saw how the person acted when he received a message. There has also been a lot of feeling of loneliness of feeling abandoned by the closest people and discoveries of problematic situations in the children. Kids who have a huge dependency, spend the day hooked on the Internet and want to know absolutely nothing about their parents. Has confinement helped to strengthen couples or increase divorces? In a first phase, everyone tried to make an effort in quotes. But the confinement has been so long in time that it has ended up wearing out couples a lot. The separations will increase, although the economic factor will also intervene. The main calls we are receiving in recent days are people who say that it is impossible for them to live with their partner, but that one of them is in Erte or unemployed and they cannot be separated. There are many people who have not passed the coexistence exam. During confinement, parents have lost the battle against the console. We are creating a generation of video game junkies. Totally. We find ourselves with the paradox that there are teenagers who hardly want to go out. They are so hooked on social media and video games that dating seems boring to them. They live in a parallel world. Many parents have discovered that their children have generated a true addiction to new technologies. To get out of it, they are going to need professional help because, as a parent, you have everything to lose. Your son is going to cheat on you. Also, when you take away their mobile or computer, their reaction is usually quite aggressive. Why is it so hard for us to set limits? It's awkward. Most days we are tired and we don't want problems. It is much easier for you to say yes than to maintain a no. Children are much more persevering than we are. Why is it that this generation has overprotected children so much? It is a need to compensate. Most parents have the feeling of spending little time with them. Since I have few children and I can't spend much time with them, I try not to let them suffer. It is like a washing of consciousness. But I am not realizing that I am leaving my children without tools for the future, as if I were walking them on crutches. It is the biggest mistake that can be made and we do not only do it when they are little. We constantly see cases of parents who continue to overprotect their 30-year-old children. We are seeing it now with the online exams. Parents help copy their children. Notice the inconsistency. You tell your children that they should not cheat and they must act honestly and it turns out that your father is the first to help you copy. Children do not stay with what we say, but with what we do. There is no greater inconsistency or greater loss of legitimacy before your children. Do you come across many cases of children returning home at the age of 30 and dedicating themselves to mistreating their parents? This is an increasingly common tragedy. They return with a situation of failure or hatred or resentment and pour out all their frustration with their parents, who will always be there unconditionally. These behaviors should never be condoned by our very children. Parents have a hard time asking for help for a child who is literally crushing their lives. Sometimes they make them mortgage the house to start a business or buy a car. They are dramas that remain silent because many families do not talk about it. The family can be your main anchor or your greatest weakness, you say in the book. There are many family relationships that are toxic, but you are tied to them and you do not dare to break. Yes, because they always tell you that family is essential and that it is the key element. But there are family members who always try to impose their criteria or take advantage of others because they are their family. So, you have to be able to free yourself from the chains of certain relatives, who condition your life and prevent you from living your own life. It is important to ensure that people do not feel bad about moving away emotionally. But it costs a lot. It seems you are bound to get along with your family. Yes, and they begin to tell you how you are going to fail your family. Affective manipulation from within the family is very easy. You also denounce that there is a certain cult of aggressiveness, as we see with rulers like Trump, Bolsonaro ... It is outrageous. It is as if we had told people: only aggressive people succeed, who are capable of overwhelming and trampling, who do not listen and who impose. It is a message that has ended up penetrating somehow. In addition, they are people who create very fanatical followers. That is why it is necessary to demystify that aggressiveness and give resources to people so that they can counter it. You dedicate a section to climbing. How do we combat them? The first thing we have to do is be able to detect them, because, at first, they earn your trust. And then they start using you. The objective of the climb is to climb at the cost of whoever and whoever. From the climb you have to wait for it to lie. And don't trust him again because he will betray you again. The climber reacts when he realizes that he can no longer get you out. Many people do not know how to put a brake on the abusers, nor the brake nor the limits. Sometimes these aggressive people end up undermining your self-esteem. But the important thing is to have the strength to put emotional distance. There are people who tell you that you have to live with them because they are their father or their partner, but you have to cover yourself emotionally so that this person does not constantly crush you.In accordance with the criteria of The Trust Project
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