“A competent specialist does not dictate what you should do”: a psychologist on how to find your doctor

— Mikhail Anatolyevich, what problems did clients most often contact you with in 2022?

What age of patients came to the appointment?

“It’s still an anxiety disorder.

Anxiety levels have gone up a lot.

As for age, according to my statistics, as well as the statistics of most of my colleagues, there is a trend: more and more often parents bring young people aged 18 to 25 to an appointment.

Now there is such an outbreak.

Mostly people from 35 years old come on their own.

- And what are the main requests that are constantly addressed, regardless of the year?

- Dissatisfaction with oneself and a decrease in self-esteem, anxiety for one's future and the future and health of one's children, household addictions.

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The first reason why people do not turn to a psychologist is not the fear of a specialist.

This is the opinion that a person should cope on his own.

The fear of a psychologist is a rather rare story.

And here it is important to remember the quote of Honore de Balzac: "Admitting his weakness, a person becomes stronger."

Taking on the responsibility of coping with any life difficulties is not a sign of strength, but a spiritual unwillingness to admit that I have difficulties, problems, and therefore the inability to work through it.

Don't try to do everything yourself.

We rarely bake bread ourselves, only when we really want to, and not in order to live.

There are many specialists who treat us, deal with our documents, deliver food to us.

We delegated these matters to all of them.

And the same with a psychologist - it is important to entrust this to a specialist who knows how to solve a personal problem faster and easier.

As for the fear of a psychologist, this is not the fear of the specialist himself, but the fear that the specialist will be incompetent and harm.

To cope with this fear, it is important to understand that the selection of a psychologist is a separate task.

You don't have to guess right the first time.

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Now most psychologists are public.

You need to read what this psychologist says, and if it responds, then try it.

If at the first meeting you feel that there is some result, this is your psychologist.

If after the first meeting - both came and left, most likely not your psychologist.

And it is also important to remember that a competent specialist never dictates what you should do.

Doesn't force you to choose a course of action.

A professional helps a person to realize what exactly prevents him from doing this or that act, that is, to remove all negative emotions (fear, insecurity, anxiety, irritation) that prevent him from sorting out his life.

And when the client becomes calmer, more reasonable and ceases to be afraid, then he acts on his own.

If from the first meeting or, say, in a specialist’s blog, we see that a person, for example, says: “If your husband behaves like this, leave him, he will never change.”

Or he advises: "Give up your wife, she does not appreciate you, start living anew."

Such a specialist is toxic.

He controls other people, and the psychologist has no right to do so.

— Mikhail Anatolyevich, since you are a specialist in the fight against various addictions, and many people want to start the new year by getting rid of bad habits, could you tell us what addiction is in general?

- This is the state of a person when he experiences discomfort (up to pain, suffering) without any object.

It is usually believed that if we love something or someone strongly, then we must experience suffering without this object or person, and suffering itself is a sign of love, but this is not so.

You can love some object, have a high level of interest in it, strive to get it, but at the same time not experience suffering without it.

This uncomfortable state without an object in everyday life is called the word "breaking", and scientifically - "withdrawal syndrome".

The manic desire for something is secondary, it is not an independent phenomenon, but a consequence of suffering without an object of dependence.

That is, the withdrawal syndrome pushes the addicted person to use the “drug”.

Why does addiction occur

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- With chemicals, everything is simple, dependence is formed due to their use.

That is, all drugs, including household ones, such as nicotine and alcohol, are substances that are quite toxic to the body, but the trick of these poisons is that in a small dose they can be processed by the body.

When a microdose of a drug enters the body, it begins to fight this poison in horror, and for this it mobilizes its resources, releases a large amount of neurotransmitters of the excitatory spectrum, and their appearance is perceived by a person as a pleasure.

Although this is a protective reaction of the body to a potent poison.

For example, the alcohol contained in any alcoholic drink is a potent poison - a neurotoxin that destroys the nervous system.

In order to quickly decompose it into sugars and remove it, the body becomes excited, releases a large amount of dopamine into the blood, and a feeling of intoxication appears.

And after a surge of dopamine, a dopamine pit follows - that very uncomfortable state.

Over time, the dopamine pit becomes deeper, and the dopamine surge becomes calmer.

And this vicious story leads to the fact that a person uses more and less and gets less and less excited from this.

These are chemical dependencies.

But there are also non-chemical addictions

— For example, the dependence of a person on a person or dependence on gambling, computer games, dependence on the information flow, shopping ... In this case, no chemical substance enters the body, but overexcitation and a subsequent pit are also present - that is, an external irritant.

For example, a person who is regarded by us as very important, valuable, necessary, who gives us compensation for our unmet needs.

He is present in our life, we get used to it, he says some words, takes care of us, and then he just leaves our life.

And a person has the same breakdown.

The principle is the same as chemical addiction: dopamine peaks, and then dopamine pits.

Food addiction is complex.

Most foodaholics are addicted to a mixture of sugar and fat (ice cream, chocolate, pastries) and less often to only one of these substances.

How do

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If we have some behavior that leads to a deterioration in our lives, but we do not regulate it or try to regulate it, but we do not succeed, then most likely it is an addiction.

But it doesn’t work, because we feel that very break.

And it is very important to separate this breakdown from the words “I want”.

For example, overweight people often say: "I want to be slim, beautiful, light, but at the same time I also want to eat rolls, lie on the couch and watch TV."

It turns out that desires are mutually exclusive.

And then it is important to understand that the first is really my desires aimed at the good, and the second is what destroys me, these are not my desires, but a painful manifestation of dependence.

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- The presence of these addictions speaks in principle about humanity, they are characteristic of most people.

Here is the trick: it is customary to consider, for example, alcoholics those people who degrade on the background of drinking alcohol, and if you just drank and stopped, you are not an alcoholic.

But this is wrong, any person who drinks alcohol in any quantity is an alcoholic, just the stages of this addiction are different.

Same with any other drug.

And then the only question is why one person can remain in the first stage all his life, while the other moves to the second, third, fourth.

And no one knows exactly why one shifts, and the second does not, science still does not know the answer to this question.

But it is known what to do in order not to move there at all is to stop using the drug at any stage.

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- Nothing different.

All the same biochemistry and psychology.

Most addicted people psychologically idealize their drug, thereby increasing their suffering without it.

That is, they not only have dopamine waves, they also have super-significance.

That is, for example, smokers believe that cigarettes are a cure for everything: for stress, for boredom, that it is a help for communication, a help for thinking, relaxing, working.

Their cigarettes are idealized.

And so it is with all drug addicts.

Their drug is idealized simply because, without it, they begin to suffer chemically to one degree or another.

They remove this suffering with the use of the next dose and thank the drug for removing the discomfort that he himself created in their life.

And adults, and children, and teenagers just walk in this circle.

And children have another plus one belief,

Therefore, the phrase: “You can’t smoke - you’re small” is simply prohibited, because for a child the most important task in his life is to become an adult and manage his life on his own.

Therefore, after such phrases, the attributes of alcohol, cigarettes and other drugs are equated with the status of adulthood, and he strives for this status most of all in his life.

Is it possible to fight addiction on your own without resorting to the help of a specialist?

How do you know if you can't do it without help?

- It is possible without specialists, but at the third or fourth stage it is recommended not to trust yourself.

It is better to at least unite in social groups.

The same associations of anonymous alcoholics, and there are such for foodaholics, and for sexaholics, and for shopaholics ... You can walk around these groups, choose the most comfortable for yourself and, together with your comrades in misfortune, do it yourself.

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The trick is what is "normality" or what is "mental health" for example.

As I always write, probably, there are no completely mentally healthy people.

The question is not at the point in life where a person is now, but in the direction of his movement.

For example, he can ruin his life with cigarettes, but at the same time try to quit.

A sign of his mental health will be his attempts to quit smoking.

If he has a vector of movement towards healthier goals, then he is a healthier person than someone who smokes and does not try to quit.

Being addicted is normal for a person.

In modern society, we will not get rid of this.

There are many things around us that make us fall into these dependencies.

The question is, are we fighting for our freedom?

If we struggle, then this is normal behavior even in the presence of addiction.