"Victims are perceived as rapists": Kozhevnikova - about the splitting of perception, the psychosomatic factor and the problems of the IOC

- This season is quite specific: athletes are fully trained in order to reach the peak of their form, but at the same time they are deprived of the opportunity to compete in really significant competitions.

Does it add problems to you as a psychologist?

- I would rather talk about another problem, physiological.

Which, perhaps, is associated with multiple vaccinations.

It is clear that the need to be vaccinated was inevitable for athletes, otherwise they simply would not be able to compete anywhere, and everything was presented in the vein that the benefits of vaccination are higher than the potential harm.

But now we are seeing a very obvious decrease in immunity.

In particular, the team that I work with quite closely, and who have been vaccinated at least twice, has been massively ill over the summer.

- Are there any official medical data on this?

- I do not have them.

Therefore, I can simply state the obvious: athletes began to get sick more often and get out of these infections for a long time.

All sorts of catarrhal symptoms seem to follow in a loop: runny nose, discomfort in the throat, not too good bodily condition.

A person develops a general weakness, which cannot but affect the ability to work and withstand stress.

- What difficulties does this add to your work personally?

- It has become extremely difficult to rely on any medical recommendations, because they simply do not exist.

We have already talked with you about the fact that on the eve of responsible starts, many athletes have a psychosomatic factor that they unconsciously use as protection against stress.

Previously, it was clear how to deal with it.

For example, to get tested and get a doctor’s verdict: is a person really sick, or is it pure psychosomatics, when it’s easier for an athlete to “get sick” than to say his own fears: that he is not strong enough, that he is afraid to go to the start, afraid to lose ...

Now, doctors do not give any official recommendations, because they themselves do not really understand the cause of frequent pharyngitis, rhinitis or latent infections.

They simply do not have enough data to consider this a consequence of total immunization.

Accordingly, for me, as a psychologist, the problem is to understand: the symptoms that the athlete is talking about are such a protection against excessive stress, or the real and not yet well understood consequences of COVID-19.

- Where is the exit?

- Theoretically, it would be good to make sure that athletes are under closer supervision of doctors, so that they can constantly monitor certain parameters.

If this is psychosomatic, it is important that the athlete has the opportunity to pronounce his fears.

When a person pronounces his negative emotions out loud, he thus evacuates emotional tension from the body, receives support from the outside.

In this case, he “does not need” to get sick in order to protect himself from an uncomfortable experience.

Unfortunately, many athletes resort to the psychosomatic defense mechanism.

There is another important factor.

If a year and a half ago everyone was sitting at home, determining this or that load for themselves, and it was, frankly, not too serious, now the situation has changed dramatically.

People have not just returned to full-fledged work in the previous mode, where training is very well funded, but they, among other things, are on a certain psychological platoon, since the same thought is now cultivated in all sports: “If tomorrow we are allowed to big starts, we must be as prepared as possible for this.

Therefore, I say that it is important to be able to pronounce your emotions.

So that we can minimize any prerequisites for the manifestation of psychosomatic reactions.

- How often, when working with athletes, have you heard the phrase: “Who needs all this?”

- Never from the athletes themselves.

I can tell you for sure: when an athlete for the third or fifth time fails to cope with himself in competitions and cannot find the reason, deep down he understands very well that he needs help.

It’s just that later, when it dawns on a person that to overcome all negative phenomena, to be able to withstand one’s own emotions, specific and fairly large efforts are required, a kind of reaction of counteraction is triggered, because consciousness requires an easy way.

Some kind of magic button, pressing which you can instantly solve the problem.

It is at this point in the brain that the phrase “who needs all this” appears.

It usually pops up when people come for help, talk about their problem and get tested.

What is the purpose of this procedure?

- Testing allows you to determine the most sensitive points that trigger an unwanted stress reaction.

We deliberately do not avoid these points, but go deeper into them.

Many decide not to continue working with a psychologist at this very moment.

This is also a kind of protection.

- We have talked with you many times that such competitive stresses are most typical for athletes who experienced the trauma of training violence in childhood, the fear of being ridiculed or kicked out.

And now I can do it again.

Such an athlete has a purely physiological reaction at the moment of failure to achieve the goal.

A kind of blackout, blocking all systems.

The person feels totally confused, disoriented.

He either flashes a powerful excitement, similar to a panic attack, or, conversely, devastation and apathy sets in.

When you start talking, it turns out that these reactions are very familiar to people.

When such athletes seek help, I immediately explain that we must learn to endure these symptoms.

Reflash the situation, train it to such an extent that the part of the brain we need does not turn off.

- In other words, after a series of tests, are you able to explain to any of your clients why this or that psychological catastrophe happens to him?

- Well, yes.

It always happens for the same reason: when rational thinking turns off, and you stop doing what you have been working on with your coach for years, and what you have to show at the start.

“And you forget your sticks in the wax booth, relatively speaking?”

“You forget your sticks, you mix up the finishing corridors, you can’t shoot because your fingers become stiff, and so on.

These are such reactions as a child's game: "Freeze!".

It’s just that the command is not given to you by some other person, but by your own brain.

- At the beginning of our conversation, you uttered a good phrase about the fact that in training athletes behave as if they were going to fight tomorrow.

How do you feel about the current reality?

There is a feeling that the suspension of Russian athletes from international competitions can be lifted in the near future?

- To be honest, I generally perceive the whole picture of what is happening in the world as some kind of panopticon.

The reactions on all sides are so immature and emotional that the situation is capable of developing in any way.

- If we consider the least favorable option, namely, that the suspension will drag on for years, is it necessary to psychologically prepare current athletes for the fact that their generation may never return to big sport?

- I think that it is necessary, and one way or another, the guys and I try to pronounce it.

How likely is this option?

I would say that 50/50: either yes or no.

While all the athletes are in the cage, they continue to train as before, and the situation, as they say, has not become chronic.

But if it suddenly turns into one, it is important to immediately begin to take the appropriate steps.

Get an education, develop other professional skills, process existing ones and redirect them in a slightly different direction.

- Your wards do not experience psychological depression from thinking about it?

- I'm not watching yet.

Much more people are worried about the feeling of insufficient physical health.

- Watching big sport from the side, I sometimes think that the pandemic has only accelerated its agony.

Here is the deadlocked fight against doping, and the emergence of transgender people and other non-binary personalities, and the total politicization of almost all the decisions of the IOC.

Maybe it’s time to close the shop as unnecessary, don’t you have such a feeling?

- I have a different feeling.

Now such serious problems have come to the fore that they are pushing aside everything that belongs to the “luxury”.

Sports including.

At the same time, I continue to perceive big sport as a sphere that, with all the craziness of the current moment, is a kind of constant.

After all, what is happening in the world right now?

There is a sharp abolition of all rules, everything rational and reasonable, on which society has stood for many years.

Our land is very small.

Everything is connected, there are no isolated political systems or economies, and one way or another, everyone will still have to enter into some kind of alliances, negotiate, develop common norms.

That's why it seems to me that people, when they reach the edge in this process of destructuring and madness, will definitely need something to cling to like an anchor.

Perhaps I am illusory, but sport seems to me just such an island of stability and positive.

— I agree.

But what exactly will this sport be like?

With first-rate stars and the Olympic principle “Faster, higher, stronger”, or gender-balanced, with the cultivation of mythical equal opportunities and the appearance of more and more exotic disciplines in the Olympic program?

- Well, we understand why all this is being done - to be able to trade a slightly larger number of products.

Here, it seems to me, it is generally not worth comparing the sport that was in the middle of the last century with the current one.

You just need to understand that sport will exist as long as the person himself.

This is inherent in the human essence - the need to move, to compete.

Dopamine will somehow push people into competition.

Therefore, I do not exclude at all that the entire world of sports at some point will simply shake off the husk of marketing excess, which is so good to trade in prosperous times, and begin to roll back to some more fundamental forms that existed several decades ago.

And that the attitude towards the same transgender people will change more than once.

— Are you, as a psychologist, not surprised when public people start coming out or talk about some deeply personal things on social networks?

- I do not regard this as a pathology.

People do this for a variety of reasons.

There are those who understand that they simply cannot continue to keep such things in themselves: the level of internal anxiety is so high that they need to throw it out somewhere so as not to carry it alone.

And someone takes such steps solely with the aim of raising their marketing value, selling themselves at a higher price.

- In other words, if this or that professional world is predominantly homosexual, is it more profitable to be called gay or transgender in it?

I would be talking about something else here.

That there is a very obvious connection between the number of mentions and the contract.

Nikolai Davydenko and Marat Safin in tennis are excellent examples.

Everyone in the know has always known that Safin plays less consistently, but he is much more scandalous, so he sells himself at a higher price.

It's just that all athletes are different in this regard.

For example, I would not feel safe with absolute openness in social networks.

- Why?

- The point here is not in my internal closeness, but rather in the schizophrenic situation that has developed in the world.

In scientific terms, there has been a split: black is perceived as white, white as black, people's idea of ​​values ​​has changed dramatically.

And there will be a next step.

The same people who are now behaving in a certain way will change their shoes several times more, because this is the essence of splitting: the poles are constantly changing in the minds of people, there is a substitution of concepts, victims are perceived as rapists and vice versa.

- That is, you recommend not to give any assessments and not to draw far-reaching conclusions?

- Including.

I myself learned this from watching Lance Armstrong win the cycling Tour de France year after year.

And I tried to refrain from any emotions about this, because I understood that the situation would change, and very soon.

Which, in fact, happened.

- Against the backdrop of everything that is happening in the world now, doping in sports seems like such a cute nonsense ...

- In fact of the matter.

How the story will develop further, none of us knows.

But the words that were said on this or that occasion will remain.

And you need to think carefully before opening your mouth once again - at least in order not to look like an idiot later.

- Finally, I offer you, as a psychologist, a kind of test drive: tomorrow one of your biathlon wards comes to you and says: “You know, Lisa, I woke up in the morning and decided that I was not a boy, but a girl.”

Your actions?

- Probably, first of all, let me remind you that he is an adult, therefore he is fully responsible for both his decisions and their consequences.

And that these consequences will definitely be, and not only positive ones.

In general, I would say that the primary task of not only psychologists, but also parents is to constantly remind a person of these two things.

It can be very helpful to take a piece of paper, divide it in half, and write down both the pros and cons of a potential solution.

And then decide for yourself whether this decision is worth making.