Why psychologists don't give specific advice

ALL WE HAVE GROWN THE MASS OF QUESTIONS TO THEMSELVES AND THE WORLDwith which there seems to be no time or need to go to a psychologist. But convincing answers are not born when you talk to yourself, or to your friends, or to your parents. We started a new regular section where professional psychotherapist Olga Miloradova will answer pressing questions. By the way, if you have them, send to [email protected].

Why do psychologists and psychotherapists do not give specific advice?

Not many of us decide to turn to a psychologist or psychotherapist with our problems — although there is nothing wrong with that. But even if such a decision is made, the first visits can leave many disappointed: contrary to expectations, the doctor does not offer his patient a ready answer to his questions and a recipe for solving a difficult situation, and often doesn’t say what we would like to hear subconsciously. Why, despite the fact that the range of issues that concern us is not unlimited (problems with a partner, self-realization, the fear of death, and so on), there are no universal solutions?

OLGA MILORADOVA psychotherapist

When we come to a specialist, we crave concrete answers: where is what is broken and how to repair. Or in general, it is not very important for us how and where, it is important that this something works and preferably does not break anymore. When we visit a doctor, we also want specific advice. So as not to take a blue or red pill in the Matrix, but to make it clear: one red in the morning and one blue for the night for seven days - and everyone is happy. Many doctors themselves teach them that the patient should not think and ask questions, but obey and follow all the instructions. Only here the psychotherapist is the wrong doctor. A psychologist and not a doctor in principle, and it seems to deal with healthy people. Go

It would, of course, be great if there was such a book or such a science, having studied that it would be possible to distribute universal advice to everyone. But, I'm afraid, a world where advice for all is universal looks like Huxley’s “brave new world”, because if we all want to be personalities, individuals with different traits and characters, then this idea does not work in principle and with different problems. people and advice should be different. But it turns out that you come to a specialist, you tell everything about yourself, it would seem that, everything is clear, I am such, give me individual advice. And you are all tormented by questions and trying to figure out what you would like to do.

The fact is that most of the psychotherapeutic areas do not really favor the paternalistic approach, where the doctor is a kind of dominant figure, possessing sacred knowledge, which will take care of everything and solve all problems, but the patient is small and helpless and cannot do anything. On the contrary, equality is welcomed, where the therapist is the same person who understands human problems, but is capable of a more or less impartial view from the outside. And, by the way, in order to understand your problem, it is not at all necessary that he, too, once suffered panic attacks, depression, divorce, death of parents, or something else in which you would like to find mutual understanding. On the one hand, it is not necessary to get sick with systemic lupus erythematosus to know how to treat it, but on the other hand, if the therapist had suffered all the problems that were addressed to him, he probably would have been the most miserable person in the world and he was would no longer be up to your consultation. But, returning to the topic, for many it really is a big surprise and disappointment that psychotherapeutic work is first of all your work that no specialist will do for you.

It is by taking our personal decisions that we grow, change and move on.

The desire to get concrete advice is the need of an immature person that exists somewhere inside of you, to shift your responsibility to someone, not to solve the problem yourself. The psychotherapist is not a magician or a wizard, his task is not to solve your problems for you, but to help you figure out, formulate what the problem is, and find ways to solve it. No one knows better than you the best solution, just sometimes too much prevents you from seeing it yourself. It is by making our personal decisions that we grow, change and move on. In addition, the fact that a specialist is also a person plays a significant role. Because there is a great temptation to introduce something personal into therapy, to begin to change people's lives in their own image and likeness.

So imagine that your therapist, for example, is an atheist, and you want to go through the giyur. Would you be happy if they told you head-on that all this is nonsense and would you rather get a job instead? Or do you come up with a request to save the family, and you are told that the family is generally nonsense, drop everything and go looking for yourself in the Himalayas. It is also very often that a person comes with one request, but in the process of work it turns out that the sore spot is completely different, because it is often too scary for our consciousness to accept true pain, and even recognizing that something is wrong, we are not ready to go to the end and realize exactly what. That is, there is some chance of getting advice not on the issue that you really care about. So, summing up all the above, the psychotherapist does not give advice, because the person creates his own suffering, but at the same time has enough strength and autonomy to solve his problems.