Checklist: 10 signs that it's time you go to a psychologist

Text: Yana Filimonova

Psychologists and their clients are still taken to be suspicious. Many people think that such help is needed as a last resort, and to recognize that such a moment has arrived is in itself an act. At the same time, the work of a psychologist differs little from the work of an earworm - this is a way to correct or at least improve your life qualitatively. We talk about the signs that will help you understand that a psychologist may be useful to you.

1

It seems to you that you go in a circle

You have a problem that cannot be solved at all, although you seem to have tried all methods. For example, wherever you get a job, after half a year or a year, you begin to devour melancholy and discontent, you get the feeling that life is passing by, the boss is a fool, and your colleagues are boring. You quit, surprising your family and friends with this, you take a seat to another place, and a year later everything repeats. Or your personal relationships always end at the same stage. Or did you realize that all your partners are very similar in some way and these features of them really do not suit you very much. You meet a man who seems to be not at all like that, and op! - Six months later, it turns out that all the familiar features are with him: from chronic lies to alcoholism.

Recognizing the recurring scenario is the first and absolutely necessary step. But to solve the problem is not enough. Our psyche works in such a way that the most traumatic episodes and experiences are forced out of consciousness - this is a way of self-defense. But it is they who become the basis of such "vicious circles" - simply speaking, we always do not see anything in ourselves and do not know about something. The psychologist helps to see the missing details of the puzzle, and then work through the problem that caused the appearance of a negative scenario, and gradually get out of it.

2

You avoid parents or, conversely, spend too much time with them.

You are an adult, who easily conducts business negotiations and is able to find a compromise with the most difficult client - but your own mother brings you to tears in five minutes of conversation, and you can’t do anything about it. Each time you reluctantly take the phone with the thought: "Now will begin." Or are you still lying to your father that the husband does not have time to come to the family dinner, because you simply cannot tell him that you have been divorced for two years now?

There is also the “best friends” scenario, which in fact often turns out to be not so bright. For example: "My mother and I are best friends. We go shopping every week. On Saturdays. By ten in the morning. Regardless of whether it is convenient for me or not. Otherwise, mother will be offended, and they don’t do that to best friends, right?" Ask yourself a simple question: if you are an adult over twenty years of age, do your parents take up more space in your life than your partner, work and hobby, or do they replace any of the above? If yes - something went wrong.

All these examples, like many others, illustrate the violations in the separation process - the healthy separation of the growing child from the parent family. As society developed, the norms of what a family should be, what the role of children should be in it, and how they should live changed. In western countries, children who graduated from school at the age of seventeen or eighteen have traditionally left for college and no longer live with their parents. This is the norm, but only in those countries that could relatively easily move from an agrarian society to an industrial and post-industrial society - in the USA, for example.

The countries in whose territory there were wars and political upheavals, and whose inhabitants were constantly engaged in survival, could not develop new ways of life in a timely manner. In such a society, people tend to cling to old behaviors that seem proven and reliable, and the lifestyles of entire generations are not consistent with the current reality.

3

You do not have personal space

In Russia or in Eastern European countries, there are cases when a young couple or even several adult brothers and sisters with their partners and children all live together in the home of elderly parents. In the eighteenth century, in the family of peasants or farmers, this scenario helped the family to survive, manage the farm, and grow a new generation of people adapted to life.

But in the twenty-first century in the city, he rather hinders: everyone is crowded, adult children and parents cannot divide the territory, everyone constantly quarrels, no one can live at their own pace, not rest and not get enough sleep. Young spouses can not normally talk in private, have sex, develop their family way of life, because they have to integrate into the already existing system as "younger." There are also chaotic "hybrid" scenarios. For example, a young woman rents an apartment and lives separately. But at the same time her mother has the key, and at any time she can go into the house, do the cleaning, rearrange things, bring groceries.

To completely stop communicating with the parental family and cut off all relationships is also a violation of the separation process. In this case, unprovided grievances, unfinished conflicts seem to freeze in time, are not resolved, and people live in negative scenarios for decades and lead long mental dialogues with their parents - that is, they are still very closely connected with them, not free.

Violations of separation are bad because they interfere with development, build a happy personal life and generally live on your own. Working with a psychologist helps to gradually rebuild relationships with the parent family according to the type “adult-adult”, as well as to “sort out” the family inheritance, leaving the behaviors that suit you and discarding unnecessary and disturbing ones.

4

You "just suck" or you "everything enrages"

You have outbursts of anger, irritation, incomprehensible depression and apathy, bouts of acute jealousy and other heavy emotions “seemingly out of nowhere”: “Suddenly I began to feel terribly lonely. I don’t understand how so: I have a job, friends, boyfriend”; "They began to annoy others. I only communicate with good people, they treat me perfectly, I don’t understand why everyone is besotting me. I guess I’m just an unbalanced person." This is also where the feeling of global discontent with life comes when a person says: “I’m all good, for some reason I wake up in the morning and I want to hang myself.”

Unfortunately, others often support the devaluation of feelings. But feelings - this is the emotional truth of our lives, and if a person is bad, then he does not think it is really bad. The main question is why, where did this painful sensation come from?

A good psychologist will certainly ask if the client went to the doctor, and advises to be examined: outbreaks of irritability or tearfulness can be, for example, symptoms of thyroid problems. Another person may have depression, which began imperceptibly. In this case, you should go to a psychiatrist and drink the drugs prescribed by him, but the help of a psychologist will not be too much. Moreover, it often turns out that a person is physically healthy, and his problems are of a psychological nature. The causes of severe feelings can be very different, but most often they are associated with our relationships with other people or with a sense of personal lack of realization and lack of demand.

After several meetings with a psychologist, alas, it often happens that the people around are not so beautiful. Irritation and anger are not a bad temper, but a healthy reaction to regular depreciation, degradation and violation of boundaries. Jealousy may not be so groundless: even if the partner does not change, he may behave ugly towards you, for example not sharing with you the details of his life, which is easily told to friends, without warning to cancel common plans for meetings with friends or help parents - in short, to demonstrate that you are far from the first place on the list of priorities.

5

You can not find your place in life

The lack of demand and the search for one's place in life (another common cause of hard feelings, which appear to be “just like that”) is a big topic, which many people have come to after only thirty or even forty years to approach. In our country, the standard scenario of self-realization has been adopted: graduation from school, admission to the institute, and work in the profession or in an adjacent, but related field.

This model is not suitable for everyone - especially since over the past twenty years there has been a mass of new specialties for which they simply are not taught anywhere. After working for several years, people begin to wonder: "What do I want to do in life? Who is my work useful for? Does it suit me?" Often these doubts pass away as if in the background and are not even realized, but they “break out” just in the form of painful feelings: feelings of meaninglessness, dislikes to work or superiors, constant fatigue, procrastination. Or they lead to protest behavior - to leave college, quit.

The main thing that a psychologist can teach here is not to get rid of difficult feelings, trying to suppress them, but to perceive them as an important signal. At first it may be hard and unpleasant, but in the end it will lead to a qualitative improvement in life.

6

You drink too much

If you notice that you have started drinking more often and more than you planned, they are broken in the mornings, you find it difficult to concentrate at work, and in any stressful or, on the contrary, pleasant situation, you think about a glass of wine or a shot of whiskey - most likely, you really have problems. with alcohol. The same can be said if you are just worried about the amount of alcohol you have drunk or you have thought about your relationship with alcohol.

If you try or regularly take drugs - this is also a reason to think. It is not only about the harm of psychoactive substances per se. The main thing here is the reasons why people began to use them. Usually we are talking about a difficult childhood, a rejecting, indifferent or overwhelming family, tremendous anxiety, loneliness or heartache that people who drink or take drugs try to drown out.

7

Or work too hard

There is a term “behavioral addiction” - this is not addiction as such, but an activity (in itself quite healthy), which has begun to occupy too much space in life. For example, you understand that the work pushed into the background meeting with friends and dates, you think about it constantly and come to the office on Saturdays without regret, but an empty weekend makes you have a slight panic. Or you began to spend so much time behind a computer game that you stopped going out and meeting people - all of this can be an alarming symptom.

8

You behave risky

Risky behavior is all that could threaten your life or spoil it badly. For example, after parties in a bar, you are not the first time waking up in a stranger’s bed and at the same time not feeling satisfaction, but only emptying. And then you are late in the office, and the boss is keenly interested in your schedule and productivity. This also includes risky driving, unprotected sex, extreme sports, and self-harm: cutting yourself, putting cigarettes on yourself, and the like. Suicidal attempts are an extreme form of such behavior.

It is important to understand that no self-destructive behavior arises just like that. Neither chemical addiction nor eating disorders are a “bad habit.” They have a reason, or rather, a complex of reasons that it would be good to find and eliminate. Firstly, it will save you health and in the future - life. Secondly, people who are prone to self-destructive behavior usually have problems in other areas: it’s difficult for them to cope with their feelings, build strong relationships of trust with others and simply feel good, enjoy life as such.

9

You can not build a relationship with food

Another type of risk behavior is eating disorders, which include not only anorexia and bulimia. Many people, especially women, suffer from their “forerunners”: for example, they eat when they are nervous, do not induce vomiting or do it irregularly, or sit on hard diets that undermine their health, exhaust themselves with workouts, and suffer from hunger amenorrhea.

If you decide to go to a psychologist with this problem or other types of risky behavior, you should tune in to a long and serious work. Do not be alarmed if he offers to go to a doctor at the same time - this is rather a sign that you have a responsible specialist: most psychologists have contacts of verified psychiatrists. What you definitely should not be afraid of is to shock someone with your problems, no matter how hard they seem to you. If the specialist's profile says that he works with your type of disorder, then he is ready to listen to you and try to help.

10

You have a topic that you cannot discuss with anyone.

The same addiction, bulimia, childhood harassment experienced in childhood, or any other topic on which you have a seal of silence. With whom you communicate and no matter how confidential the conversation is, you always keep silent about these circumstances of your life. Many people have hard secrets. Usually they rationalize what is happening: "Why discuss if it doesn’t bother me? Everything is already in the past." But the very appearance of the taboo subject says that there is something behind the whole story. She is difficult, terrible and unbearable so much that it is impossible to touch her in conversation even with the closest people.

From one episode, a whole tangle of fear, guilt, anger, and destructive attitudes is often unwound: “My uncle harassed me when I was ten, and my mother preferred not to notice anything. Why did she do that? She saw him putting me on his lap "For a long time I felt as if I was guilty of something. I was afraid of men, I ran away as soon as someone started flirting with me. And now I feel how angry I am with my mother."

"To stir up the past" in this case is simply necessary. This is done in order to call white white and black black and return responsibility to those who should have borne it. In the example described, the uncle is a pedophile and he should be treated, and the mother is responsible for not protecting her daughter. But the ten-year-old girl is not responsible for this situation, she is the victim.

What she needs to know ten, fifteen or some years later is that she is now adult and can protect herself, that her sexuality is not evil and not the cause of violence and can be shown with those partners that she likes, and the extent to which she is comfortable. When the taboo subject is named and "spelled", the process of liberation begins.

Photo: DigiClack - stock.adobe.com, Sean Nel - stock.adobe.com, Oleksandr Lutsenko - stock.adobe.com, Brooke Becker - stock.adobe.com