Olga Razmakhova and Nika Vodvud and their book on social anxiety
IN THE RUBRIC "COMMUNITY" we talk about girls who came up with a common cause and achieved success in it. But at the same time we expose the myth that women are not capable of friendly feelings, and can only aggressively compete. In December, the book "Social anxiety and phobia: how to look out from under the invisible cloak?" - Invented a project and organized the work of many authors psychotherapist, intersectional feminist and creator of the movement “Psychology for Human Rights” Olga Razmakhova, and illustrator for the publication was made by illustrator and intersectional feminist Nika Vodwood. We asked Olga and Nick about how they worked together and why it is important to hear as many different voices as possible when talking about anxiety and psychological states.
Alexandra Savina
About myself
Olga: I have been doing psychotherapy for about five years. After receiving education in special and clinical psychology, I realized that this was not enough, and began to improve my qualifications. Began to stumble on new interesting directions, such as feminist psychotherapy. And she began to think differently about how psychotherapy should work, she saw how specialists, because of patriarchal thinking, can harm clients and clients.
About two years ago, my colleague Kirill Fyodorov, a St. Petersburg activist and psychologist, and I decided that we were closely associated with the Russian psychological associations. We decided to create our own movement for specialists and specialists who understand that the psychological state, the quality of life of our clients and clients are related to the context, the situation in which they are: social pressure, laws that openly discriminate or stigmatize people, and so on. The main goal was to bring together specialists and specialists who work with vulnerable groups in NGOs to show them how discriminatory systems can intersect. For example, an organization that deals with people with disabilities may come to people with disabilities with a homosexual or bisexual orientation. Or, for example, a lesbian woman or a migrant woman can come to a crisis center for women.
Nika: I have been doing illustrations since 2013, drawing my own comics (I have a collection of "Singing", it is sold in stores) and I am engaged in freelancing. I also shoot videos on YouTube and do femativism. Since I live mainly due to channel advertising and subscriber support for Patreon, lately I have been trying to take less commercial illustration projects and more social ones related to feminism, LGBT and so on. Illustrating Olya books for me was just the perfect order.
About social phobia
Olga: I once had an acute social anxiety disorder, so for me this is a particularly significant topic. Plus, I began to work a lot with people facing social anxiety, and I have a lot of practical material. I do not know any quality, popular, accessible literature on social anxiety. Therefore, it was especially important to put the book in open access, because not everyone has money for books. We decided to make an electronic version and openly distribute it.
Sociophobia is an obsolete term, now using “social anxiety disorder,” but we used a more recognizable name in the book. Not all people have a disorder, but almost everybody experienced social anxiety in one way or another - I wanted to unite in this book the problems and situations that not only people with a diagnosis face.
Social anxiety arises due to social situations associated with people. This may be an alarm due to public speaking or, conversely, anxiety during a one-on-one conversation. There are physiological symptoms: heart palpitations, hyperventilation of the lungs, a face may blush, palms may sweat and shake, the body may be tense. Since we all actively interact with people in one way or another, social anxiety can greatly reduce the quality of life. A person may, for example, refuse to increase, because you need to phone with the leaders and pass the interview, but he is too hard. Or, for example, not get a higher education, although he did, because he is afraid of meeting new people. Similarly, with a romantic relationship, where you have to open up before someone else - it may be easier for a person to avoid intimacy. It can hit hard in different areas of life.
About the start of collaboration
Olga: Once I worked in an orphanage, and there girls looked vlogi Nicky. I did not know then who it was, but I saw that for girls it is very important and she very much supports them. Since the girls could not go beyond the orphanage and get to meet with Nika, I decided to take her letter to her. We met, talked and decided that it would be great to do some kind of project together. After some time, when I thought about the book, I immediately wanted to ask Nick how interesting that would be to her. She supported me very much - I saw that what I was doing was right for her - and in many respects her support helped to decide what the project should be done.
Nika: We met Olya at the Bumfest comic festival, which takes place every year in St. Petersburg. I usually participate in it as an illustrator: I sell comic books, I meet with the audience. Olya told that she is engaged in psychological support of adolescents in orphanages, including working with girls. She handed me letters from them, a six-to-seven piece of text - that my videos help them, that my channel is very important to them. Olya gave me thanks from them, said she supports my activity and activism. I was very pleased, I carried this cardboard with letters in my backpack every day of the year a year or two.
Olga: At the beginning of my work on the book, I did a lot of volunteer, social, and activist projects, and because of this I had to work less with clients and clients. I wanted to pay for the work of illustrators, layout women, plus I wanted to devote all my attention to the book. I had to raise money through crowdfunding - I think this is a very good mechanism. There was, for example, an option to win a grant, but it is not clear how to do it - I understood that in the book we will disclose points that are not very desirable for the state. I wanted to be independent and make the project as we see it.
It was not easy. I talked about collecting professional associations, talked about it with the help of our movement, but more actively helped activists, bloggers, feminists: Nika Vodvud, Ekaterina Karelova, Bella Rapoport and others.
Nika: I immediately told Ole that I was ready to help with the fundraising, told about it in social networks and on the channel, and gradually we collected the necessary amount.
I do not have social phobia - there is an anxiety disorder, and I go to psychotherapy. I supported this project not because it is directly related to my experience, but because it is important and useful for others. It seems to me that any such projects contribute to the destigmatization of mental disorders and directly or indirectly help people.
About the book
Olga: The book has three sections. The first one is personal stories, mine and two more people. From them you can understand how social anxiety can look like, relate your condition to other people's stories. The second section is devoted to psychotherapy, psychotherapists and psychotherapists, psychologists and psychologists, who told how to work with social anxiety, participated in its creation. It was very important for me that all specialists and specialists represent the directions of psychotherapy, which are considered to be the most effective in working with social anxiety. It would be desirable that, while reading, a person could decide which type of psychotherapy to turn to. We sought to have in this section a lot of recommendations, specific tasks that you can help yourself.
The third section is written by activists and activists. Here it was important for me that the rule “Nothing for us without us” worked - people wrote about their experience. There are topics of transgenderism, fatfobia and bodipositive as a whole, aylism and ageism, xenophobia, gender discrimination, non-monogamous relationships - it turned out to gather a unique experience. We talked about the topic, its boundaries and volume, but otherwise people could say whatever they wanted. Everyone wrote in different styles, but this is precisely what is valuable. I did not want to bring the book to a single mind, for example, to insert feminatives everywhere, which I use myself. Someone wrote with gendergaps, so as not to exclude transgender and non-binary people, someone did not think about it.
The third section is most important to me, because social anxiety is very rarely attributed to the pressure of the majority on the minority. Suppose, with the idea that a woman should have children and she should be married, or that a man should earn a lot and provide for her family, or that everyone in Russia should be white, and so on. We looked at how the system of discrimination can influence the demands of society and, accordingly, the human condition. It seems to me that personal experience showed it very well.
I invented the structure of the book and made logical connections, but otherwise I gave all participants and project participants to write independently, based on my experience or activist knowledge. The book does not have my name as an author - I consider myself the coordinator, the creator of the project, but not the author. There are a lot of people behind it, and this is our common cause.
Nika: It seems to me that one of the main values of this book is that it uses an intersectional approach, describes the social context in which social anxiety is formed. The minus of so many texts and materials is that they claim to be universal - and because of this, only one experience is often seen. For example, the experience of a person who has money is taken. Those who are looking for a job are advised to go for a lot of interviews throughout the city - and then it turns out that for people who do not have a car or money for public transport, these tips will not help. A far-reaching example was obtained, but the bottom line is that the universal approach removes many people from a conversation, and often these people need help much more than the more privileged.
It’s very cool that Olya decided to write about it in her book, and it’s doubly cool that she didn’t do it alone. This fully corresponds to the principle of activism "Nothing for us without us" - it means that if you protect someone's rights, you need to do it directly with these people, do not speak for them and do not decide for them what will help them, but ask.
About teamwork
Olga: Cooperation with Nika was also as horizontal as possible. I roughly explained to her the images that come to my head, but at the same time I always said that she could do everything differently, which is very important for me, so that she was first of all interested. Communication with her was very supportive and valuable, it helped every time when I realized that I was already very tired of the project, and the deadlines shifted.
Nika: Olya was the most comfortable to work with. She very clearly set me a task and made it clear that she trusts me as an illustrator - she does not ask me to draw something completely different, she wants me to do everything in my style. As far as I remember, she didn’t say what specifically to do - just wrote a list of short plots, said that they should communicate, suggested a metaphor about the invisibility cloak.
I drew one picture, showed her the style and characters - she really liked everything, and then it went very quickly. I painted, threw the picture to Ole, she always reacted very enthusiastically, and this, I remember, motivated me very much. I did everything with great pleasure and at a calm pace. In my opinion, in general, it took two or three weeks. It happens that customers are very controlling the work: they say what and how to draw, how to paint, where to draw another nose, they literally start doing my work for me. There was no such thing with Olya. She has her own competencies and understanding of what her text is and what ideas she wants to convey - and I have competence in how these ideas can be portrayed, what characters it is important to draw. For example, it was important for me that the story about the relationship was not too hetero-normative, but that no one had any problems in the end. Therefore, in the illustration about the relationship it is not entirely clear who is depicted - two girls or a girl with a boy. Olya welcomed all this.
About future
Olga: Now I am particularly interested in the psychology of relationships - and stigmatization of relationships in general, and stereotypes, requirements for what relationships should be. If I took up the next project, I think I would have already written the book myself: I have accumulated a lot of material, plus I keep a blog about relationship psychology and my own experience.
If we talk about the fate of the book, now AST Publishing has contacted us - they want to publish it. From there, no gendergapes, feminitives will be removed - it will remain in the form in which we wrote it. Unfortunately, there will be an “18+” badge, because the LGBT subject is touched on there, and the publisher cannot do otherwise. But it is very important to me that a book with obvious feminist optics and a direct position on discrimination and stigma will be sold in stores to a wide audience.
