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News.dayoo.com September 2005 Source: Guangzhou Daily.
Today is the third World Suicide Prevention Day. Most people who intend to commit suicide suffer all kinds of pains. So, can alleviating pain keep a person away from suicide and restore mental health?
Dr Zhiyan Chen from the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences said that the answer is no. We are in pain, and our first reaction is to relieve the pain and escape from it. However, the pain itself is actually just a signal, just telling us that the problem has happened and should be changed. If you just try to reduce the pain and avoid it, you are avoiding the problem itself, which is not conducive to the growth of the soul.
This is the same as physical pain. When we have a stomachache, doctors often don't recommend taking painkillers first, because it will numb the body and make it difficult for doctors to detect where the internal organs have changed, so they can't start treatment. Psychological pain means the same thing.
Zhiyan Chen said that every kind of psychological pain is meaningful. There are countless ways to reduce and avoid pain, but there is only one way to really solve the problem: face the pain, know the meaning of the pain, understand the root of the problem and grow from it.
Zeng Qifeng, a famous psychotherapist in Wuhan, said that "the mind is destined to move forward in trauma", which is the truth.
It's been three months since the first issue of June 1 1 saw a psychologist after the quarrel, and today 10 World Suicide Prevention Day.
During these three months, I often feel overwhelmed, because I have received so many letters for help that I can't reply to them one by one, or even help readers find a suitable psychologist, because the psychological counseling industry in China is far from developed. Moreover, some readers have no money to find a psychiatrist themselves.
In this process, I have been thinking and discussing with many psychologists how to help readers improve their mental health, and what ideas and suggestions can make more people help themselves.
Finally, I found three sentences:
First, accept psychological problems and live actively with their own psychological problems;
Second, open your heart and look for "amateur psychologists" around you;
Third, understand others and be an "amateur psychologist" yourself. Text/Wu Zhihong
Pain is only a symptom of psychological problems.
Facing the problem directly can reduce the pain
First of all, I want to emphasize one point: never think that your problem is unique, and never think that you are the most unfortunate. In fact, almost everyone I talked to, including my relatives and friends around me, has various psychological problems to some extent. In fact, we all live with psychological problems. The difference is that some people are getting more and more depressed on psychological problems, while others can live actively with psychological problems.
For example, the mathematician Nass (the prototype of the hero in the movie A Beautiful Mind) suffered from schizophrenia when he was young and has never been completely cured. He was troubled by hallucinations and delusions, but he lived and thought with symptoms and finally won the Nobel Prize.
To distinguish between pain and problems, we can find ways to alleviate the pain, but more importantly, we must have the courage to face the problems.
Too much pain is often because we don't know why we are suffering. Too much pain directly leads us to escape from pain and fear pain ... Finally, we ignore the problem itself and are eager to eliminate the pain, which leads to a series of psychological problems. To live with psychological problems, we must first change some habitual misconceptions and understand the relationship between pain and problems.
One of the misunderstandings: "I am the most unfortunate person in the world"
"I blush when I talk to the opposite sex. Every time I face the opposite sex, I feel irritable and want to run away. I think others are so calm, why am I the only one? "
"Stuttering is killing me. I have tried various methods to treat stuttering, but it still has no effect. Because of stuttering, I humiliated myself again and again and wanted to die every time. Seeing others speak fluently, I am envious and jealous. Why are they so comfortable and I am so unfortunate? "
"I am a college student. When I was a child, I broke a little finger because of an accident. Since then, I have been particularly inferior and feel that I am a disabled person. In college, I was very worried that others would see my disability, so I always put my hand in my pocket. Every time I have to take my hand out, my heart will pound ... my life will be ruined on this little finger. "
"I am lovelorn, watching others walk together in pairs, and I feel that I am the most unfortunate person in the world."
……
Everyone has different degrees of psychological problems, and everyone has a large number of "peers" with psychological problems. However, people often fail to see this and think that their suffering is unique. They always sigh "Why am I unfortunate", infinitely expand their own problems, regard them as the most important thing in life, and use all resources to correct them.
This is because people with psychological problems think that their problems are a scourge and dare not expose them, but at the same time they close their problems. Over time, I feel that I am the most unfortunate person in the world.
That's what stutterers do. Many stutterers regard themselves as the most unfortunate people at first, but once they come into contact with stuttering groups, they find that so many people are as unfortunate as themselves, and their pain is reduced by half.
The same is true for people with various social phobias. People who are afraid of blushing think that they are lonely in the world and blush when they see people; People with eye phobia think they are the only people with "dirty eyes" in the world and dare not look at others ... but in fact, many people have these problems. When therapists treat patients with social phobia, the first step is often to show them other people's cases. When they found that so many people had the same problems as him, the pain was reduced by half.
No matter how strange the psychological problems are, you can basically find a large number of similar people. No one is the "most unfortunate person in the world". There are always others who are as unfortunate as you, or even more unfortunate.
"Our happiness is based on the suffering of others", which makes sense from this perspective. No matter how unfortunate people are, finding the same unfortunate people will always feel the feeling of finding relatives.
Myth 2: "The pain is all because of the present"
There are negative emotions such as fear, panic, anger, anxiety and sadness, and we will be trapped in them. It doesn't hurt to think about "why" at this time.
A 27-year-old girl wrote that she had only been in love once, and she never dared to fall in love again after breaking up, because "I am afraid of losing, I am afraid of the feeling of sitting on a cloud and suddenly falling to the bottom, I am afraid."
Countless people broke up in love, but most of them later started new relationships. Why is this girl "too scared" to fall in love again?
Generally speaking, this can be traced back to childhood. This kind of girl who dare not fall in love again has serious separation anxiety in her childhood. For example, parents left her for a long time when they were very young. Even after one of his parents left, he never came back. This serious anxiety of separation finally turned into a kind of unconsciousness, which was deeply buried in her heart. Breaking up revived her unconsciousness and induced her serious separation anxiety again. Therefore, she would rather be numb than have any intimate relationship.
Most of the sufferings in love are related to the anxiety of separation in childhood. When you are in pain, don't just immerse yourself in pain, or reduce or numb your pain by looking for excitement, but think about "why am I so painful?" What experience did I repeat when I was a child? "
A pair of sisters, studying in the same university. My sister committed suicide by cutting her wrist after falling in love. She vowed never to fall in love again. She really persisted, and she was still single in her forties.
On the surface, my sister may be too guilty, but at the same time she agrees with her sister and hates that man and all men who are her sisters. However, if you go back to childhood, you can understand what is going on:
Their father failed their mother, divorced her and left them after having a third party. At that time, their 4-year-old and 2-year-old children were in a critical period of building a sense of security. Their father's departure caused them serious separation anxiety, and they buried their doubts and anger against men early in the morning. My sister is young, and more importantly, she feels inferior. My elder sister is two years older, and more importantly, hatred.
Many people break up when they are in love, but my sister cut her wrist and committed suicide because breaking up aroused the despair brought by her father's departure when she was 2 years old. Sister hates all men, not only because of her experience, but also because she has already buried her hatred for men in her heart. The sister's incident just proves once again that this hatred is "reasonable".
For the 27-year-old girl and two sisters, their logic seems reasonable, because the experience of adulthood repeats the disaster of childhood.
However, if they can think carefully about where their fears and anger come from, they will understand that their fears and anger are based on limited life experience and are unreasonable.
Myth 3: "Do everything possible to reduce pain"
Confucius said that people's cognitive ability is divided into four levels: "those who are born with knowledge are also in the world;" Those who learn and know, second; Learn from difficulties, secondly; If you are trapped and don't learn, the people are next. "I used to think that his words were beautiful and reasonable, but in my limited life of 365,438+0 years, I haven't met a real' natural knowing person' so far, and all the psychologists I know are' studying hard'.
For example, Rogers, a master of humanistic psychology, is regarded as the most contributing psychotherapist in psychotherapy because he put forward the concepts of patient-centered treatment, emotion and unconditional positive concern. His discussion on the doctor-patient relationship is more exciting, and the doctor-patient relationship has become the essence of his treatment theory. However, before Rogers became a psychologist, he was always very autistic, and his wife was his first real friend. He suffered for this, seriously thought about interpersonal relationships, and finally found the true meaning of love. "Love is deep understanding and acceptance." From then on, he understood and accepted anyone better than most people.
Another example is Japanese psychologist Morita Shoma, whose Morita therapy of "letting nature take its course and acting according to one's ability" has become a very popular and effective therapy for mental diseases such as obsessive-compulsive disorder and social phobia, and he himself was a serious neurotic patient in college.
Another example is psychoanalyst Freud, whose Oedipus complex, childhood trauma and unconsciousness have all become the key to understanding human nature, and he himself is a child with serious Oedipus complex.
Another example is Ping, a famous stuttering correction expert in China, who was once a serious stutterer himself. He formed a set of effective treatment methods when he was self-treating.
There are countless such examples, which constantly subvert my superstition of Confucius' four-division method. Now, I firmly believe that Parker, an American psychologist, said, "The tendency to avoid problems and their inner emotional pain are the main causes of all mental diseases."
We want to escape from the pain, but the problem behind the pain is only a part of us, and we can't escape for a moment. The so-called escape is nothing more than distorting our understanding of the problem in various ways of self-deception, thus reducing our pain. We thought we couldn't see them, but in fact they were still our tails.
And those who face up to their own pain and problems behind them, every pain promotes their growth.
Dr Zhiyan Chen said that pain is both a signal and an opportunity. Pain tells us that "you should change", and people who bravely face pain are also the easiest to seize this opportunity to make their humanity grow.
Remember, simply avoiding pain will inevitably lead to self-deception. Facing the problem itself will make you grow.
Myth 4: "I can control everything."
We often think that we can control everything, which is the direct cause of obsessive-compulsive disorder, social phobia and stuttering.
A young man wrote in the letter:
"I am an ordinary person who has been out of social employment for six years, but I always hope that I can make extraordinary achievements! Although the situation is ok now, I want more! I also know something about myself. Summing up the past few years, I realize that I am not mature enough in character!
The main problem is that I often can't concentrate on what I think, and my mind is easily distracted when I think. As a result, my efficiency is very low. I want to ask you: how can I concentrate? "
A young mother wrote:
"I love my child very much, but I once had the idea of strangling him. God, why would I think that? I must be crazy. So, I tried my best to suppress this idea, but now it comes out more and more frequently. I don't even dare to hug my child now, for fear that I can't control myself. "
The problems of this young man and this mother are somewhat similar. They all think they can control everything. When a young man is occasionally distracted, he thinks it will seriously affect his pursuit. Young mothers believe that if they love their children, they can never have the idea of "trying to strangle them".
They all have absolute ideas. People often make such mistakes, but they don't realize that we can only control our own consciousness at most, but consciousness is only the tip of the iceberg of psychological energy, and a large number of subconscious minds are under our control. They will inevitably surface from time to time. We don't want them to appear, it's just an unrealistic request.
The characteristic of the subconscious mind is that the more we want to control it, the more we can't control it, and the more frequent its activities will be. For example, young mothers try their best to suppress their unconscious thoughts of strangling their children, which will appear more and more frequently.
A person's potential is infinite, but the scope that a person's consciousness can directly control is limited. We should realize this clearly, don't always have a hard time with the subconscious mind, and don't have to take the occasional distracted and bad thoughts seriously. Otherwise, they will become real problems.
Myth 5: "Without it, everything will be fine."
Many times, when we focus on the problem, it will become a scapegoat for our refusal to grow.
For example, the college student who broke a little finger mentioned earlier, his final conclusion is that "his life is ruined on this little finger".
Is that really the case? We can make a basic assumption. If he had this little finger, would everything be all right in his life? Obviously, the answer is no.
A college student was deaf in one ear before the college entrance examination, which did not prevent him from being admitted to a famous university. However, after entering the university, he found himself unable to communicate freely with people in public because of his hearing defect. So he began to lock himself up. Soon, he fell in love with a girl, who was very kind to him, but he thought that the defect of his ears made him unworthy of her, so he escaped again and again in his feelings.
Because of repeated emotional trauma, he eventually suffered from severe depression and fled to the online world, playing video games all day.
At that time, he thought that his world would be completely different without this ear problem.
However, his ear was later cured. At this time, he found that he still faced many problems, he was still depressed, he was still autistic ... Finally, he understood that the ear problem was just a "scapegoat", and it took courage to grow up, but he lacked the courage to grow up. Therefore, his ears became the natural reason for his laziness. When his ear was cured, he just lacked a physical defect, but other problems remained unsolved.
Some boys will take short stature as a scapegoat and refuse to grow up; Some girls will take ugliness as a scapegoat and refuse to grow up. They blame all their problems on one of their own shortcomings, and often fantasize about "if … everything is fine".
But some equally short boys and ugly girls have the courage to live and live successfully. Some tall and handsome boys and some beautiful girls also found various scapegoats and refused to grow up.
What's your biggest concern? Think about it, has it become your scapegoat?
Parents, spouses, friends ...
Find a "psychologist" around you.
We always seem to meet the difficulties of life head-on at this or the next corner. However, we always seem to have a way to balance our psychology in a difficult situation, and then continue to live according to our own choices. Sometimes it's because of time, sometimes it's because I found my own exit. In fact, this is not just a dilemma. Even in the face of calm every day, we still need our own vent channels and need to talk.
A psychologist is someone who exerts a subtle influence on you. He or she will listen carefully to the difficulties or needs you describe and offer some suggestions. These suggestions are like bright lights, guiding you to find a way out of the confused life. Even if you don't need an answer, you just need someone who is willing to let you vent your emotions. After talking to him or her as a psychologist, you will feel relieved.
However, the lack of practical channels makes it almost an extravagant hope for everyone to have a psychiatrist. Throughout our lives, most people don't have a regular psychologist, but many people have found an alternative way to make people around them become their own "psychologists".
parents
Meng Meng is used to telling her parents what she is worried about. Parents are very open-minded, even if they don't agree with her ideas, they rarely interfere with her decisions. Meng Meng said, "Although I have many friends, I can't pour all my' mental garbage' on others. And everyone is about the same age and has similar troubles. " Therefore, Meng Meng feels that talking with his parents is the most comfortable. After all, they are the ones who can tolerate themselves the most.
Comments: Many people in life can't tell their parents what they are worried about like a dream, because the generation gap is still very common. Even though my parents' life experience is richer than ours, their ideas of solving problems and their concepts of acceptance are always different from ours, and they often leave with a full stomach of dogma. Moreover, we are often afraid that our parents will worry about us.
love
From classmates to lovers, I have known my wife for 10 years. Chen Yu feels that his wife is already her relative and friend. Almost every day, they will tell each other interesting things they met during the day. He prefers to complain in front of his wife when he encounters unhappy things. He thinks that men should always keep their image in front of others, so that they don't have to be so reluctant in front of their wives. He is willing to tell his wife even if sometimes she is bored by his complaints and ignores him.
Comments: Many people will think that Chen Yu is lucky because his lover is the closest person to him. But it is often because of intimacy that communication barriers will be caused. Unlike when you are in love, you may find it difficult to describe your weak and disorderly mood to him or her. Maybe it's because you've been close for so long that you've lost interest in exploring each other's secrets. Moreover, being too busy, not in the mood, and something inconvenient to say may be an obstacle to speaking.
friend
It is said that the biggest gain of the university is to know my current friend Ye. Their personalities are complementary, the moon is pessimistic and sensitive, and Ye is strong and optimistic and insightful. Every time I meet a knot that I can't untie, I always say to the leaves. Today, although they are separated, they still talk on the phone almost every day.
Comments: Friends are the easiest harbor for us to find comfort, and also the people we often turn to for help. But sometimes I have dinner and chat with my friends every day, just for fun, and suddenly I talk about something deep, for fear that it will scare them. Sometimes, God sends his friends to other places regardless. In fact, we don't allow ourselves to complain to our friends all the time. If we talk endlessly, no matter how deep our friends are, they will get tired of endless trifles sooner or later.
stranger
Xiao Yi has many net friends he has never met, many of whom have good relations. She is never afraid to mention anything to them, perhaps because to outsiders, she can always collect some objective opinions from them more or less every time. However, she said that she would never be willing to meet these netizens. She would rather believe that they don't exist in reality.
Comments: Talking to strangers often has no psychological burden. It's good for everyone not to know each other. We no longer need to maintain the positive image of our painstaking efforts, and we can be honest and unscrupulous. However, we often see that many people can't grasp this measure well and make themselves into modern "Xianglinsao".
Children and pets
Dong Er has a naive puppy. Since having this puppy, Dong Er has formed the habit of talking to it, especially when it is unhappy. Dong Er said she thought the dog could understand her. Sometimes, when she cries, the puppy will lick his hand. After talking to the puppy, she will feel much more relaxed.
Comments: Children and pets are weak. In addition to winning in the competition, the realization of personal value also comes from the feeling of being needed to some extent. Just because a child or pet is your psychiatrist doesn't mean you will talk to them. You just get the feeling of being needed in the process of getting along with them, thus relieving your mental stress. But at the same time, taking pets or children as the object of talk is easy to have self-pity.