Psychological assistance today exists in an incredibly large number of formats and techniques. Of course, which of them to use must be decided in each case individually. On the one hand, it depends on the training of the specialist. Today there are many schools or paradigms of psychology and psychotherapy, each of which considers the human psyche in a slightly different way, uses its own methods and techniques. The psychotherapist, as a rule, in addition to university education, undergoes a long training in one of these traditions. For example, we were trained in the tradition of gestalt therapy. On the other hand, tradition alone is not enough, and the clients’ request and their individual characteristics are also important here. Sometimes you also have to use NLP techniques, cognitive-behavioral therapy or psychoanalysis. It turns out that, based on the competence and capabilities of the psychologist, as well as the request and characteristics of the client, these two people start to work.
Reasons for Application
It should be noted right away that psychologists and psychotherapists work with healthy people, and not with pathology. Diseases are the domain of psychiatrists who are doctors. Psychologists and psychotherapists work with those who do not require hospitalization and do not need pharmacological treatment (no need for pills and injections). Psychologists lead some patients together with doctors, but these are isolated cases.
Why then should a healthy person consult a psychologist? The classic answer is to improve the quality of one’s life. The problem is that people often live with a huge number of problems, without even knowing that it is possible to live differently. They only care if they are normal. Yes, indeed, their psychological characteristics do not pull on pathology, but they can be catastrophically lonely, experience difficulties in building relationships, not achieve success, feel inferiority, toxic guilt, shame or anger, or “feel nothing at all”. Of course, a person always chooses the best from the psychologically available. But many people do not even suspect what they are depriving themselves of, leaving their inner world in desolation.
Psychology and psychotherapy are, first of all, the study of oneself. In the course of work, the client begins to understand why his/her life is developing in this way and not in another way. What was the reason for this, and what is he/she doing in the present to maintain the “status quo”? It would seem strange why people themselves, without an outsider, will not sort out the problems? But it’s not that simple. The human psyche is designed in such a way that it will do everything possible to avoid change. We have at least 100 psychological defense mechanisms that do not allow things that psychologically threaten us, but are an integral part of our nature, from entering our consciousness. For such work, you need a second person who will not only correctly reflect you in these changes, but also create the right supportive conditions for this.
There are a huge number of reasons why they turn to psychologists and psychotherapists. It is more convenient to highlight some topics:
Self-determination
– If in childhood we were not asked a question about what we want, we never learn to ask this question to ourselves in adulthood. As a result, we get an adult who does not feel oneself at all, does not realize one’s needs. Such people live by the needs of others, but at the same time they are chronically unhappy, because they do not understand who they are and what they want. Psychology and psychotherapy not only help to answer the questions “Who am I?” and “What do I want?” There are no good or bad characters, but each of them has octaves. Having a schizoid character is neither good nor bad: but in the high octave it gives high creativity, and in the low one – a tendency to distort reality.
Relationship
– Relationships in all their incredible variety. This is a romantic relationship, collegial, parent-child, friendship. Humans are a social beings, and they cannot do without relationships at all. However, this is one of the areas of human life in which there are an unthinkable number of problems. We rarely think about the fact that we have boundaries, and if other people accidentally or intentionally violate them, we feel discomfort. Sometimes a person lives for years in a toxic and destructive relationship. Sometimes people get so stuck in self-sufficiency that they lose the ability to have close and trusting relationships. There are many options. Working with a psychologist helps to understand this difficult topic and tune it in such a way that the sphere of human relations will significantly improve.
Sexuality
– This is one of the most subtle and delicate topics. Of course, it is necessary to distinguish between psychology and sexology, but we have a corresponding specialization, which allows us to apply the psychological gestalt approach to work with various problems in the field of sexuality. This is work with impaired attraction, peculiarities of psychosexual development, problems in the sexual life of a couple.
Psychological Trauma
– The human psyche does not always cope with the load that we face in life. When resources are scarce, trauma occurs that may not be remembered by a person, but which significantly reduces the quality of their life. Instead of fighting or running away, the person becomes numb, unable to do something. The problem is that the injury doesn’t go away on its own. It continues to exist in the human psyche in a form of a time bomb. It can detonate at any moment when conditions close to those in which the person was injured are recreated around. Here you can’t do without working with a psychotherapist.
Psychosomatics
– In early childhood, a child has no other way to communicate with the world around her, except through her body. Over time, parents teach their child how to describe their experiences in words. But this process does not always go smoothly. Sometimes some fragments of our psyche do not receive proper development, and then we continue to get angry with the body, frightened by the body, envy or ashamed all the same through the body. Long-term and meticulous work is required to translate bodily signals into adult intelligible and lucid verbal messages. The body, of course, helps us: it is a gift from Nature. But the body should not hurt just because we were not helped in due time to learn how to express our difficult experiences in words.
Additions
– It is not so much about the treatment of chemical addiction, although the mechanism of alcohol and emotional addiction is similar, but about a broader concept of the type of attachment of a person. What if breaking up with a person causes exactly the same withdrawal that a drug addict experiences? What if someone in the family becomes addicted to drugs, the Internet or gambling? Today the concept of “co-addiction” is often heard and is said to be very widespread and even culturally supported. Addiction brings serious suffering to both addicts and their environment. The family system, as a rule, protects the addicted scenario, and competent outside help from a specialist is needed to help the person realize what trap they are in.
Developmental Crises
– We live most of the crises in childhood, since it is there that a large number of qualitative changes in our psyche take place. In a moment of crisis, we must abandon the old understanding of ourselves and come to a completely new understanding. This is a new answer to the question: “Who am I?” Most of us remember our own teenage crisis, but it will not be the first or the last. There is also a middle-age crisis, which also forces you to go through painful changes. Crises cannot be avoided – they are part of our nature and psychological dynamics. But you can move through them consciously, or you can get a lot of related problems. Moreover, sometimes people in 40 have to work through what they did wrong during the crisis for 6 years. Psychology helps to understand these complex processes in order to live them correctly and develop.
The reasons for contacting a psychologist, in fact, are much more than those listed above.
Work format
It is important to understand that it took years to form the psyche as it is today. Therefore, changes in it also take time and effort. Psychological work is always long-term, often unpleasant, and requires effort and work with one’s own resistance. That is why the format of work involves regular meetings.
We work in 50-minute sessions once a week. The work is carried out in a dialogue format. This is not taking a “magic pill”, but speaking, remembering, trying to understand, explore both the client’s present and his/her past. The client tries to formulate a request: what he/she would like to receive in the course of working with a psychologist, and then a slow and unhurried immersion into the client’s inner world begins.
Sometimes the gym metaphor is convenient. There is no benefit in going to a training once or twice. And once you take a break, the body immediately returns to its former comfort zone. Training is not always pleasant; you need to make an effort on yourself. And the help of a coach is important, who works like a correct mirror, telling what exactly clients doing, since they do not see themselves from the outside. Psychological work is very similar to going to the gym regularly.
The psychologist is specially trained to correctly reflect the client, without introducing one’s own distortions into the dialogue. This is how he/she differs from a friend, from a relative or any other person in the client’s life. A psychologist not only knows psychology. Passing one’s own psychotherapy developed in him/her the proper sensitivity to what happens in contact with other people. That is why the experience of such work is difficult to overestimate, since you will not only learn something useful about how the human psyche works, but also receive careful and professional feedback on what it is like to be with you in a given situation or topic.
Fundamental rules
Relationships “psychologist-client” differ from any other formats of relationships primarily because they are built according to strict rules:
– Confidentiality. What is discussed in a session with a psychologist is not discussed anywhere else. The psychologist will not discuss you with your friends or relatives. He/she shouldn’t have any other intersections with you, except in the format of psychological work.
– Not causing harm. This rule applies to both the psychologist and the client. The psychologist understands what caution and safety are. Although there are no forbidden feelings for the client at work moments that could not be expressed, the client, nevertheless, should not destroy furniture around during a personal visit or cause physical harm to a psychologist.
– Setting. This is the observance of boundaries and the so-called “oral agreement”, according to which the work is built. This applies to the place of work or the means of communication (if the work takes place online), the time of work, as well as its payment (the cost is negotiated in advance and may depend on a number of factors: the complexity of the case, the intensity of the work, etc.). The client and the psychologist agree on what will happen if the session is missed by the client, how long in advance it is necessary to warn about the postponement of the session, whether it is necessary to pay for missed sessions, whether it is possible to call the psychologist between sessions. All this is about important professional boundaries, which are no less important for the client than for the psychologist.
Psychological consultations are conducted in Russian, both face-to-face (in Warsaw) and online. An individual format is possible, or participation in small therapeutic groups.
Of course, this short description does not cover all the possible questions that you may have. If you still have questions, you can contact us to clarify those points that you do not understand. We always agree to a preliminary clarifying free conversation to answer any remaining questions.