Smile on demand
Oh, come on, let's go! Chin up! At you in a life all is excellent or different: the work is, the apartment, health! Yes, there is a queue up to the Dnieper to take your place. The cheerful advice of her friend was not just meaningless - he gave something bad, perhaps, a hidden envy to my relative financial well-being, or even secret joy about what I finally got on merit. All this is only my suspicions, but since then I have not phoned her anymore - since she is not the only close person. If the advice to spit and relax was sincere, it has as much meaning as in the desire for a pleasant appetite for a person who is fed glucose through a tube.
Another example from the same series is perhaps even more pathological for depression in the life of a modern woman.
In Slavic culture there is one tedious feature: in sadness and in joy we demand that others share our feelings. And passionate debates about politics in the trolleybus, and drunken sobbing, and suspicious attitude towards people who do not drink at the general table - all this from the inability to respect someone else's identity. But in the last 15 years, a Western European innovation - a positive psychology - has been superimposed on this cultural phenomenon. The mixture turned out to be truly explosive.
Two case histories
"I'm the most charming and attractive," says the plump, wonderful heroine of Murav'eva, following the stern attitudes of her psychology friend. Repeating aloud such "positive affirmations" (statements) is one of the main methods of positive psychology. "I will succeed"; "I am becoming more self-confident"; "I feel better and better" ... French physician Emil Kue invented the health and mood during the depression in the life of a modern woman and his patients at the beginning of the 20th century, but since then his ideas have been developed and confirmed in hundreds of books by different authors: Louise Hay, Liz Burbo, Mirzakarima Norbekova, Valery Sinelnikov, Natalia Pravdina, Alexander Sviyash. All of them are very different, with different levels of education and life experience, but they agree on one thing: the world in their works appears as a huge store in which each person can satisfy his need for love, health, wealth, fame, in a new mobile phone, spacious a mansion and a holiday in the Canaries. It is enough to clearly formulate your request to the Universe, and it will respond. "What you think and believe in, it will come true for you. Your thoughts create your life. It's easy! "Exclaims Louise Hay. She herself, according to the official biography, was healed of cancer in six months, using only a diet, acupuncture, and, most importantly, positive self-suggestion, or affirmations. However, nobody will confirm the effectiveness of such treatment from cancer. Oncologists know a lot of cases when the tumor ceased to develop or even "absorbed". This is called "unexplained remission." If all the healed people acted by the method of Louise Hay, this would already be known to the world, and she would be awarded the Nobel Prize. But - alas. Everything is much more complicated. It can not be denied that the cancer is psychosomatic in nature, and it is quite possible that the optimism of the patient really does miracles. Only to become an optimist by order is impossible.
An important sign of a psychologically healthy and mature personality with depression in the life of a modern woman is the ability to experience sad feelings, without despair and without falling into depression. But this ability, unfortunately, does not develop with the help of auto-suggestion. This is a much more complicated process than appears in positive psychology, and the words reflect the inner state rather than form it. Of course, good mood is important. Football players are set to win before the competition, giving themselves a victorious setup. But we often see that this does not work, and the promises of "tearing the enemy apart" do not guarantee success. And positive theories give the illusion that everything in the world can be controlled in an omnipotent way, and this not so much describes the real situation as reflects unconscious fears and anxieties.
Mania of Delight
Positive psychology often attracts people who have serious problems in their lives. For example, with health or with money. On promises of rapid achievement of financial success, a multi-level marketing scheme is built. At general meetings, sales agents tell each other how they fulfilled plans that seemed unreal; for the year they earned a home for their dreams; as from the use of their own products they have grown hair on their bald patch, they have allergies, etc., and so on. They sing hymns, shout out the words - the same positive affirmations. The result is the introduction of thousands of people in the likeness of trance, or maniacal delight. "In psychiatry, a diagnosis is known - manic-depressive psychosis. Depressive stage is characterized by a feeling that there is no future, manic - a feeling that there is no past, everything is ahead, everything is possible. In this state, a person is indefatigable, enthusiastic, can not sleep, not eat ... But sooner or later the resource is depleted, and depression, nervous breakdowns, somatic diseases begin. Maniacal status of commercial agents is beneficial to their superiors, so it is constantly maintained - with the help of books, corporate rules, meetings, conferences.
The task of the leaders is to ignite the bottom and collect profits.
Another example of attracting positive psychology to achieving financial success: "You are poor, because you do not allow yourself to believe that you are worthy of much. Believe that somewhere there is a salary of 10 thousand dollars, intended for you - and then you will definitely get it. " A similar statement is contained in dozens of books with titles like "How to become a millionaire, not particularly straining."
To inspire such confidence is almost impossible during a depression in the life of a modern woman. On the contrary, the opposite effect is probable: setting a deliberately unrealistic goal worsens self-esteem. "If I get five times less than I deserve, then I'm flawed, and I will not like myself until I get it. And if I do not get it, I'm in for a bitter disappointment. Here is a story from my practice. The client, a young woman, at one time decided that she wanted to quickly earn a certain amount of money and create a business. How to earn money? Prostitution. She calculated that in three years she would put together the right capital, and then forget about everything, get married and start a new life. Typical positive thinking: the future is cloudless, there is marriage and children, and the coming years are not me, it's not my life, just a way to achieve what you want. She did so, invested all the money she earned - and burned, and she still had a lot to do. And how do you think she did? I decided to return to my craft once more. And then everything will be fine ... But the fact is that the shadow sides of life accumulate and shoot at the most inopportune moment. For example, there is a well-wisher who will tell her husband everything. And the former prostitute herself is not the same person she was before. Irreversible personality changes occur. "
From general to specific
An important component of positive psychology is visualization, an "order" for the desired, which the Universe should immediately deliver to you. Sometimes the "order" is executed, otherwise the above-mentioned authors would have nothing to write about. But the books do not say how many orders are not executed.
The secret of success is precisely not in the concreteness and narrowness of the task, but on the contrary - in maximum openness. If you say to yourself: on vacation, I want to spend the night on an island under the southern sky, lying on the seashore, to the right of me there were three palm trees, and to the left a cliff five meters high, this desire will most likely never be fulfilled - such place on earth may not be at all. It's a different matter if you set a goal: I want to spend a vacation interesting, like I never did; I want adventure! This formulation forces the body to be tuned in a certain way: we begin to unconsciously pay attention to opportunities that we did not notice before.
The famous Kiev artist Natalia Isupova decided in 1998 to buy an apartment and found just what she dreamed of. Prices at that time fell heavily, but for her 15 thousand dollars were a huge sum. Then she, a fan of all kinds of esotericism, turned to the universe with a request to "send" her money. "I began to receive orders, I quickly earned five thousand, and the missing sum was given to me by the son," the artist recalls, quite sure that this was the "response" of the universe. In fact, this is a perfect illustration of how the search for opportunities was going on. Obviously, at first Natalia refused to do additional work, and her son did not want to burden with requests. But the desire to buy an apartment was so great that it forced her to compromise - and as a result she got what she wanted.
Her belief in "positive thinking" has not hurt anyone. Isupova has always been a very optimistic, life-loving and resilient person, and books from the series "Help yourself" only convinced her of the correctness of the life position. But the fact of the matter is that positive psychology is often taken up by those who have problems with their "I"!
A friend of mine experienced a painful divorce. He was painfully doubly because her parents are very successful people living in a happy marriage, and the daughter has always tried to meet their expectations, too, to be a "champion" in everything. After the divorce, she became a sales representative of one of the cosmetic companies. In this firm there was a staff psychologist who taught ladies a positive view of the world and explained that if so to tint cilia and that's how to apply a cream, then life will improve. My friend did all this, really began to feel better and look, she believed in herself and married a second time. But soon the new marriage had the same problems as in the previous one. It's natural - after all, self-imposed optimism and the belief that everything is possible - just a make-up that hides emotional turmoil. If you have a sick liver, a foundation, of course, will hide a bad complexion, but inside it will go the process of decay!
Go down to earth
So, positive psychology - pshik, deception, profanity? Not at all. It's just how to apply it. Since in our society for centuries it has been decided to shift responsibility to God, the government, the state, those surrounding, then the fans of positive psychology strive to give responsibility to their lives for the egregors, the angels, the Universe. In American society, where this direction of psychology was born, people are used to taking responsibility for themselves, so their positive attitude turns into real efforts to achieve the goal. Try to answer a simple question: what will become possible if your salary increases? What are your wishes and dreams become real? What efforts do you make to achieve them? It seems - a nuance. But to fall asleep with the idea of high incomes is one thing, but with the thought that today you did everything you could, for the sake of your dream - that's quite another. And the positive in the second is much more.
I invite you to come down from heaven to earth and look around. You will see shattered hopes, abandoned dreams, desires left halfway and, of course, fatal circumstances and insurmountable obstacles that people face on the way to the goal. Alas, life is not under our complete control, no matter how much we aspire to this. If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans. So is it worth it to set goals, if not all in our hands, if everything can turn out in vain? Yes! I invite you to be courageous and take seriously your desires, and then turn them into goals to spend your life on their implementation and achievement. The art of living is the ability to stay on a fine line, where human aspirations and willingness to accept everything that sends life to us are combined. Finding this balance, and not a hysterical desire to make everything in life perfect, is the secret of lightness and harmonious relations with the world.