A psychologist is a person who not only received a higher psychological education, but also invested a lot of effort, time and money to learn how to help people with psychological problems. A psychologist works with mentally healthy people and does not have the right to prescribe medications (even if he is a clinical psychologist). He should not be confused with a psychiatrist — a doctor and a specialist in mental illness.

Mental illnesses include schizophrenia, epilepsy, and paranoia, which are the subject of many films, as well as depression, anxiety disorders, PTSD (which can be caused by an accident or fire), culture shock, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and even nightmares. It is not necessary to determine them yourself-you can find them all at once, like the hero of Jerome K. Jerome, who read the medical directory.

If a psychologist or psychiatrist has received additional training, they have the right to engage in psychotherapy, that is, “treatment” of the psyche using special (conversational, bodily, creative) methods. To tell you more, I will save on the letters and use the term “psychologist”, meaning “psychotherapist”. What do they most often go to a psychologist with? Usually with something that can't be tolerated any longer, a kind of psychological gangrene.


Top 5 questions that “I even went to a psychologist”

How to survive a breakup? The question can be presented in variations from " he doesn't love me anymore, how do I live?"before" I don't love him anymore, how can we break up?". A break — up is always difficult, and if the relationship is codependent (which is usually), it turns into an operation to separate Siamese twins without anesthesia. About this relationship in a song from my youth was sung: "I am you, you are me, and we do not need anyone.” In the vernacular version, it sounds like “I can't live without him” and “he will disappear without me". When I lived through the breakup with my husband, my "other self" (as we called each other), I had the feeling that there was a huge hole inside me that nothing could plug, and all the joy and warmth of the world fell into this hole. I grew it for a year in weekly consultations with a psychologist.

How to live after infidelity? When someone else is preferred to you, it hurts a lot. But the role of a " bad girl” who has a lover, too, not everyone can stand. Guilt and shame are some of the most difficult and destructive experiences. They are compounded by the fact that you do not always share this with your girlfriend — you risk running into pity, a sermon from oblico morale, or spreading rumors at supersonic speed. Psychological counseling is a good place to deal with your feelings, understand your needs, and decide what you want from your relationship with your partner and how to achieve it.


How to deal with grief and loss? When a loved one is seriously ill or has died, it is as if we are experiencing a small death ourselves. When a person turns to stone and does not allow himself to feel grief, he gives a “green light” to psychosomatic diseases and depression. In the form of a dubious bonus, you can get the admiration of others (“You are so strong — you don't cry at all!”). The psychologist helps to do the " work of grief”, to live through all the stages of loss, to come to terms with loss or powerlessness.

How can I live when I'm so scared? We want to control everything and be perfect in order to become invulnerable. The desire is clear — who does not want to feel safe in this terrible, terrible world, but the price for this is high. For example, fears of " I'm not good enough”, “everything will collapse if I make a mistake”, and “I can't handle it”. ” This "is replaced to taste with" motherhood”, "job search”,” moving “or”making a cake".

Along with fears, we experience anxiety ranging from “I don't think this shirt suits me” to “I called all the morgues, you were delayed for an hour!” (the latter is very much in my mother's style). Total control takes a huge amount of emotional resources and time and does not bring the result for which it is practiced. The world is not getting any safer. Working with a psychologist helps you feel safe, less afraid, and get more pleasure from spontaneity.

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Originally posted by studio-ghibli-world

How to live when you don't want to live? Most often, when life is not happy for a long time and hard, we are dealing with depression. Depression is not necessarily caused by some event, it happens just like that, let's say “thank you” to our hormones. It is important to understand that bad mood, sadness and sadness are normal. And depression is when you can't be happy in principle and you want to lie still, and it all lasts, and does not pass with a piece of cake "Napoleon" and a message from a loved one.

Depression is not defined " by eye”, for its diagnosis there are tests that can only be used correctly by a specially trained professional. They are not related to tests made of gloss, which can be passed in any quantities — there is no harm, one solid benefit.

With depression, psychotherapy and antidepressants work most effectively-in combination, because a good word and a gun can do more than just a good word. Antidepressants are a great thing in the struggle for the joy of life, for details to turn exclusively to a psychiatrist, and for a kind word — to a psychologist.

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Originally posted by meowrightinthekisser

What people don't come to the psychologist with, but it would be worth it

As my friend joked: “If you were born, you should already go to a psychologist." In General, I agree with him, especially since psychological help not only” fixes", but also opens up new horizons. The latter is also known as” coaching " and is usually more expensive.

The basic recipe is simple. Go for help if you feel that for a long time life has been like a test that you are somehow coping with. We are not talking about running to a psychologist at every trouble (although if you want to — why not). Everyone has difficulties, mistakes and black bars, and this is quite natural. But if you want to change something in your life for a long time, but you can't, then you should definitely go to a psychologist.

In addition to the difficult situations mentioned above, a psychologist is required if you are experiencing violence (physical, psychological or economic), a serious illness, difficult dismissal or constant stress at work, moving to another country, or the collapse of illusions. The painful splinters that you don't have to live with, but you can go and deal with, are: find a common language with relatives, change jobs, love your own body, stop torturing yourself with diets and bouts of gluttony, stop Smoking, stop marking Friday as the last day of life. And-the cherry on the cake-learn something new that you will never succeed, because the voice inside authoritatively declares that hands are out of your ass, a bear has stepped on your ear, and you are an elephant in a China shop.


Do you know the joke about the boy whose mother strictly declared “no legs — no cartoons”? So here — if there are no legs, that is, the ability or resource to stand on their own feet, rely on themselves, then there will be no cartoons in life either. Together with a psychologist, you can grow these legs, heal them, or accept the restriction that there will be no legs, and adapt crutches. After a two-year marathon with a psychologist, I no longer die from the fear of being left alone, calmly accept the criticism of the boss, most of the time I like myself in the mirror and live every day with gratitude for the fact that I have it. Not that I'm always in an orgasm, but the overall degree of fun has increased.

Working with a psychologist gives a long-term and stable result, in contrast to traditional ways of solving problems-a fortune teller, a girlfriend, another dress, alcohol, a new Beau or a chocolate bar. As a symptomatic treatment, these methods are good, but they do not save you from relapses. Introspection and reading psychological literature are almost always useful, but there are limitations. In short, the psychologist himself is like a dentist: it is painful, uncomfortable and fraught with complications. Finding adequate books on psychology is a task for critical and logical thinking, because stores are filled with bestsellers like “Men from Mars, women from Venus” and works by Natalia Pravdina, which have nothing to do with psychology.

Finally, if you are still undecided, it's time to wait or even wait, suddenly it will fall off, you can go from the other side. How do I know that it's not time for you to see a psychologist? My answer is if you want to continue to feel and act the way you do now.