2024-04-22 05:05:54
In the book Psychologists in a bathrobe, you discuss several topics – the stigmatization of mental illnesses, toxic relationships, trauma, toxic positivity or perfectionism. If you had to choose, which topic do you personally consider the most important?
Tereza: If I were to speak for both, it’s definitely the stigmatization of mental health, because it’s a topic above all others. It is important to talk about the fact that it is essential to take care of yourself psychologically as well. Next, it’s probably comparison and perfectionism. I work with overweight and obese people and it’s a topic that comes up a lot during sessions.
How can we get rid of comparing ourselves to others?
Tereza: Comparing yourself to others is normal. The idea that you will stop comparing yourself to others is an unattainable goal. Correct comparison can also have its benefits. So it’s more about how to compare myself in a healthy way so that it motivates me and doesn’t throw me into inactivity, frustration or anxiety.
How can we compare correctly?
Tereza: First of all, I need to realize who I am comparing myself to. Are they people who are similar to me, live a similar life? It can be frustrating to compare yourself to someone many years younger, or conversely many years more experienced, or even a celebrity. See if your goal is realistic. Second, map out what comparing yourself to that person evokes in you. what do you feel If comparison hurts you, frustrates you, and locks you in a negative vicious circle, it’s not good. We are all different, we have different conditions for life. The most useful thing is to compare yourself with yourself. How did I live before, what did I manage before and how am I doing now?
Let’s not use “traumatic”
In the book, you also deal with the issue of trauma. It is a word that I hear more and more often in everyday communication. Isn’t this term sometimes overused?
Tereza: Yes, sometimes we really use it incorrectly and too quickly. We include under it experiences or situations that would not be classified as trauma. Even the diminutive “traumíčko” is sometimes used. Trauma should not be trivialized. It is a fundamental negative experience that can affect a person in the long term.
In the book and in the podcast of the same name, you talk about the need to be careful with whom and under what conditions we open up our own intense feelings and traumas. How do I know I can trust that person?
Tereza: First of all, it is important that the person in question is transparent about what he has been through. What studies and accredited psychotherapy training did he complete? For me personally, it’s a warning sign when someone on the web relies only on personal experience along the lines of “I’ve been through this, so now I’m doing it for others.” It’s great that the person made it, but it doesn’t give them the right to heal and apply their experience to others. There should always be some professional background. In psychological practice, we do not start from our own experience, but from psychological methods and findings that have been tested for years.
Caroline: Another warning sign is the promise of efficient and quick effectiveness: “We will get rid of your trauma in a week or a weekend.” I understand that we want to get rid of the suffering quickly and sometimes there really is a short-term relief, but the difficulties often do not go away because the emotions are not processed, they are not cared for and sometimes they come back in a worse form. Likewise, promising that a given method or weekend will definitely help you one hundred percent. As experts, we know that even if we study for another twenty years, we cannot help everyone in exactly the same way.
Positive passwords can be dangerous
You also dedicate one chapter to toxic positivity. How would you describe her?
Caroline: It is a form of positivity in which real emotions are suppressed. It is unhealthy, hurtful because it distorts and denies true reality. It has negative consequences on one’s own experience, because one robs oneself of one’s understanding of one’s self. This may result in poorer adaptation to crises. If, on the other hand, we go through a crisis and find out that it is not pleasant for us, thanks to it we set boundaries for the future and maybe we can even avoid the given situation. Rather than being positive all the time, it is better to be cautious and realistically positive.
So is it important not to avoid negative feelings and experiences?
Caroline: Yes. At one point, I noticed an explosion of positive motivational quotes on social networks in the style of “get rid of every negative person around you” and I thought to myself that sometimes someone would have to get rid of me too, because I am also sometimes negative. Clients often come to me saying that they have surrounded themselves with similar mantras, they even have them printed and stuck at home. But then they worry that they can’t apply, and they ask what’s wrong with them. Some such slogans can even be dangerous, such as “only positive things will happen to positive people”. I wish it was that simple. As a result, such statements can have negative consequences, because we push ourselves into unnaturalness and expect unfulfillable things.
So what is right?
Caroline: A certain amount of negativity is natural and normal in life. It’s normal to feel bad when we get a bad night’s sleep or argue with our partner. We need to get angry sometimes to know that we should go a different way. We should accept that we don’t have to be optimistic in all circumstances.
Tereza: It is healthiest to feel a wide range of emotions. We don’t have to call them positive or negative, but just pleasant and unpleasant. On the other hand, in therapy we define avoiding a negative experience as a problem. The given emotion can then be maintained. It often leads to the choice of inappropriate coping strategies and suppression of feelings.
The goal is to be able to overcome crises
So positive thinking doesn’t work?
Tereza: First of all, I would say that it does not have a significant effect. Just because you tell yourself every morning that you’re beautiful, amazing, and have a wonderful career and relationship doesn’t mean it’s going to be that way. It’s normal to have ups and downs in life and to not think positively at times. I would be very careful that positive thinking doesn’t work for me so that I don’t bring on other secondary difficult emotions such as guilt or anger at myself for not being able to think positively enough.
On the other hand, we also work on changing the way of thinking in therapy. We strive to make our thoughts more balanced, adaptable and kindly attuned. As a result, we create a more balanced, alternative idea for the client. We also work to ensure that the client talks nicely to himself, notices his positives and is grateful for them. But that doesn’t mean it has to be positive every time. We try to reduce his negative view of himself and often the world. It does not mean, however, that we teach him to ignore unpleasant emotions and thoughts.
Many of us want to “just be at peace and happy”. Is this a psychologically attainable state at all?
Tereza: Each person will have it differently. With the client, I try to reach a stage where he knows himself enough to react to possible life difficulties in a healthy and reasonable way. To be able to go through the crisis and take care of himself in it. Perhaps the goal is to make a person feel strong enough to overcome life’s challenges and know what to do during such a crisis. It is certainly not a life without suffering, but a fulfilled life in which there are pleasant and sometimes unpleasant emotions that a person can process in a healthy way.
Caroline: The goal is not to perceive life too rigidly and dogmatically, but rather flexibly. The ideal state in which we want to be at the moment can change. In our twenties, we quite possibly saw our dream state of mind and the satisfaction of our needs and goals differently than ten years later. It is healthy to accept that the ideal state changes. At one moment, the goal for you in life may be to have challenges, stress, to move somewhere, to experience something, and in the next phase of life you may want less challenges and more peace.
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