When the familiar world collapses, we are all overwhelmed with conflicting feelings, it is difficult to understand what awaits us beyond the horizon. We suggest doing personal “excavations” and discovering your values and meanings. And the existential psychotherapist Victoria Dubinskaya will help us with this. She answered readers’ questions and told how to create your own personal PSY-navigator.
Victoria Viktorovna, how can we find support in ourselves in these difficult times, where to start?
Victoria Dubinskaya, existential psychotherapist: It is worth recognizing that for many of us now all the supports have collapsed, the floor is gone from under our feet, and we seem to be hovering in the air. Anxiety grips us and we think about what might happen next. We have a lot of fears, defense mechanisms work and reactive feelings arise: aggression, shame, guilt. An algorithm will help to get out of this whirlpool, which will lead us from fears and anxieties to values and actions. We will move in small steps, as if probing the soil in a swamp.
So where do we start? The first thing we can do well for all of us is to look into our fears.
Let’s remember that fears are our friends
They are directly related to our values: we are afraid of losing what is important to us. They say that “fear has big eyes”, and we don’t want to look in its direction at all, let alone recognize it. It seems to us that we are afraid of everything, but this is far from the case: different situations frighten us, and for each they are individual. Some are afraid of losing their jobs, others do not know what to do with money, others are most worried about their children. The first step is to identify your main fear. To do this, it is useful to sit down at the table and calmly answer yourself the question: “What is the worst thing that can happen to me?” When we peer into fear, it works in the most paradoxical way: we dissect it, present it in great detail and stop worrying. At this moment, we see the bottom of fear, and behind it the value that we are most afraid of losing. Clarifying the fear is the first important step. As soon as we recover a little, we will discover the values uXNUMXbuXNUMXbhidden behind it.
Now can we pay attention to our feelings?
Of course, and this will be the next step in the search for meaning. During a crisis, our feelings are like fireworks, they are varied and undulating. At the same time, we may feel sadness associated with the loss of a relationship, pain that something undesirable is happening, and grief. Mixed, unrecognized feelings make us very worried, break down, rush about. It is worth taking a closer look at your emotions, naming them, thinking about what causes them. Defining feelings is what really matters at the moment.
What values can we discover?
As we work through fears and reactive feelings, we can encounter very different values, each with their own. Someone will see that he, as an intelligent person, carries a non-violent worldview. And this is its value. He will think about the main function of the intelligentsia, which has always been inherent in it: to discuss the important, to teach others to talk, and not to fight, to involve society in this process. Someone will understand that for him the most valuable thing is love for the Motherland. And following the example of Anna Akhmatova, who said: “No matter what happens to me, I will stay with my people,” she decides to work further in her country, to help people who find themselves in a difficult situation. And someone will find out that he is holding on to his family and friends. And he will have a huge wave of love — as an alternative to aggression.
In each of these values, we can see the meaning of our lives, which will move us to action.
I now see many women who, like weavers, fill voids and gaps, restore destroyed space. They do unique things: they write to their relatives and friends, communicate, offer help, say kind words. They roll peace and tranquility through pain and aggression like a sheet, and they themselves do not understand what a great thing they are doing.
Values save us, suggest what is the meaning of life?
It is not even the values themselves that save, but the actions that are associated with these values. We discover our values and they tell us what we need to do. Perhaps this is the most important step — to discover what is really important to us, to get to the deepest in ourselves, to discover the meaning — the leading value at the moment. When the meaning opens up, we stop fussing, we begin to live more calmly, concentrated. Sometimes more modestly. Meanings, they are, they are not about fashion and new handbags, they are clearer and simpler and immediately show what is important in life. At such moments, families, who themselves live quite modestly, begin to give children’s things and money to help refugees. Why do they do this? Because they feel that it is important for them to do good; love is their main value. This is the domestic exploits. Philip Zimbardo wrote more about this in The Lucifer Effect (Alpina non-fiction, 2019).
Meaning is able to resolve even the strongest contradictions.
For example, we may have many desires, but in the world around us a new reality appears, which is broadcast in the form of sanctions and prohibitions. We may not like it: we would like to return flights, go abroad, stop the price increase. And at this moment we can and must determine our meaning. First, concentrate on your desires, perhaps even write them down, and then do the same with the givens. And ask yourself: “What is more important for me now in the new reality? What is the most valuable thing now: love, freedom, justice? This is a deep question. And when we ask it to ourselves, then the meaning sprouts as if from under the ground, raking up all the givens and desires, and blossoms into a beautiful trunk. We stop doing what is unimportant, aim at the main thing and calm down.
How can we help our loved ones and strangers?
Some of us understand meaning as something that is important to ourselves, but there is also an extended meaning of this concept. Psychotherapists Alfried Lenglet and Viktor Frankl believed that an important component of meaning is understanding where we are needed. We calm down when a field of activity appears where we can be useful, based on our worldview positions. Many today are beginning to act intuitively: they protect loved ones, help the victims. There are many of us who invite refugees to their home, open doors for them, work as a volunteer, support those who have been injured, saying simple things: “it’s okay, everything will pass soon and peace will come”, “everything will work out”. And soon smiles and calmness appear in this peacefulness.
Helping children in crisis is somewhat different from helping adults.
For young children, we can help by keeping them away from the violence in the news by creating a protective cocoon.
Kids should know and feel that adults will protect them, they will do everything to make them feel good. But with older children, especially with teenagers, you can and should talk. Teenagers are maximalists by nature, it is important for them to recognize extremes, and this can now be dangerous. I recently discovered a simple thing for myself: teenagers are good at parables. We can tell stories not about them (for example, “one boy, a friend of my acquaintances, ran away from home, he wanted to appear brave”), and then discuss, ask the teenager if the hero of the parable did the right thing in his opinion? Children are happy to respond and speak frankly on such topics.
How to see the prospects of a future that is not defined?
We really do not know what will happen next, the situation has not been fully resolved, there is a lot of uncertainty around. Therefore, the most correct decision, in my opinion, will be to live today, with hope and faith (everyone has their own). Unfortunately, now we are receiving a virus of traumatization — this will affect us and the next generations. This is a new test, and only time will heal. Like all women, I like everything to bloom in spring, smell of bread, light curtains hung on the windows. I hope that love will win and save our world from destruction.