10 questions to psychologists

What is happiness, how to develop creative abilities and what does the mood depend on?

What is happiness?

Aristotle gave this definition: "Happiness is the activity of the soul in the fullness of virtue." Nothing more serious for a long time did not appear. But today there is another approach, according to which the happy one is one who feels himself to be so, and happiness is more a subjective view. At the same time, studies on the relationship of genetic factors suggest that their influence can vary from 10 to 40%. There are a number of genes, each of which makes its small but statistically significant contribution. In sum, they give a fairly weighty contribution.

As for the common question, and if money is happiness, then the answer to it is positive, but to a certain level. When basic needs are not satisfied, a person does not eat well, he does not have confidence in his own safety, there is no roof over his head, a home, and so on, then in his life there is frustration, which prevents him from being happy. But as soon as a person achieves that level of satisfaction of basic needs, which today is inherent in the middle class, he reaches quite specific limits of saturation.

We know that happiness can not last long for a number of reasons. We are always doomed to move towards the desired. Only for a very short time we can fully achieve this merger, and then we again live a certain distance from the desired. And this distance creates tension, which leads to the fact that in some moments of life we experience a state of happiness, and the rest of the time we try to find this state anew. Happiness is not a destination, but a path.

Are there any mentally healthy people?

Of course, they are. However, there are different approaches to understanding the norm and pathology. The psychoanalytic school believes that the most psychologically healthy people - neurotics, people who have internal conflicts, experience some mental suffering and must be visited by a psychoanalyst. But they do not have problems with understanding reality, they have mature protective mechanisms.

If we talk about the clinical interpretation of this problem, a normal psychological state is one that does not require a visit to a doctor. The existential-humanistic position is based on the fact that health implies certain psychological characteristics of the personality that make it capable of self-development, the creation of intimate relationships that can view life as a specific life project that makes sense.

When we talk about health and illness, we can consider this in dichotomous terms. If we measure each of us on a certain scale: depression, anxiety, hostility, aggressiveness, etc., then most likely if a person answers honestly, each of us will be at some point on the scale of depression, in the Some point on the alarm scale. In a situation where this point begins to approach critical, it is necessary to think about how to help yourself and not to bring the situation to a clinical level.

How to complete the gestalt?

To explain what a gestalt is, you can use an example from everyday life: before starting a car trip, a person has a need to determine the shortest route, and the gestal is the setting of the navigator; But in case he sees a lighted fuel indicator light, an alarm and past experience will organize a new gestalt - he will start looking for a gas station. In the case of a call from his wife, he again has a change of gestalt. These gestalt will remain open during the trip, during which the person will be busy with their completion: talking, caring, driving, driving home - actions that can meet the actual needs.

In the natural process of human life, gestals are created as the needs are actualized and destroyed as they meet them. If you want to complete the gestalt - realize it, notice its need, return your ability to creative adaptation and either by direct or substituting action consciously and spontaneously complete, destroy the existing gestalt.

Why should a person assert himself?

In everyday speech, ordinary consciousness, "self-affirmation" is often associated with negative character traits, with behavior aimed at humiliating another person. Indeed, you can meet many cases where a person is publicly ridiculed, insulted, humiliated, and not at all for the purpose of educating him, but for achieving a sense of his own worth.

But self-affirmation is not limited to personal superiority over others. Asking the question of why a person needs to assert himself, we, above all, associate this need with constructive superiority, with the desire of a person to grow above himself.

What determines the mood?

There are external causes - these are life events that are set from the outside and mediated through our internal characteristics. This is because different people have different attitudes to the situation, they see different consequences and perspectives in it. There are internal causes - these are biological mood factors, such as: the somatic role of health, the tone of the nervous system, the biochemical balance, and mood swings associated with seasonality or with daily time.

Psychological factors: when the basic needs are met, the mood is often good. First, it is security and predictability - something that provides a person with no anxiety. Secondly, it is the ability to experience pleasure and create for oneself the situations in which it is experienced.

Experiences about yourself. A person can not be in a good mood if he experiences negative emotions in relation to his personality. If he is unhappy with himself, he can not respect himself, if he has low self-esteem, he will at every step encounter negative experiences that will influence his mood.

Self-realization, understanding that your life is needed for something, that you leave a meaningful trace on this earth and that this is good not only for you, but for the whole world.

Why do we experience stress and should we avoid it?

Stress is a condition that arises when stimuli are applied to the human body, to which it is difficult to adapt. These can be the environmental conditions in which we live (polluted air, the noise of cars), a large number of people we meet (in public transport or traffic jams), time limit, heavy physical activities, problems in the family and at work. All this can cause stress. But stress is not always negative emotions. Euphoria - this is also stress, and therefore, unfortunately, you can die with joy.

Part of the stress occurs due to individual genetic characteristics. Carriers of some variants of genes react more strongly to stress or return to the norm more slowly after the reaction and, as a result, are more likely to get stress-related disorders. If we are talking about culture and upbringing, phenomena far from genetics, genes can not be completely discounted. It is the work of genes that allows us to fix in the form of nerve connections what life and parents teach children.

Stress affects a person's condition both beneficently and detrimental. He can mobilize the strength of the body, contribute to increasing human activity. But accumulated, cumulative stress is the result of experiencing a multitude of negative events. The consequences of such stress can be expressed in different ways: the normal level of wakefulness is disturbed, there are problems with sleep, somatic reactions such as heart palpitations, respiration, etc. appear. With such stress, problems with the gastrointestinal tract, various skin diseases and others effects.

What is mental trauma?

A mental trauma, or, as psychologists say, a mental trauma, is a condition that arises from a severe extreme stress event. Such an event necessarily involves a threat to the life or physical integrity of both the individual himself and other people, for example his relatives. In everyday consciousness, traumas often mean domestic negative events: grievances, conflicts, insults or mental breakdowns. But often clients of psychotherapists and even experts in this area incorrectly define this concept.

There are two types of traumatic stressors. The first kind is extreme single events: car accidents, robberies, attacks, single sexual violence. The effects of such stressors are given in the clinical variant to classical PTSD with its main symptoms. The second type of traumatic situations are repeated traumatic influences: military actions, residing on the territory of military operations, repeated cases of sexual violence in the family. This is a chronic trauma, it is carried by the person much harder, because in addition to the most traumatic impact a person experiences also his repetition, lives in constant tension. Here the personality itself suffers, the system of its worldview, the world for man becomes hostile.

Why does depression occur?

The causes of depression are never unambiguous. The contribution of genetic factors is generally low, but there are violations in the metabolism of neurotransmitters. The main reasons are psychological, and above all it is a violation of self-esteem and self-esteem, when a person has a certain idea of his own self as an unworthy love and respect. You can buy Phenazepam.

For psychological reasons, depressions also include problems in close relationships. When a person needs another person to feel alive and able to adapt to reality, he is inclined to merge with another person and maximum reduction in distance. In such cases, a person experiences himself through another person, and the partner often feels strangled. Such relationships often disintegrate, and the person who needs this fusion feels this as a loss of self.

In addition, depression has social mechanisms. Here, the cult of success, rationality, prosperity, which is planted through the media and parenting, comes to the forefront. The mechanisms of social comparison are activated, and when a person compares himself with other people, the comparison is not in his favor.

How to develop creativity?

Creative abilities are a collective term for a whole "bouquet" of abilities. You can lead yourself very differently in order to develop these creative abilities. Dancing, drawing, theatrical art, discussion of scientific problems, invention - all this in one form or another positively affects the creative abilities.

The most well-known methods of developing these abilities are tied in our culture to relatively early ages when they try to develop creativity in children. For adults, this is much worse written and traced. Development of creativity in adulthood requires non-trivial actions, non-trivial words, actions. Any classical spheres - artistic creativity, theatrical creativity, dance, word games, painting - are suitable as a material where one can develop his creative abilities. However, it is very important to deal with this systematically, the result can not be achieved in 10 minutes.

Is it worth blaming yourself for laziness?

Quite rightly, laziness is seen as a drawback, a vice and even a mortal sin. Psychology distinguishes several types of laziness (from lack of motivation, from weakness of will). From the point of view of biology, laziness is an excessive realization of the principle of saving energy. All living organisms tend to optimize the ratio of the received vital resources and the energy expended for this, that is, they try to get more by spending less.

This pattern is not just a speculative conclusion, but a deduction made on the basis of measurements. Of course, saving energy (that is, the energy expended to meet a certain need) is biologically justified, just as it is biologically necessary to receive energy (that is, to eat). To live, you need to eat. But if a person lives to eat, it's bad, maladaptive.