Stress, they say in the textbook, is an adaptive reaction of the body. That is, something happens - and the body strains its strength to somehow navigate and live in this new thing. Adapts. The process itself, of course, is unpleasant, but it makes sense. However, sometimes a stressful situation goes beyond what a person and the psyche can “digest.” And then we talk about traumatic stress. I’ll tell you below what it is, why and (most importantly) how to cope, and I’ll try to make the scientific categories more digestible. I am close to the position of Irvin Yalom, who proposed to consider psychological problems arising as a result of traumatic stress from the point of view of death, freedom, isolation, meaninglessness. In a traumatic situation, these themes do not appear abstractly, not as metaphors, but are absolutely real objects of experience. Unfortunately, recent events confirm this. In ordinary life, we have psychological defenses that allow us to exist side by side with the thought that one day we will die. We all know this and for the most part we somehow get along with the understanding of our own finitude. We continue to study, work, create families, give birth to children and raise them, go to the forest to pick mushrooms and carelessly swim in the sea. Thank you, psychological defenses. They do not appear immediately. The child forms them unconsciously in the form of basic illusions. There are three of them: 1. The illusion of one’s own immortality (“Everyone can die except me”); 2. The illusion of justice (“Everyone gets what they deserve,” “If I do good to people, it will come back to me”); 3. The illusion of the simplicity of the world (“The world is very simple; there is only black and white, good and evil, ours and not ours, victims and aggressors”). The destruction of basic illusions is an extremely painful moment for any person. And it is very important what comes after this. If a person can leave the world, albeit comfortable, but still illusions, into a dangerous world (but still real), then he has matured. As one character says in Bernard Shaw’s play: “I don’t want happiness anymore. Life is nobler than this." If a person was unable to overcome this barrier, then, as a rule, he either concludes that the world is terrible (and suffers), or builds other illusions that help him recreate and strengthen the belief of his own immortality. This condition is associated with a high risk of traumatization. Traumatization actually arises from the fact that a person cannot “digest” (experience, give meaning, understand) what is happening. And therefore cannot process the destructive experiences that have arisen. He finds himself trapped in an internal nightmare. In order not to completely collapse, the psyche contains these experiences. However, they are there, inside. And any, even indirect, mention of a traumatic situation activates them in a new way. Then what is called “uncontrolled emptying of the container” occurs. The person is again captured by feelings, his behavior becomes inadequate. Such states seem frightening not only for others, but also for the person himself. Therefore, a person is forced to protect his “container” from accidentally stumbling upon the corresponding stimulus - he is forced to constantly be attentive and avoid anything that may resemble a traumatic situation. Maintaining the “container” over time requires more and more effort, which leads to fatigue, insomnia, irritability, impaired attention, memory, etc. Research in the field of psychotrauma confirms that the emergence of “containers” leads to a violation of the integrity of the individual. In especially severe cases, a so-called “dissociated personality” may arise, when at least two personalities coexist in parallel, completely different from each other: one is healthy, the other is sick, injured. Surely you have seen films about soldiers with PTSD. When people returning from war in some situations suddenly seem to fall back into war. And they behave in the same way as is appropriate there and then, and not here and now. Also in terms of behavior, people.