From the author: Dedicated to dear eternally losing weight clients, psychotherapists and caring people. If you feel like a disgusting caterpillar, eating everything that comes along the way, or one that is entangled in soft hovering like a cocoon above the ground in anticipation of the unknown, know: this is not the end! The greatest, most grandiose is yet to come, soon you will become a beautiful butterfly, if, of course, you find a safe place in which the caterpillar will receive enough nutrition and the pupa will be able to survive a wonderful transformation. **************************************** *****************************************Excess weight is one of the most pressing problems of our time, but none of the global problems can be compared with the personal tragedy of one individual person who fell into the clutches of a grinning fate. And if we consider that today the fight against excess weight is the “gold mine” of any businessman, then for a person tragically experiencing his imperfection, it becomes a struggle against oneself, and at one’s own expense. “Do you want to lose weight? Buy our book about diet, it’s the best, for sure. Then go to our gym, only here are the most attractive trainers. We also have a miracle pill and a belt for losing weight while lying down. What do you like best? Of course, take something quickly, it’s too painful to live in a slender world with your hanging belly. Does it help?” Of course! Until the first breakdown. Well, then let's do it again. Books, sports and other tricks.” Does anyone ask how you feel and how you feel about it? Does anyone share your misfortune? There is only a barbaric question: do you have willpower or not, are you worthy of being slim, can you do at least something in your life? I sincerely believe that there are people who offer such help not in order to skillfully manipulate the painful condition of another person, saturate your wallet. Obviously, there are those who care, but who are captured by misconceptions and ignorance. And of course, there are those who work professionally with overweight people, understanding that excess weight is not a person’s choice, but a manifestation of nature, and the human body, as a creation of nature, cannot be subject to conscious regulation by the Ego. Nature has its own laws, which a person must reckon with if he does not want to be crushed by it. I view the process of helping a person suffering from excess weight metaphorically: as the process of helping a caterpillar, which really wants to become a butterfly and has a really serious chance of dying in its cocoon, without waiting for dawn. All she needs now is safety. If I were Mother Nature, I would give her a secluded place where I could guard her dead sleep, exactly until she is ready to spread her free wings. The need for a safe space is due to the nature of the psychological process that takes place in the psyche of a person who got a big body. But before we continue, let's define the concepts. I use the word fullness on purpose, it has a lot of warmth for me. It is not at all the same as acute medical obesity or the contemptuous philistine fat. In addition, this word perfectly reflects the internal state of a fat person: he is full of not only obvious shame and guilt, but also not always obvious love, passion, sexuality. But in fact, everything is simpler. Obesity is excess deposition of adipose tissue. Some people love it in their body, some ignore it, some get rid of it without problems, and some are unable to calmly coexist with it. So, I am now writing about the obesity of the latter and do not consider cases of fat deposition caused by medical diseases. A troubled existence with obesity is always associated with the machinations of her “friend” of food addiction. It does not allow you to give up excessive or harmful food for a long period of time, i.e. achieve a lasting effect in losing weight. By food addiction I mean a special relationship to food thatgoes beyond the physiological process of satisfying hunger and is something much more. Let's look at why and why breaking this connection terrifies an addicted person. An overweight person with a special relationship with food is a person who has received psychological trauma, and at a time of greatest vulnerability. He will not remember it and will not voice it, because the injury occurred before the age of 3 years, perhaps in the first year of his life, perhaps on the first day. The child is born psychologically not separated from his mother, he has no awareness of his own borders, mother and mother’s breasts in particular are part of him for him. For a baby, a mother is food and life itself. Only from the experience of integrity with the mother is a feeling of inner integrity born. What if the mother cannot provide the child with continuous contact? There is a certain period of time during which a waking child can be without his mother without feeling that he is left without a huge “piece of himself.” Imagine he wakes up, feeling the cold of the world around him and cries. Mom, of course, will take the restless baby into her arms if she is nearby and if she is able. Then the child’s experiences are compensated by her hands, breasts and kind words, everything is fine. Well, what if there is no mother? He cries harder. Mom is gone. He starts yelling. Mom is gone. It happens that there is no mother! And when she returns, the mechanism of compensation with mother’s care has gone astray, and the child has lost a part of himself. Imagine what you would experience if you woke up without an arm and legs, for example. Penetrating animal fear and a body rattling from its own scream - this is what a baby is at such a moment. H. Kohut called the child’s feelings about the loss of his mother the anxiety of disintegration, since by losing his mother, the child loses himself, psychologically disintegrates, falls apart, and dies. According to the American psychoanalyst, this is the deepest anxiety a person can experience. The emotions of a person attacking a refrigerator will be similar to the feelings of a baby left in the dark. In essence, he experiences a pure natural fear of death. Before a person puts a huge piece of cake into his mouth, he unconsciously assumes that he will die. If we analyze the personality traits of a food addict, we will find a “hole” in what is called identity - self-conformity. “At work, I am an accountant. , employee, reconciling debits and credits, writing reports, calculating salaries; I am a mother with a child, I take care of him, I read bedtime stories; and near the refrigerator I don’t know who I am, either an animal or a man, there is a clouding, I just go and eat. I don't want to do this, but I do it again and again. Why can’t I deal with this, what owns me, and why do I let it be who I am?” This is the hole left by the injury. Some overweight people feel it quite realistically inside their soul. Some call it emptiness, others call it cold. This is not a part of the personality that was once closed by maternal warmth, which still requires the mother, requires her breast, requires nutrition! Food becomes food, sweet and soothing, relating to the pleasure of the first year of life, when the mother fed, gave warmth and returned life to the child and himself. The American psychoanalyst D. Kalshed studied how, during trauma, the unconscious system of self-preservation of the psyche comes into play, which makes it possible for a person to continue to live, despite the fact that it gives him other difficult experiences. Nature believes that suffering from one’s own obesity and overeating is a better option for a traumatized person than physical death from a heartbreaking feeling of one’s own inferiority. By the way, statistics prove the wisdom of nature: the percentage of suicides among overweight people is significantly lower than among people who do not have problems with their figure.D. Kalshed describes how the self-preservation system of the psyche takes a person to the world of illusions, where it is warm and cozy. Illusion whispers to a fat person: “You will definitely lose weight, but it’s betterstart tomorrow, you are so tired, you deserve this soft cake and that juicy piece of meat. Today you deserve it." A person eats enough, and then tomorrow comes and everything repeats in a circle. The self-preservation system can sometimes drive you crazy, but it makes life itself possible. A person turns out to be a prisoner of his own problems, but he lives. Everyone is familiar with illusions; they are charmingly sweet, but fraught with large and sometimes irreparable losses. Many have experienced what it’s like when the “rose-colored glasses” fall off and disappointment occurs in a loved one or in oneself. Disillusion - this is the meaning of the word disappointment in English: the disintegration of illusions. A fat person who wants to free himself from the burden of food addiction and extra pounds is a person who needs a particularly careful and careful approach due to the mental trauma he has. He needs to be treated, and do not teach, carefully restore, and not persistently push to independent activity. If your leg is broken, you should not move it. What do attempts to move someone who is always losing weight lead to with calls “come on, you can do it!” or provocations about the power of the will? Of course, to repeated and even deeper traumatization. Everyone knows the fact that after another new-fangled diet, a person breaks down and gains even more weight than before, and, of course, worries even more than before. When talking about helping someone suffering from their weight, I emphasize the importance of the principle of “treating the patient, not the disease.” Restoring the integrity of the individual (healing) seems to me to be an adequate goal of psychotherapy. The client’s request to lose weight is realized by restoring the connection between parts of his personality, and not through his rejection of his own body, which often occurs with the “philistine” approach. The work is always long. A person has to literally put himself back together piece by piece, build a full-fledged Self that can be aware of itself and will be able to satisfy its needs for beauty, health, recognition, etc. A safe space that is created in a psychotherapeutic relationship has a healing effect in the case of a spiritual hole. To break the connection with food, you need a calm and non-illusory place where you can warm up and patch up the wound, and you need a person-host mother who will restore the lost connection with your own mother. Therefore, it is important that the psychotherapist is non-directive, i.e. one who will neither teach, nor criticize, nor manipulate, nor limit. When I was preparing a group for overweight people, one psychologist told me: “Look, you have to be strict with them!” No, it’s not necessary, under no circumstances, if your goal is to harmonize your personality, and not empty weight loss for the effect of “wow, it works!” and even greater traumatization. The directive approach, of course, bears fruit. Clients definitely need a mother, and a strict and dominant mother is better than an absent, lost one. The therapist regulates the client’s behavior, the client listens, loses weight, and in the best case scenario, leaves therapy slimmer and with the image of a controlling mother in himself, so he is able to control himself in his relationship with food. But this approach does not seem environmentally friendly to me. Without acquiring an internal image of a warm and accepting mother, which gives a person a sense of security and trust in the world around him, healthy personal development is difficult. As for methods of psychotherapy, I consider the most effective use of images: sand therapy, art therapy, symbol drama, etc. The choice is determined primarily the fact that the therapist has to deal with partial alexithymia. The client has difficulty identifying the emotions and feelings associated with the period of trauma. Indeed, what concrete can be said about what you experienced before the age of 3? How to catch today's emotional experience, from which only vague painful echoes remain? Images, preverbal and superverbal mental objects, cope with this task perfectly well. Emotion unconsciously.