My clients are surprised: “How, am I creating my own disease? I suffer because of this.” “Overheard conversation between two girls. The older one (five years old) admonished the younger one (three and a half years old): “If you don’t want to do something, say that your heart hurts!” “It all starts from childhood...” Which of us hasn’t come up with various ways so that our mother would take pity on us and not scold us for getting a bad grade? We pretended that we ourselves were worried and even cried. And, all this, for the sake of “getting” less. And perhaps arouse sympathy. Further, a person can unconsciously create illnesses or problems for himself so that they would sympathize with him. Such a person gets used to this process so much that he even makes someone else’s problem his own. For example: “my daughter is getting a divorce” - and everyone around begins to sympathize with the person who said this. The question: “What is your problem here?” is, to say the least, puzzling. Also, a person burdened with a problem is usually forgiven of previous debts and obligations. If he once managed to avoid fulfilling obligations under a previous agreement in this way, he begins to practice it almost unconsciously. A person can drive himself to depression by adopting the parental style of interaction with the world: worry; and not just to worry, but to be seen and pitied. A person creates the same phobias for himself - real, unsafe fear is immediately repressed. This place is occupied by anxiety, which is impossible to withstand without an object. A relatively safe object is placed in this place. Being afraid of an elevator or heights is socially safe and even arouses sympathy. From my experience: people with phobias and Pas cannot stand long-term work, as if they do not want to return to the source of their phobia, but ask for a “magic pill”, while realizing that there is none. But, not everything is so gloomy! There are people who need a problem in order to develop and move forward. The problem is like a “take-off” point - a “magic kick””.