ProblemsDistress signalsEverything that happens to a child, even unwanted and disturbing ones, has a very definite meaning. We are always talking about the child’s unsuccessful attempts to achieve specific goals related to his needs. These needs are biological in nature, which means they are basic, necessary, and not ones that can be ignored or neglected. We can say that the child gives a signal that something is going wrong, tries to independently solve the problem of his development, and at the same time informs adults about this. Such signals can manifest themselves in what is commonly called deviant behavior, including aggressive behavior, and even associated with illegal actions. The incomprehensible and strange behavior of a child is often called abnormal and is associated with mental disorders, trying to explain them by genetic and other reasons. However, many problems go away on their own when we understand the meaning of the messages that the child conveys to us, the requests and suffering hidden behind them, and respond to them adequately. A striking example is self-injurious behavior, when a child injures or hurts himself (bangs his head against the wall, cuts himself without the intention of killing, breaks his hands until they bleed, hitting a wall or punching bag, and so on). Sometimes this behavior can be understood as an attempt to transfer emotional pain, which the child is unable to cope with, into physical pain. In order to “cure” these manifestations, it is necessary to help the child understand the cause of his suffering, so that he can comprehend the painful experience and express it in other ways - words, drawings, actions. This allows the psyche to process the traumatic experience without getting stuck on it. The main problem is that all this is not so easy to do. Firstly, some problems may be delicate, inconvenient, associated with various prohibitions and taboos, topics that are “ashamed” or “inconvenient” to talk about. Then, instead of understanding, empathy and calmly exploring the problem, we may feel anxiety and fear that prevent us from improving the situation. We may also become angry at the person we blame for the problem, which will cause further injury. But even if we can overcome our anxiety and fear, it is not enough to simply say: “oh, well, this is an emotional problem, we need to get rid of it” or “well, you are upset about such and such, just don’t think about it.” this, everything will be fine." The human psyche is a very complex apparatus with many related systems and subsystems that have a certain logic of development and are in subordinate and hierarchical relationships. By “getting into” a person’s inner world by force or rudely, we can cause additional harm and traumatize him even more. Many processes are counterintuitive, that is, at first glance, they contradict our intuition and common sense. Other processes are hidden and we may not even be aware of their existence and influence on the child’s psyche. The power of connection An example of the “hidden” underlying mental health is the emotional connections that connect a person with the world around him. Figuratively speaking, a person, in addition to the physical body and objects that surround him, also has attachments - to people, animals, various things, activities, and so on. Some of these connections are extremely strong and inherently “built-in” into the human psyche. This is, for example, the connection with the mother. The bond with the father is also very strong and important, playing a big role in shaping the child's personality. There are other connections: for example, when we say that a child has a favorite toy or a favorite hobby, we are talking about very specific emotional attachments. Weak ties can be broken without much harm to a person’s mental health. Let's say, often instead of one thing you can buy another, replace one thing with another, without much worry. At allit's a different matter when it comes to strong and important connections. Even in the case of things, each of us can imagine that there are things that can simply be forgotten and replaced, and there are loved ones and important ones, having lost which, we will be upset, think about them and worry. When it comes to attachments to people, the situation becomes much more dramatic. The reaction of the human psyche to the “break” of communication, to the loss of the object of attachment, that is, a loved one, significant in life, proceeds in a certain way and is associated with the process of grief. To understand how fundamental the grieving process is, it is important to know that when you lose a loved one, the process takes about a year at best. This process has its own dynamics, stages and is associated with various risks for mental health, including the occurrence of depression, self-harmful behavior and aggressive manifestations. Moreover, the loss is not necessarily associated with the death of a person; we can talk specifically about a break in relationships, a breakdown in communication, for example, divorce, separation from friends (in the case of betrayal or moving, or a parental ban on friendship). Choice without choice is a typical example of a trap in which turn out to be a teenager arises due to a conflict of attachments to significant people. At a certain period of life, communication with peers, communication with friends or communication with the opposite sex becomes the most important task of a child's development. This means that his values, aspirations, hopes and desires are mainly associated with these people, and building relationships with them is extremely important. This is a natural stage of a child’s development and it is very important that he be able to go through it, forming the appropriate mental mechanisms. It may also turn out that the child has already developed attachments, but the parents don’t like their friends and demand that they stop communicating and be friends with someone else. Then the child finds himself in a trap from which he cannot escape: he must choose between his parents, whom he always loves and to whom he is attached, no matter what he says, and his friends, to whom he is attached and whom he loves and appreciates. It turns out to be such a trap: whatever the child chooses, the connection that is significant to him is broken, and he feels guilty for the betrayal. Both choices bring pain and suffering and are felt as wrong and unfair. At the same time, the child is not mature and independent enough to get out of this situation; he will have to choose. The strength of attachment to parents is such that the child will almost inevitably choose his parents. This is especially obvious for “home” children who are close to their parents. Severing connections with friends triggers the grief mechanism, and the child’s psyche is filled with pain, grief and anger. While it seems to parents that the problem has been solved, “unsuitable people” will no longer interfere with the normal development of the teenager and he will simply find new good friends, the child suffers from raging feelings. He is hurt, bad, lonely, he feels that he is not understood. Since it is impossible to express anger at his parents, he often directs the overwhelming aggression towards himself, which is noticeable in self-harming behavior, feelings of guilt, and decreased self-esteem. He cannot resolve this situation psychologically, or get out of it. He may develop depression, apathy, and reluctance to do anything. He finds himself alone with his pain, in need of sympathy, love and understanding of what is happening to him. This is a very difficult stage for both the child and the parents and requires great wisdom and attentiveness from them. On the one hand, the need to choose between two significant connections can greatly traumatize the child’s psyche, leading to mental disorders that require real help from a psychotherapist. On the other hand, allowing a teenager to communicate with any people he wants can skip the risks of cults, drugs, and other dangerous predators. Parents' love at any cost The most important person in the world for all people is the mother. This is the most important, beloved, desired object for whose love the childready to do anything, including abandoning himself, his parts, crippling himself, and so on. The strength of the bond between mother and child is a manifestation of the biological law of nature. It happens that a child behaves in such a way that it is difficult to believe: observing an aggressive child who accuses, declares his hatred or disappointment, it is difficult to believe that he actually needs his mother’s love, her unconditional acceptance. At such moments, the mother may rather think that she is not loved and feel unhappy and rejected, experience resentment for unfair reproaches and insults, experience disappointment and anger from the ingratitude of the person in whom she has invested so much spiritual strength and care. This is a dangerous trap into which both mother and child fall, inflicting ever greater emotional wounds on each other, suffering from misunderstandings and the ability to improve relationships and give each other what each of them needs. Each demands love from the other and blames and punishes the second person for not giving this love in the way that particular person wants. A mother who takes care of a child, trying to provide him with a decent education, quality nutrition, and material benefits, and, perhaps, exhausted at work, sincerely does not understand how a child can be so ungrateful and looks for problems in the child himself or his environment . A child who needs the warmth and affection of his mother, her admiration and support, and maternal faith in his abilities, hearing from her only demands, reproaches, comparisons with others and threats, does not believe that she needs him on his own. He suffers from this, feeling useless and worthless, feeling that something is wrong with him and attracting attention, trying to gain the attention of others. Often such children are criticized for behavioral problems, giving them additional labels of “problems”, and thereby aggravating the situation. These children easily make contact with any adult who shows them that they need the child, that they like him. They need love expressed in a way they can read, and will bond with any adult who is willing to offer them love. This, on the one hand, makes them vulnerable to possible predators who want to use children in their own interests, and on the other hand, does not solve the main problem - getting love from the mother. Despicable Me “I’m terrible”, “I’m bad”, “I’m unworthy”, “I’m worse than others”, “I’m abnormal”, “others are better than me”, “there’s something wrong with me”, “I’m not normal”, “ I don’t have the right to just be”, “I will be rejected”, “I don’t deserve love”, “in order to be loved, I have to do something”, “everyone will turn away from me if they find out what I really am” , “I have to pretend to be something other than who I am”, “to get love, I need to study well/get into a cool university/have a lot of money/have a prestigious job/defend a PhD”, “somehow I’m not like that” - these and such negative ideas about oneself are characteristic of those who have not developed the mechanism of self-acceptance. This mechanism, sometimes called the capacity for unconditional or maternal love, is critical to the psychological health of the individual. The lack of development of this mechanism is manifested in self-rejection, experiencing oneself as bad, worthless, and of little value compared to others. This attitude towards oneself has an impact on all areas of life. Problems with non-acceptance of oneself lead not only to moral suffering, but also to problems in all other areas of life, from building relationships with others to difficulties in professional self-realization. Self-acceptance is expressed in calm self-respect. Unlike selfishness, when a person is fixated on himself and does not see those around him, unconditional self-love is the basis that lies in a positive, friendly attitude towards himself and other people and the world. This mechanism is truly the foundation for everything else. He seems to say: I have the right to be, just to be. I was born on this earth, Ialready here, I deserve love and happiness, I can grow, develop, hope for the best. It manifests itself, for example, in the sphere of interpersonal relationships, limiting a person’s ability to build friendships, partnerships and professional relationships. A person who feels bad and worthless is rarely capable of sincere love, trust and self-disclosure. Feeling the need to pretend to be someone else, to pretend to be someone else, better and more worthy and interesting than himself, a person is constantly under the threat of exposure, tearing off the mask. This is constant guilt for one’s own inadequacy, an attempt to hide and dress up and, at the same time, the fear of exposure that continuously accompanies a person. This fear can take many forms: fear of rejection due to one's appearance, speech patterns or stupidity, lifestyle, career status, salary, and so on. The specific manifestation of this fear is only an illusion that masks the lack of love and respect for oneself. The mechanism of unconditional self-love is critically important, because here we are talking not just about self-respect, but about recognizing one’s right to exist, the existential right to live. Negative assessments and self-doubt can be summarized in one phrase: “I am not worthy to live, to be on this planet among people.” The painful despair of such an experience motivates a person to take specific actions in order to get rid of the burden of his own “badness.” They can manifest themselves in various ways: from attempts to achieve certain goals at any cost, to the development of mental disorders: depression, self-harming behavior, suicidal attempts. A person who is ready to sacrifice everything for the sake of his goal, for example, career growth or certain academic achievements - his health, the health of his loved ones, relationships with other people, may truly believe that achieving a result will change his life for the better. In fact, behind these desperate attempts there is a desire to gain the right to life, the right to love, to respect. The futility of such strategies becomes obvious when a person experiences failure - the scale of his reactions, suffering and experiences is often incomparable with external losses. But they can easily be explained if you understand that behind the external attributes of success and prestige, in fact, there are attempts to avoid death and earn the right to life. A person who does not accept himself is, in principle, unable to experience such experiences as sincere joy in the achievements of another person. Feeling worthless compared to others, he will perceive other people's successes as another reminder of his badness and inadequacy, experiencing pain, anger and envy, mixed with guilt and shame for these feelings. This poisonous tangle of feelings not only does not allow us to share the joyful experiences of others, it poisons any relationship with the desire to control other people, humiliating and impeding their development. The social environment, in the family or at work, will fully correspond to this attitude. Even the creative process bears the imprint of self-dislike. The author looks at his works as “bad”, “inappropriate”, projecting his attitude towards himself onto them. As if apologizing for the products of his creativity, a person is embarrassed to show them to the public or give them as a gift. “I baked a cake for you, please forgive me that it’s so terrible, it didn’t turn out well” - the meaning of this is the same as any other message: “I’m generously sorry that I’m so terrible, ridiculous, like everything I do” The attitude towards professional activity here turns out to be twofold: on the one hand, the thirst to increase one’s value makes one passionately desire high positions and status. On the other hand, a simultaneous lack of faith in one's own dignity can cause flight from success and sabotage of one's own happiness. This is the case when a person feels that he is not worthy of such a good job, a kind and respectful attitude towards himself and chooses the worst options of all available,as if more suitable for such a nonentity as he secretly feels himself to be. Problems arise with such an inevitable part of life as making mistakes. The fact that no person is perfect, and mistakes are so inherent in human nature, is reflected not only in many sayings and proverbs, but also in standard academic courses that take into account the role of the human factor, for example, in the development of equipment or the design of instruments. Any mistake that can be made will be made by one person or another. Even those mistakes that would never occur to you will still be made. People are imperfect and they learn from their own mistakes, not from others. But since none of us is free from imperfections and mistakes, development and growth inevitably require coming face to face with our imperfections - admitting the mistakes we have made and correcting them. It may also be that admitting responsibility for the mistake made, a person feels so bad and spoiled, as if this mistake had divided his life into two parts - before, when he was good, and after, when he became bad, spoiled, unworthy of anything good in life, deserving only censure and punishment. This person suffers from mental pain, not just accepting the hardships of life, but actively seeking out and avoiding joy, as if with every choice he makes, confirming the decision to punish himself. Mistakes really are different, both in the form and circumstances of their commission, and in the scale of their consequences. They occur for various reasons, committed out of good or bad will, out of ignorance or malicious intent. Some of them are destructive and even fatal for the fate of some people, others, even those that seem very significant, upon careful analysis turn out to be simply an illusion that a person invented for himself or that was inspired by others. The consequences of some mistakes are so insignificant that a person with a developed self-acceptance mechanism will never understand why the activity of some people can be completely paralyzed by the possibility of doing something imperfectly. In psychology there is even a special term “perfectionism”, which denotes such a strong desire to achieve perfection, which already turns into a disorder that interferes with normal work and life. But whatever the mistake made, personal growth and development requires its awareness and correction. Both are problematic for a person who does not have self-love. By not accepting himself as he is, this person avoids seeing himself doing something bad, wrong or shameful. The threat to an already fragile self-esteem is so great that the pain of realizing one’s own actions is almost unbearable, and the person does anything to avoid facing the truth. Denial of the very fact of a mistake, blaming others for one’s actions, anything to avoid admitting one’s own responsibility for the actions taken. These inherently pathological strategies turn out to be destructive to a person’s life, narrowing his consciousness and driving him into an increasingly existential impasse. He may try to forget himself, pushing the memory of these events into the far corners of his consciousness, displacing and forgetting them. Unfortunately, after a serious mistake is made, a person can no longer remain the same as he was before. This mistake becomes like a certain milestone, after which two possible paths open - further degradation or personal development and growth. The first of them is associated with denial of error, avoiding the awareness of one’s own responsibility for one’s actions. By choosing this path, a person slides lower and lower, knowing deep in his soul that he does not dare to realize and correct, feeling guilt, driving it away and making excuses to himself and others. He may actively blame others or circumstances, explaining that his actions were completely justified and legal. But attempts to drown out the voice of conscience bring nothing but feelings of anxiety, uncertainty and.