Also important is what the one, who cut off and sew on, has once gone through. It is my profound conviction that working with trauma is similar to diving or mounting climbing. It is difficult to teach how to dive or how to climb a mountain being a theorist. Of course, it is possible to give a lot of statistically average recommendations. But trauma is a specific experience of going through. It is a special type of therapy where theory is not enough. Often it looks as follows:
What did not kill me, will not kill you as well. You came for this, you wanted to hear this, didnt you? I usually ask in different forms a person who came to see me on a recommendation. And the person realizes, that if somebody has already gone through this situation, it means that he also has a chance.
Probably a work with a psychological trauma and its consequences can be acknowledged as a surgery in its essence. An existential psychosurgery. When a specialist has his or her own experience of diving and mountain climbing, the therapy process obtains a shade of guidance. The guides image participates in the professional dissociation of a psychologist-surgeon as a fragile fabric, woven from a subjective objectivity, embroidered with gold threads of unconditional love.
This I would like to clarify, so that you do not get any illusions.
In their lives psychologists-surgeons are strongly pronounced misanthropes.
And I am no exception.
I sincerely do not like mankind as a species. It is hard to imagine a more stupid, deceitful and unholy expression of life. But the Supreme Being is merciful, and more often I work with the exceptions. And I help them.
Others I do not help.
Yes, yes, Jean Batist, do not be surprised.
I choose with whom to work and with whom not.
But the main point has to be clarified. I do not blame. But I do not accept.
This is my second principle.
And this, in my opinion, is the basis of success and quality in work.
For example, I refuse to help a person if he is a pedophile. Or a sadist. Or evokes my rejection for any other reason. This is what happens when you walk past an open manhole, and you know for sure that the key word is past.
I refuse to help those. Politely but categorically. Because I have my own values, which I collected throughout my whole life. And now I construct any therapy building on this particular foundation.
For the sake of a successful therapy.
For making a person free.
For securing the psychologist.
The deep part of the foundation consists of a sense of respect. It is necessary to respect a patient.
It is more complicated with regards to the surface of the foundation. Psychologists should work on the border of the vectors of moral and ethical perceptions. Of their own, as well as of their clients perceptions. Figuratively, in the case of a psychologist it is like a huge mirror-like hand fan reflecting a rainbow. Reflected in this mirror-like hand fan are thousands of shades of morality and ethics acceptable for them. And the client has only one perception. Well, sometimes there may be several shades. Because clients do not need more. They have their life, experience, education, conditions that determine their existence. And if the clients view of the world is reflected in the huge mirror-like hand fan of the psychologist, then the therapy will be successful.
In other case it is just a business.
Or a fraud.
Or a crime.
Or a mental disorder of the specialist.
But not a psychotherapy, which, in my opinion, means a souls rehabilitation. Do you understand what I am talking about?
Anastasia looked at Jean Batist and once again reflected the inner light coming from the depths of his heart. He smiled back.
Jean, what do you think of psychotherapy as a psychiatrist?
Anastasia, I will certainly tell you about it. When talking about my own trauma. But not now. Because you began talking about yourself. And I want you to continue. Jean talked a little slow, but almost without an accent. After all, his student years spent at the Russian Peoples Friendship University have left in Jean Batist an imprint of a blade wrapped around by a snake as well as a Cyrillic engraving. He had become an excellent psychotherapist with a good command of Russian language.
OK, Jean. But being a gentleman, will you give me some preferences? I just have not one, but several traumas, which I could tell you about.
Of course, Jean laughed and shook his head. You are a woman. Moreover, you are a Russian woman. A Russian woman who is a psychologist-surgeon! Oh! I want details!
They laughed, and it got lighter near the fireplace.
Then I will tell you the first story, which happened to me at the time when I was especially happy
Anastasia looked into the cup with cappuccino. The drink was perfectly ready for use. I wish everybody has a motivation like this, she thought.
The smell of coffee and cinnamon was stopping the time, and Anastasia, warming her hands in the embrace of porcelain, wondered what to begin with
Chapter 2. Angels Death
Goldfish Broth
Jean Batist smiled with his cautious smile, poured himself some tea and began to listen to Anastasia carefully.
What a great meaning has the ritual of sharing food and thirst quenching. As if we not only feed the stomach, but also add some special spice to the soul food. It seems that we not only quench thirst, but also slowly and with pleasure fill with a bracer the vessel of the mind. We can call this a repast, compiled from the temporal and the eternal. This kind of lunch is only possible when the interlocutors are free from the most widespread evil stupidity. And stupidity is a human evil, eighth sin, I am deeply convinced of that, Anastasia put her fingers around the porcelain cup and, responding to Jean Batists expectations, proceeded with her story.
Fateful nuances comprise our reality like the sand makes up the ocean coast. For example, today, when she decided to talk of a trauma in psychotherapy, an interesting awareness had occurred to her. Anastasia recalled the date, which she usually did not recollect. Almost 13 years ago, on November 20, 2003 she lay on a hospital bed, waiting.
She waited, unable to change anything.
She had waited for two days in a row.
Waited for her child to die.
Her little boy. Her Mishenka.
To die inside her.
To die in her.
And this had brought the understanding that she was dying together with him.
And probably no one would believe, but she had died.
This was an absolute, hundred percent death. Her physical body lay somewhere. Somebody took care of it. Her family. Her mother, husband, friends. Thus she was told afterwards. They told her the same way, as usually a person with amnesia is told. But she herself almost did not remember that time. Probably her Guardian Angel practiced in painting and at some point decided to master the technique of pencil drawing. And in graphic arts curved lines should be periodically erased.
Absurdity of the situation had brought such a compilation of emotions and feelings, that to Anastasia, who was a psychologist at the moment, not yet a surgeon, but already a great experimenter, all this seemed to be a bad dream. Viscous, stifling nightmare as it happens sometimes when you cannot wake up.
Because just yesterday she had been brought by the ambulance to the hospital and was told that her waters had started to break. But, despite such period of pregnancy 6.5 months nobody would try to change anything.