Numerous patients know this woman as an experienced specialist who has saved more than one family from collapse. Colleagues - as an author of articles, training courses and a developer of computer treatment programs. In addition, Almaty psychologist Elena Lyubich is one of the founders of the Almaty Group for the Development of Analytical Psychology (GRAP) and the only Kazakh specialist in the field of family psychology today who has been awarded the international status of Ambassador of Peace for her professional contribution to universal human values. Today she is a guest of the Kazakhstanskaya Pravda newspaper “- Elena Arkadyevna, having started your professional journey in Almaty as the head of a social structure for family support, you are now actively expanding your horizons of activity: working on the Internet, creating your own school in the north of the country, in Petropavlovsk. In your opinion, where is the profession of a family psychologist more in demand – in the center or “locally”? – Let's start with the fact that I do not divide my patients into “central” and “regional”. Large cities can be valued for a wider range of opportunities for study, income, entertainment and the like. But they also consume more energy, put more pressure on the psyche, provoking stress and leading to a dead end - this is the price to pay for scale. As a wise classic noted: “...Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Unfortunately, many people are familiar with the situation when close people cease to understand each other. Mutual reproaches, unwillingness to listen and hear each other, a feeling of a nightmarish dead end... Relationships are collapsing like a house of cards, alienation is growing; is about to cover everyone with an avalanche of mutual hatred, which, as you know, is one step away from love. It’s as if just yesterday everything was completely cloudless, it can’t be that nothing can be improved... Alas, it can. And it all didn’t start yesterday, it just came back to haunt us only now. It’s difficult to understand this on your own, which is why people turn to a psychologist: who else, if not him, can figure out where the “legs” of your problem come from. Divorce, infidelity of husbands and wives, disobedient children and cruel parents, unemployment and inability to feed the family - you never know the reasons to plunge into the abyss of depression! On this fertile soil, various psychosomatic problems bloom wildly, that is, violations of the physiological functions of the body caused by psychological stress. Is it necessary to explain how this affects the moral state of the entire society? Shortening of life, declining birth rates, abandoned children, suicide, drunkenness and drug addiction - all these are links in one chain. Unfortunately, neither flight to big cities nor good luck in business can save you from these problems. Among my patients there were quite wealthy people, prosperous on the outside and deeply unhappy on the inside for the same reasons. “But young people don’t think so and rush from villages to regional centers, and from there to capitals in pursuit of the ghost of great opportunities. Should we stop them from taking this step? - What for? This is their conscious choice. You can influence him, but this should not be done on the station platform, but much earlier - in childhood, and preferably from the first month of life. All our problems begin in the family, and sometimes at very deep levels of distant ancestral roots. And the subconscious stores a lot of nuances that inevitably affect the interaction of subsequent generations. From the point of view of psychology, any mental illness is a person’s loss of himself, a failure in the internal program of harmony inherent in us from the very beginning. To correct the situation, you need to return to your inner sources, and the task of a psychologist is to help determine the right direction, identify the cause of the failure and find a mechanism for troubleshooting. But a psychologist is not a genie in a lamp or a fairy with a magic wand, so you shouldn’t expect a miracle from him. He is, rather, a guide for a lost soul on this difficult path to himself. – What problems do people come to you with most often? - Somewhat stableThere is no typology. Of the typically female problems, perhaps the most frequently repeated complaints are about “difficult” children and husband’s infidelity; for some, everyday troubles threaten to develop into divorce. Men are more likely to suffer from depression and worry about things like not being able to earn enough to support their family. But both of them are concerned about eternal human questions: how to establish relationships with each other, to prevent “being overwhelmed by everyday life.” It is important that a person takes the first step towards understanding his mistakes and is ready to work on himself with the help of a specialist. The sooner he decides to do this, the more successful the result will be. Unfortunately, in most cases, people turn to us too late, when the relationship is already in complete discord, the “love boat” is leaking at all the seams and, look, it will sink... - Who are more among your clients - men or women? Can they be classified by age or profession? - Women, of course. It seems to me that this happens because a woman is morally more responsible for the psychological climate in the family. It’s just so that centuries-old traditions have developed that she devotes more time to the family than a man, she has the opportunity to observe children more often, to see the situation from the inside. And of course, he experiences the slightest deviations from the “norm” more emotionally. Although this does not mean that men do not care about everything and do not need psychological help. They are simply not so susceptible to emotional swings, so they are ready to endure until the last moment in full confidence that they will cope without outside help. Plus the notorious male pride, which does not allow one to mentally “undress” in front of a stranger. The consequences of such self-confidence can be catastrophic: a person who is not ready to withstand a psychological blow easily “breaks” and ends up with a psychologist in an extreme state of mental exhaustion. It is much more difficult to select keys for such a patient. There are no other classifications. Neither profession nor age can protect against stress and mental illness. – How diverse are the methods you use in your work? – A family psychologist is always a generalist, and how could it be otherwise: despite the similarity of problems, all patients are different, each requires an individual approach. Some people work with in psychoanalysis, others are more suited to, say, art therapy, others have to just listen for a very long time before building a strategy for helping... The arsenal of methods is expanding all the time: by helping people solve their problems, the psychologist also improves, because a true professional learns all my life. The most dangerous thing in our profession is focusing on one thing, and I try with all my might to avoid this. I work with young colleagues: in Petropavlovsk and on the Internet, for example, there is a School of Practical Psychology “Psyche”, where people learn the basics of psychological self-education in the process of training. A lot of work has been done to create (together with Russian colleagues) six distance psychological courses. The development of original programs for individual sessions of color correction and audio therapy “Your own psychotherapist” is in full swing... – Since 2008, Kazakhstan has had a juvenile justice system developed by the Ministry of Justice on the recommendation of a UN committee. What is its essence, from a psychological point of view? – The trouble is that a person placed in conditions of captivity does not always take the path of correction. After only a year and a half of imprisonment, the teenage psyche is irreversibly broken, its restoration turns into a long and labor-intensive process, and it is not yet a fact that it will be possible to adapt it to life in a normal society. Our task is psychological support for juvenile offenders, aimed at strengthening the personality structure at the stage and in the process of legal proceedings. – What professional advice could you give to the readers of our newspaper? – Don’t worry about trifles, believe in yourself, love and take care of your loved ones. And then everything will be fine with you. – Thank you very much for the conversation and good luck in all your endeavors. I hope we meet again again.