How we protect our psyche. Psychological defenses part 1. We are “wired” with special ways of protecting ourselves from negative events that happen in our lives one way or another. Thanks to these protections, we did not go crazy and were able to adapt to society. BUT they also cause us a feeling of anxiety, dissatisfaction with life, and can even lead to mental disorders. The strongest of these defenses is “Repression.” It helps us “forget” various negative events and the unpleasant feelings associated with them. Unfortunately, we don’t actually forget them, but rather push them deeper into ourselves as if nothing happened. And for a short time it really helps. An example of such repression is the death of a loved one. Imagine that at this moment you need to get together and organize a funeral, wake, and solve a bunch of problems at the same time, and you simply have no time to grieve. At the moment, it may even seem to you that you are not very upset about this. But at some point, when everything settles down, you are overwhelmed by an avalanche of all the emotions and feelings associated with the loss of someone close to you. And the longer you try not to “feel” these emotions, the stronger the rollback will be. Such containment takes a huge amount of our strength. A person can live for years with this burden of accumulated emotions and not suspect that the anxiety he experiences may be associated with these events. In practice, I encounter this very often. Such repressed events may be 10, 15 or even 30 years old. Such experiences are often reflected in our body in the form of psychosomatics. And sometimes, in order for a connection between repressed emotions and events in our lives to appear in our heads, more than one psychotherapy session is needed. As you understand, there are a huge number of such events in our lives. Physical and emotional abuse comes first, and this is something we would probably like to forget. Actually, this is what our psyche helps us with. BUT emotions don’t just go away, they settle in our body and often lead to neuroses and psychosomatic disorders, simply diseases. And until you get rid of them, they will not go anywhere. Body therapy helps well with this. The most common thing I hear when working with clients is: “I thought I had already lived through this...”. Our bodily memory is unique; the body remembers everything. In therapy, people often recall long-forgotten moments in their lives. By reliving them, allowing ourselves to cry, scream, get angry, be sad, we are freed from the burden of experiences and life miraculously begins to change for the better. Sincerely, Oleg Zogol.