How to adapt and deal with difficulties in immigration: psychologist's advice

Clinical psychologist about the joy, meaning of vulnerability and the consciousness of spies

Emigration to a new country, the first disappointments, betrayals of loved ones, parting, difficulties in adapting to a new team ... Today's life is full of stresses, and even more so they cannot be avoided by those who are trying to start a new life in a new country. Probably, every emigrant at least once was tempted: how good it would be to be able to turn off feelings and emotions, learn to relate to the environment completely indifferently and start to calmly smile around everyone, not a bit showing what you really feel!

Olga Podolskaya on the radio

"The character is Nordic, true Aryan." These qualities sometimes seem necessary not only for the professional Shtirlitsa, but also for those who are forced to go to an unloved job every day, live with an unloved person or put up with other means in circumstances that do not suit him. However life coach from san francisco Olga Podolskaya assures: suppressing or substituting one’s feelings is not at all such a harmless and easy way of psychological self-defense, as it seems at first glance. Being an experienced clinical psychologist in Russia, Olga worked, including with combatants and security forces, and she knows firsthand what the price of external equanimity and apparent invulnerability is.

Under the mask of Stirlitz

«A situation in which people say one thing and feel the other causes a cognitive dissonance, which it costs the psyche very expensive. Yes, such people are in a sense truly invulnerable, but this does not mean that their condition is normal. In general, the most invulnerable state of a person is a corpse. For a living person, the desire to be as invulnerable as possible is very expensive. It is not without reason that psychologists unanimously say that it is the ability to recognize one’s vulnerability and experience pain that allows a person to remain alive and to live his life to the fullest, experiencing both sincere grief and sincere happiness. It is the ability to fully live your life with all the senses and desires that is considered today the standard of a full life”, Olga emphasizes.

The psychologist explains: it is impossible to “cut off” the ability to feel pain in oneself, and at the same time continue to experience happiness, joy, or even quiet relaxation. An attempt to suppress one’s feelings extends to the whole gamut of sensations without exception.

Psychologist at work. Photo by Olga Podolskaya

«The only thing that is accessible to a person in such a state is perhaps the intellectual joy of victory, but even it is not felt in the whole body. Therefore, even if the human psyche copes with such a state (and such people, as a rule, have a very high-resource psyche), sooner or later the body cannot withstand them. And what begins is called "somatic collapse": a stream of physical illnesses, one after another. Permanent life in cognitive dissonance requires very large resources, and the body begins to take them from the body", Says Olga Podolskaya.

The fact is that the most reliable way to restrain feelings is to breathe less deeply, which inevitably affects health.

«A man as if wants to breathe, but holds his breath. When we breathe in, the intercostal muscles and the diaphragm relax, the inner space of the chest expands, the lungs are stretched and filled with air. When a person holds his breath, intercostal muscles are compressed, respectively, neuralgia and muscle cramps occur. The internal organs that are in contact with the diaphragm are also pinched, including the stomach, gall bladder and duodenum, which often causes gastritis and other diseases of the internal organs.

Photo: Olga Podolskaya

In addition, stress is certain hormones that activate the sympathetic nervous system. At this point, the whole organism becomes focused on flight or struggle. Sugar is released into the blood, blood supply to the muscles improves, breathing deepens. But at the same time the vessels are narrowed, which lead not to the muscles and not to the brain, that is, for example, to the digestive system. If this is a short-term reaction, necessary, for example, to escape from the tiger, as it was originally conceived in nature, after acute stress the parasympathetic nervous system switches on again, the blood supply to the brain and muscles worsens, and, on the contrary, the blood is supplied to the digestive system and other internal organs. But with constant stress this does not happen. Therefore, the constant stress of cognitive dissonance leads to a deterioration in the blood supply to the internal organs, and primarily affects the digestive system", Explains Olga Podolskaya.

According to the psychologist, even the most professional spies are unable to “deceive” their own body. For example, scouts “in the fields” most often do not seek to suppress their feelings, but, on the contrary, demonstrate them, accompanying sincere emotions with false explanations. With this technique, it's almost impossible to track down a lie. A scout can sincerely show love or hate, replacing only a couple of names or titles - the true subject of his love or hate. However, Olga Podolskaya is sure: such a technique can have an ideal effect “at work”, but it does not bring genuine relief to the speaker.

«Firstly, the very fact of such a replacement means that a person cannot show the world what he thinks and feels in reality. This means that the world around him is hostile, which means he cannot relax in it, and lives in constant tension. This means that the cycle of tension and relaxation is knocked down, and the person, in principle, loses the ability to relax. Further, even if we are talking about replacing just a few words, a person has an additional stage - the very substitution, relatively speaking, of Hitler's name for Roosevelt. What is happening at this moment?

Suppose you have hatred, and you know that this hatred is addressed to Hitler. Accordingly, when talking with Hitler’s allies, your whole body instinctively tenses up, your hands get ready to hit, and so on. In other words, the dominance of hatred is activated in the brain, which is expressed in some micromotion, and the person himself is well aware that all this is aimed at the very supporters of Hitler with whom he is currently talking. Then a second dominant appears in his brain: replace Hitler’s name with Roosevelt, which in its strength should overlap the first dominant. The result is an internal conflict that absorbs our energy. That is why replacing one word is even more difficult and sometimes requires even more energy than just a lie."- explains the psychologist.

Reorientation of feelings: from the gym to Chopin

Photo: Olga Podolskaya

Olga Podolskaya notes: the ideal way out in such a situation is an attempt to end the relationship that generates a constant internal conflict. This can be a dismissal from work (not only “spyware”, but also anyone who is openly unloved), a divorce from a spouse, with whom he lived only by calculation, moving to a country where you do not have to hide your political views and so on. But it often happens that just this simple decision is not so easy to make. Sometimes people are forced to work in an unloved job to feed their children or pay loans; sometimes they have to live with an unloved person, for which for some reason there is no way to leave; and those who have to take care of their elderly parents cannot so easily leave their seats and leave. In this case, it is possible to alleviate your condition by reorientation of feelings.

«You can express feelings without being aware of their causes, or even hiding their causes from yourself. For example, you can watch a sad movie and cry from it if you feel sad. Remember that even about some Nazis who burned people in gas stoves, they were surprised to say that "he was so thin in kind, and cried when he listened to Chopin." This is a classic example of a reorientation of feelings: the sympathy that should have been directed at his victims, he expressed whatever they were.

However, with this method, internal dissonance persists, and the cause of the internal conflict remains unchanged. Only awareness allows not only to really experience feelings, but also to dive deeper into their cause and change it. Therefore, I would not recommend this method to people who have no good reason to live a double life. However, sometimes even the most honest of us have to endure an internal conflict. For example, we cannot hit the boss who rude us or run away from the office, and are forced to restrain our feelings. You are experiencing stress, but you cannot do physical work that exhausts stress and allows the parasympathetic nervous system to turn on. That is why people need gyms so much - this is also a kind of reorientation of feelings, which allows the sympathetic nervous system to get tired", - the psychologist explains.

The price of the "icy heart"

Another common illusion that often occurs in people who have suffered trauma is the desire to feel less, not to take the situation “to heart”. In this case, it is no longer about suppressing or replacing feelings, but simply about stopping experiencing. Simply put, is it possible to become "pachyderm" in adulthood?

According to Olga Podolskaya, such a "petrified insensibility" is most often the result of trauma and is also not the norm for a healthy person.

«Any person in deep depression does not feel anything, but this is a disease, and the limit of insensitivity is a corpse. The absence of feelings is the dysfunction of the psyche, since it is feelings that determine our ability to exist happily in this world. Another thing is that sometimes we are overwhelmed by feelings that do not belong to this moment, when a person reacts to some not very significant things too sharply. This is also an indicator that his experience coincided with some kind of trauma, which has not yet been “healed”. The psyche in this case can be compared with the skin. Where a scar has already appeared on the wound site, the skin is much less sensitive. Where the wound is open, sensitivity is sharpened. Neither one nor the other is the norm, and they require awareness, and then work on yourself"- explains Olga.

According to Olga Podolskaya, there is one version that psychopaths, that is, people who are practically deprived of empathy, experience trauma even in the perinatal period or a maximum of up to a year. However, it is not necessary to envy their composure - the psychologist assures that their gamut of feelings is extremely limited, which does not allow a full life.

«Of course, much is compensated in the psyche, and some parts of the brain can take on the functions of other parts, so if you wish, any predisposition or injury can be subjected to at least partial correction. For example, a scientist James fallonwho studied psychopaths suddenly discoveredthat itself has a psychopathic brain profile. However, he was married and lived a perfectly normal life, benefiting society. Moreover, having seen his profile, he began to adjust his behavior more. In psychology, unlike physical injuries, it is much easier to compensate for the effects of trauma or illness.", Concludes Olga.

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