It is as if a giant wave rushes to you: there is nowhere to get away from it, and you are freezing without strength. Or maybe you feel like a limp character of an action movie or horror, lose your own «I» feeling? We explain what two extreme reactions causes stress: horror up to loss of breathing and the experience of the absence of oneself and the world.
The earth leaves from under the feet, and to lay in the head what is happening around is not possible. On such days, tips to abandon caffeine and ground are perceived as applied plantain. Useful in the moment, they may seem empty with prolonged stress.
When circumstances are intense, large-scale and it is impossible to control them, we all find ourselves in a borderline. At such moments, it becomes easier to understand people with anxious disorder, depression, a borderline personality disorder (PRL) and bipolar affective disorder (bar).
From extreme to extreme: it’s hard for you to breathe or exhale?
“He was and was broken, he was alive and was killed,” the words from the song “Spleen” are perhaps one of the most accurate descriptions of a person of
a difficult, borderline situation. To be inconsistent, unstable and confused – normal.
The indicator of the intensity of the anxiety that a person experiences can be a breath. Psychologist Anastasia Dolganova Offers Pay attention to what is more difficult to do in a situation of extreme excitement: inhalation or exhalation.
If you grab the air, but cannot slowly let it out, we are talking about a neurotic anxiety
A person can feel her in moments when he finds himself face to face with supplanted, forbidden feelings: aggression, greed, lust, jealousy.
It is in this case that the technique of respiratory recovery and mobile applications for meditation, as well as the techniques of complacency and return to reality are effective, are effective to relieve symptoms. In the long run, this can be work on the adoption of the shadow sides, recognition of ambiguous emotions and the formation of a more realistic image of oneself.
It is more difficult if a person cannot take a breath: such a reaction can talk about intense psychotic anxiety
And the techniques of overcoming it will be different. Such anxiety arises against the backdrop of the experience of fear of death, meaninglessness, despair and isolation.
In the work «Existential Psychotherapy» Irvin Yalom gives a personal example of a collision with the fear of death after a car accident. The psychologist talks about the background experience that is experiencing a few more months after: «The world has become unreliable». He becomes ominous, loses his comfort. The internal boundaries of a person in such a situation are blurred, the usual supports collapse.
“We can respond to the crisis of meaning by the protective crowding out of this topic, a clearance from the consciousness of the suffering part of the personality … We can succumb to despair and become cynical,” write Ursula Virtz and Yorg Tsobel in the book “Thirst for meaning. Man in extreme situations. Limits of psychotherapy «.
Another option is to look for meaning in the «dialogue performed by love». If there is a topic for discussion and space for opening, a real meeting with another person takes place. So, according to the Virtz and Tsobel, proximity is formed as the deep interaction of people.
In a situation of existential “pitching” there is no more effective way to relieve the alarm how to divide it with another
Those who are here and now able to hear, understand and accept. Then inexpressible despair and fear begin to gain boundaries, powerlessness does not pass, but it becomes a prolonged.
If the dialogue is increasingly reminiscent of the game in the ping, the interlocutors do not hear each other and the conversation resembles two alternate monologues, saving tactics will move away and increase the distance.
Absurd, sur and alienation: how to survive derealization
Когда обстоятельства накрывают с головой, справиться с этим бывает нелегко, а порой — невыносимо. In such situations, the human psyche resorts to the most powerful defense. One of these – depersonalization. It can act as an independent symptom, be one of the manifestations of bipolar affective disorder, schizophrenia or depression, as well as the mechanism for protecting the healthy psyche in extreme situations.
If you look at the reflection in the mirror for a long time, for a few seconds your own face may seem unfamiliar, strange and alien. This is one of the simple and brief options for depersonalization. At such moments, a person ceases to feel himself and feel at all. And reality begins to seem to be shots of a surreal film.
There is another similar state. You know this strange feeling when the usual simple word suddenly turned into nothing, an empty phrase? You repeat it, but as if you will not recognize. When something similar happens to the world around him, this is called derealization. The usual space of the room can become a completely unfamiliar place in a second. This feeling of alienation and unrecognition can be unpleasant, intense and difficult to endure. For example, Jean-Paul Sartre called a similar state nausea.
“Any human activity – the work that we go to every day, conducting religious ceremonies, daily natural departures – it seems strange, or even absurd, if you look at it without emotions and complete involvement,” this is how Daphni Simeon and Jeffrey describe the state of depersonalizationAbugel in the work «I am not me. What is depersonalization and how to live with it «.
Such detachment can be inhibiting, frightening and difficult. Or, on the contrary, when experiencing the death of a loved one, loss and in a difficult life situation give a person some relief.