Natalia Skuratovskaya- psychologist, psychotherapist, teacher of the course of practical pastoral psychology, leading trainings for clergy and church workers, director of the consulting company "Viv Active".
Good day! Although there are a lot of people, we will be able not only to communicate in a lecture format, but also to try to do something to resist manipulations in real life. I am a practical psychologist, not an academic, but a practitioner, and I have been working with church topics for six years. I work mainly in the context of pastoral psychology - counseling priests, parishioners, including victims of psychological violence.
Is the person manipulating you? Have pity on him
This topic did not arise by chance, it arose based on many personal stories of different people, many disappointments. Of course, freedom is very important, but no less important is the love that every person expects to meet in the Church. Having read the Gospel, having learned that God is love, a person strives with an open heart towards this love, this freedom in Christ. But very often this is not what he is faced with. Not because the Church itself is bad, but because the people who are saved in this Church remain people with all their inherent weaknesses, which are far from always eradicated over the years, and some are getting worse.
Manipulation is a common background in human communication. Somewhere we are ready to put up with them. Suppose, when trading in the market, we expect them. Or in a business process, in negotiations. The laws of the genre suggest that each side tries to short-circuit the other and achieve maximum benefits for itself. But there are situations where, according to our inner feeling, manipulations are unacceptable for us - this is the family, and this is the Church. Because there should be places in our life where we can be ourselves, where we can be open.
Manipulation, of course, is often very painful, but at the same time, we all, one way or another, manipulate others.
Manipulation is any influence on another person in order to impose his will on him, to get him to do what we want from him, not taking into account what he himself wants. I emphasize that the impact is precisely hidden. Because if you have the power to order, you can force a person. He will be unhappy, but he will. If we take into account his interests, we will come to an agreement with him - perhaps he will voluntarily do what we want from him.
Manipulation is not an order, nor is it an honest contract. This is an appeal to the weaknesses and vulnerabilities that each of us has in order to gain some kind of power over a person. Manipulation can be directed towards different things. You can control your actions, control your feelings. All of you in your life have experienced how easy it is to manipulate feelings. In fact, it is precisely because we have feelings that we become easy prey for manipulators. Just because we are alive.
Therefore, after this lecture, we will not strive for complete invulnerability, we will not live in a spacesuit, because this is not life. Simply, I hope, we will begin to calculate such situations in advance, to prevent, not to enter, to leave this contact in time, or to unfold the situation in such a way that it is equal and honest.
The deepest level of manipulation is to change a person's attitudes, replace his goals with ours, manage his life intentions, reorient his life in the direction that we consider right for him. Maybe we have the best intentions. For example, when we are raising children, we use manipulation regularly. We ask you to eat a spoon for mom, for dad - this is also a manipulation, because mom and dad will not get anything from this, except for peace of mind. We will talk about the manipulations of childhood literally in five minutes, because all of them grow.
Manipulation is in most cases not necessarily a deliberate malicious act when we want to enslave someone's will. Manipulation, as a rule, firstly, is not realized, and secondly, it is so familiar to a person that he simply does not know how to communicate in another way. Because they talked to him like that in childhood, he got used to it, learned from childhood experience: such techniques work, but such do not work. If I whine, my mother will allow me everything, so from now on I will pretend to be a victim and manipulate her weakness. On the contrary, if I always smile, I will be treated well at home and at school, so I will not show my true feelings to anyone, I will manipulate my invulnerability.
At the same time, this usually comes with some provocations in order to take others out of peace of mind and against their background to be a standard and a model of calmness. This is done for the purpose of benefit. Most often, this is the simplest way of manipulation, when we can open it and just calmly say: "You are doing this and that." We can use counter-manipulation explicitly and openly, thereby making it clear that we have figured out the game, are ready to play it, but suggest not to play it.
Another goal is power, not necessarily formal. Power over minds, power over souls is very seductive. And this is what we often deal with in a church context.
Finally, control, which does not necessarily apply to power. Power and control can come in a set, they can go separately. Very often manipulation for the purpose of control is not a person's fault, but a misfortune. Because if a person is neurotic, it is simply vital for him to control the situation around him. If you are part of this situation, then he will have to try to control you.
Therefore, the first thing I ask you to remember. If we meet with manipulation, then this is not a reason for aggression, for confrontation, in order to give a decisive rebuff. This is a reason for sympathy.
Strong, confident, calm and kind people rarely need manipulation. Therefore, if you are being manipulated, take pity on this person to begin with - this is both Christian and psychologically the first correct step in order to deal with the manipulation. Because anger is not the best counselor in these situations.
God punished is a trap
So, what kind of manipulation are there? As I said, conscious and unconscious. We meet with the conscious, especially in the church context, much less often than with the unconscious. Because the unconscious are not only those that a person is vaguely aware of, but also a broadcast of those manipulations that a person himself once underwent.
If a person is sincerely sure that if you do not follow a certain set of prescriptions, then everything, you will go to hell, he sincerely saves you from this, hindering you in every possible way. For example, if you come to church without a headscarf, you will go to hell. Or if you choose as your life companion the wrong person whom your confessor advises, then salvation will not be seen, both of you will perish.
The one who uses such manipulation, in most cases, does not calculate coldly: "Yeah, if I control the sphere of personal relationships, if I control the circle of acquaintances and all aspects of my flock's life, then he is completely in my power." There are still few such insidious manipulators. Usually this is done precisely from the idea of some kind of distortion of spiritual life, in this example - from the shepherd. Although the same can be said by experienced parishioners.
I will take an example from the experience I know of a person who addressed me. A mother who has lost her child comes to church, is not in the church, just in despair. The first thing she encounters: a kind woman begins to tell her that she lost her child because she was not married to her husband, the Lord punished her, and that if she does not want the other children to die, she needs to do something, then - this and that. This is not because the priest taught them so. This is because such a picture of the world and such an image of God lives in their minds - God destroys children.
The peculiarity of this manipulation is an unrelated message. Does God destroy children in all unmarried marriages, or is this woman particularly unlucky? There is also a standard answer to this - that God loves whom he punishes, so the Lord chose you, decided to save you. This is also one of the standard manipulative influences. But most often this does not happen in the format of deliberate manipulation, and such a person himself needs to be helped to cope with the fears that keep him in this trap.
Manipulations can be verbal, that is, verbal, with the help of speech, and there can be behavioral - with the help of actions, deeds, when words are only an addition or are not present at all. For example, if we declare a boycott to a person because he did not do something, this is manipulation. If every time family members do not what we want, we have a heart attack and everyone has to give up everything and run around us, this is a deep neurotic manipulation that has already reached the psychosomatic level. It happens.
Poor health is a great way to control others, which many people use..
To be completely invulnerable to manipulation, you have to be dead, because manipulation relies on feelings. Some of them are natural and each of us has, and some are destructive, and in an amicable way we should get rid of them in ourselves. However, this is something that manipulation can lean on.
Originally from childhood
The first and foremost feeling is love. The basic human needs - food and love - are what even a newborn baby needs. Manipulation with love is very simple - there is unconditional love, and there is love with conditions: if you do not do this and that, I will not love you.
For example, mom says, "If you get a C, I won't love you." Or the father says: “If you don’t go to college, you are not my son. There were no fools in our family. " At the same time, it is absolutely indifferent what the son wants, the main thing is that the condition is set. If the condition is not met, the person is punished by rejection, emotional isolation, or exclusion from a certain community.
Why am I giving examples from my childhood? Precisely because the sensitivity to these manipulations is formed precisely in childhood.
A person whose childhood was full of unconditional love is much less likely to fall for the manipulation of love.... Because he has the intuitive conviction that he is undoubtedly worthy of love.
He does not need to prove anything to anyone in order to win this love. He's just good and just loved. A person who was manipulated by his parents in this way in childhood is very vulnerable to such manipulation, because he has a different picture of the world, he does not have basic trust in people. He has an attitude: love only if you meet expectations.
In a church context, guilt becomes endless
When we turn to the church context, we understand that the stakes are even higher here. They threaten not only the loss of love of significant others, but also the fact that God will not love you. The main manipulation is “God will reject you if you don’t do this and that. If you do as we say, God will love you. " I am simplifying so that the scheme of exposure is clear.
Second, "there is no salvation outside the Church." If you do not do the prescribed set of actions, then you are not Orthodox, we will reject you. A person who comes to church is a neophyte, he is open to everything. Calling grace and a vague search for God brought him to church, he is ready to believe everything. If at this moment he finds himself in conditions of manipulation, then this manipulation will become the leitmotif of his entire spiritual life for many years.
The next is fear. Manipulation of fear is simple and obvious - to understand what a person is most afraid of, and by this to scare him. These are threats from childhood - “if you don’t eat the soup, you will grow up frail and the girls will not love you” or “if you don’t pass your final exams, you will go to the janitors and die under the fence”. In a church context, the stake is extremely high - this is salvation, the opportunity to be with God.
Unfortunately, such a concept as the fear of God is tied to this.
The fear of God is not the fear of a punishing God who watches over our wrong actions solely for the purpose of giving us what we deserve. It is the fear of our own imperfection, the realization that in the face of God we are open as we are.
On the one hand, God undoubtedly loves us. On the other hand, the feeling that we are worthy of this love? The fear of offending God is the fear of God. But more often the interpretation is different, literal: one must be afraid.
The next one is a feeling of guilt, which is very easy to provoke in a person, especially if he is used to it from childhood. If my mother's career did not take place, because she devoted herself to children, then my mother says: "All my life I live for the sake of the family, for you." The parentheses mean that you have to work it out, it’s for life. Feelings of guilt are often provoked in marital relationships, because: "Because of you, I did not succeed in this and that, because of you I gave up such and such opportunities." A person who is invited to feel guilty is forced to make excuses and is forced to somehow atone for his guilt.
When we move into the ecclesiastical context, our feelings of guilt become endless, because none of us is sinless. Repentance is an important thing in our spiritual life. The line between repentance, which is “metanoia,” that is, a change of oneself with God's help, and a hopeless feeling of guilt, when you understand that whatever you do, it will always be bad, sometimes very imperceptible. Moreover, unfortunately, this is how our modern Orthodox subculture has developed.
The feeling of guilt is actively exploited, because everyone has it, and we all know about the benefits of repentance.
The next thing is self-doubt. When a person is not confident in himself, it is easy to make him helpless. The main thing is to explain to him more that he cannot cope without you, that he himself cannot do anything. If this happens to a person in childhood, he grows up in a state of so-called learned helplessness: he is not able to take responsibility for his life and make decisions on his own, because life experience tells him that he himself cannot cope, he himself cannot.
Imagine, such a person comes to church, seeks spiritual nourishment. As often happens, if a person has psychological problems, he finds himself a complimentary partner - someone who will make up for his incompleteness. In this case, the person is infantile, he has learned helplessness. He will find himself a confessor who will decide everything for him. The ideal option is some young old man. For him, this is an ideal parishioner - he himself does not decide anything, knows nothing, is afraid of his desires, afraid to trust himself, asks for blessing even to blow his nose.
If such a person comes to a priest who perceives spiritual guidance differently, then the priest will already have the feeling that he is being manipulated. And it's true - manipulation of pity also happens. “I am so helpless, I will be lost without you, I don’t know anything, I can’t do anything, so you must take full responsibility for me and on your neck I will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. I myself do not want to think, and I myself do not want to do anything. " In this case, the manipulation is often mutual.
The next trap is pride and vanity. I think it is unnecessary to talk a lot on this topic. We all know how dangerous pride and vanity are spiritually dangerous, but it's also an Achilles' heel in terms of manipulation. But this manipulation is no longer forceful, but with the help of flattery. If you tell a person how wonderful he is, that no one else can do it, that he is special, exceptional and we believe in him, and he is susceptible to such flattery, he will come out of his skin to justify our high expectations.
Or we can take it weakly, say: “I'm not sure that you will succeed, this is only for the strongest spiritually,” and the person begins to prove his superiority over this general mass.
A pity. Don't confuse it with compassion and empathy. Empathy is a quality that I believe every Christian should have. Because it is our ability to share and help another person's pain. Pity is always top-down. We feel strong and we find weak.
If we are manipulated with the help of pity, then they just appeal to our secret pride: "He is weak, and I am strong, I can help him, I am such a little god for someone." Manipulation of pity differs from really difficult life situations in that a person himself is not ready to do anything for himself. He needs to be done for him. Because he himself cannot do anything, or he has a reason, or there is no suitable state, or he does not understand, does not know, does not know how and simply cannot cope without you. If you helped him once, then that's it, you have already taken responsibility for his future life, because he will disappear without you.
Many people know this manipulative triangle. Pity manipulation is the message of the victim to the rescuer. Now, I have life circumstances or I have an enemy who is squeezing me out of the light, and only you can save me. Manipulation of pity is impossible in relation to a person who does not have vanity - these are related things.
Finally, the manipulation of hope. When a person is promised a reward that, in fact, the manipulator cannot provide him, and certain conditions are set. In a church context, we come across this quite often, and not only in everyday parish life, but also in the face of numerous petitioners who come and say: "You are Christians, you must help me, give me money, dress, put on shoes." If you offer them, for example: "Help us sweep the yard, chop wood." They will say: “No, no, what are you! You just have to help me. Why are you so selfish, why should I work for you? " And here you can say: "Dear comrade, you are trying to arouse my pity, but you yourself are not ready to do anything for yourself, so let's think together how you can get out of this sad state."
As for the manipulation of hope, there are different hopes in the Church: there is hope for salvation, there is hope for acceptance, for understanding, that all are brothers and sisters. No wonder they say that in the most difficult life circumstances prayer awakens. Because while some false hopes and false paths of achievement are being formed, this prevents a person from coming to real faith. Manipulation becomes an obstacle.
We are not vulnerable to all of these manipulations. Some, for example, are very resistant to pity, but powerless in the face of fear. Some people easily fall for guilt, but pride and vanity cannot penetrate it. Someone is very afraid of losing love, but at the same time they control their other fears very well, and nothing else will frighten him.
I think now in real life you will train yourself to recognize these manipulations. Let's see what you can do with them.
Receptions of manipulators and protection from them
Briefly about manipulative techniques. What exactly do we do when we are faced with manipulation? As we said, it is possible to manipulate information, emotions, or behavior. Perhaps the most common thing in our church context is to mix information and opinions. This manifests itself even in dogmatic questions, when dogmas are mixed with theologumens. And sometimes with some kind of fabrications, Tradition is mixed with traditions, often not at all Christian, but this whole cocktail is passed off as Orthodoxy.
When we have a mixture of information and opinions, there is only one way out: to focus on facts, that is, to learn to distinguish between facts and interpretations, what is actually said, and what is introduced by our interlocutor or someone else.
Further - the cover of authority. This has already been mentioned today - the covering up with the authority of God, the readiness to speak on His behalf. For example, in the preliminary discussion of our lecture, there was a conversation about who will be saved, who will not be saved. One lady told everyone that we would not all be saved. Everyone who comes here, too (you, too, "will not be saved", by the way, I warn you).
Her position: in general, nothing can ever be doubted. If you doubt something about the Church, that is, not about the Church itself, but about the fact that there are some difficult situations in the Church - if you start thinking about it, you will not be saved. People often say such things about someone's salvation: “It's God, God Himself, it is written in the Gospel that those who go to psychologists will never be saved. It is written about this in the Holy Scriptures. "
- Doesn't it bother people that there are Christian psychologists?
- There is no competition between psychology and counseling, these are completely different occupations.
- Nevertheless, there is a course in psychology at the theological academies.
- Yes. I believe that there should be even more psychology there. Understanding human psychology helps priests understand, first, their own inner world, their psychological obstacles. For example, their vulnerability to certain manipulations, their limitations, fears and somehow work them out so that later not to project their psychological problems onto their parishioners.
On the other hand, psychology helps to understand your parishioners, and not to measure them by yourself. To understand that they are different people, with different values, with a different life history, and an approach to them is possible not only in the style of “do as I do, or as it is written in this book”.
We act simply with authorities, especially since the Holy Fathers and Holy Scripture act as authorities. Without challenging the authority, we can deny the interlocutor the right to speak on behalf of this authority, because usually what is pulled out for the purpose of manipulation does not in any way reflect the source.
If John Chrysostom had known that from his legacy, many would have in their heads only the phrase: “Sanctify your hand with a blow,” he would probably have taken a vow of silence in his early youth.
Farther. A specific language is a professional trait. If you feel that the use of special terms, even if they are church terms, but not quite clear to you, serves to make you understand how incompetent you are, switch to the language you are accustomed to. In any situation when they try to impose on you a language that is not typical or not very clear to you, retell the same thing in other words.
Narrowing down or changing the context is something that is encountered very often. This includes pulling quotes out of context, and placing circumstances or spiritual advice given to completely different people in an inappropriate context for them. One of the difficulties that we face quite often is that the spiritual instructions that are used now in the modern Church are not differentiated according to the addressees. Something was said only for the monastics. And something was said in a certain situation.
Most of what was said about cutting off one's will and absolute obedience was about very specific situations. A person who has renounced everything worldly goes into the wilderness. He has an abba - this is not a random boss who was sent to him. This is not how the Patriarchate appointed a bishop, whom none of the priests elected, but everyone is obliged to remain in complete obedience. Or how the bishop, in turn, sent a new priest to the parish, and no one chose to trust this priest, but this is the only church in the village. The situation is different - with regard to the freedom of the one to whom and to what extent one can entrust his will.
Changing the context here is fraught with the fact that a person is manipulatively posed an unsolvable, in principle, task. Now, by the way, they say about fasting that the Typikon was written for monasteries, and how problematic it is for those living outside monasteries. I don't know, I somehow got used to it, it seems to me that it is normal to fast according to the Typikon, there is nothing like that.
- Tell me, please, is a lie manipulation?
- Lying is definitely manipulation. It's so obvious that I didn't even write it down.
- How to resist this?
- To resist? If you know that this is a lie, then of course you know the truth. If you suspect that this is a lie, then ask clarifying questions to confuse the person. When we deal with manipulation by distorting information, the best thing we can do is to focus on the facts, clarify, concretize, squeeze, as they say, not let us be confused. Here our assistants are logic and common sense.
- And temperament.
- Yes. Temperament, of course, is innate, but the ability to deal with it, compensating for its weaknesses and squeezing the maximum out of its strengths is acquired, so we need to work on it.
For example, if we know that we are easily irritated, there are different ways to control the irritation, up to breathing exercises. In any case, the main strategy is not to follow the manipulative path that our opponent is trying to take us away.
Is he trying to make us make excuses? For example: "Have you already stopped drinking cognac in the morning?" - a classic question, which can be answered "yes" or "no", but you will still find yourself in an uncomfortable position. Or: "Yes, you are a heretic!" - and make excuses. By the way, in such situations you can agree, or you can offer your opponent to substantiate his assumption. The main thing is not to get involved in this dispute.
- You can say: “You are right. But do you know to what extent you are right? "
- Yes, you can confuse him with an asymmetric answer, of course. If they try to ask you questions that are not asked in order to hear the answer, but in order to confuse you, slow down. Answer the first question: “What happened next, did I listen?”, “Can I write it down? Could you repeat? "
- And if there is no answer?
- No, and no trial. You can manipulate not only information, but also emotions. Once you've felt a strong pressure on your emotions, whether positive or negative, it's a sure sign that it's time to focus on the facts.
If a tear is squeezed out of you, if they are trying to provoke you to anger, if you are being flattered and you feel proud, say to yourself: “Stop! For some reason, this emotion appeared in me. What does this person want from me? " This is the main opposition to the very manipulation of emotions, which we have now analyzed in relation to the church context.
Any manipulative phrase addressed to emotions breaks down into a clarifying question: “Why are you so sure of this? Where is it specifically written that when I come to church in jeans, I will go to hell? Are you sure it's not cute? "
The holy fathers said: "test every spirit." Therefore, any pressure on emotions is a signal. Taking a step back, and just the facts. We are not obliged to provide our emotions to anyone in control, therefore, with all these manipulations, we ask for concretization.
The next technique that is encountered is emotional contamination. Emotions are known to be contagious. Basically, a good way to manipulate is to put yourself in such a state that it is contagious or portray it authentically. It can be a delight, it will be passed on to everyone - and all your words can be taken on faith. It may be anxiety: "Do you know that the INN is on the products in your refrigerator ..." There are no such manipulations that work for everyone. This is selective, here you need to understand what works.
Empaths, for example, are very easily infected with other people's emotions. On the one hand, this is a good opportunity to understand other people's emotions, on the other, there is a constant risk that you will be planted with some cockroaches. Because to rejoice in someone else's joy, to cry in someone else's tears is a normal natural state of a person endowed with empathy. And to be afraid of other people's fears ...
Incidentally, the escalation of conflicts also very often occurs due to the contamination of anger. Therefore, if you feel that there is some kind of emotional message that you are not ready to share, you again say: “Stop! What information is supplied to me along with this emotional message? ”- even if the emotion is very pleasant. That is, we separate emotions and information.
Finally, pressure on emotions is all sorts of non-verbal demonstrations, and sometimes also verbal. These are resentments, explicit, hidden aggression, devaluation of what you say, demonstrative disrespect for you. In fact, those things that are designed to cause your self-doubt, your guilt. You can resist this, naturally, by staying calm. It is much easier to stay calm if you understand what is happening to your interlocutor, why he is behaving this way.
In fact, this is an unhappy person who is forced in this way - by demonstrating negative emotions and luring negative emotions out of you in return - to achieve a more or less psychologically bearable existence for himself. Therefore, it is very important to remain calm, understand, sympathize with the aggressor. He probably had a difficult childhood when he was also manipulated a lot. Then he had no less difficult adolescence and youth and maturity. And he is unlikely to have a happy family life, because a person cannot manipulate in one place, and not manipulate in another.
- If I say this, won't it cause even more aggression?
- No, to say to myself, of course. It was about how to calm down and not break down. If we want it to explode before our eyes, we say it all out loud. But that would be manipulation. We just hit the patient and bring his anger to the extreme.
Finally, the impact on behavior. Behavioral control is a very powerful thing, especially when it happens unconsciously, at the level of “you are sitting in the wrong place,” “you are not standing there,” “you are not standing like that,” “you are looking in the wrong place,” “do that,” “do not do this. ".
It is dangerous when it is camouflaged. For example, we are told: “Wouldn't it be difficult for you to stay late after the service, otherwise the bishop arrives tomorrow, you need to clean up the entire church three times and start preparing your meal. Some gourmet dish, otherwise they won't be in time in the morning. " This may be a normal request, or it may be manipulation.
Any manipulation can be a request, the text of the words is the same. The only difference is whether you are left with a choice or not. When asked, you can refuse, someone else can do it, you can do it with someone else. If a person says: “There is no one else to ask, but we will be with you all the way until we do everything,” then this is less manipulation than saying: “Well, you understand what important things I have about tomorrow's event, therefore ... ”A very important border is freedom. You are left with freedom or not left with freedom.
Further - the activation of stereotypes. In religious communities, this is the most beloved, because this distinction is based on the principle of "you are ours" or "you are not ours." “A real Orthodox must ...”, “we are Russian, we are Orthodox” - these are also appeals to stereotypes. On the one hand, pride, and on the other, fear: if you do not behave like ours, or dare to say that not all Russians or not all Orthodox do this, then we will not recognize you as Russian and Orthodox. You will be a secret Jew and a Catholic.
When you are faced with the fact that you are attributed to a certain community in order to force you to act in accordance with formalized laws (and these laws may not be exactly what they really are, but their interpretation that is beneficial to your interlocutor), here we always take a step back, say: "Stop!" Are all Orthodox Christians, for example, obliged to attend all services in the church, even if they are daily? Adjust your work schedule to this, or are there other options?
- And “to whom the Church is not the Mother, to whom God is not the Father” is this manipulation?
- It is often used as a manipulation. This is an example of church folklore that was taken out of context, changed its meaning and began to be used manipulatively. Moreover, in defining what the “Church as Mother” is, again, a set of conditions is brought. For example, you should not notice any flaws, because you do not judge your mother. If your mother is sick, you will not ... Answer that if my mother is sick, I will treat her or call a doctor is useless.
“Yes, it means that you do not love your mother if you say that she is sick. We have the best mother.
- Yes. Therefore, in this case, we move away from generalizations. The main opposition is that it is not necessary to do this, this and this, and “read out the entire list” in order to earn the right to belong to the Orthodox.
Farther. Pressure by status. In the hierarchical structure, which is the Church, this is a natural thing, especially since there are certain traditions - the attitude towards the priesthood, the relationship between different levels of the church hierarchy. But even if communication is built from top to bottom and bottom to top, it is not only “you” - “you” is marked. This is marked, for example, that I can demand from you, but you cannot from me. I can get nasty at you, but you can’t tell me. There are many status markers that anchor bottom-up and top-down relationships.
You can get out of this only by separating the status from the meaning of the statements. Easy reference to transactional analysis. Summary: if the internal state of each person is designated that there is a child, there is an adult and there is a parent. Top-down communication is parent-child communication. Communication on an equal footing is communication at the level of an adult-adult, or a child-child, or two parents. Two parents usually discuss the imperfection of children, or in general, which all are bad and do not obey us. Communication between adults is communication at the level of logic, at the level of facts. Communication between two children is communication at the level of emotions.
The simplest, but not the most effective, if for some reason we need to communicate with this person regularly is to reduce contacts to the minimum possible. We know that we are being manipulated - we get out of contact, that is, we get away from capture. You have already understood that each manipulation involves some kind of clue. A contact is established, a weak point is found or felt - for someone it is fear, for someone it is pity, for someone it is pride. We connected to this weak point of yours and applied manipulation to it.
But until that moment has come, until you are hooked, or, if this is a manipulation of the presentation of information, before you are confused, you have control over the situation. If you feel that your clarity of consciousness has floated, they say something like nonsense, but there seems to be nothing to argue, or pressure on emotions - it seems you need to sympathize, we are Christians, we must, we are obliged, we are always to blame, but this is also on the level of feelings did not pass - at this moment it is necessary to get away from the capture.
You can get out of contact, go out for five minutes, go to the toilet: "I will go out, and you go on, go on." You can seize the initiative - for example, start asking questions, which we have already talked about. You can, if you are sitting, stand up, if you are standing, sit down - change your position in space. You can start to look probingly at the interlocutor.
Each person has their own favorite ways of manipulation. They have their own pace, they have their own rhythm, they have their own techniques. They do it, they fall for it. Naturally, each of us also has such. But if this rhythm, tempo, habitual techniques get lost? I just started to establish contact, once - an emotion. For example, they began to squeeze a tear out of you, and you left. Like a wall, it's useless. You are back - already again you must first squeeze out a tear. This confuses the manipulation.
Changing the pace is also a very powerful tool, because very often the manipulator does not give us the opportunity to concentrate: “Come on, come on! Faster, faster! If not now, then never, this is the last chance! Make up your mind urgently! " Naturally, in this situation it is necessary to slow down as much as possible and say: “I need to think, I cannot do this right away,” that is, take a step back and postpone the decision. Sometimes, on the contrary, you are exhausted by slowing down: “Well, I don’t know” - long pauses. You can try to speed up your communication.
We filter out informational obstacles that mask any manipulation, get to the bottom of the facts, facts, real problems, real desires, motives of your interlocutor and use unpredictability. The less predictable you are, the more difficult it is to manipulate you. The paradoxical nature of the reactions makes a person practically invulnerable. You need to turn off emotions - not in the sense of blocking them completely, but in the sense of learning how to separate them from the information supplied with them. Emotions are separate, facts are separate.
Next, you need to preserve the possibility of dialogue. Human consciousness in its natural state is reflexive, that is, dialogical. We weigh pros and cons, agreement and disagreement. In the process of manipulation, we are involved in a monologue, and this monologue is not ours. If you feel that on some issue you have one and only true truth in the last instance and there can be no alternative, then this is a good reason to analyze this truth - whether this confidence was the fruit of manipulation. Can you still look at the situation, at the person, at this or that idea from different angles.
It helps a lot to create an extended context or move from the context that is imposed on you into the context that is organic to you. And alternatives. If you are told that this is the only way of salvation, you say: "Maybe there is another one?" Or: "I read from the holy fathers that he was saved this way."
When it is said about obedience, there is also a substitution of the meaning of words. Obedience now often means doing something that you do not want to do, but must.
- For example, they ask me, they talk about the importance of mercy and demand to give all the money to charity immediately, and I expand the context, say that I have other responsibilities, I have a family, and then, and then. Therefore, mercy is also important, but ... Is this what we are talking about?
- Not really. Rather, here the narrowed context will be like this: they tell you about mercy and say that if you are a really merciful person, then you will definitely support this dog shelter, because it is impossible to remain indifferent. Then, for example, you say that you are already supporting sick children. Or the opposite situation: "Oh, dogs are dearer to you than people?"
“My way of showing mercy is the only correct one, and your ways of showing mercy are useless” - this will narrow the context. You suggest alternatives or expand the context. This can apply to anything - your family life, your parenting. It's just that there is an appeal to duty: "You must help me, you must help everyone." You can get out of this state of imposed debt and say: "I can help you, but I don't owe you anything."
Finally, when it comes to manipulating hope, you need to dissolve hope and manipulation. Yes, I have hope, and I want to keep this hope, but I do not understand how the prescribed action is connected with my hopes.
Manipulation or neurosis?
There are situations that look very similar to manipulation. This is manipulative behavior, but the person is not completely in control of it. This is a situation of deep neurosis. Very often the neurotic has a so-called system of neurotic demands. I think, after reading these requirements, you will remember such people, and sometimes there are whole parishes like this:
- no one should criticize us,
- no one should doubt us,
- we are always right
- all of us must obey,
- we can manipulate, but we cannot do that,
- We must solve problems for us, and we can be capricious,
- we can conflict, and you must humble yourself, you must endure,
- we must be understood, but we will not understand anyone.
- so that everyone, having caressed us from all sides, would leave us alone and not interfere.
- This is definitely not a program of our government?
- No, these are symptoms of deep neurosis. It happens to everyone. Therefore, if you see all this in a complex, you should understand that the response to the resistance to manipulation, especially to the harsh, ironic, to an attempt to build a wall, will be conflicting and completely inconsistent with the strength of your influence. This is a reason to be wary, weigh every word and understand where a given person's vulnerabilities are, so as not to approach these vulnerabilities as much as possible.
If this is a characteristic of a certain community, then we can catch the peculiarities of the general church subculture in which we find ourselves. Because there are things in the Church that, to a greater or lesser extent, are conducive to manipulation. What is listed here does not necessarily exist everywhere and always, but the stronger these parameters manifest themselves, the more manipulative the environment itself becomes, that is, a person finds himself in a situation in which it is difficult for him to resist manipulations:
- hierarchy, suppression by authority;
- insecurity and guilt;
- selectivity in the application of norms and rules (“I want to execute, I want to have mercy”);
- the gap between the declared and the real;
- a taboo on the discussion of certain topics (the impossibility, often, even realizing the manipulation, to answer it by specifying questions, clarifying).
For example, "they are mocking you, but you must humble yourself, you are a Christian, you must endure." "Why are you not so peaceful, why are you so conflicted?" And if at the same time you object to your opponent, he will say: "Oh, you are also arguing, so this is pride!" "We do not offend you, we humble you, we care about your spiritual salvation." If the questions of the legality of such actions are taboo, that is, they cannot be discussed, you can say: “Thank you for your humility and for the science. Can I try to work on myself somehow? "
From substitution of feelings - to substitution of meanings
At the heart of many of the manipulations that we discussed today is the imposition of certain feelings and a certain state. This, of course, is a separate big topic. I mean this. Some feelings you have to experience, and some feelings are sinful, they should not be experienced. Therefore, the awareness of these feelings in a person is blocked.
For example, a person is sure that he is never annoyed, or that he is never offended, never lies, but at the same time he sympathizes with everyone and sympathizes. Awareness of their own feelings is distorted, respectively, contact with other people brings the situation out. The more manipulative spiritual guidance is in one place or another, the more difficult it is to get out of this system.
When we talk about sects, about young elders, about those who lead not to Christ, but to themselves, we very often deal with just a closed, opaque system, in which a substitution initially took place at the level of feelings, then at the level of meanings, and then - at the level of external manifestations, requirements for members of this subculture, and so on.
What to do when you are dealing with manipulations not by an individual person, but by the environment, that is, you feel the restriction of freedom? For example, you came to a new parish, you try to fit in, you try to improve relations, you understand that you can't talk about it - you don't stand here, you look differently, dress differently, and in general it is sinful. This is a reason to ponder, is this the spiritual guidance you need?
Once in a rigid manipulative system, it is sometimes easier not to try to prolong it, but simply to get out of it, since the possibilities of spiritual guidance are not limited to one place.
Having touched on the big topic of manipulation, we did not have much time. The issue of psychological problems of counseling in general should be considered separately, because many questions are associated with this, which were asked in advance. I would like to point out one thing. If in spiritual nourishment, instead of feeling how you become stronger, how you become closer to God, how you receive more love, you feel more and more unfreedom - this is a sure sign that at least you need to get out of this vicious circle and consult with some other, authoritative priest for you.
- And if the situation is really difficult? There are non-standard situations in the Church.
- A hypothetical case that so often happens is a civil marriage. It is clear that b O Most of the clergy do not approve of him and do not even give communion to those who have unregistered relationships. Here the questioner himself should be ready to hear the answer. I do not mean the answer "You must part because you have already sinned." The question should be: “How can we live in this situation? How can we go to salvation? " To honestly analyze what prevents the relationship from being formalized somehow, why do they remain in this status? And is it true that both spouses want to live together, or is this status convenient for one of them? For example, it is convenient for a young man to live in a civil marriage, and a girl would not mind formalizing a relationship, getting married, but she is afraid to insist. This is a reason for a deeper analysis of the situation.
In general, in such situations it is worth going to a person whom you trust, or if you do not have such a familiar priest, ask your friends, acquaintances whom you trust, without even indicating your topic sometimes: “Is there a priest with whom you can talk frankly? " Necessarily surrounded by at least one such will be found.
Video: Vitaly Korneev
Are Orthodoxy and Psychology Compatible? Why is depression considered the most common mental disorder among Orthodox believers? What can a parishioner oppose to manipulation in the church? What is healthy churchliness? These and other questions are answered by Natalia Skuratovskaya - psychologist, psychotherapist, teacher of the course "Practical pastoral psychology" of the Khabarovsk Theological Seminary, general director of the training company "Viv Active".
Natalia, how are Orthodoxy and psychology combined?
The subject of psychology is the psyche, not the soul and not the spirit. Of course, we can partly say that the concept of the psyche comes into contact with what is called the soul, but only in part. There are different approaches and theories in psychological science: some of them are consonant with the Christian worldview to a greater extent, others to a lesser extent.
A believer may well use the developments of practical psychology to solve certain internal or interpersonal problems. There is also such a direction as Christian psychology, which tries to combine Orthodox anthropology and modern psychological knowledge.
Psychology is often accused of atheism and almost in connection with dark forces.
There is such a thing. When seven years ago I began to study psychology in the church environment, one bishop invited me to conduct training for priests, and I had to refute such prejudices - that psychology is not from the evil one, that it is not a satanic science, but just a way to figure out how it functions the human psyche, how relationships are built between people in a family, team, society, what patterns affect this, what problems there are and how they can be solved.
Still very often you can hear the objection, especially from the clergy, that psychology is trying to replace counseling. This is incorrect because counseling primarily concerns the relationship between man and God, that is, the sphere of the spirit. Psychology, on the other hand, has nothing to do with this sphere in principle - that which connects us with the Creator can only develop in a religious, ecclesiastical context.
It is often necessary to observe how a believer passes off some of his emotional experiences as a "revelation from above."
This is the most serious question in Orthodox asceticism. Associated with this is such a concept as delusion - self-deception, when a person believes that he has already come to holiness or has acquired some of its signs. Asceticism suggests a way of discernment, which is called sobriety. This is very consonant with such a psychological concept as criticality.
Asceticism teaches that you need to test the nature of your spiritual experiences. Psychology also recommends not to unconditionally accept certain attitudes, especially if something seems to us to be a “revelation from above,” and to check whether this is connected with some of our emotions, moods, or mental disorders.
Based on your practice, what psychological problems are most common among Orthodox believers?
People are different, and everyone has different problems. Often they are brought to church by unjustified expectations, including psychological problems - grief, loss, dissatisfaction with relationships, a sense of loneliness, alienation from the world and neurotic experiences.
In a religious context, we believe that a person is called to church by divine grace, but it is usually felt at the level of some vague sensations - they say, you have to go there to find protection, support and salvation, which, as a rule, is understood not in the highest sense, but as getting rid of inner disorder. There is another option: a person reads spiritual books and falls into a state of delusion, thinking that he has learned the truth and will now save the rest.
There are probably no psychologically stable people devoid of any kind of emotional problems. Life and environment hurt each of us in one way or another. Getting into the church environment, a person can be injured again. The qualities that prompted him to seek an outlet and consolation in the church often lead him into the same system of relationships from which he sought salvation.
For example, a person grew up in a situation of domestic violence under the yoke of a cruel authoritarian father who drank, beat, morally destroyed, and so on. He brings this trauma to the church and often finds himself a confessor, who is in many ways similar in psychotype to that very father. But now it seems to be decorous: no one drinks, no beats, but at the same time he teaches to consider himself the worst of all, not to live with his own mind, because human will is damaged, and one cannot take a step without a blessing.
And thus a person finds himself in his usual psychological conditions, but from now on his problems became supposedly pious - the inability to take responsibility and the standard position of the victim turned into "humility, obedience and cutting off the will." In fact, these neurotic manifestations have nothing to do with what the holy fathers mean by humility, obedience and cutting off the will.
By the way, about cutting off the will. What does it mean?
To begin with, this very concept appeared in monasticism. Most of the instructions concerning asceticism and the ordering of spiritual life were written mainly by religious people. Most of the writings that define our church life today were written at the dawn of Christianity. And there was a clear separation of two paths - monastic and family. None of them is better or worse, they are equal on the basis of the fact that there are people of different spiritual dispensations.
Cutting off the will primarily refers to the religious. Anthony the Great, when talking about this, noted: as for a monk it is detrimental to live by his own will, so for a family man it is disastrous to abandon it. Therefore, if we are talking about the laity, then cutting off the will in any case is more an exception than a rule.
In our time, spiritual fathers who, in a lofty sense, lead their children to salvation are a great rarity. Here you need to separate the roles: a confessor, who regularly receives confessions from a person, knows his inner world well and can guide his spiritual life, as more mature in the spiritual plane, and the one who takes full responsibility for the life of another person.
In addition, in order to transfer your will to someone, you need to have it. The person should have the ability to make volitional decisions, and not take an infantile position. A wise clergyman promotes the spiritual growth of the believer, and not his enslavement in the role of an eternal child.
And connected with this are the most common problems of “older church age”. Living in illusions, the neophyte sooner or later begins to feel an inner conflict. This is why they say that the most common disorder among the Orthodox is depression.
The content of prayers and church services is aimed at making us realize our sinfulness, but at the same time we forget that the holy fathers wrote this in the firm conviction that God is with them, that he loves them, and saw our imperfection in the light of this love. It was not self-mocking picking at their sores, but an inspired desire to purify and acquire divine qualities.
And if we only say: they say, I am the most sinful and worst of all, but at the same time we do not feel that God loves us like that, accepts us for who we really are, and leads us to salvation, then our spiritual life turns walking in the circle of their psychological problems.
Psychology can help clear up these mental problems that prevent you from leading a true spiritual life, while not interfering with the realm of the spirit, but helping to remove obstacles.
There is an opinion that the external traditionalism of the church and strictly vertical relations between clergy and laity are becoming less and less justified in modern conditions, more equal than in previous centuries.
The metaphor of the relationship between father and children permeates the entire church life, beginning with the fact that God is the Father. But not fierce, but loving. At the same time, the priest stands on behalf of the community before God in the status of a spiritual father. But even in an everyday sense, the task of a father is to raise his children so that they become adults and strong. The father who tries to keep his child in diapers all his life is abnormal.
I can only talk about the Russian Orthodox Church, which I know well from the inside, and about some other local churches, where certain things are arranged differently. In the Ukrainian Church, as far as I know, it is much the same as in the Russian one.
In modern church pedagogy, little is designed for the spiritual maturation of parishioners; often they artificially stay in the "arena". A person falls into a regulated system, and at first it calms him down. He begins to understand all the rules, often without delving into their inner meaning, becomes an "expert", but nothing prompts him to grow up spiritually.
If a priest has such a personal gift, it contributes to the growth of a person in the church, and not to remain an “eternal baby,” however, in the current generally accepted church practice, there are practically no such tools.
Then the parishioner begins to feel dissatisfaction: they say, I have been going to church for 10, 20, 30 years, but I do not feel God, there is no feeling that I have approached holiness, I commit the same sins; yes, some have stopped, but new ones have been added. A person is disappointed, even doubting the existence of God, and often this leads to a devaluation of faith.
If a priest is sensitive to his spiritual children and contributes to their maturation, he understands that this is a normal crisis. An analogy can be drawn here with adolescence. On the one hand, it seems to a teenager that he is already an adult, on the other hand, he still lacks understanding in something, in some ways there is not enough independence, he still needs parental support to feel safe.
If such a parishioner does not begin to reproach that he is “non-church”, “not ours,” if the community does not reject him, then, having survived the crisis, he comes to a more mature and conscious faith. He begins to understand that “not a person for Saturday, but Saturday for a person,” that reading the morning and evening rules, canons before the sacrament, observance of fasts are not the main content of spiritual life, but only guidelines on the path.
In our church, relations are very hierarchical, the medieval Byzantine model of relations is being reproduced, which practically did not develop in our country. There is a medieval RPG element to this. Then the hierarchy was natural, the outside society corresponded to the church society. Now we do have a gap between the systems of relations within the church and outside it.
Of course, the church is always “out of this world”, and she should not chase after him, but the human personality has also changed over the past 2000 years.
Starting with the fact that the very concept of personality is from the strength of 250 years old. What was meant by it in the Middle Ages corresponds to the current concept of the individual. In the modern sense, an individual and a personality are “two big differences”.
Where the Orthodox Church does not make up the majority of believers, it has transformed faster. There is no such distance between clergy and laity, as we have, internal church relations are often more democratic and more open. Over the past twenty years, a request for a change in the internal church system of relations has begun to form in our country. In my opinion, our church will soon come to this.
If a person is faced with manipulation in the church, what can he oppose?
First of all, it should be borne in mind that the manipulator is not always aware that he is manipulating. Often he reproduces patterns of behavior that are familiar to him - he was manipulated, and he does not know how to do otherwise. The manipulator perceives this as the norm of the relationship. Noticing this, a person sometimes begins to be indignant. This is not worth doing. The priest and the so-called authoritative parishioners are not saints. They are just people capable of, among other things, deliberate or unconscious manipulation.
It is necessary to analyze the situation with a clear head, with a cold mind: what is happening with us, whether the manipulator is aware that he is trying to influence others. Deliberate manipulation is usually aimed at one or another specific benefit - for example, material or status. And unconscious - as a rule, to gain more power over a person and to satisfy vanity.
Next, we isolate for what purpose they are trying to manipulate us, how this correlates with our own interests and what we can oppose to this. Usually it is enough to reveal this manipulation, to speak it out.
For example: “It seems to me that you are trying to get me to mindlessly agree with you, but the church teaches us to stand in the freedom given by Christ, that free will is a gift of God, and if I have other judgments on this issue, I would like so that we do not reject them by default, but reasonably discuss them. "
If the manipulation is carried out by pressure on emotions - fear is whipped up or "pressure is pressed on pity", you need to separate words and facts from the emotional component, ask yourself what emotion they want to evoke in me now and why.
In case of emotional pressure, it is worth taking a step aside and understanding what the conversation is really about - to return to the literal and objective meaning of the message that they are trying to convey to you under the sauce of these emotions. And then talk about this "dry residue".
Offer to talk calmly, making it clear that you will not be injected with panic. For example: "We are ready to help, but we do not like extortion." This is how we build boundaries.
Let's return to the neurotic manifestations of believers. Some church psychologists use such a concept as "Orthodox neurosis." What is its nature?
Neurosis is a collective concept. There are a great many of them, including among the Orthodox. But the most important thing that neuroticizes is internal conflict. And often it occurs between the ideal and the real, rejected "I", which is not given the opportunity to manifest itself in the outside world.
This setting works: in order to be loved, you need to be approved. And a person begins to build his false “I”: instead of perfecting his true essence in church life, he polishes his neurosis in the Orthodox system of coordinates.
This is not so much deliberate hypocrisy, but rather an unconscious inner conflict, which is greatly facilitated by the peculiarities of our church life. There is a system of prescriptions and ready-made models for the formation of a false "I": they say, if you will be such and such, then you will become Orthodox and we will accept you.
A person accepts this and follows the path of self-deception, which usually presupposes a distorted understanding of God - a formidable judge who punishes, fixes all our sins and sends them to hell for the smallest of them, and in general will send there everyone who is not like us. Such a psychology is inherent in sects and, unfortunately, is often found in the Orthodox environment, giving rise to near-sectarian formations.
The normal approach is about mindfulness and acceptance. As in psychotherapy, where the basic condition is unconditional acceptance. We accept a person as he is, with all his features and shortcomings; we do not evaluate or judge, but understand his qualities, which does not mean indulging his vices. By default, we treat him with sympathy, ideally with love, we give emotional support and, possibly, feedback about his weaknesses and weaknesses, but at the same time we convince him that he can overcome them. Orthodox asceticism teaches the same thing.
Church teaching has a very good foundation for a healthy churchness, we just often misinterpret and apply it. We say that the church is a hospital where a person comes for treatment, but in reality he is often required to pretend to be healthy, so as not to upset the head physician, under the threat of eternal death.
Sound churchliness assumes that relationships are built not only around discipline, but also around love. And if you do not love yourself, then you cannot give others any love. Without accepting yourself for who you are, you cannot unconditionally accept another.
Natalia Skuratovskaya is engaged in an unusual business: he conducts psychological counseling for Orthodox people, including priests. In addition, she is the author of unique psychological trainings for future pastors. Now these trainings are being successfully carried out at the Khabarovsk Seminary. She recently delivered a public lecture on "Psychological Manipulation in the Church," which caused a great resonance in the Orthodox community. We talked with Natalia about the psychological problems that arise in the parish between priests and parishioners. Who is a "metaphysical father", what does it mean to "laminate sins" and how a priest can protect himself from burnout and from prohibition at the same time - read in an interview.
Where neuroses hide
- The topic "Psychological manipulations in the Church" arose for you when people who encountered something similar within the walls of the church began to turn to you. Have you felt manipulative techniques on yourself?
- I had such an experience, but I was originally an unsuitable object for manipulation. This is how my childhood developed: I had non-authoritarian parents, and already from my two or three years they were ready not to demand, but to justify their demand, so we immediately developed a fairly adult relationship. This attitude was then preserved in communication with any authoritative people. It is easy for me to disagree, to ask a clarifying question, I am not afraid to be a black sheep, a "marginal", I am not worried that they will not perceive me that way. I brought out from childhood the feeling of my own acceptance, so my self-esteem is not lowered when they tell me that I am “wrong, not Orthodox enough”. I try to separate constructive criticism, which helps to work on oneself, from manipulative techniques or devaluation.
I have been in the Church since I was 18, Orthodox in the first generation, it was my own impulse. In the neophyte period, I was faced with different things. The end of the 1980s, the church life was just being revived, there were many uncertainties and distortions. Already then I reacted to manipulations: I either retreated, or, according to youthful maximalism, resisted. She constantly stood up for her friends, who were victims of manipulation, and, as it seemed to me, could not stand up for themselves.
Now I understand that I did not always tactfully interfere, for example, in their relationship with the abbot. The abbot does not pay extra to the kliros, he says that you came to serve for the glory of God, how are you not ashamed at all to be so mercantile, they say, do not serve God, but mammon, and people, in fact, live on it. And I rushed to shame the abbot and get money out of him for this choir — real case. Then I realized how to solve such situations softer, more tactfully and without conflicts. And in my youth, it turned out that the people I was trying to protect fell into the category of uncomfortable along with me. That taught me a lot too.
- How do modern people, parishioners perceive the priest? Whom, first of all, do they see - the executor of the demand, the psychotherapist, the celestial?
- All of these options are present in real life, but, fortunately, priests, in addition to all of the above, are also pastors, counselors.
Indeed, someone sees in the priest a priest-executor. These are people who in religion are looking for a means to achieve their own pragmatic goals. I'll light a candle to get well, so that my son can go to college. That is, I will give something to God so that God, in turn, will take care of my daily needs and worldly affairs.
- But here, too, the attitude can be different. As a specialist in the service sector - if a priest refuses to consecrate something or baptize on demand, a stream of negativity immediately falls on him. Or there is an attitude from the bottom up, as to some higher being. Recently I came across the phrase “strong priest” somewhere on Facebook.
- Yes, when a priest is perceived as a carrier of some superpowers — this is another bias, and it is not useful for the priests themselves, nor for those who treat them in this way. It is not useful, first of all, because a system of inflated expectations associated with the presence of a holy dignity is being formed. As if a priest should know the answers to all questions, should be almost a miracle worker, selflessly serve 24 hours a day, at any time you can turn to him and demand attention. He is a holy man, he must always respond.
This is such a temptation that it is very difficult for pastors, especially young ones, to overcome. I want to match. At the exit, we have either charm and youthfulness, or breakdown, emotional and spiritual emptiness. — precisely because of the feeling of futility of attempts to justify these overestimated expectations, because of the feeling of one's own duality, the discrepancy between the external image and internal self-awareness.
For parishioners looking for a celestial in the priest, the one who will decide everything for them, this is also very unhelpful. A state of spiritual infantilism and irresponsibility is consolidated in them - a metaphysical father is seen in the priest, on whom you can blame all your problems and remain a child in the spiritual plane until the end of your days.
It often happens that such a destructive relationship develops, but both parties are happy with this. Infantile parishioners find a priest whose pride is flattered by such an attitude, and he begins to believe that he is "not like other people", special, that any thought that came into his head was put in by the Lord.
If such a priest is asked about things that he has no idea about, he says any gag, but believes that it is the will of God through him that is manifested in this way.
By and large, this is lovely. In such a relationship, both parties receive their own, including psychological, benefits. But this has a rather negative relation to spiritual life. Such parishioners are in the illusion of the salvation of the chosen path, sometimes neuroses, the fear of the unpredictability of life are hiding in these relationships. Often it is such parishes that surround themselves with a wall of hostility to everything external, worldly, looking for signs of the end of the world, eschatological neurosis — everything is bad, only we have salvation, enemies are all around, only with our priest or in our monastery salvation.
How can Christians be "the salt of the world" with such an attitude to this very world, it is completely incomprehensible.
"It can't be otherwise with us"
- According to my feelings, many Orthodox Christians like manipulative priests. Why do people want to be manipulated?
- Here it is worth starting with what many people come to the Church for and what they are looking for in it. When they are looking for protection from their fears, confirmation that there is some only correct way, they find it with priests of a certain warehouse. Often people bring their own experience of codependent relationships to the Church, in which they are the weak side, and there is someone strong, authoritarian, psychologically aggressive, who makes them ...
-… parents, husband or boss?
- Yes, this all happens because people who are accustomed to such relationships easily fit into the same relationships, in a certain sense they are comfortable in them, because they do not need to change anything in themselves.
- Such people usually really do not like it when the priest says: "Think for yourself."
- Yes, for them this is evidence that this is some kind of wrong, “weak” priest, he does not want to “adopt” everyone - in the sense of recognizing them as eternal babies who need to be manipulated, who do not understand otherwise.
The second point: people with a penchant for codependent relationships habitually justify these relationships - "With us it is impossible to do otherwise." They already have a distorted image of themselves. In such priests, who look at them from top to bottom, they see reinforcement of this distorted image, their picture of the world is confirmed, and this reassures: “I knew that I was no good for anything and I would not live with my mind, well, father tells me this , and we must obey him in everything. "
This is a mentality that is also a consequence of historical reasons. Mother Maria Skobtsova wrote about this back in the 1930s: that when the Church in Russia ceases to be persecuted and the authorities support it, the same people will come to the surface who, from the Pravda newspaper, will recognize the party line - whom they hate, whom condemn and whom to approve. That is, people with non-reflective, non-critical thinking, who believe that there is only one answer to every question, and are not able to look at the problem in all its diversity.
People with such uncritical thinking, having come to the Church, will first learn - look for a mentor who, in the same categories, will give them this “the only correct answer”, and then, when they understand that they have already mastered the basic concept, in the same spirit of “infallibility ”Will teach in the name of the Church, anathematizing all who disagree with them. That this will become the dominant type of churchliness — this was quite logically predicted based on the social and psychological facts of the early twentieth century.
- Believers really identify the opinion of any priest with the opinion of the Church ...
- Here the main substitution is that the authority of the Church in the highest sense of the word extends to its individual representatives, and disagreement with individual representatives of the Church is presented as a rejection of the Church as such. At the same time, we forget that in the history of Orthodoxy there were different positions and disputes within the Church. Remember at least the Ecumenical Councils — in what discussions the truths were born, and that in the Orthodox Church there is no dogma about someone's infallibility. We condemn Catholics for the dogma of the Pope's infallibility, while in our country many priests (not to mention bishops) claim the same infallibility of their judgments, becoming “mini-popes” in the parishes, deaneries or dioceses entrusted to them, and any disagreement with their private opinion is perceived as an attack on the Church.
Loudest of all the intolerant minority
- On the other hand, a priest who says something different from the opinion of the majority is perceived as “wrong”.
- They see infallibility not in anyone, but only in the one who confirms their own picture of the world and the Church.
As for the majority - here, too, everything is ambiguous. Especially in recent years, when various trends have clearly emerged within the ROC. Once, in the company of priests, teachers of theology, we counted 8 different "religions" inside the ROC, which almost did not intersect with each other. — from extreme fundamentalists to supporters of the Parisian school of theology. From within each faction it is seen that "our Orthodoxy is the most correct, and those who disagree with us are not entirely Orthodox."
One's own opinion seems to be the opinion of the majority. Although we usually don't know the majority opinion — the loudest is the voice of an intolerant minority. The same extreme fundamentalists — they are not the majority, but they loudly state their position. And the hierarchy does not challenge them for various reasons, so someone begins to perceive this as the position of the entire Church. For example, one of the fundamentalists opposes certain cultural phenomena, while outsiders begin to think that the Church is climbing everywhere: in theaters, schools, etc. with their opinions and prohibitions.
- But non-church people usually see this opinion in the church press: they print such priests, call them on TV channels, and therefore they are perceived as the church's mouthpiece. And the parishioners, as people who join the opinion of the majority, begin to believe that if you criticize all this, then you are some kind of unchurched ... How unhealthy is this situation, or maybe it is natural? And what can this lead to?
- The situation is understandable, although, of course, abnormal. We observed this in Soviet times in relation to various phenomena: everything leads to the emasculation of meanings.
People in the Church do not gather to clarify relations on social issues, but it is precisely through these discussions that the very concept of Christian, church life is being replaced. The focus of attention shifts from salvation, deification to attempts to impose some external moral norms on the surrounding world. Although, if we return to the Gospel, Holy Tradition, this has never been the task of the Church.
- Today's seminarians, future pastors - what images are they guided by now? Do they understand what the parishioners want from them, what do they themselves want?
- According to my observations, they do, but not always. They come guided by a variety of considerations: from the desire to serve God and people to the perception of seminary as a social elevator: I live in the village, there is no money, there are no prospects, and here five years on everything free, and in general the main thing in the Church — settle down, and then somehow, you can live and earn ...
The seminary largely sets the atmosphere in which future shepherds are formed. Seminaries are very different: both in terms of attitudes and methods of education. There are, in my opinion, rather destructive spiritual schools, in which they cultivate a relationship of rigid codependency, where the main goal is — embedding into the system of hierarchical relations.
Priests don't understand the basics of crisis psychology
- I communicate with a large number of priests, and it is easy to determine by communication: whether a person studied at a seminary or first graduated from a secular educational institution, and seminary, possibly in absentia. The style of public speech of young priests who graduated only from seminary is full of Church Slavicism, clichéd phrases, they absolutely do not know how to “switch registers” and speak like real people. And a person after a secular university easily switches these registers.
- A certain manner of speech and behavior is learned — this reveals one of the problems of modern spiritual education, and in general, intra-church communication. Most priests do not know the art of dialogue at all, they are monologic: he broadcasts - they listen to him. Any question (not to mention disagreement) causes an almost panic reaction, which is often expressed in attempts to "silence" the dissenting person.
- This is often seen among seminary teachers ...
- Yes, this is where the inability to conduct a dialogue, manipulative techniques begins — using formal status as an opportunity to silence your opponent. This is then carried over to the priestly ministry.
When I worked with the guys at the Khabarovsk Seminary, we were engaged in the development of communication skills, the ability to organize discussions, listen to the interlocutor, and speak the language of our audience. And then the seminary carried out a project (which, I hope, will continue) "Pastoral Practice": seminarians performed real church tasks, interacting not only with parishioners, but also with various non-church audiences: schoolchildren, students, inmates of boarding schools for sick children, soldiers urgent service. They organized a "landing" from senior seminarians to rural parishes to help the local rectors: catechesis, conversations with parishioners, organizing events for the schoolchildren of the village. The seminarians and I practiced communication skills in the language of the audience in order to understand the motives, interests of people, and adequately respond to objections.
We had such classes: I divided the group into “priests” and “anti-clericals”. The latter made lists of all typical claims against the Church, starting with the notorious "priests in Mercedes", and those who were in the role of "priests" had to reasonably answer these claims — not formal excuses, but so that it is consistent with their beliefs, without guile. Then the groups changed so that everyone had the opportunity to learn how to adequately respond to "controversial issues." Fortunately, in the training format, they had the opportunity to work with their own beliefs too. When an answer is given that is formally approved, but the priest himself does not believe in it, this answer does not convince anyone, it is perceived as hypocrisy. And when you manage to pull out your own doubts, articulate, comprehend, the answers are given at a different level, and there is no fear of facing questions.
Claiming against the Church is an easy task. A more difficult level of work with senior students is a claim to God: why does He allow the suffering of the innocent, what to say to parents of disabled children or parents who have lost their children.
In the life of a particular priest, this comes up constantly: many are brought into the Church by sorrow. At the same time, the priests do not understand the basics of crisis psychology: what is grief, how it is experienced, what are the stages, how to work with it in terms of counseling - what a person can be told, what cannot in any case, what will destroy him.
(At the moment I am writing an article on this topic: “The Priest and Grief.”) I believe that every priest should know this, but so far practically no seminary teaches this.
We, unfortunately, in the Church have deep-rooted opinions about “how for what sins God punishes,” although I categorically disagree with this, and the holy fathers warn against this. People replace the judgment of God with their own judgment.
- Thus, traumatizing people who are traumatized without it ...
- Yes, and sometimes leading to such despair that it repels from God forever. I came across such cases precisely as a psychologist. People tried to get consolation in the Church after the death of children or during a difficult pregnancy, threats of miscarriage. Or an Orthodox woman, but not very churchly, comes to confession, and they say to her: “Oh, you have an unmarried marriage — your baby will die or the patient will be born! Cursed is your child from God for your sins, for your life! " And this position, which was dominant in the 90s, still exists.
How spiritual are puffy cheeks?
- What is a “good” priest for the parishioners? How important is his appearance, demeanor? How does this affect the attitude towards him? According to my feelings, the simpler the priest behaves, the less reverence for him, the weaker the perception of him as a priest. And the puffer the cheeks, the longer the beard, the more shocking, manipulative behavior, the more respect for him, the more spiritual he is seen by people.
And the idea of what spirituality is is different for different people. Usually spirituality — it is a confirmation of their own ideas about what is good and what is bad. That is, the more the priest confirms this, the more spiritual he is. At the same time, ideas can be aggressive, far from Christian.
As for puffy cheeks, demeanor, emphasizing your status — yes, there is a significant category of parishioners for whom this is evidence that the priest — a special person with special gifts. And if he behaves simply, it seems to them that he is losing the dignity of the holy dignity, that he does not know how to earn authority.
At the same time, for thinking people (not those who are looking for ready-made answers to all questions), the opposite is true: they will not communicate with the “inflated and important”, but will look for someone who can speak normal human language. This is how the stratification of "church subcultures" occurs.
People disperse to different parishes, and if there are different priests in the same parish, an internal conflict may arise, including between the priests: a certain competition arises. It is no secret that sometimes priests are jealous of whom how many parishioners are worth for confession, how many spiritual children they have. This can serve as a pretext for hidden wars, often manipulative, and sometimes, unfortunately, for intrigue.
But in the long term, the bet on a good-looking appearance, on "puffed up cheeks" does not justify itself. In addition to the external, there is also the internal, and if a priest leads the flock to internal devastation or anger, he will not be able to bring anything but harm by his service.
Few have seriously dealt with this issue from the standpoint of patristic asceticism. But there is, for example, Fr. Gabriel (Bunge), well-known to many, who was engaged in patristics while still a Catholic monk, and then converted to Orthodoxy and joined the Russian Orthodox Church. At one time, exploring the issue of spiritual devastation of clergy (I was interested in this in connection with the syndrome of pastoral burnout), he wrote that an attempt to compensate for inner devastation with external activity is completely destructive for both the pastor and the flock. As a result, the priest shuts himself off from his spiritual problems, and leads his parishioners from the spiritual to the outside.
External activity can be expressed in very good forms - social service, for example, but it can also be the notorious "Orthodox activism" with the pogrom of impious exhibitions, etc. Anything will do to distract oneself from the spiritual life. And at the same time feel like people engaged in church work. But there is a devastating self-justification behind it all.
Laminate your sins
- The main meeting place for a priest and a parishioner is confession. Are there any discrepancies in the understanding of the sacrament of confession by priests on the one hand and parishioners on the other? Could there be manipulation?
- Of course. And there are problems, and there can be manipulations. Moreover, the problems are partly systemic. The very concept of repentance in the mass church perception is sometimes replaced by books like "A Thousand and One Sins." And preparation for confession is often formal, and at times manipulative, with the requirement to recognize as a sin what you do not consider to be a sin inwardly. The concept of repentance is replaced by some kind of formal ritual action, which does not induce a person to internal changes.
Second substitution: confession for some parishioners — it is a substitute for psychotherapy. Under the guise of confession, they try to tell the priest about the hardships of their life, instead of confession they get self-justification: how bad they are, how I suffer from them. "Sinful with anger, but they will bring anyone!" Or they ask for advice on what to do with this, but the priest does not have the courage to say that he does not know, and he gives a standard pious answer, which has nothing to do with the inner state of the questioner.
In my opinion, a good, "strong" priest is one who is not afraid to admit that he does not know everything. Who can say to his flock: I don't know what to answer you - let's pray together. Who does not try to replace God for his flock.
"Father, what should I do?" - this, on the one hand, is the manipulation of the priest, shifting responsibility onto him. And most priests do not have the level of holiness and foresight to reliably say whether or not to marry this person, to look for or not to look for another job (unless we are talking about something clearly criminal). But if such a question is asked, the priest often considers himself obliged to answer it. And these answers destroy destinies. It turns out, on the one hand, the priest manipulated trust, his hidden fear of losing his authority, as well as pride that I was so special, God gave me the right to judge everything.
Confession is not in order to enumerate sins, but in order to change, to abandon your passions. This is an admission of their mistakes and a willingness not to return to them. But in real life, it happens that people come from year to year with the same list, confession becomes a formal admission to Communion, and Communion becomes a formal procedure confirming your membership in the Church. As one familiar priest joked bitterly: well, they come with the same list - let them laminate, and if they get rid of anything, I myself will give them a marker to cross out ...
This is one of those things that has not been fully revived in our church revival.
- And where was it supposed to be reborn, from what time?
- This is also a difficult question: many aspects of church life have actually been revived according to the models of the end of the Synodal period. — not the best, frankly, the time of the existence of our Church. I think, first of all, it is necessary to revive meanings, and to look for forms in an honest open dialogue.
- How is the feeling of repentance different from the feeling of guilt? It seems to me that people often confuse these two feelings: if a person does not feel in himself the notorious “I am the worst of all, I am the worst of all,” it seems to him that he does not have any repentance.
- It can be distinguished by the vector of application of efforts: a normal penitential feeling should prompt a person to change - not to self-destruction, not to self-flagellation, but to get rid of passions in oneself, correct mistakes. This is not to say that our sense of guilt is always harmful, always unfounded, but we should not confuse the imposed sense of guilt and the voice of conscience. We made a mistake, but can we fix it or not? We did harm to a person: can we fix it or not?
- And if we can't fix it?
- It happens if we killed a person or he himself died. But usually we think that everything, the relationship is broken and nothing can be changed, but in fact we can ask for forgiveness, and fix something, do something for the person whom we offended. Our own fears and self-esteem prevent this correction.
There are objective situations that we cannot correct. This raises the next question: how can we redeem it — before God and people? Let's remember that in Orthodoxy it is not a legal concept of salvation, we are saved by the grace of God. A person has done irreparable harm, but he can try to do some kind of good. For example: a woman had an abortion, then went to church, repented, but nothing can be corrected, death is death. But everything can be redeemed with love: to your children, strangers, helping other women in such a difficult situation. — both psychological and material. If conscience dictates what needs to be redeemed, then opportunities can always be found.
- Are the prayers of repentance that are served for women who have had an abortion - is it not a dead-end path? It is believed that this should provide them with some kind of support ...
- By themselves, these prayers can increase the destructive feeling of guilt, if everything is limited only to prayers, without good deeds. This leads to the realization of the incorrigibility of the deed simultaneously with the realization (illusory) that God will not forgive. And one cannot hope for redemption through prayers: God forgives not because a person has performed certain actions a certain number of times, but because the person has changed.
Spiritual life — this is an internal rebirth, and if a woman who has had an abortion continues to live with a feeling of unforgiveness, irreparable deed, she will continue to bring evil to the world, she will not be able to give love to her children or her husband, she will not be able to help other people, but all her strength will be aimed at self-destruction. Kill yourself, even psychologically — it will not correct the evil. Our Church does not approve of suicide in any way.
The difference between repentance and a sense of guilt is in the creativity or destructiveness of this feeling.
Pastoral split personality
- Friendship of a priest with parishioners: how widespread is the type of relationship, are there pitfalls here?
- According to my observations, this is not the most common type of relationship, precisely because it is often believed that a priest should be "special", too human relationships can lower his authority. Sometimes the priest himself considers it necessary to play a certain role in front of the parishioners, which he has learned either from the models of the theological school, or from those priests who contributed to its formation. Therefore, sometimes he considers friendly relations not very acceptable for himself.
There are real dangers here too: the priest's excessive familiarity with the parishioners can make him an object of manipulation on their part. Is it useful or not. — depends on the maturity of the priest. If this is a relationship of adults, it is rather useful. If this is friendship - to drink beer together, sometimes to speak evil, then this can then complicate the pastoral relationship.
- Professional split personality - how often does it happen with priests? How to avoid the fact that the person in the temple is alone, and with friends, family - another?
- It happens quite often, because the very system of church relations dictates a certain role. The priest does not find the strength to escape the demands of the external environment. The danger is clear — it is an internal conflict. The question arises: where is he real? If he is not real in the church, this undermines his faith in the end, leads to crises, not only psychological, but also spiritual: to "de-church", leaving the priesthood.
A person understands the objective problems of church life, and an attempt to convince himself that these problems do not exist often leads to such a dichotomy - as a clergyman, he is also related to these problems, but he cannot change anything, therefore it is easier not to notice or justify them. A "Stockholm syndrome" arises - an emotional justification for "their" aggressors. This duality is fraught with deep neurosis.
How can I avoid this? You need to have less fear and more sincerity in your inner world. But what methods to achieve this — there is no universal recipe, it depends on what a particular person has now.
- What solutions do the priests find out of this situation, except for the removal of dignity?
- There are several ways out, and not all of them are constructive. One of the most common — ecclesiastical, professional cynicism. Yes, I have such a job, a censer-sprinkler, a priest-executor, I will be like that, since the parishioners and the hierarchy want so. On the one hand, this is a devaluation of your service, your mission, on the other — protection from very destructive actions: not to sleep, for example.
As I said, another "way out" is codependency, identification with the aggressor. Or retreat into denial, into a defensive position: they say, the Church is holy, and everything in it is holy, I am wrong in everything, and the Church is right in everything. This is a neurotic position, not useful for either the priest or the flock, but quite common.
The third position: to outgrow all this, to “separate the wheat from the chaff” in oneself, to get out of the myths, partly invented by ourselves, partly imposed by the church environment, to a more objective awareness of the church reality. Realize: what can I do specifically that corresponds to my convictions, my faith. And through this, overcome the duality.
Although in real life it happens that when a priest tries to follow this path - to be unhypocritical with people and God, to be sincere - he encounters problems within the church. The system begins to squeeze him out: the bosses, the people who serve with him — and this is very difficult to resist.
Burn out mentally active
- The notorious burnout: some argue that this is not a problem, not a reason for sympathy. It is a sin. They say, everyone has it, and whoever does not cope is to blame, a loser, a traitor in a cassock, etc. And there is nothing to raise this topic at all.
- This is usually stated by the same people who believe that the priest — this is a superman, a fireproof terminator, who 24 hours a day, seven days a week should be a holy miracle worker, an ascetic, give everyone whatever they ask for. This is a manipulation with the aim of denying a priest the right to human feelings, the right to make a mistake, to be weak. Obviously, this is fundamentally wrong: the priest remains a person who finds it hard, who gets tired, he has doubts.
Emotional burnout — it is a professional risk associated with constant communication with a large number of people. He is especially strong in the "helping" professions, which include priests, doctors, psychologists — all those to whom they go with problems, from whom they expect emotional support. Naturally, a person who is conscientious about his ministry begins to invest in it emotionally. It's bad if there is no way to recover — both objectively and because of a misunderstanding of what an emotional resource is and how it should be restored. There is a request: must serve, come on, you have grace. And if you feel tired, empty, then you are praying badly, you are a bad priest.
This is manipulation, on the one hand, with love, on the other. — pride, on the third — fear of depreciation. This is a very difficult situation for a clergyman. Many people themselves believe in this, and while they still have the strength to pull themselves out, serve, communicate with people, instead of pause in time, recover and return with renewed vigor to their service, they torture themselves out of this service and reach an extreme degree devastation.
In the last stage of burnout, there is a physiological need for alienation from all people. Likewise, the priest feels that he has almost been "devoured", and he goes into an extreme defensive position in order to leave at least something of his personality. You are running out of strength, it is difficult to get up in the morning, not to mention more.
This is not a sin, it is a professional risk. Therefore, you need, firstly, to know that there is such a problem, and secondly, to stop and recover in time. But it is necessary that this is understood not only by the priests themselves, but also by the hierarchy. And parishioners should understand that the priest is given a special power to perform the sacraments, and not superhuman capabilities. Parishioners should not use the priest as a permanent donor.
In trainings for priests, we dealt with this problem, because it is a frequent request: where to get the strength for everything? People often turn for advice precisely from the position “I can’t take it anymore”: “I’m overloaded, I can’t do anything, I don’t want to, my personal life has collapsed, I don’t see my children, my mother is depressed, everything is bad”. And everything is bad because the balance between ministry and personal life, between giving and restoration is disturbed. There are high expectations that a person tries to live up to. And then we need to stop and start restoring this balance.
In the Orthodox Church, this problem has been voiced literally in recent years. At the beginning of 2011, I spoke at the Christmas readings with a report on pastoral psychology, following the results of the first school of pastors (we were doing this in Kamchatka at that time), and on psychological inquiries. She touched upon the topic of burnout and was literally anathema to the outraged Orthodox community. Active women from the audience shouted to me: “How dare you! Blasphemy! You slander, priesthood grace guarantees against burnout! It can not be so!" At the same time, the priests sitting in the hall nodded, approached me, thanked that “at least someone saw people in us”, took the coordinates, saying that I have problems that I have no one to discuss with: “It seems you will understand — can I come with you? "
This is how psychological counseling for priests began. After that, literally a year has not passed since our Patriarch spoke about pastoral burnout and the topic ceased to be taboo. But still, many still believe that pastoral burnout — it's about lazy priests. Although I would say that this is not about those who are spiritually lazy, but about those who are mentally active. Those who rely heavily on spiritual strength, and serving people has dragged on too much, headlong.
And the Catholic Church and Protestants have been working with this problem for more than a dozen years. For example, there is such a practice as "houses of gaining new strength" - in Germany, exactly this is, in my opinion, in Italy. Catholics started it, then they united with the Protestants. This is a kind of sanatorium for clergymen who have undergone pastoral burnout, a three-month course of therapy. This therapy includes time for individual prayer, and (when they have more or less recovered) participation in worship — the priest needs to celebrate the liturgical, the Eucharist is healing.
There is such a practice, but when I told our Orthodox priests about it, the reaction was - bitter laughter: “I can see how my bishop will let me go to be treated for pastoral burnout, will treat me with care, relieve me of diocesan obediences ...”
We have a complex problem. A priest can partially protect himself, and we figured out this at trainings: how to organize our life so that the causes of burnout can be minimized as much as possible. Find opportunities to recover both during the week and throughout the year — to include the same cyclical restoration in the cycle of liturgical life.
And one aspect — how to build a relationship with a bishop, how to defend oneself in the event of refusal from some diocesan obedience, so as not to fall under the ban. It was at the self-help level. As you can imagine, bishops very rarely seek psychological counseling.
What pushes you away from the Church
- I think neither one nor the other. The fact that the presence of priests on social networks is being monitored, “your every word can be used against you” is very important in the church environment. For many, this is the only way to frankly discuss some of their opinions and doubts. It happens that this is spontaneous psychotherapy. — mental stress is so great that you can throw it out either in something destructive, or under a pseudonym speak about the painful one.
Unfortunately, many priests do not even allow themselves to think about psychotherapy, it seems to them that if they turn to a psychotherapist, they will lose their authority as a priest. But this is a trap — maintain your authority at the cost of your own health and life.
But when a circle of the same people gathers with the same problems, disappointments (and since we have one system, the disappointments are similar), often, instead of realizing and understanding, this leads to mutual induction of cynicism and depreciation. From a psychological point of view, it helps, but from a spiritual point of view, if this is not a transitional stage, but a final one, it can be harmful.
- I heard that in Poland Catholics have rehabilitation centers for alcoholic priests. And how do we treat a priest, for example, with alcohol addiction?
- The attitude is different. There is such an exercise in our trainings for priests: we find out what brings people to the Church and what repels. In most of the groups I have worked with, the number one reason most often cited is — these are the sins of the shepherd. Priests themselves realize how devastating their sins and addictions can be on their parishioners. But what they realize among themselves, in a narrow circle, does not mean that in the presence of parishioners they do not deny these sins (a frequent position — this is the denial of the problem). In people with addictions, in principle, denial — a very common position, and all those who try to point out the problem fall into the category of enemies, spiteful critics, and are excluded from the social circle.
The attitude of the parishioners is most often judgmental. There is a category for which this is an excuse for their own sins: here and our father is not a saint, but to me — so God himself commanded. But the attitude that would help the priest to cope with addiction almost never occurs. You need to understand: not to be an aggressor for him, but also not to become a "rescuer" who helps to stay in this position.
- In my opinion, our only way to "help" the priest is to send him to the ban for some time ...
- Several times I ran into exceptions. The real situation: the priest serves alone in a rural parish, a difficult family situation, he began to drink with grief and anguish. At some point, it slides into alcoholism to such an extent that parishioners begin to complain to the bishop. The bishop does not send him to the ban, but transfers him to the city church under the guidance of the abbot, who has the skills of rehabilitation.
In one diocese, there was even a joke that this is our “rehabilitation temple”. The abbot there was also spiritually respected, and helped to cope not only with addictions, but also pulled out of despair — such is the psychologist from God. And the bishop adequately appreciated that there is such a treasure in the diocese, and this can be used to help priests in difficult situations. And for a year or two such a priest was appointed to this church, and when the abbot said that such and such a father was in order, he could be released, the priest received a new appointment.
But, firstly, such people are needed in the diocese, and secondly, this is possible in small dioceses, where at least some personal relationship between the bishop and the priests takes place.
- How would the parishioners answer this question: what pushes them away from the Church? In my opinion, not the sins of the priest, but rather hypocrisy.
- I would name two reasons for parishioners: the first — hypocrisy, and the second - "followed love, but received violence." We followed the Gospel, the outward promises that "God is love", Christianity — it is the path of salvation, the path of drawing closer to God. But when they came to the Church, people did not see this love. On the contrary, they were quickly explained that they themselves are so bad that they do not see her, they need to work on themselves, reconcile themselves, and correct themselves. And when people realized that they became even more miserable than they were, that love is now even less than it was before they came to the Church, this became one of the reasons for leaving, right up to falling away from Christianity, from faith in God.
- And people see the personal sins of the priest, while listening to his flowery sermons, in which the priest denounces these very sins in others ...
- Yes, this is the same hypocrisy with which a mentally normal person cannot be reconciled, he has a cognitive dissonance. If a priest can see sins, but he fights with them, repents (not only the parishioners, but also the priest have spiritual warfare) ... Here you can recall the story told by Metropolitan Anthony of Surozh, how in his youth he had to confess to a drunken priest, and this confession turned his life upside down. The priest cried so sincerely with him, so empathized, realizing his unworthiness ...
Despondency or depression, father or psychotherapist?
- How can a person (it does not matter: a priest or a parishioner) understand that he has a spiritual life? A person can sometimes confuse spiritual life with some kind of self-psychotherapy, which helps to cope with neuroses, depression. For example, you have not received Communion for a long time, a certain inner discomfort appears - you go, receive Communion, and the balance is restored, you live on. And then again. And a person may think: maybe this has nothing to do with spiritual life at all, only a sequence of rituals that helps a neurotic person to keep himself in relative harmony.
- I suppose you can understand it by the fruits. As the apostle Paul wrote, the fruit of the spirit — it is peace, joy, longsuffering, mercy, meekness, abstinence ... And if a person has been going to church for many years, and the fruits of the spirit are not increased, but rather diminished, then this is a reason to think that instead of spiritual life there is some kind of illusion.
If a person in the Church learns condemnation instead of love, if instead of joy he feels depression, instead of peace — bitterness, what is the quality of his spiritual life?
- What is the difference between the psychological approach and the spiritual approach? How to understand when you need to fast, pray and humble yourself, and when you need to go to a psychotherapist?
- It is necessary to notice this not only in oneself. A wise and tactful priest should notice this in the parishioners and advise them to turn to a specialist.
One of the signs: walking in circles — the same sins, passions, situations. And it seems that a person struggles with them, fasts and prays, takes on deeds, penances are imposed on him, but nothing helps. This may be an indication that the problem lies not only in the spiritual plane, but rather in the psychological one, and without overcoming this problem it is impossible even to start a spiritual life.
Second sign — constant self-justification. Everyone is to blame, I am not to blame. A person's inability to take responsibility for their actions — this is one of the signs of neurosis.
The same sign can be anger, aggression, a feeling that there are enemies around, fear. The whole spectrum of negative emotions that often accompanies psychological trauma and neurotic perception of reality.
The church often offers another answer: these are your sins, you must fight them. But if it is a neurosis, then it is better to cope with the neurosis, and then with those consequences of deep-rooted passions that darken spiritual life as well.
Finally, it is worth paying attention to the symptoms of psychopathology and mental illness. The same endogenous depression, which should not be confused with despondency, — it is, in a sense, the same metabolic disorder as diabetes. Only the balance of not those hormones that affect the body is disturbed, but the neurotransmitters that affect consciousness, the nervous system. And if a person's levels of serotonin and dopamine dropped, then, of course, the Lord can miraculously heal, but the position of the Church, nevertheless, — Do not tempt the Lord and do not refuse medical help.
If the depressive state does not go away, it is aggravated, if despondency becomes more and more from attempts to fight depression, if you categorically want to limit your social circle, do nothing to the maximum, if you do not have the strength to get up in the morning, comb your hair, brush your teeth, you should consult a doctor to select the appropriate drugs. Or, if this is not depression, but there is another physiological disorder behind it, determine the cause of these problems. This condition, for example, can be with some diseases of the thyroid gland.
Our mental and physical conditions are connected, and what we perceive as sin, passion, sometimes has a medical cause.
Interviewed by Ksenia Smirnova
Reviews
- Poisk - 11/07/2018 23:52
biomehanik writes here competently, no need to accuse him of lack of spirituality. Perhaps he is a priest himself, and probably selfless and deeply fundamental in a good way. But I think that both points of view are legitimate. Yes, they have different reference points and coordinate systems. Not everyone can endure the hardships of the world at the same level as a biomechanic. I think the psychologist here also acts out of love for his neighbor and can sometimes provide an ambulance. God God, businessmen - training, and psychos - an ambulance. And the Lord will judge. - White Horvat - 07/16/2017 09:29 PM
Olga, a biomechanic, writes about her internal problems. He read Skuratovskaya's text superficially. Re-read the text again, and you will understand that the text is beautiful, and the abuse is completely empty and spiritless. - White Horvat - 07/16/2017 00:56
Noble fury beats in the words of biomechanics. Is it good? The "Holy of Holies of the Church" - the priests? Where is this from? I have always believed that the Holy of Holies is the Body and Blood of Christ. In general, the text is inconsistent, internally contradictory and a little "quixotic" - the biomechanist is fighting with the mills. - Olga - 07/09/2017 23:04
At first I really liked the article by N. Skuratovskaya and I almost believed her that it was all about the priests, and after reading the review of Biomechanics I was convinced that it was me. Thank you for admonishing us and "Deliver us from the evil one and do not lead us into temptation"! - biomehanik - 02/06/2017 20:12
New apostles: we are ours, we will build a new worldA short answer to the article by Natalia Skuratovskaya "What we consider a sin sometimes has a medical reason."
A priest who needs the help of a worldly psychologist is no longer a priest. A priest has only one Comforter - God. All the rest are from the evil one.
If a priest cannot help himself, then he cannot help his parishioners in any way, and his price, as a pastor, is a broken penny. If a priest came for a consultation with a psychologist, then he himself, of his own free will, renounced the Holy Spirit, transmitted to him by the Apostolic succession of the hierarchy. To talk about priesthood in isolation from the Holy Spirit and the succession of the hierarchy means either not fully understanding the essence of the issue, or slyly leading it towards worldly simplification - to the place where all the templates of a society mired in sin can be easily applied to priesthood. What is in itself very attractive to the world is to tarnish the priesthood with the label “one of us”. Psychology and everything connected with it is one of such ways to reduce the role of the Church to another "service sphere", replacing God with his postulates.
Psychology, as a science, is an absolutely insignificant human teaching, which is the fruit of purely mental speculation and artificial methods of recent times. For thousands of years, humanity has existed without psychologists, turning to God for the healing of soul and body. And then suddenly, almost the day before yesterday, it turned out that life without psychologists and psychoanalysts is, in principle, impossible, and the priests themselves urgently need specialists of this kind, very intimate services. What else can you call them?
And if only a confessor ... So also a "coach". Who are we talking about - horses? They are being trained, I agree. And people, generally speaking, are trained. But isn't the “coaching” offered by the author for clergy too similar to all sorts of express business courses with the so-called. "Cases" - homemade templates of template examples for memorization and subsequent "application in practice"?
The mention of holiness is also noteworthy. To talk about the “level of holiness and foresight” of a priest, which, according to the author, is sought in a priest by parishioners, is to totally fail to understand the meaning of holiness. AMONG LIVING PEOPLE THERE ARE NO SAINTS. The living can only be righteous, but not saints. Only the living God is One Holy in the Most Holy Trinity.
Holiness is, first of all, the recognition by God of a righteous life lived by a person or his martyrdom for the sake of faith. And only then - by the Church. Elevation into saints without the will of God and during life is a sin. Priests are spiritual fathers, but not holy fathers. The author of the article is a deuce for an unlearned lesson!
About the "strong priest". To admit that you do not know everything is not power, but a statement of fact. There is nothing strong about it. For no one knows everything, no matter how burdened he is with scientific degrees and all kinds of ranks and titles. The strength of a priest is not in his omniscience, but in the strength of his faith and his faithfulness to God. The strength of a priest lies in the tears of his parishioners during the service, when the soul is torn to God from his words and the singing of the choir. The strength of a priest lies in the fact that a person humbly and reverently kneels before his Creator, when he proclaims: “We truly thank the Lord!”, Even if everyone around them stands with their hands behind their backs. The strength of a priest is to give confession before communion to EVERYONE who came to God for confession and communion - even if this significantly increases the duration of the liturgy - because he is fulfilling his duty to God and to people. The strength of a priest is to give a person a blessing for a godly deed, even if he is rejected by everyone and allow him to kiss his hand - for through it the parishioner kisses the hand of God. The strength of a priest lies in the fact that by his service he uncovers the very secrets of the human soul and raises it to God. This is what the priesthood is for.
But this power is not available for those who look at the Church as another "clearing" for the development of a profitable business and for those who come to the Church "just in case." For them, the priest is the subject of close attention in order to discover in him something that can be criticized, ridiculed, slandered. It doesn't matter where - on some rubbish forum on the network or in a "respectable magazine for specialists." And if it does work out, then make some money on it.
A couple of words about the misunderstanding of love - both by the author and by those characters who “were looking for it in the Church”. All the same consumer infantilism. Can a person who has not found love in himself see it in others? Is it possible that God has endowed some with his Love more than others - so much so that it is necessary to hiccup it somewhere, except in himself, in his heart? And not finding, but rather not making the slightest effort for this, yelling at every corner and scattering leaflets: "I was deceived!" And you can clearly hear in this offended scream all the same grabbing "GIVE!" The church and the path to God is about working on oneself, and not a place for free distribution of kisses and hugs. Didn't the author and the “visitors” she defend confuse the Orthodox Church with a charismatic sect?
And the priest is not always obliged to exude love. Sometimes it is necessary to remind the sinner of his debts to the Almighty. About the coming Judgment and the fear of God. The mere mention of the Judgment should be awe-inspiring. But man does not know the fear of God and instead prefers to continue sinning. And what then? He condemns the priest. Instead of repentance, there is a new sin, which the author obligingly readily covers with the “subtly noticed” insufficient psychological preparedness of the priest and his allegedly flawed personal qualities. And are they the essence?
A superficial glance slides over the outside, without penetrating deep ...
Forgetting the beam in his own eye, a parishioner dissatisfied with the priest seeks and will certainly find a lot of shortcomings and sins in the priest - both real and imaginary. But does that make sense? Everyone is responsible before God only for their sins. Nodding at the priest to justify your inaction in relation to your sins at the Judgment Seat of God will not work. And let it be known to any jealous evaluator of God's servants reading these lines that in addition to the general commandments of the Lord, for ALL members of the Church there are also the Rules of the Apostles (http://lib.pravmir.ru/library/readbook/1311#part_13887). There are 85 of them. They regulate relations within the Church itself and external relations between the Church and the world. The rules of the Apostles apply to bishops and priests, and to all other ministers of the Church, as well as to the Orthodox laity - including those who "come to visit" the Church. Breaking these rules is also a sin.
It is wrong to identify a priest with the Church and God. A priest is, first of all, a man. And by nature he is as sinful as a parishioner. And yet a priest differs from a parishioner - in the Church (including outside the church) it is he who represents God - according to the right given to him, according to the succession from the Apostles themselves. He may not like him, he may even be antipathetic. But a priest is not the whole Church, and even more so, not God. To identify a priest with the entire Holy Church and to transfer our attitude towards him to it means thinking at the level of the plinth. But this is exactly how the “mentally normal person” thinks in the author's article, about whom she cares so much and for which all this psychological pseudo-Orthodox fuss was started, which is essentially a spiritual sloth who comes to the Church to satisfy his many-sided consumer greed.
The author has an oversimplified approach to repentance, which is very far from a truly Orthodox one. Especially abortion. Repentance cannot be substituted for even the kindest deeds. The holy fathers of the Church speak about this, to whose prayers, the author, apparently because of the great employment in training seminarians, did not manage to get, although it is with them that the day of every truly Orthodox person begins: “Let faith be imputed to me instead of deeds. My God, do not find more deeds that will by no means justify me. But that my faith prevails in the place of everyone, that it answers, that that justifies me, that that shows me the partaker of Your eternal glory. " And where there is faith, there is repentance. There is no Orthodox faith without repentance.
God only accepts repentance. Otherwise, any sin could be smeared with "good deeds", or even simply "smeared" with a generous sacrifice. Human standards are not applicable to God and His Judgment. God is not bargaining. Repentance, as something one-time and not too burdensome, so as not to “increase the destructive feeling of guilt,” is not good. The “destructive sense of guilt” is a crafty Jesuit invention of an intellectual theorist who is not even close to repentance.
Abortion is a grave crime before God and hoping for an easy deliverance from this sin is a frivolous and very dangerous naivete for the salvation of the soul. Only God Himself can deliver a person from the sin of abortion. Personally. And only God will let the repentant know about the forgiveness of the sin of abortion by the sinner-infanticide, and these include both the woman-“mother” and the man-“father”, as well as everyone who participated and facilitated the abortion, including the so-called “doctors "Who underwent an abortion operation. GOD and NOBODY more. And if for this it will be necessary to repent of burning tears and snot every day throughout life - then this is the will of God. There is no other way to forgiveness: “Rise up, accursed man, to God, remembering your sins, falling to the Creator, weeping and groaning; The same one, as if he was merciful, will give his mind to the nobility his will. " (Canon of repentance to our Lord Jesus Christ).
Although, however, the author has his own version of the “solution to the issue”, which is gladly accepted by a sinful society, mired in abortion - why bother with repentance, destroying oneself with “destructive guilt” if “deeds” can fix everything. And then sin again and "fix" again. Will not work.
It is criminal to replace Orthodox prayers and patristic canons of repentance, not to mention the Gospel, with home-grown advice from a housewife with a “psychological” bias (or even a diploma). To confuse seminarians and readers is to push them from the path of God's commandments to the path of cunning philosophies and sin.
Redemption. Conscience is not a corrupt saleswoman. Conscience is the voice of God in man. And not everything can be “redeemed”. And what can be redeemed is usually redeemed with blood. Moreover, exclusively YOURSELF. As Christ Himself did. If the author has in mind in his article and advises his readers and clients at consultations it is in this spirit to redeem what “needs to be redeemed” - that is, to atone for their sins with blood, then the question arises, who is the advisor? If these arguments are open trade with God (I am good for you, and you are forgiveness of sins to me), then they are insignificant and sinful.
About mistakes. Whether we can correct a mistake by sinning in relation to a person, or we can no longer correct anything - of course, it is important. But it's not just about “fixing the mistake”. If the author means by "fix" - to return to the place taken without asking, to glue the broken, to ask a person for forgiveness for the offense, then this is catastrophically not enough.
Although quite enough for a psychologist. Having convinced the person that he will die without him, it is then important for the psychologist to convince the client that everything is not as bad as it seems to him, that he himself is not so bad, despite all his follies and committed iniquities. That it is enough, according to a certain "author's method", to FORGIVE YOURSELF, and not to blame yourself - so as not to fall out of the "cage of life" and further continue your victorious march to the "heights of success and prosperity."
And if you look more closely at what psychology does to a person, you can, without digging too deeply, see that she gives him what he WANTS TO HEAR. Psychology is a prostitute of society.
To our great regret, it also penetrated into the Orthodox Church. And, judging by the article in question, they use its services, with the connivance of the church authorities, none other than seminarians, future priests, and maybe already serving in parishes - confessors of repentant sinners standing before God. About 400 years ago, such priests, at best for them, would have been anathematized for apostasy, excommunicated and exiled forever to a place where even now a person can only live on a rotational basis - with all the achievements of civilization. I will keep silent about the worst options, so as not to cause some non-positive "dissonance" in the reader - cognitive or worse.
The services of a psychologist are a temptation for a priest. God tempts in different ways to build up in faith. And so too. And at the same time, this is a temptation for the psychologist himself - God gives him a chance to make the right decision and the opportunity to stop in time. This is how the Providence of God works - the test of choice. Everyone has their limits. The Church is the Body of Christ and there is no place in it for mental fabrications according to memorized scenarios. In the Church, as nowhere else, a person feels his unity with God - his heart and all his soul. And for this, man and God do not need any psychological methods: the Creator and creation are one.
And with regards to the correction of mistakes through indemnity ... Committing any sin in relation to his neighbor, a person first of all sins against God and the whole of Heaven. Any sin, no matter how it manifests itself, is NOT GRATEFUL to the Creator. Therefore, it is LITTLE to “correct” and “ask for forgiveness” from people - one must REPENT TO GOD and beg for forgiveness from HIM. And not lying on the couch of the psychoanalyst, through a sweet doze, listening to so sweet for him soothing tales about the "healing of self-forgiveness." Easy paths only lead to hell.
Any professional psychologist, first of all, is a KOMMERSANT with his well-established practice - an office, clientele, marketing plan and methods of increasing clientele, i.e. money making machine. In psychology, you won't be able to make money if you tell the client the truth about him, which, in addition to everything, must be able to see. But usually a superficial glance, limited to templates - taken into service from textbooks or personally concocted in vain self-admiration, does not allow us to see the truth lying on the surface. As a result, the word uttered by the psychologist to the client is a lie. For there is no God in him. And if there is, it is only in order to justify the "psychological method." For cover. What we observe ...
You cannot serve two masters at the same time - both God and mammon. Thus, psychology leads a person astray - we know where.
And the idea expressed in the article that a “wise and tactful priest” who noticed disagreements among his parishioners should “advise them to turn to a specialist” (in the sense of a psychologist) is the author’s blatant assertion about the powerlessness of God and the omnipotence of a psychologist. Isn't it absurd? Slyly philosophizing in his office, rented in a business incubator, the "specialist" turns out to be stronger than God - he can heal the soul, and at the same time the human body, because they are inseparably connected during his life, by some of their own methods, usually author's, and from this is not as cheap as a free confession before the Creator, which relieves the soul from impurity and gives healing to the body. But the filth of the soul is not a psychological or commercial concept. Tears of repentance are also rare in psychological practice. But arguments about cognitive dissonance, endogenous depressions and other highly wise nonsense, in the definition of which the "specialists" themselves are confused, are a frequent guest in their reasoning: before someone set their brains in place, they must be thoroughly powdered.
Just don't think everyone is idiots except yourself. What is the worth of this quoted paragraph, in which the author advises the priest on how to behave with the parishioner: “And, finally, it is worth paying attention to the symptoms of psychopathology and mental illness. The same endogenous depression that should not be confused with discouragement is, in a sense, the same metabolic disorder as diabetes. Only the balance of not those hormones that affect the body is disturbed, but the neurotransmitters that affect consciousness, the nervous system. And if a person's levels of serotonin and dopamine dropped, then, of course, the Lord can miraculously heal, but the position of the Church, nevertheless, is not to tempt the Lord and not to refuse medical help. "
As far as I understand, before confession, the priest must now measure the level of serotonin and dopamine in the penitent - whether it has dropped, but to be faithful ask him to bring more urine and stool tests with him - you never know ...
Let me gently remind the distinguished author that it is not the Lord that is tempted by man. This is absolute nonsense. Creation cannot tempt the Creator. Personally, I have a strong temptation to question the author's bold assertion about any involvement in Orthodoxy. Because we have to try very hard to forget the prayer "Our Father", given to humanity by Christ, in which it is clearly said: "and do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one." Is it not because it is forgotten that there is talk about crafty? And I very much doubt that the position of the Church - no matter what issue - can sound in the context of "not tempt the Lord." Such confusions are unforgivable for one who has undertaken to teach the mind-mind the Orthodox priesthood.
To train a priest with psychological methods is to distort the essence of his ministry. Psychology and all its techniques, including the Jesuit NLP techniques, operate from the mind. The priest is from the heart. Sin is born in the mind, but not in the heart of a person. You cannot connect the incompatible. A priest cannot be a psychologist in the sense that society puts into this word. A priest is a shepherd who leads to the Savior through repentance. His vocation is to convey the Word of God to the heart of a person, but not to tempt his mind with cunning ornate philosophies, gleaned from psychological workshops and cases born in the womb of business centers.
And finally, about the main thing. Consider the title of the article, which reads: "What we consider to be sin sometimes has a medical cause." WHAT IS THIS?! If you still do not understand, then this is the author's policy statement about revising the Gospel and denying the truth of the Word of God. Who of the Orthodox - real, and not mummers, can dare to do this? Isn't it madness? .. As Jesus showed during his earthly ministry, ANY disease is a CONSEQUENCE of man's SIN. ANY. With no exceptions. Nothing happens to a person outside the will of God. Was it not for this that the Lord healed the crippled and the hopelessly sick, and raised the dead - so that a person would understand the destructiveness of sin and the omnipotence of the Heavenly Father? And not for this, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, gave the ability to heal diseases to his Apostles? Isn't this why He ascended to the Cross?
Another view of an Orthodox person on this issue takes him beyond the boundaries of Orthodoxy. After such a title, everything written by the author in the article can be called only in one word - HERESY.
A separate question is for the administrators of those Orthodox resources on which a similar heresy is published: what god do you serve? It does not interfere with delving into the meaning of at least the HEADLINES of the articles proposed for publication.
Even a cursory acquaintance with other "works" of Natalia Skuratovskaya causes a persistent feeling of their outrageous "toxicity" - if you use her own terminology. Those. poisoning, or rather, undermining and destroying the Orthodox Church. Again, its very foundation is the priesthood. The far-fetched and stereotyped (this is the most decent thing that comes to mind) problems of the Church and the "methods" of solving them, mixed up on the equally superficial - purely rational, mental, but quite often covered with quotes from the patristic heritage and for persuasiveness theological terminology - understanding the essence of Orthodoxy and spiced with a good dose of pride and vanity, and in addition, a poorly concealed hostility towards the Holy Orthodox Church, expressed in disregard for the priesthood, cause irreparable harm to the ministers of the Church and Orthodox laity, who have accepted all this anti-scholarly "Jesuitical" godless nonsense at face value.
Without a parishioner's own work on his sins, not a single priest can help him - even "from scratch" grown from a test tube in a business incubator according to the method of Natalia Skuratovskaya. God must be sought not in the church, and not in some elusive "perspicacious" priest, in search of whom many half of their lives roam all over Russia, like pagans looking for a new idol for themselves. God must be sought IN YOURSELF, in your heart, but not in your mind. He does not hide and never hid from a person. God is everywhere - the whole world is God. And there is no need for intermediaries between God and man. God will answer any question of His creation seeking Him and help solve any problem - for someone who not only prays, but also waits and hopes to hear the answer from Him. The Temple of God is a place where a person, with the help of God and his Guardian Angel, has ALREADY done the proper spiritual and prayer work of repentance on himself, can, having sworn allegiance to God on the Gospel and on the Cross, sincerely confess sins with the intention not to sin anymore and receive their forgiveness through ANY priest according to the right given by God and partake of the Holy Gifts of eternal life. A priest is only a helper from God, but a worker to correct his sinful life is a man HIMSELF.
***
A piece of cake is too sweet for many - to impose their shaggy paws, clawed paws, or even tender paws with manicure on glued claws on the Holy Orthodox Church, priesthood and parishioners. And the entry point was found - psychological consultations. Slowly and gradually, through the parishioners, the accompanying secular structures, the imperious secular and church offices, the tentacles of society, sticky with greed, have finally stuck to the holy of holies of the Church - to the priests - bearers of the Apostolic succession. And with saliva on their lips, aggressively and "reasonedly" - on tables and flowcharts, they now prove their right to indicate to those who are entrusted by God with the secret of confession and absolution, how to confess the repentant.Are they not new apostles? .. It is quite possible. But who is their god?
- White Horvat - 10/25/2016 20:23
"There needs to be less fear and more sincerity in the inner world."
Here it is, that very word.
Fields marked with an asterisk must be completed.
Spiritual leadership is one of the most important aspects of church life that requires special sensitivity. But often it is here that both pastors and flocks are trapped by psychological problems that can distort both spiritual life and personal destiny. This is the subject of a lecture by psychologist Natalia Skuratovskaya "Psychological problems of counseling: how to avoid traps for pastors and flocks", which took place in the lecture hall of the Tradition charitable foundation. We bring to your attention the first part of the lecture.
This material is devoted to a complex and rarely discussed topic, namely, the answer to the question why, going to church (that is, seemingly to God, to joy, to love, to become better), as a result, people often find themselves in a psychological dead end , become unhappy, or even acquire a neurosis that did not exist before the church? Some even manage to destroy family and professional life. How so? After all, everyone had good intentions, why did everything turn out like this?
I would like to note right away that it is not only the flock that suffers, but also the shepherds. Therefore, the topic of the lecture will not be condemnation of the “wrong” priests who “torture” their parishioners. The tragedy is that sometimes everyone torments each other, but I will try, if possible, to explain how to avoid such situations.
Sometimes a person does not know what he is looking for in the Church
Let's start with what it is - counseling, in what conditions does it occur, what influences it?
Traditionally, counseling is understood as spiritual guidance from the Church and, specifically, the shepherd, leading people to Christ. In the narrow sense of the word, we are usually talking only about spiritual guidance, that is, about the relationship between the shepherd and the flock.
It should be noted that the flock come to church for a certain reason with certain expectations, with certain hopes and fears. A person himself sometimes does not know what exactly he is looking for in the church. Someone comes, dimly feeling the invoking grace. Someone comes in a difficult life situation, because they needed consolation and support, and often, in general, they just come for free psychotherapy. In his youth, when there is still a lot of maximalism and little experience of failure, a frequent motive for converting to faith, to church life is the desire to become a saint and show everyone around him how to live in this world.
In addition, each of us has personality traits that we bring to church. Someone should be treated tenderly and reverently, with someone, on the contrary, directly and, perhaps, even ironically; with someone you have to be very specific, and for someone, being too specific will hurt.
Finally, each of us enters the church in certain life circumstances - I mean the first conscious arrival in the church. If our parents brought us to church, if we were baptized in infancy and grew up in the church, then at some point all the same, children's faith ends. Then it happens that a teenager develops his own faith, and he leaves in search of adventure. Then, finding them and suffering in order, having suffered his own mature desire to come to church, he returns to the bosom of the Church, and this is a different situation.
Much depends on what life circumstances a person is in: what he needs in spiritual guidance, what issues he will worry about, and what he will be especially sensitive and vulnerable to.
For example, if a person comes in grief, it is clear that he wants to be comforted and given hope.
The loss of a loved one sometimes makes you feel what can be expressed in the following words: “No, it’s not fair for everything to end with this - life, love. May they give me guarantees that life is eternal, that I can do something, pray, and finally light a candle so that my loved one will feel good. " For such hopes and expectations, a person at this moment is especially vulnerable, which is often used by various unscrupulous religious leaders.
This situation with the loss of loved ones and vulnerability on this basis is most vividly illustrated by what happened to the Beslan mothers, to whom Grabovoy promised to resurrect their children. Imagine the degree of grief these people have. On the basis of seemingly unrealizable hope and deep vulnerability, a sect was formed. And even when Grabovoi had already been put in prison, these unfortunate mothers tried in every possible way to get him out of prison, corresponded with him. He went out, and some of them never gave up hope. That is, there are circumstances in which we are especially vulnerable.
Empathy is essential for a priest
The shepherd, for his part, also carries his load, because shepherds are not aliens from Mars and not messengers of the angelic spheres - they are the same people as we are, bearing the burden of their life problems, their often difficult life circumstances. Of course, we assume that they pay more attention to the spiritual life, that they are in some way wiser, in some way more experienced. But practice shows that in our modern church, a priest often has less time, opportunities and energy, for example, for personal prayer, for his own spiritual life, than his parishioners - simply because he has too many responsibilities that have nothing to do with counseling. , and ministry, unfortunately, does not always come first.
The shepherd has a nature-given or consciously developed ability to empathy, that is, to imbued with the feelings of another person, as they say, to see the world through his eyes. I believe that this is a prerequisite for pastoral professional suitability, because it is empathy that makes it possible to compassion without condemnation, without evaluation, not to project your stereotypes onto a person, but to understand what his difficulties look like, his situation through his eyes - this is the only way to give the right pastoral council.
There are people with an innate high ability for empathy, and this is a talent from God, but to some extent it is present in each of us, and it can be developed. That is, if it is not given from God - train. As you know, there are brilliant artists who have talent from God, and someone draws, draws, draws - and now he is already good at it, he can already express his inner world through drawing. So it is with the priests. If one person does not really feel, does not really understand the other, but every time he will stop himself, wanting to tell him a morality, say to himself: “Stop! How does this situation look through his eyes? " If a person listens more, has more compassion, then sooner or later this quality will come to him, he will develop the ability to empathy.
Finally there is pastoral attitudes... This is a rather difficult block, and here anyone is as lucky - both with a priest and with pastoral guidelines. All the spiritual experience that the priest acquired in his life before ordination plays an important role; all other priests who were his spiritual mentors - good or “bad” (“bad” in the sense that their spiritual leadership was traumatic).
A person who is going to become a priest chooses some models of ministry for himself. If these samples did not show examples of pastoral openness and pastoral love, understanding, non-condemnation, readiness to pull the flock out of difficult mental and spiritual circumstances, to help him in the struggle with passions, to give timely advice, - if the models of ministry of the future pastor were not like that, then he, accordingly, he did not have the opportunity to learn all this.
Moreover, pastoral attitudes can be quite strict as to how one should generally communicate with the flock: a pastor must be imperious, authoritarian, so that in no case will they see a person in him - he should only be a symbol of his ministry. “Revealing Christ” is understood not as “revealing love, acceptance”, but to manifest Christ already on the throne, reigning, reigning - and a departure from this image, that is, leaving the role, seems to be just a pastoral failure. That is, a lot also depends on pastoral attitudes.
"I am the worst of all" and other problems of parishioners
Finally, there is one or another definite church subculture... Why "certain"? Because there are many of them in our Church. There are conservatives, there are liberals, there are fighters against tax identification numbers and barcodes, and there are ecumenists. These are all very different systems of rules and norms into which a person (especially if it is a beginner, a neophyte) comes and fits into. He fits into the system that exists, and accepts the settings that are.
Accordingly, each system, each subculture has its own authorities and, unfortunately, Christ is not always present among these priorities. These can be shrines, traditions, miraculous icons, relics. Such an unspoken norm may form that one should not bother Christ over trifles, one must pray to the right shrines at the right time, know who to order a prayer service. Even the Gospel does not need to be read, because, they say, you will still misunderstand it - unfortunately, there may be such a subculture. Or it may be the other way around: everything is possible, everything is allowed, everything is not a sin, everything happens. In this case, a person who was looking for directions in the Church, some ways, completely loses orientation: "Where should I go?"
In this structure, each of the participants in the process, that is, both the pastor and the flock, have their own dangers, which will be discussed below.
Let's start with the flock. The biggest misfortune that can ever happen to a person who comes to church is lack of independence and avoidance of responsibility, that is, initially some kind of infantile position. This is the risk that then entails a lot of troubles and disappointments. Because such a position may even be approved by the church: that's right, you don't know anything, your thoughts are all wrong, you don't know how to do anything - how to stand, how to pray, how to tie a handkerchief, in the end, and we will teach you everything here, we will format you by the standards of our subculture.
Therefore, dependence and avoidance of responsibility are highly encouraged in many parishes, which creates the false impression that this is a prerequisite for spirituality.
And dependence is renamed into obedience, avoidance of responsibility is renamed into humility, and now the flock is already “spiritual”.
Parishioners already feel themselves to be novices, and accordingly, they need someone to play the role of “Abba of the Spirit-bearing,” and it turns out to be the priest who formatted the flock according to this model. And then a very sad situation can develop.
In addition, we can bring our own previous trauma and neuroses, that is, we often come to church already wounded, but this, in general, is normal. Almost no one succeeds in living to a conscious age so that life does not hurt. The question here is how much a person can or cannot cope with this, how much he worked or did not work this experience, and how deep these wounds are, because there are experiences that cannot be dealt with so quickly - it takes years to work out. In the church, unfortunately, these injuries often turn out to be the cause of the so-called secondary trauma, that is, a person is beaten in the same sore spots.
For example, a person grew up in a situation of domestic violence: his parents beat him, insulted, humiliated him. And so he comes to church - it would seem, "a ray of light in the dark kingdom"! But, as a rule, this person will be attracted to such a parish, where he will receive about the same, but in a decent form and with the explanation that it is spiritual.
He is not just beaten - sins are knocked out of him, he is not just humiliated - he is humbled.
And then there will be many teachings; quotes from the works of the holy fathers on this topic will be prepared in advance, and a person, due to his vulnerability, will receive new wounds that will make him completely powerless and helpless in this system. By the way, this is what keeps such people in such parishes for years, because the feeling is created: “Where will I go? I felt bad there, I hurt there. I came here - it hurts me too, but that means I’m so bad, I’m worthless. ” Devaluation begins, which is also often helped by the church: “I am the worst of all,” and the like.
We talk a lot about the fact that the church is a hospital, and then we ask ourselves why so few people recover in it, and many more people, having come to the hospital, become chronicles, or even incurable patients. Why do we have some kind of hospice, and not a hospital? To endure there to death - in general, having some kind of hope ... So this is also a threat.
Another threat is dependence on the opinion of authorities... A person who was originally brought up so that he must obey, that his mother will not advise bad things, that the elders know better - no matter whether parents or teachers - is such a person who is already accustomed to the fact that everything is decided for him, coming to the church subculture, without resistance, without critical analysis assimilates that either constructive or destructive system of values that exists in the church community where he came.
You can illustrate this position, adjusted for historical realities. Upon acquaintance with the legacy of mother Maria Skobtsova, the accuracy of this thought is striking: in 1935 or 1936 she wrote about the future Church, that when the persecutions ended and the Church was allowed in the Soviet state, the same people would come to church power who are now from the newspaper Pravda “They will learn whom they should hate, whom they should condemn, who is the enemy of the people, and who, on the contrary, should be praised in every possible way, who should be flattering.
First, these people will learn everything, that is, assimilate the "party line". When they assimilate this "party line", they will put it into practice with the same consciousness of infallibility, with the belief that their understanding is the ultimate truth. And if the “party line” has suddenly changed, then the truth must also be changed. Exactly this non-critical, non-reflective thinking often becomes the cause of subsequent disappointments, because a person assimilates something completely inorganic for him or for Christianity. Moreover, what he has learned may also be internally contradictory, and he has to spend all his energy trying to extinguish these cognitive dissonances, instead of thinking about God in general, praying, in the end - that is, not subtracting the rule, not to defend the service, but just to go and pray.
Shot from the film "The Apprentice"
The next threat is especially dire for neophytes - “ jealousy beyond reason". This is when a person comes to church, burning with the desire for righteousness. The recently released film "The Disciple" is just a very vivid illustration of what a person can be led to, for example, by reading the Bible unwisely.
Another threat is false expectations... They are not always dictated by grief, as in the example that was given above. Sometimes they are dictated by what is again connected with lack of independence: “They will do everything for me, I will end up in a place where they will save me. Here I am - that's all, save me! " If I am baptized, regularly attend services, fulfill all obediences, then a place in paradise is guaranteed to me, I earned it for myself, I “bought insurance” for myself - this is also a false hope. But these false expectations very often involve a person if they are supported by the shepherd: “Yes, yes, if you obey me, you can not even doubt your salvation,” and then some quote reinforcing this hope.
Finally, but this is already a threat of a later period - this depreciation... When a person intuitively feels the falsity of everything that happens to him, and sometimes the falsity of himself, then the psyche, which is still not iron in our country, begins to break down from a feeling of inconsistency between the declared intuition and everything that happens around and in the inner world. The natural reaction is devaluation, and here, as they say, a child splashes out with the water, that is, trust in authorities, in a subculture collapses, and everything collapses.
Further, on these debris, a completely different life is built, the most atheistic, because the Church has compromised itself in the eyes of man. Further we will dwell on this topic in more detail, because it rather refers to the topic of religious neuroses and the way out of them - more or less smooth and harmonious.
"Vyzhebatyushka - all hope is for you!"
Let's turn to the other side. Pastors are also, in a sense, hostages of this church subculture. Firstly - and even before that “firstly” - they are exactly the same people with everything that is inherent in mere mortals, and as shepherds, the first thing they suffer from is exaggerated expectations from them. Many believers believe that a priest should be perspicacious, tireless, responsive, an expert in everything, should know exactly the only correct answer to all questions. And if he doesn’t know, it means that he is weak, doubting; it means that he is some kind of "not that" shepherd - well, let's go and look for others - tougher, for example.
The priest, on his part, is afraid not to justify these high expectations because the crown will fall from him, the flock will demote him from recognized authorities. Why is this happening? Because his self-esteem also depends on the assessment of others, that is, he has no or not enough sense of self-worth. But it often happens that the shepherd is still young and feels that he has been really burdened with an unbearable burden.
Imagine the feeling of a young man of about 23, who was ordained - and now he is already a father, and the people have formed in line for him, and everyone with their sorrows, everyone says: “Father, how is it? Father, pray, you are a great prayer book. Father, all hope is in you. "
Imagine this boy who is being loaded with all this load of hopes, aspirations, projections, expectations - everything that has not been given in the world, but it is inconvenient for him to say that he does not know how to carry it. Who should I tell? If he has a good confessor, he can consult with his confessor. If suddenly the confessor is not very lucky and there is no one to consult with, he is left to himself or becomes a hostage of those instructions that he received earlier.
The shepherd also has “ jealousy beyond reason”- this is one of the most famous pastoral temptations of the early period, about which all pastorologists wrote. For example, Cyprian Kern understands this in the most detailed way - the desire to be the most outstanding priest, to be truly the light of the world: "Since I accepted this ministry, it means that I will be practically like Christ himself." But it’s not hard to guess what the attempt to claim the role of Christ leads to. Very often this turns out to be a kind of little antichrist, which leads not to Christ, but to himself. But “jealousy not according to reason” involves in self-conceit, as a result, there is a young age and building a system of codependent relationships around itself.
Right there around such a zealous, selfless and, naturally, young and handsome priest, a circle of “adorers” appears, who look into his mouth and say: “Father, you are so wise. Father, you are so perspicacious. Father, you blessed me, and it became so much easier for me! " - and that's it, he fell into the net of this flattery. Let's remember that manipulations are not only from top to bottom, but also from bottom to top - and the manipulation of pride is oh, how terrible. None of us are 100% sure of ourselves, and this is what we are caught. If we know this about ourselves, it is easier for us not to get caught. If we do not know this about ourselves yet, then life will still teach, and if this happens before the person realizes himself, it will be very difficult.
The next danger for shepherds is the standard "role model" of the priest... We have a certain stereotype of how a priest should behave, how he should behave, how he should speak, how he should build relationships with the flock. You can even create a kind of "classification of priests." A priest can be humble and calm, or, conversely, strict, tough, categorical, zealous (sometimes to the point of anger), fanatical. He can be domineering or gentle, immersed in thought or active, confident or insecure in himself and in his flock, smiling or gloomy. The flock sometimes forms a stereotype of the shepherd's appearance: a certain "man without age" - thick, handsome, with a thick beard. A separate type is the "perspicacious old man".
As you can see, there are several "role models", that is, several types. It seems that when a priest begins to serve, he chooses a type that is somehow close to him - emotionally, in character. For example, he himself is quiet, closed and humble - and he chooses just such a "role model". Although, in principle, the same person can become an example of some kind of “shocking” type of priest - that is, to enter into a role that is alien to him so that this role seems to “stick” to his face, and he will remain so. But, as a rule, a role is chosen that is easy to play.
Why is the "role model" bad? The fact that no matter what role is worn, if there is nothing inside for it, then one way or another the flock will feel fake.
You can try on the role of a strict and categorical shepherd, or, conversely, a kind, praying, calm, and so on. But if it did not happen from the inside, it will become an empty formality. Moreover, the "role model" may even correspond to the inner qualities, but if it did not grow naturally, but was taken, tried on, copied from someone else - a more authoritative abbot, for example, for parishioners who feel false, this leads to a formal ecclesiastical: “You portray a“ spirit-bearing abba, ”and we portray obedient, humble parishioners. But in reality, we know that everything is not so, it’s just the rules of the game. ”
As a result, the church turns into a kind of role-playing game: both the shepherds and the flock become “role-players”. A costume, role, line of conduct is prescribed for each side. Leaving the church, they take off this role and go on to live their own lives. We talk a lot about how Christianity should permeate all life, that this is a change of soul, a change of mind, but where do people come from who are alone in the church and others outside the church? It's very simple - they were shown an example that they play "role-playing games" in the church. And since they were sensitive to the church subculture, they learned and play their role in such a way that you can't dig. They will also teach others - "newcomers" who have only recently come to church.
"I did not sleep nights": why the shepherds burn out
But let's move on to the dangers of a later period of pastoral life, when the zeal has already passed, when some roles are either played “on autopilot,” or are already boring. This is where the dangers of middle pastoral age arise (it is clear that we are not talking about the passport age, but about the experience of the priesthood) - this is disappointment, burnout, cynicism, depreciation... Because, on the one hand, very often this turns into unnecessary zeal: “I was on fire, I didn’t sleep at night, I did everything 24 hours a day, I abandoned my family. Children faintly remember me in person, mother raised them alone. So what? Someone escaped? Has someone changed for the better? They listen to my sermons, but do not fulfill them. " The search for the culprit begins. The next stage is the devaluation of my ministry (“Everything I did - it was all in vain!”).
Sometimes church realities just turn out to be not at all what a romantic young man dreamed of. Or as it seemed to an exalted middle-aged man who decided to change his life, dropped everything, went to church, he was offered to be ordained, he happily agreed to serve Christ, but then he realized that the entrance was free, but the exit was not. He resigned himself: "This is my life, I will serve ... Censer, sprinkler - and leave me alone with your questions."
There is a “role model” of such an impenetrable, incomprehensible, aloof priest - sometimes in this case the pastors switch to it in a situation of disappointment.
It cannot be said that this passes without a trace for the parishioners, because parishioners under the leadership of such a priest often also come to a loss of faith, to its cooling. Because they had expectations in his address that he would live as a church, that he would burn with faith, and he was so indifferent, as if frostbitten. And unfortunate. He may be just impenetrable, he may be fat, drunk, but still not happy - he does not look very happy. Or he constantly says something that devalues, something humiliating to the flock, so that against the background of this flock he feels better in this crisis of life.
It also happens that the priest did not go completely into such cynicism, but went into active affairs. Replacing the Spiritual with the Secular Is another pastoral risk that is very costly for parishioners and society as a whole. Usually, either feeling a cooling of faith, or striving to be noted by the authorities, the pastor begins to actively engage in external affairs, not spiritual. They can be very good, represent his social service. They can also be of dubious nature - fighting gay pride parades or going to exhibitions with pogroms. But no matter what such a pastor does - all this, by and large, is just to distract from spiritual life, if only it looks churchly - in the understanding of churchness that exists in our church subculture.
How to live your life right
In combination with zealous parishioners, this leads to activism, which also leads them, in general, who initially strived for spiritual life, into the world, leads away from God, leads them to an occupation that is completely uncharacteristic of the Church, such as: to impose moral norms on everyone who did not manage to dodge. Therefore, instead of thinking about their own salvation, people start thinking about anything but this. I personally happened to communicate with very churchly active people - from those who organize clubs of Orthodox fathers, clubs of Orthodox motorcyclists. At some point, it turned out that a person who has been heading the club of Orthodox Fathers for three or four years does not know not only the prayer before meals - he “had no time” to even learn “Our Father”!
Such activism, of course, must be distinguished from true deeds of mercy. When performing the latter, it is very important to maintain a balance so that, say, caring for the sick, do not deprive yourself and your wards of the spiritual component of this mercy. When caring for the sick, the dying, the disabled, orphans, they, in addition to purely practical care, can be given faith, hope, and love. It's about priorities: mercy should be associated with the fact that a person maintains faith - accepts those about whom he cares, as he received Christ, that is, gives his love.
If it is present even in the background, then it is a matter of prayer. If a person approaches the performance of deeds of mercy without prayer, he can very quickly burn out emotionally on it. Because many people rush to volunteer, but they only last for a couple of months. And the spiritual component of life gives greater stability: a person not only does not burn out, but he finds strength in this for subsequent service and finds more opportunities. It is not always possible to help physically, for example, terminally ill, but you can always help spiritually, mentally.
But, unfortunately, there may simply not be a spiritual component. Vigorous activity can simply be a substitute for spiritual life. How can one acquire this spiritual component? In general, this question is answered by all two thousand years of the history of the Church and several centuries of patristic heritage.
But in short, you just need to be with God, pray and seek wise spiritual guidance - but just wise. You need to test the advice you receive.
Let us consider some more of the results that are obtained from certain threats that exist for the shepherds and flocks. Neurotization applies to both. At first glance, the victim is a flock. But in fact, more often the picture is different: there are two neurotics, one is a shepherd, the other is a flock. And the pastor, who has already created an appropriate neurotizing environment around himself, begins to neuroticize a person who, perhaps, did not have such problems. If a person already had a problem, then he gets a subsequent trauma.
Codependency- a problem for both. Because, again, at first glance, it seems that one aggressor, another victim (and the role of the aggressor can be played by parishioners, parish women who completely tortured and commanded the priest, or "spiritual dependents" who all the time ask for blessings for the simplest actions) ... No matter how much he tells them to think and decide for themselves, they continue to insist on frequent and unnecessary blessings.
Codependency is a form of psychological abuse. That is why codependent relationships are terrible, although until a certain moment their participants may be quite comfortable. And all the energy is spent on rotating in this circle, on maintaining these relations. A classic example of an alcoholic's wife - she spends a lot of energy on saving her husband, so she burns out much earlier. Psychosomatic diseases begin, neuroses develop. That being said, what is meant by saving the husband is actually the fuel for this codependent relationship.
The line between codependency, addiction, and your own life is very thin. In my opinion, the ability to live your life is a product of the love that you feel for your loved ones.
You do not sacrifice yourself - you, having taken care of yourself, give your love to another person in the form of care, attention, and so on. This is living your life without falling into a relationship of codependency. It's another matter if you feel that you must take care of someone at all costs, otherwise something bad will happen. Like the very wife of an alcoholic: "I have to take care of him, because otherwise he will fail." At the same time, with her constant expectation that he will break loose, she just pushes him to make him break away, so that she again has somewhere to put her desire to save him.
At the same time, as we all know, codependency is an excuse why something is not being done in my life, something is not working out. If for us the things we do for others are an excuse for powerlessness in achieving what we really want, then we are not living our own lives.
So, we have touched upon a number of dangers that exist for shepherds and flocks. We will also mention ritualism- as a product of formalism. We often see that people go into an external ritual, paying attention only to the orderliness of worship, to the fact that everything should be right. Attention and emphasis are transferred to shrines, to pilgrimages, to the performance of certain actions and rituals. A certain magic of thinking arises: if we correctly perform a certain sequence of actions and correctly say certain words (in quotes, "spells"), then the magic will work and we will get what we originally hoped for. The danger here is understandable - to believe, in this case, we no longer begin to believe in God, but in the correct performance of a magical ritual, which deprives us of communion with God.
Priest Sergiy Begiyan. "Harsh Sip" of the word. On Reading as the Path to the Church and Reading in the Church
About the forgotten tradition of reading in the temple, about what to do if the Bible is difficult to read, and what to do when something confuses in the lives.
It is absurd to neglect psychological help today, and turning to psychologists for it is a trend. Dear, fashionable, public, Orthodox, and, of course, will solve any of your problems - how not to make a mistake in your choice? On the Day of the Psychologist, Natalya Skuratovskaya exposes myths about specialists.
A good psychologist graduated from the best university in the country
Natalia Skuratovskaya
Lack of normal education is a minus. But a diploma from a good university is not a guarantee of quality. It is possible to rely on the teaching staff of the university in which the psychologist studied, but this is not a panacea either. There are a number of educational institutions that, in practical terms, are not inferior to Moscow State University.
Universities provide basic education, and skills of direct work with clients are acquired in the process of additional. It is worth finding out if the psychologist has additional training. What methods does it work with? How long? Where did you learn?
Of course, education is an ambiguous criterion. I know good specialists, whose basic education was not at all psychological, but they graduated from a master's degree in psychology and mastered a number of psychological methods. If a specialist has a diploma of a mediocre institution, and there is no additional education, you will be very lucky if a talented self-taught person comes across.
Serious specialist services are expensive
There is no direct correlation between good and expensive. There are many excellent specialists who work in charitable projects, receive a salary while working in government agencies, or simply have chosen for themselves the “don’t take a lot of money” pricing policy.
Expensive or not very expensive - rather, it characterizes the level of claims of the psychologist himself, the skills of his self-promotion. If someone has decided that only oligarchs will be his clients, then it is not surprising that those around them will seem exorbitant prices.
But in any case, pricing affects the balance between the number of customers and the quality of work. And if a psychologist works a lot, but at the same time lives from hand to mouth and does not have the opportunity to develop and improve his qualifications, sooner or later the quality of his work will decline, no matter how talented he is.
One meeting is enough for a good psychologist to understand the problem and help
Clients often do not see the difference between counseling and psychotherapy.
If we are talking about a local problem, if there are no serious injuries, neurosis, other internal obstacles, if a person does not lie to himself, does not lie to the therapist, there are times that not only to understand, but also to help a person get out of a problem situation is obtained in one session.
But there are plenty of examples when in one session it is possible to only approximately localize the problem, and it can take months, and sometimes years, to get rid of the problem. If we are talking about deep personal problems, then the one who promises to help at one time is either a charlatan or inadequately assesses the situation.
Working with a psychologist for a month, six months, a year, it is important for the client to pay attention to subjective and objective improvements in his life.
For example, something weighed down - now it doesn't weigh me down, something didn't work out - it began to work out, I was at a dead end - I got out of it. The dynamics of change determines how qualified the specialist is and how his style of work suits the client. In psychotherapy, both improvements and subjective deterioration of the state are possible for short periods (a person is scared, anxious in the process of work, negative experiences are exacerbated). But most importantly, is the client's objective reality changing for the better?
If only the mood changes for the better (there are subjective changes, but there are no objective ones), life tasks are not solved, and the problems are aggravated - this is the case when the psychologist "got hooked". By and large, the psychologist has one goal - to become unnecessary for the client until he has new life tasks and questions.
The psychologist is able to solve any problem.
There is some confusion about who is a psychotherapist and who is a psychologist.
Psychological counseling usually helps to sort out a person with a specific request. For example, how to correct behavior in certain life situations, how to build relationships with children, how to overcome failures in a career. Someone wants to use help to navigate in the priority of life goals. The result of a psychologist's consultation will be either getting rid of the problem, or reaching a qualitatively new level of understanding of your life.
Psychotherapy is focused on solving personal problems, not momentary, but systemic. Their reasons may be developmental features, childhood in a dysfunctional family, life crises that knocked a person out of the usual rhythm of life. Lack of strength and desire to do something, inability to cope with fears, irrational problems that are difficult to formulate in words - all this is the sphere of the psychotherapist's activity.
Obviously, not every specialist can cope with such a range, because different groups of problems require different training and competencies. Nobody canceled the individual characteristics of a specialist: one is good at one thing, the other is good at something else. There are no universal psychologists. Life is not enough to successfully prepare for everything.
If someone is taken to work with any problem, it usually means that the person is not very qualified.
However, the responsibility for the choice always lies with the "buyer". When acquaintances and colleagues bombard you with contacts and recommendations from psychologists, this creates a space of choice. But you will have to choose on your own. Try to clearly define the problem for yourself, designate the task that you want to entrust to the psychologist. In part, this will help not to be mistaken, and it will help your friends not to recommend you too much.
A good psychologist always gives specific and practical advice.
A psychologist should not advise at all, and even more so - make certain decisions for the client. There are different areas of counseling and psychotherapy. The degree of directiveness in them will also be different.
For example, in cognitive-behavioral therapy, a psychologist can give specific instructions and action algorithms. In psychoanalysis and other psychotherapeutic directions, it is strictly forbidden to give advice. The methodology simply does not provide for this.
A good psychologist helps you make an independent decision. Bad - imposes the only correct advice. And the more categorical the advice, the more doubts about the qualifications of a psychologist.
Relationships and even friendship develop with a real ace.
In addition to qualifications, professional experience and good reviews about the psychologist, there is a moment of subjective, partly irrational choice. For work to be productive, a welcoming, trusting therapeutic alliance must be formed.
If the client is experiencing emotional rejection, no matter how deserved the psychologist is, you should listen to your intuition and leave. This does not mean that the psychologist is bad. This means that he is not suitable for this client.
The hope is often placed on the psychologist that he will compensate for the shortfall in relations with other people, and at once for the whole life of the client. This was noticed by the founding fathers of psychoanalysis. Freud described the transference mechanisms in which the client projects positive or negative feelings and expectations onto his therapist. People often expect to develop friendship, emotional closeness with a psychologist. But in most areas of psychotherapy, friendship with the client (as long as he remains a client) is impossible. In some therapeutic paradigms, the client is not even allowed to communicate between sessions. There are areas in which one or another relationship with a client is permissible, but in any case, mixing of roles is unacceptable.
For example, you cannot work with relatives, colleagues, with people with whom we enter into fairly emotionally charged relationships.
A productive, benevolent, trusting relationship develops with a good psychologist, because without this the work will not work. But this is not a criterion for the quality of a specialist, it is a criterion for the compatibility of the client and the therapist.
In conditions when there is no licensing of psychologists in the country, and the confirmation of the qualifications of a specialist is the responsibility of the client, people want to hedge themselves. We turn to psychologists with delicate, painful, confidential questions, therefore, it is right to look for guarantees, relying on the experience of other clients, whom working with this psychologist helped to solve their problems.
But friends do not always advise psychologists they know personally. Much more often they recommend those who are known to them by hearsay. It could be a psychologist whose lectures they watched on YouTube, heard on the radio, just read articles. Try to find out if your counselors have personal experience with this psychologist and how successful they are.
You need to be sure that there is no place for emotional dependence in the advice of friends. Sometimes people may like their “such a wonderful” psychologist because he is a master of building a codependent relationship with a client. Until people reach a crisis, when idealization is replaced by disappointment, such a psychologist will be "the best" for them.
Word of mouth should not be ruled out. Seeking reviews and recommendations is a normal way, especially if you are dealing with psychologists for the first time or have negative experiences and seek to hedge against new failures.
If you are potentially interested in a specialist who has been recommended by friends, if you are considering working with him, ask your friends specific questions. Why is it good? How long did you work? What is the result? If work is in progress - what objectively changes for the better?
And the main thing is to be Orthodox!
In the Orthodox environment, there is a certain distrust of psychologists. I remember the times when priests perceived psychologists as "competitors for the souls of the flock." In all seriousness, I had to explain that psychology is not Satanism, not against faith, it’s generally about something else. And until now, such an attitude is not uncommon, although now Christian psychology has proven its right to exist by deeds, and many priests and believers are familiar with it firsthand.
And yet, the religiosity of a psychologist is less important than professionalism and the ability to respect the client's values without imposing their own ideological attitudes.
"Orthodox" is not a quality criterion. When someone insists on being an Orthodox psychologist / lawyer / taxi driver / pediatrician, doubts about the qualifications of this person immediately arise.
Those who have been inside the Church for a long time, have worked at the parish or diocesan level, probably faced situations when, insisting on their Orthodox Christianity, a person simply expects that his professional imperfections will be forgiven him: “I am mine, I am Orthodox.” For now, the prefix "Orthodox" remains a reason for manipulation.
And even if the professionalism of a specialist suits us, it is worth seeing how his belief system is in harmony with ours. A good psychologist will not impose his beliefs on a client, but he may well indicate them, declare what is personally unacceptable for him. Conflicts on the level of values and beliefs are not conducive to effective counseling or psychotherapy.
If a believer, an Orthodox person is faced with the problem of “how to choose a good psychologist,” then there is only one advice - professionalism should come first, and respect for the client's faith and convictions and the willingness not to impose anything second.
A good psychologist is a public person
If a person manages to blog, write books, publish articles, while actively working with clients and involved in educational projects - he is a superhero! First of all, this is a sign of the ability to organize your time, but it does not directly mean that a specialist is superior in all respects to less public specialists. It is necessary to look at what is behind this - after all, 90% of his time a psychologist can spend on self-promotion or hire other people to write on his behalf. Publicity, like non-publicity, is primarily associated with the desire and skill of a specialist to be present in a public space. A high-class specialist may not do all of the above, but not because he has nothing to say, but because he has no time or he is burdened by publicity.
But do not forget that publicity is always an opportunity for a client to slightly reduce risks. Look at a specialist without advertising the desire to consult. Decide for yourself how much he is ready to trust such an expert and whether he agrees with what the psychologist says and writes. How contradictory, from the point of view of the client, the beliefs of the psychologist, including religious ones, can also be detected through his public activity.
Publicity is not a criterion in the choice, but it simplifies the choice. After all, if the fruits of publicity inspire confidence, then it is possible to make a preliminary decision on cooperation.
I experienced all the troubles myself
I don’t think you have to go through all the adversity to be able to help others. Fortunately, every person has a limited supply of troubles. And it’s strange to reduce the work of a psychologist only to those troubles that he personally experienced.
A good psychologist is empathic. This means that he can feel, empathize with the client's pain. It is important for the psychologist to be resourceful, able to help the client to sort out troubles, without falling into his experiences.
Agree, someone who has just read about problems will not undertake to work with them. It is necessary to delve into any problematic, enter, immerse in - through specialized training and experience of working with a certain range of problems, since personal experience is always not universal, and it will not work to say to others “do as I do”. For example, you can practice divorce counseling while you are in a happy marriage. If a specialist is familiar with family issues, family therapy techniques, has thoroughly studied the problem and knows what crises are and how they can be resolved, he does not have to start divorce himself to see how it works in practice.
Each of us, sooner or later, experiences some kind of sorrow. The experience of their own experiences makes the psychologist more compassionate and delicate in some matters. But you can become compassionate and delicate in another way.
What you need to consider when choosing a psychologist
How to choose your psychologist cannot be said in one sentence. Still, a good or a bad specialist is an evaluation category. For some, a good psychologist is one who can effectively help solve a problem. For others - who will provide maximum emotional support, carefully and delicately. For the third - the one who will play along with the client, agree with all his conclusions, speak pleasant to the ear. The fourth will prefer the one who, ruthlessly and harshly, like a surgeon, will not leave a stone unturned from previous convictions and reassemble them in a new configuration. To choose a good specialist, you need to decide what quality criteria are important for you. But there are basic principles that should be taken into account in order not to make the wrong choice:
- try to decide what result you want to achieve what do you want from a psychologist;
- look at open sources, interview your acquaintances, take a chance and look for specialists on the portals dedicated to psychological assistance;
– among the selected specialists arrange "Competitive selection for a vacancy";
- do not bet on one, so as not to be disappointed in psychology at all; talk to several specialists before deciding who to go to for a consultation;
- go for a trial consultation to understand how comfortable it is for you to work with this particular psychologist;
- trust your intuition but test it with your mind;
- do not be afraid to talk to the psychologist about your doubts, including - and at the first meeting.
