Natalya Skuratovskaya is a psychologist. Psychologist Natalia Skuratovskaya: Why Violence Occurs in Priestly Families. God punished is a trap

Psychologist Natalia Skuratovskaya comments.

“The priest killed his wife” is terrifying, but alas, not surprising. Domestic violence occurs in priestly families (and simply in "deeply churchly" families) more often than "on average in the hospital." The reasons are simple: psychopaths among priests, to put it mildly, are no less than among other citizens, but widespread ideas about marriage and marital relations are such that they actually legitimize violence and prevent a way out of a crisis in a family situation. (Moreover, these ideas are based on a false understanding of both the Gospel and the canons - another substitution that cripples, and sometimes even takes away life).

I had occasion to communicate both with a very young mother, beaten to the blueness by her equally young husband (the offspring of a venerable priestly family "with traditions" - yes, including - with the tradition of "humble" his wife by beatings), and with many children suffering from domestic violence older mothers who have experienced more than one fracture over the years of family life, with broken kidneys, but do not dare to change the situation. What do they usually hear from a spiritual father? "Be patient, humble yourself, this is your cross, this is for your own benefit, divorce is a mortal sin, let the wife fear her husband ..."

And where in an ordinary family a woman would overcome fear and codependency, get to the crisis center and receive support and shelter, many mothers will endure to the last - and not only because of the above "edifications", but also because it is a shame “Defame” the husband, lower his priestly authority, “bring blasphemy against the Church” (by the way, very often these abuser priests behave completely differently in the parish - and the parishioners consider them “good shepherds”).

In some cases, domestic violence is not a consequence of psychopathy, but of a situation of tremendous pressure, in which a priest finds himself due to the peculiarities of our "church system", and if he does not deal with this chronic stress constructively, then the "Take out" all negative emotions that do not find a way out)

And I really want to remind women who find themselves in a situation of domestic violence:

1. You are not alone with this misfortune- throughout the country there is a network of crisis centers for victims of domestic violence, which will provide both psychological and legal assistance, and, if necessary, a shelter (and even with 6 children, yes). It's free.

And even if you are not going to leave yet, it is worth contacting the specialists of the crisis center and confidentially discussing your situation - so that there is an adequate perception of the situation as such, and the risk to which you expose yourself and your children, and opportunities to change the situation.

2. If you decide to leave your abusing husband, then first grab the children and go to a safe place(if there is no such place for relatives and friends, then in a shelter), and then sort things out, discuss a possible divorce, etc.

3. Your Leaving Will Not "Destroy the Marriage"(if there is a threat to life and health, everything is already destroyed), but it can give the marriage a chance for salvation (and this chance lies in psychotherapy, in some cases - with the participation of a psychiatrist, who will help the abuser to restrain aggressive impulses, and possibly - to cope with those own personal problems that push him to violence). Until the wife leaves, the abusing husband has no incentive to admit the problem and begin to address it.

——————
Rest, Lord, the newly departed Anna and accept her into Your heavenly abodes!

And help, Lord, those who can still be saved.

Information Department of the Khabarovsk Diocese

From 6 to 16 September 2013, with the blessing of Metropolitan Ignatius of Khabarovsk and Priamursk, the first cycle of classes from the course "Practical Pastoral Psychology" was held at the Khabarovsk Theological Seminary. The author's program of psychologist Natalia Stanislavovna Skuratovskaya is designed for two years, it was developed as a practical addition to the basic course of psychology held at the seminary.

Natalia Skurotovskaya - Lomonosov Moscow State University M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Faculty of Psychology, General Director of the company "Viv ACTIVE", consultant, business coach.

Khabarovsk Theological Seminary has become a kind of experimental platform: for the first time in the system of spiritual education, the seminary is teaching the course “Practical Pastoral Psychology” in an active training format.

Each semester, full-time students will "immerse themselves" in a two-week intensive, and consolidate the material covered in webinars. The course consists of thematic blocks: personality psychology, social psychology, communication psychology, motivation, public speaking and discussions, self-organization, time and stress management.

- Natalia Stanislavovna, tell us how the course of practical psychology came about?

“The idea was born three years ago, during the“ Pastor's Psychological School ”in the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. When we were examining difficult situations, many fathers said: “Oh, if only I knew that in seminary,” because a lot is always expected from a priest: advice, instruction, admonition, consolation, without adjusting for age and experience.

-What are the features of pastoral psychology?

The Church is the mystical Body of Christ; on the other hand, it is also an organization. It has its own tasks, distribution of responsibility, hierarchy. When we come to the solution of these tasks in the Church, we always mean the spiritual dimension. For practical pastoral psychology, this means that we always focus on patristic teaching, find points of contact between patristic and secular psychology, cut off methods that are unacceptable for an Orthodox person. For example, in psychology there are many methods for developing self-confidence that simultaneously contribute to the development of selfishness and pride. The entire path of an Orthodox Christian is aimed at combating this sin, therefore, you need to look for other ways to solve the problem.

-For example, how to overcome uncertainty, so to speak, "in the Orthodox way"?

Need to figure out what is undermining our confidence? Fear, vanity (the desire to make a better impression on someone than what it really is), inertia (the inability to resist the overwhelming will of others).

You can develop self-confidence by overcoming your fears. You need to accept yourself as you are. The Lord loves us for who we are and accepts, why should we despise ourselves? Place the accents correctly. To understand that there is no point in looking better than you really are, you just need to strive to actually be better. By the way, fighting fears and passions is an important ascetic task.

-Many clergymen are wary of psychologists and psychological science. Why do you think?

When the question arises, why psychology, if there are holy fathers, then I answer: If a person firmly embarked on the path of spiritual improvement, if at this stage of his life there is no goal more important than being with God, then psychology is completely unnecessary for him. But are there many such people in the parishes? To become on the ascetic path, a person must grow up. Until this happens, he suffers from mental disorders that prevent him from approaching spiritual issues. To help other people, you need to clear the place from the psychological garbage that each of us carries in ourselves. The future shepherd must understand how the psyche, consciousness functions, how relationships are built between people, which causes conflicts.

-What topics were the students most interested in?

Dialogue management, discussion, public speaking .. Much depends on the personal qualities of the children, those who had oratorical experience and teamwork skills, more consciously approached the classes. With the understanding that after the seminary they will need this knowledge. But for some it is still abstract material.

It is impossible to make a person psychologically competent in a week, so my task at this stage is to arouse interest and make you think. This course is not only training, but also education, the process of personal growth. I hope this will help seminarians at the beginning of their ministry in parish, missionary, teaching practice, that is, in any business that requires communication with people.

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 summoned 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 manipulation is carried out by pressure on emotions - fear is whipped up or “pressure is 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 slightest of them, and generally sends 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- 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 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 are dealing with manipulation by distorting information, the best thing we can do is to focus on the facts, to clarify, concretize, squeeze, as they say, not to 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 the 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 keeping 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 showing 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,” “don’t 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 will come 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 behave differently than 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 that the Church is, 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. 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, before 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 that 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 manipulation:

• 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 cannot talk about this - 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 you trust, or if you don’t 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

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 turning 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 own, 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, paints - 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 would they see a person in him - he should only be a symbol of his ministry. “To reveal Christ” is understood not as “to show love, acceptance”, but to show 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 should obey, that his mother would 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 the 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 uncomfortable 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 father, a circle of "adoring people" 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 internal 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, detached priest - sometimes in this case it is on this that the pastors switch 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 devaluing, something humiliating to the flock, so that against the background of this flock he feels better in this life crisis.

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.