So that our children are happy. Dialogue on the topic: “It’s better to pretend to be happy than to really feel unhappy. What makes a person unhappy

All people live according to the same system: school years, university, permanent work, wedding, children. However, the sooner this order is changed, the better. After all, following such a plan will gradually lead to a person completely forgetting what happiness is.

In order not to encounter the sad result of your actions and not become unhappy, you must carefully avoid some mistakes.

Human mistakes that lead a person to unhappiness

Choosing the wrong person. Sometimes life becomes crippled precisely because of this essential factor. The fear of loneliness becomes one of the most terrible troubles, which prevents you from soberly assessing your interlocutors and potential friends or lovers. Based on statistics, the divorce rate is staggering. Many psychologists advise taking a closer look at your partner before committing your own life to him.

Inaction. Many people usually prefer to endure various problems, mistakenly believing that this will be easier than taking the situation into their own hands. The fact that a person does nothing and constantly complains about life is directly to blame for himself. It is necessary to carefully think through and work through all the life moments that cause trouble.

Long memory. Every person has a habit of replaying memories of past events in their head over and over again. However, some analyze it in detail in order to significantly change the future and the present, some simply because they want to. The latter should not be done, since the past can give rise to resentment, anger, pride - all this will only bring failures and losses in the future.

Callousness. You should not be constantly afraid to show emotions and live by them. Sometimes the fear of showing your feelings is generated by fear of a deep misunderstanding of others. However, there are too many people who wear masks of absolute indifference, so you should be confident, positive and not afraid to take the first and important steps. After all, a life rich in emotions becomes bright and filled with meaning and vital goals.

Today we will talk about what makes a person unhappy. And what makes a person unhappy are insatiable desires that we did not begin to control from the very beginning, and they turned into chronic ones. Why are we talking about this? Because a happy person is a person who controls his desires. Because if I don't control them, then they control me. I simply become a slave to my desires. And what’s most interesting is that I’ve been a slave for many lives in a row and I don’t even know about it. But how can a slave be happy? No, he always wants to break free.

This is precisely the main problem of human consciousness, but psychology does not want to admit it. We are simply slaves to our desires and do not even understand that the solution lies on the surface: we must learn to control them. A person who controls his desires is called gosvami, and the slave of desires is called godasa. This is where success hides. After all, a slave certainly cannot be called successful. Therefore, the first thing self-awareness begins with is the understanding of who controls whom - I am my desires, or my desires control me. Who is in charge in my body, strictly speaking?

And the first, most powerful desire that we cease to control is the desire not to depend on anyone. It is born from the desire not to depend on desires themselves, but since it is difficult not to depend on desires, we misuse this right desire and want to not depend on all other living beings. We are not just living, we are playing in a big performance, trying on various roles, checking whether I can be independent in them. Will I be able to be independent in kindergarten, because my mother is no longer around? Eh, I can't. Maybe then I can be independent at school? Once I even skipped a whole month, but this still did not make me an independent student. Maybe then I can be independent at the institute? No, and there is a session every six months, from which it is very difficult to be independent, they simply expelled him and that’s it.

Well, maybe then I’ll be independent at work? And there are so many bosses at work, and they drive me from dawn to dusk. Well, maybe I should become a director myself then? But here comes dependence on suppliers, on clients, on subordinates, on the crisis, on the dollar exchange rate, on competitors. Maybe I will be independent if I leave my mother and live alone? But being alone is boring, I depend on communication. Then maybe start a family? But there is generally one continuous dependence. So one day I understand that the whole world is proving to me that we cannot be independent, therefore happiness must be sought in correct dependence. And Bhagadgita says these simple words: “To become happy, one must depend on someone who is already happy, such a person can be called a teacher.”

After all, if we do not come to this in this life, we will have to try on other roles in the process of reincarnation. Maybe I should try to become an independent bird? Wow, it turns out that I depend on the season of the year, on the hunters, on the pack, on the food. Should I become an independent fish, elephant, ant, bee, cat or plant? But there will be dependence everywhere, there is simply nowhere to escape from it, because initially we depend on happiness, and happiness depends on love. The whole question is only one thing, what is the level of our happiness, and this means how purely we love, how sublimely and selflessly.

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What makes a person unhappy?

Alcohol, drugs, empty chatter cloud the mind of a person who sees nothing and no one around him, becomes a dummy, unable to think, feel and empathize.

Ask yourself a question: how often have you responded to a rude statement or action addressed to you with patience, love and understanding of the inner state of this person. The fact that we are unhappy depends on whether we have such darkened emotions as jealousy, pride, attachment and hatred. These four emotions make a person unhappy. I would like to give some examples of these emotions in our daily life.

JEALOUSY: jealousy of husband or wife; jealousy of someone else's toy; envy that she or he has a better car, house, job; jealousy and greed for other people's wealth and happiness

PRIDE: statements like “I’m cooler”, “I’m smarter”, “I’m richer”, exalting oneself over others, contempt for the weak and defenseless, humiliating them, reluctance and inability to admit one’s shortcomings and defeats, reluctance and inability to admit one’s wrong.

ATTACHMENT:“I love this toy more than anything in the world,” “I can’t live without my favorite phone and car,” “I want these earrings and a dress, I’ve been dreaming about them for the third night.” The loss of an object of clinging leads to frustration, anxiety, and, in other words, to misfortune.

HATRED:“I hate you”, “you are a freak”, “I will kill you”, “I don’t want to see you anymore.” Anger is the most powerful feeling that can burn a person’s inner world, making him nervous and irritable. Don’t evaluate or blame people, don’t insult people, and you will receive love and blessings, you will become kind and happy and will not be preoccupied with the trifles and trifles of life, to which we sometimes attach too much importance.

In your mental stream, you need to cultivate good states that are the foundation of a happy life, such as joy, love, compassion, patience, responsibility for others, develop wisdom and understanding of what is happening around you.

Re-educating your mind and helping your children in this lies in whether a person understands the difference between noble feelings and ignoble ones, whether he develops the quality of his consciousness or not. Of course, you need to start with yourself, and only then help your child in correctly understanding his position in life. Recognition and development of your condition precedes any advice and moral teaching, both to your child and to the people around you. The ability to look inside oneself, relax, enjoy life - this is what parents should develop in their child.

When a child is left alone, this does not mean that you abandon him, make him lonely and unable to make his own decisions in the future or be an outcast. At the moment of loneliness, a person recognizes where his “I” is, where the outer world is, where the inner world is, finding himself in a state of contemplation, in a state of peace. Have you ever thought about the meaning of the word “peace”, how often do you stay in it, what is the reason for the inability to stop in time, where does this constant desire to run somewhere, look for something come from? In fact, you don’t need to run anywhere or search either, you need to look for all the answers inside, outside there are only questions that create fuss, problems, and misunderstanding.

Everyone and even more writes about how to become happy and successful. But few people dare to write about how to ruin their life and become an unhappy person. Simply because this topic is not very fashionable and not very pleasant. Since it has long been no secret that it is not those around us and circumstances that make us unhappy, but ourselves. And again, we inflict the most severe pain on ourselves. But not everyone can admit this to themselves.

Because it's getting scary. After all, if we are to blame for our plight, then complaining about external circumstances will no longer work. But you will have to pull yourself together and start working hard on your happiness. Just don’t confuse it with well-being, because if it is present, people are not always happy!

One of the options to give a magic kick, after which even a hedgehog will fly, is to take advantage of our natural talent to do everything “from the opposite side”. It’s not for nothing that Grigory Oster’s book “Bad Advice” is so popular. So let's call it "Ten Tips for Those Who Want to Be Unhappy."

Celestine Chua wrote these ten tips before starting her next twenty-day experiment. This time she decided to spend 21 days only in a positive attitude despite external circumstances.

After reading these tips, I realized that I myself was a sinner. Some points almost screamed “You do this all the time!” I can't say that I'm unhappy. But sometimes I get this feeling that the whole world is against me and everything turns out very badly. The main thing is just not to get hung up and not stay in this state for a long time, otherwise you can get involved and become Eeyore;)

Constantly complain about life

This is what we do best! Options: “Why did this happen to me?!”, “Why didn’t I get this job,” “Why didn’t he ask me on a date?!” etc. and so on. The list of such complaints can be endless. People are always complaining about something. If it's not the government, then at least the weather. There has been no snow for a long time - where is winter?! It was covered in snow, which did not melt even in mid-March - when will this winter end?! Every situation can be turned around so that it looks unfavorable. Agree that we look for negativity much more often and find it much faster than positive aspects.

What to do? Try to find positive or at least neutral moments in everything. And as soon as you catch yourself starting to whine and complain, stop it immediately! Otherwise, the wound-up organ will never stop. Awareness is the first step to solving a problem. Try to catch the moment of switching to negativity and understand what exactly is the trigger for you.

Deliberately Avoid Problems

Sometimes Scarlett O'Hara's version helps a lot ↓

I won't think about it today. I will think about it tomorrow.

But too often many people use it as an excuse for their inaction and unwillingness to solve problems that have arisen.

Putting it off, avoiding it, closing your eyes, pretending you weren’t heard, not expressing your opinion - all this is avoiding problems. But this way you don’t solve them, you simply put them off for later. Moreover, over time, a small problem can turn into a huge snowball that will eventually bury you. In any case, such ostrich behavior will only make things worse. So get your head out of the sand and do something about it. This is already a step towards victory.

Compare yourself to others

This is my favorite point! You can’t even imagine how stupid it all looks from the outside and how much trouble such a comparison actually brings. About six months ago I watched the film “The Joneses,” which very colorfully describes this behavior. In which an ideal married couple with an ideal house, ideal children and things arrived in a small town. Everything was luxury. And the neighbors began to look at them and try to do everything exactly the same. As a result, one of the heroes became so carried away by comparing himself and his family with this standard that he committed suicide when he realized that he did not reach their level, no matter how hard he tried.

This plot from the film shows one of the most terrible consequences of such imitation. I don't know how real such cases are. But low self-esteem and feeling like a complete loser are guaranteed. There will always be someone who is at least somewhat better than you.

Worry about things and events that haven't even happened yet

This is one of the most common reasons why so many great ideas never see the light of day. Because their owners are afraid of failure, which they are not 100% sure of. Just suddenly?! And a whole series of far-fetched obstacles that may arise in front of a novice entrepreneur immediately line up. For the same reasons, families are not created, couples do not get along and children do not appear.

I don't want to sound cynical, but in the end we will all die. So why miss such a huge number of positive moments in our only life because of fears that may never come true?!

Burden yourself with problems

Avoiding problems is bad, but immersing yourself in them too much is also not very healthy. If you have a talent for making mountains out of molehills, then this item is just for you. Everyone faces problems. Big and small, urgent and not so urgent. If you lament, even the smallest problem will seem difficult to solve.

Stop whining and ask for help.
Break the problem down into its components and it won’t seem so scary anymore.
Don't try to solve several problems at once. Create a priority queue and process problems one at a time in the order in which they arrive.

Do things you don't like

I will not dwell on this point in detail, since it is already obvious.

It's hard to be happy while doing something you don't like.

Continue a relationship that has long since exhausted itself

Being close to someone you no longer love is stupid. Staying close because of guilt and pity is doubly stupid. No matter how well you hide it, the person still feels that the attitude towards him has changed. And he will harass you so that you confess. Particularly talented partners also manage to instill a feeling of guilt, because of which you will definitely never leave him.

By remaining in such a relationship, you deprive yourself of the opportunity to find new love and start a new life. It's like you're stuck in a negative past with no future. The option “We are responsible for those we tame” is only suitable for pets. With a person in this state, it is no longer love, but affection. These two completely different feelings should not be confused. You need to get rid of attachments.

The same goes for relationships with friends. No matter how sad this fact may sound, people change and over time some connections fade, weaken and are completely broken. Drawing on them just because you are friends is as stupid as staying with someone you don't love. Such friends will not appreciate or listen to you.

You had a wonderful completed relationship. It's time to move on.

Try to change the people around you

It's difficult to change yourself. It's even harder to change the people around you. Especially when you're just trying to adjust them to suit you. Any person with even rudimentary self-respect will stubbornly (or even aggressively) resist such an act of violence against his personality.

You can spend a huge amount of time changing what you think are bad habits of your significant other. In the end, he or she will simply leave you, changed and improved. To those who will appreciate them for who they are. At the end of this story there will be only one unhappy person - you.

People change solely of their own free will. So the only thing you can do is lead by example. And if you succeed, you can start a whole movement that will change not only the people around you, but the world as a whole.

Try to please everyone

And this is generally one of the most thankless tasks. It is impossible to please everyone. If everyone likes you, then you are most likely mediocre with no opinion of your own. It’s one thing to keep your mouth shut in front of relatives or bosses, but another thing is to try to be pleasant to everyone. In the pursuit of “making everyone happy,” you will not notice how your own “I” will dissolve in the flow of other people’s desires and preferences. As a result, you will earn another neurosis and inferiority complex.

You should live your life, not other people's desires.

Tie yourself to goals/things/statuses/people

There is nothing permanent in our world. Everything flows, everything changes. Including you. Your goals set at the beginning of the year may become completely irrelevant by the end of the year. The person with whom you were madly in love and with whom you vowed to “live in sickness and in health until death do you part” may turn out to be a completely different prince, friends tend to let you down, and children tend to grow up not the same as we did them. represented. People change, money depreciates, work can get boring - you can’t tightly tie yourself to previously set goals, to people and to things. Be flexible and open and then the world will definitely respond and give you a couple of worthwhile ideas/people just at the moment when you don’t expect it.

I think that everyone will find at least one item on this list that they do every day. Sometimes with special persistence. Perhaps there are no absolutely and permanently happy people. But we can at least try to become like this for a day... for two... or maybe for a week. And maybe this state of happiness will become one of our good habits?

Don't get stuck, don't stop and never give up.

Alexander Tkachenko continues his thoughts about the psychological problems of modern man and talks about the five most common traps that lead people to unhappiness and neuroses. Start of article Will I be cured too?

Trap 1: Someone else's view as a measure of truth

Here is a man walking down the street. He looks no different from everyone else - jeans, sneakers, a fashionable haircut, a bag with a laptop over his shoulder... Except his face is a little more tense. But in general - everything is like everyone else. But what lives in his soul is not just a need - a real thirst for love and acceptance by those around him. It would seem, what could be more natural? After all, if you look at it, each of us strives for exactly this - to love and be loved.

But in fact, a neurotic desire for love can be distinguished by a very simple sign: it is vitally important for a person to be loved and accepted not only by loved ones, but by absolutely all the people with whom fate brings him - random passers-by on the street, salespeople in a store, fellow travelers in tram, officials in government agencies...

Therefore, he is always concerned about what others think about him; he, in fact, always looks at himself through someone else's eyes. When he waits alone for the bus at the bus stop, he feels quite comfortable. But as soon as at least one more passenger appears nearby, the person becomes restless. He immediately begins to secretly check whether the wind has tousled his hair, whether the crease on his trousers has gone astray, he remembers that on his left cheek, as luck would have it, some small pimple popped up in the morning, and in general - that his figure not very reminiscent of antique samples. And it doesn’t matter at all who this newly arrived passenger turns out to be - a guy or a girl, an adult woman with glasses or a gray-haired pensioner with a cane. It also doesn’t matter that in a few minutes he will disappear forever and will never appear in your life again. Only one thing matters: how does he look at you? Are you worthy of approval, in his opinion, or do you look like a complete vakhlak (which deep down you consider yourself to be)?
Such a need does not prevent a person from successfully studying, working, starting a family, or making a career. However, his life can hardly be called happy. Indeed, in addition to his own ideas about what he should be, he - and this is especially characteristic of our 21st century - every day, certain “standards” of beauty are literally driven into his consciousness through advertising, cinema, and the covers of glossy magazines. And he... He is just the way he is. And his loved ones love him, without even thinking about how he corresponds to these dubious glossy standards. But, alas, the invented image turned out to be more important to him than real love.

Trap 2: You are not needed, but you are

“Oh, you brainless fool!” “Such rubbish, what are you doing?” “Uh-oh, shameful bastard, he messed up again!”
Familiar lines, aren't they? But it’s not the boss who scolds a careless subordinate, it’s not the mother who scolds her daughter for having her dress burnt by an iron, and it’s not the boys in the yard who are spreading rot on a peer who made a mistake according to their boy code. With such (and sometimes even worse words) a person can scold... himself many times a day. Moreover, for rather harmless mistakes, which no one except himself even noticed.
The fact is that the painful desire for love also has a downside, which we have already mentioned - dislike for oneself, sometimes turning into real hatred and contempt. However, oddly enough, it is precisely these feelings that can lead a person to the heights of success in career growth or creativity. Due to constant dissatisfaction with himself, he will always strive to become better than he is, to improve, to acquire new experience, knowledge and skill. And the modern world will spur it on with its “standards of success”: higher education at any cost, a well-paid job, career growth, a bank account, holidays abroad...
But even having become a super boss, a star, an idol and a favorite of millions, he will still remain in the same conflict with himself and will continue to dislike himself and scold himself with the last words for no reason. Constantly comparing oneself with an ideal image does not leave a person any chance to get rid of this addiction, because dislike for oneself is also an addiction, since one cannot get rid of it.
One Russian brilliant actor and director, whose name is on everyone’s lips, and whose acting has been captivating audiences with its perfection for several decades, said the following about himself in a recent interview: “I am a very, very insecure person. I even cry sometimes from disappointment in myself, from the fact that I always think that I will be exposed, how unimportant I am. I don’t know, how can this be - am I interesting? I don’t know... I generally live under the slogan “You are not needed, but you exist”..."

Photo by Arek Olek

There’s probably no better way to say about self-dislike. Many people live under the same slogan, not only gray and downtrodden, but also outwardly bright, dazzlingly successful. But instead of calm satisfaction with life, success brings them only temporary peace from the awareness of this terrible thought: “You are not needed, but you are.”

Trap 3: Because I deserve it!

The editor of any publication knows what it is like to work with an “unrecognized genius,” when the person sitting opposite you is convinced that every line he writes is worth its weight in gold. At the same time, although he writes tolerably, it is quite mediocre. However, at the slightest hint of this, he can become mortally offended and leave the editorial office forever, in the hope that his “brilliant” prose will be deservedly appreciated at least by his descendants.
Despite the tragicomic nature of such situations, one can only sympathize with a person with such a self-image.
The internal conflict between the real and ideal “I” with inexorable logic leads a person to the highest point of this split - neurotic pride. To put it very simply, it is self-respect based on imaginary merits and merits. Tired of constant self-dislike, a person slowly begins to identify himself with the ideal image he has invented and get used to it. And finally, he becomes his slave. The ideal image turns for him into a kind of Frankenstein's monster, hating and seeking to destroy its own creator. There can be a great many options here, because such a person is capable of being proud of anything, from the highest virtues to the most base vices. The main thing is that these traits are present in his ideal. For example, there are people who are proud of their responsiveness, their ability to sacrifice their time, energy, and resources for others. It would seem, what's wrong with that? And the whole point is that this selflessness is just one of the qualities that a person attributed to his imaginary double. And he acts in this way not at all out of love for people, but only for the sake of satisfying his neurotic need - to correspond to this phantom. Of course, the people he helped will rightly be grateful to him. And the benefit that it brings to others is, of course, just a benefit for them, and not something else. But such a life hardly brings him joy: after all, the more he helps people, trying to please his mental idol, the further his true personality moves away from them. Well, how can we not remember the words of the Apostle Paul: ... And if I give away all my possessions and give my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing (1 Cor 13:3).

An example of such terrible selflessness without love was shown by the writer Pavel Sanaev in his famous book “Bury Me Behind the Baseboard,” where the grandmother, caring for her grandson, living for him and giving herself to him without reserve, turned his childhood into a real hell.

But you can be proud of compliance with the much less noble qualities of your ideal “I”. Thus, Rodion Raskolnikov imagined himself equal to Napoleon in the right to decide other people's destinies. To confirm this, he hacked to death and robbed two elderly women. And only after the crime had been committed, he suddenly realized that his real personality was not “Napoleon, who has the right,” but exactly the same “trembling creature” as most of the other people so despised by him. The genius of Dostoevsky tore the mask of his ideal “I” from the soul of this hero. And, seeing his real self, Raskolnikov suddenly discovered with horror that he despised himself in the same way, and even more, since the hopes that he was different crumbled to dust. But this was the 19th century, when researchers nobly sought to use the discovery of such “dark rooms” in the human soul to correct it.
Nowadays, such nobility has turned out to be fairly diluted by the banal desire to make money. It is this painful need - to be proud of one’s invented virtues - that is used with might and main today in advertising of a wide variety of goods and services. “...After all, I deserve it,” “...only for the best,” “...real men choose” - a great many similar calls, like a hammer, hit this pain point of the buyer, turning to his ideal “I”, giving this “I” new features, forging new needs. As a result, the unfortunate person begins to be proud of the fact that he uses razors from a well-known company for shaving, because “... there is no better thing for a man,” or smokes cigarettes of a certain brand, since their advertising was built on the image of “a real man, firmly in the saddle.”

Trap 4: I am exceptionally exceptional!

In Chekhov’s story “Joy,” the college registrar Mitenka Kuldarov enthusiastically tells his family that they wrote about him in the newspaper and now all of Russia will know his name. True, the newspaper article only talked about how he, while drunk, fell under a cab driver's sleigh, having previously received a shaft to the forehead. But even such dubious popularity aroused great delight in the young official.
This is another neurotic trait - a feeling of exclusivity, a deliberate confidence that you are not like everyone else. It is expressed in the constant expectation of recognition of this exclusivity by others and in the firm belief that one day the day will come when everyone around them suddenly realizes that such an amazing person has humbly worked next to them for so many years. Moreover, recognition should come somehow on its own, without effort on his part. Well, just once - and that’s it! And - it happened!
This strange feeling was very succinctly and succinctly expressed in the early songs of “The Time Machine”:

...In the same way, everyone believes in their exclusivity,
Surprised that there is no confirmation of this.

But, alas, there is really nothing to be surprised about here. Over time, a person gets used to his ideal “I” and simply forgets that he himself invented it. And this one, invented, is wonderful! He's great! It’s impossible for such perfection to go unnoticed!
Unfortunately, this perfection exists mostly only in the head of its unfortunate creator. And disappointment in such expectations is a common story.

...Everyone believed that the main thing would come.
They considered themselves one of the few
And we waited for what was about to happen
Happy turn of your road,
Your destiny has a happy turn!

...But our century seems to be coming to an end
And soon, no doubt, it will pass.
And nothing happens to us,
And it's unlikely that anything will happen.

(A. Makarevich. Pauses)

As a result, a person can study, work, start a family, and raise children just like everyone else. But all this does not make him happy. After all, he lives in constant anticipation of some decisive moment, when everything will suddenly magically change and the life that he has invented for himself as the only one worthy of this name will finally begin. And his real life at this time quietly and irrevocably passes by, taking with it joys, victories and opportunities that he never took advantage of...

Trap 5: Networks and their inhabitants

Here is a man sitting in a cozy cafe, in the company of friends. He eats delicious ice cream and listens to pleasant music. And suddenly he grabs his smartphone, presses the button, and intensely peers at the lit up screen. Then he puts it back on the table and continues to chat with friends. But not even a minute passes before he repeats this whole procedure with the smartphone again. And then - again. And further. Until, finally, one of his friends asks him: “Listen, do you have a direct line with the president?” Only after this does he smile shyly and put the phone in his pocket. But the fact is that he was just... counting the likes on his latest post on Facebook.
In social networks, a real expanse opens up to satisfy neurotic needs. Just look at the just-mentioned system of public approvals - likes. After all, for a person with a “dislocated” desire for love, there is nothing more important than recognition. Therefore, “collecting” likes very quickly became a favorite pastime of millions. And let idle analysts not be outraged by the insane number of cats, food and other cute photos posted on social networks every minute. The point here is not the cats themselves, but the fact that with their help the author of the photo can get the maximum number of likes - after all, everyone loves cats and delicious food.

Although, with the advent of cameras on the front panel of smartphones, “selfies” - a type of self-portrait taken at arm’s length - have become more than serious competition for cats. True, a slightly different principle was involved here - the same need to constantly look at oneself through someone else's eyes in the hope of approval. And now the expectation of the coveted red flags on a blue background forces people to look at their pages on the Internet almost every minute: has anyone else liked me?
Communication on social networks also turned out to be an excellent opportunity to realize those very painful expectations of recognition of one’s exclusivity. After all, here the opportunity finally appeared to calmly speak on behalf of your ideal “I”, without fear of being caught in a substitution. There is a sad joke that quite accurately reflects this situation. The Lion, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman came to the great and terrible Goodwin. One complained that he had no courage, another that he had no mind, and a third that he had no heart. The great and terrible Goodwin nodded understandingly: “Okay, but now this is no longer a problem!” And... he gave the defective applicants a laptop with Internet access.
Probably everyone has noticed such a strange phenomenon - a person in online communication is simply strikingly different from his real self. A quiet, calm man in life suddenly becomes aggressive and impudent in a chat, a modest homely girl begins to talk with the intonations of a “femme fatale”, and I don’t even want to talk about all sorts of substitutions of age and gender here. And the reason for all these various oddities lies precisely in people’s dislike for themselves, in their painful desire to become not who they really are.

Much more could be written about neurotic needs - about the resentment they generate, and about the constant expectation of praise, and about the desire to do everything perfectly for fear of making a mistake, and about the cult of power, about the desire to suppress other people... But how Kozma Prutkov said, you cannot embrace the immensity. It is impossible to comprehensively cover a topic about which many thick books have been written in one journal publication.
From the point of view of scientific psychology, all threats to mental health in the 21st century turned out to be possible because the human soul is not nearly as healthy as is commonly thought.
And is it any wonder that psychology here, in its own way, came to exactly the same facts that the Church has been talking about since its inception. “...I must say that it is very rare among people to love themselves. Most people hate themselves…” - these words of St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) can be put as an epigraph to all modern publications about the distorted needs of man. And psychology essentially defines the causes of this misfortune in exactly the same way as the Church: the absence of love, its cooling, the replacement of the law of love with the lawlessness of sin. True, the ways of overcoming this dislike in the Church and in psychology are, of course, different. But any path always begins with the first step. And in order to begin to solve his spiritual and psychological problems, a person must first at least see these problems, realize them, and understand that it is not the modernized world that is their cause.
Yes, modern civilization has brought upon us a huge number of temptations unprecedented in the history of mankind. But the soil on which these new seeds sprout abundantly today is as old as the world. Psychologists give it their own names, for example, “basal human anxiety” - a concept that includes a feeling of one’s own insignificance, helplessness, abandonment, and exposure to all the dangers of the huge world. Christianity says that all these feelings are a direct consequence of man’s falling away from his Creator. And it is possible to completely get rid of them (and therefore protect yourself from all modern threats to mental health) only by restoring this broken connection with God.
And this is not banal church rhetoric, but a very real experience of overcoming the traps for the soul that every century sets for humanity. Just in order to take advantage of this experience, you need to enter into it and at least try what it is like to live according to the commandments of the Gospel, what it is like to pray. Because without such practical steps towards one’s own mental health, neither religion nor psychology can help a person.