Cuándo acudir al psicólogo, artículo en inglés

When and why make a visit to the psychologist?

Hello to everyb@dy. 

Many times we can hesitate to go to a psychologist because we don´t understand the signals that alert us from seeking the advice of a specialist in mental health. If these characteristics signals persist insistently, concerning our behavior accompanied with a discomfort such as an emotional distress, it could be or maybe because we don´t understand these signs that post  significant problems with multiple dimensions in our psycho-affectional tendencies, like for example the feelings of anxiety, depressions, phobias, relationship issues (what is called affective disorders) or fears.

This signals are accompanied by symptoms such as repeated insomnia, stress, prolonged decay feelings (abatement), high sensitivity (feeling irritable), being inflicted with disturbing thoughts, etc. In children these signs become evident especially in school performance, likewise in behavior problems as famishing, reluctance to bathe, having an aggressive and argumentative behavior, etc.

Other signals, that are already a bit more complex concerning our biology, could be the stutter, arthritis, the continuous pains of head, the high blood pressure, stomach ulcers, epilepsy and all the forms of psychosomatic disorders that we have been indicated by doctors or those we have found out by ourselves. Many of these signals sink their roots in the personality disorders; others are because adaptive disorders; others are caused by traumatic stress.

With regard of why going to the psychologist, we think that people in overall, such as adults or children, at any time of their life span may be victims of uncommon emotional agitators even without being aware of it, like for example feeling hatred (or being in a covert hostility), feeling fear, or any kind of dreads without reason, guilt sentiments or multiplex feelings of inferiority or dependency. All these are harmful emotions, gradually making havoc in mind and body and are able to produce mental or physical injury. Furthermore, all these agitators or malcontents’ emotions even can modify the normal pace of health (or biorhythm) by blocking the natural healing powers that we all have at our disposal in a healthy body. Already in this phase we may well speak of mental disorders (moderate or severe) that can adhere or fasten together to those medical complaints like in psychosomatics disorders.

But moreover, these emotional agitators even have a tendency to be unconscious, many are biological tendencies, others are cognitive tendencies. All of them form a kind of vicious circle in which many times we hide to ourselves. For example, the feeling of fear, not an easy one! This emotion is a problem that must be face to each one of us. It is a fact in medical consults that fear acts on our endocrine glands producing dysfunction throughout the nervous system. Fears such as the trepidations in falling, fear of loud noises, fear of the dark…, heights, enclosed places, spiders, snakes, to sleep, to death, and last but not list, fear of our own thoughts.

All these fears produce harmful effects in us, especially if we don´t challenge our self to think sincerely about our problems or to assess us as we really are. In this sense, the denial mechanism is a dangerous one; we deny certain thoughts and emotions to keep up with social appearances and personal comfort. Plastic proof of this comes to us from the hand of literature or motion pictures of the Victorian era, where pretending or feigning, exhibiting disloyalty or hypocrisy were on the agenda of those times when making a friendship, a colleague from work or a personal relationship.

We may well list seven classes of vain fears that frighten us (cited by the Professor John Dollard, University of Yale), such as:

1.      To fail

2.      Sexuality

3.      Trust in others

4.      Loneliness

5.      The defense of ourselves  

6.      To talk

7.      To think

We will pause at the last two fear items a little bit, that is, the fear to think or speak. This type of fears comes mainly to us by the type of education we have received in our childhood, at home but also at school, because usually they produce many inhibitions. For example, we are punished when we gossip or chitchat  in the classroom at school, or when we are forbidden to move and keep still in the classroom, listening only to the teacher,  and all this issues dressed from a sober and rigid discipline. Others difficult moments that we face in our lives are when we fear the leak or drip of some badly thought or a wrong expression, a kind of negligence that discover the mask that we present to the world. Although these fears turn out to be hazardous fitting in our persona as people-dependent, bully and often suggestible.

Other psycho-agitators who point out extremely in our emotions are guilt, feelings of inferiority and lost love (sentiment of abandon, hate). We make a stop in this point, without intending to exhaust the reader with an extensive article, but to be comprehensive and pragmatic reading. Therefore, and to conclude, the antagonist feeling of love is hate, sentimental agitators that we had mentioned spin around our concept of love, either toward ourselves, either headed for others.

Having three fundamental attitudes towards somebody, we can love him, we can hate him or we can be indifferent or uncaring. Hatred has been called by social scientist as a misguided love (or a frustrated love), and these are attitudes and significant tendencies that always impoverish us, and when we really make out who we really are, we can find the way to our emotional well-being and our mental health.

There is a antique Greek adage that says "know yourself", that after more than two thousand years of history, this Greek aphorism gnothi seauton, or in latin expressed with the formula temet nosce, constantly invites us to self-knowledge in order to be what we should be. So we could walk straight towards the Kingdom of harmony that is within each of us.

 

David Norberto Gascón Razé. 
Psicólogo en Madrid  

Tel: 636 55 45 62 
Página Web: http://www.psicologaenmadridarganzuela.com