Punishing yourself is a fairly common thing in the life of a fat person, and not just a fat person, in principle, any person.
The word “punishment” comes very easily from our lips, as if it were a self-evident thing, and if an overweight person punishes himself with the help of a diet, then everyone simply claps their hands, “What a great fellow you are!” Keep it up! Let's keep working out and take care of yourself (scoff)"
I wrote it in parentheses (scoff), because I can’t call it anything else, if a person begins to punish himself for something, he is at once an accuser, a judge, an executioner, and a victim. Somehow it turns out like this, 4 characters at once in one single action.
The most unpleasant thing is that this is supported by society and these habits come from childhood, this is how they are brought up, this is how they teach self-discipline.
After all, no one wants to be punished?
Right?
And in order not to be punished, do the right thing, do everything well and be good.
Here, in my opinion, there is one problem - there is no simple desire to achieve something and not feel bad and be punished because of it.
Self-punishment menu: oncology, psychopathic partner, tyrant boss... What do you want?
Ecology of life. Psychology: Classics of the genre - different types of psychosomatics: headaches and migraines, problems with the gastrointestinal tract and cardiovascular system, hyperhidrosis, up to the most serious oncological diseases. In addition, this can be real, physical harm to oneself: biting nails, pulling out hair, cuts, burns, hurting oneself, broken arms and legs. Children often choose these types of self-punishment.
Some people, feeling guilty of something, passionately desire to be punished and persistently look for a way to punish themselves as severely as possible. They, as a rule, succeed in their intention - they undermine their health, “get stuck” in damaging relationships, and regularly engage in self-criticism.
Self-punishment for every taste - from primitive to sophisticated
Classics of the genre - different types of psychosomatics: headaches and migraines, problems with the gastrointestinal tract and cardiovascular system, hyperhidrosis, even serious cancer.
In addition, this can be real, physical harm to oneself: biting nails, pulling out hair, cuts, burns, hurting oneself, broken arms and legs. Children often choose these types of self-punishment.
It happens that people, punishing themselves, remain in relationships or situations that clearly harm them, threaten their health and even life. For example, with partners who practice physical and emotional abuse. At work, where there is a tight schedule and it is impossible to rest or get enough sleep, where a tense atmosphere constantly reigns and everyone communicates with each other in a raised voice. In an apartment with three rooms, there are twelve residents who quietly hate each other.
“Wrong” feelings are a good reason to severely punish yourself
The desire to punish ourselves is awakened by all the socially unacceptable emotions that we forbid ourselves to experience in relation to other people: fear, anger, pain, disgust, guilt, shame, sadness. A person who is prone to self-punishment lives with the idea that he cannot express his negative emotions to others, including loved ones - under no circumstances should he be angry, he should not be angry, he should not be sad and cry, he should not demand his own.
For example, I am angry with Vasya, but he is my boss, so I restrain my anger. If I find it difficult to keep her in check, I will accidentally step on Vasya’s foot or press him with the door. And if I know how to restrain myself well, anger will come out in the form of psychosomatics.
The problem comes from childhood
An unconscious desire to punish oneself arises when a person cannot externalize the feelings and experiences he experiences. Instead of directing them towards the other person or situation into which they were born, he begins to direct them towards himself.
All feelings, emotions, sensations are born in us in response to some stimulus from the outside. We saw a friend and were happy. If you prick yourself with a needle you get upset. We deal with our feelings differently. We can express them directly: for example, smile or frown. We can - indirectly: make a caustic joke or remain meaningfully silent. We can generally hold back and not share them with others.
All of these ways of reacting are normal and natural as long as they replace each other, that is, as long as a person is able to choose how he reacts. But sometimes this natural process is disrupted. For example, parents forbid a child to express anger: they scold and punish him if he is angry, and encourage him if he does not show this “ugly” and “inconvenient” feeling, hiding it inside himself. The child learns that anger must be restrained, and from now on strives to disguise it. This puts him at risk.
Be your own friend, not a strict judge
If you find yourself prone to self-punishment and would like to get rid of it, try taking the following steps.
1. Take back control of your actions. So, people who bite their nails smear something bitter on them. Thanks to this trick, a person notices that he is biting his nails - usually he does it unconsciously - and stops.
2. Establish the true object of your negative emotions. When you feel an overwhelming urge to harm yourself, ask yourself: “What feeling is driving me? Who is it really aimed at?"
At this stage, it is useful to resort to a classic exercise invented by the psychotherapist, founder of Gestalt therapy Fritz Perls - “Empty Chair” . You imagine your “inner pest” in the form of some kind of image (an animal, a friend or stranger, a character from an animated or feature film, etc.) and “sit” it on an empty chair. You settle in opposite. Having tried to visualize your counterpart in detail, you ask him any questions you want. For example: “Why are you doing this? What do you want? Why do I need you? Then you move to the chair of your imaginary “interlocutor” and answer on his behalf. The purpose of the exercise is to hear the “truth”, the point of view of the “internal saboteur”, come to an agreement with him, and turn him from an enemy into an ally.
3. Choose a constructive way to express a feeling that you forbid yourself. For example, you realized that you are angry and annoyed with your boss. First of all, it is important to realize: anger is a very useful feeling, it appears when we want to change something in our life, when we feel that the current situation is harming us, when the feeling arises: this cannot continue . Having figured out what changes are desirable and necessary for you, honestly discuss with your boss what does not suit you. Maybe he sets unrealistic goals for you, or downplays your achievements and does not reward you enough, or treats you in a rude manner. If you can’t find a common language with your manager, you can gather like-minded people around you, invite a commission to evaluate working conditions, decide to move to another department or quit, etc. There are many options.
It often seems to people that anger literally overwhelms them and is capable of destroying everything around them. And when they finally decide to express it in a specialist’s office, it turns out that in fact the “degree” of this anger is much lower than they imagined.
Sometimes the true reason for self-punishment is deeply hidden and veiled. In this case, it is better to unravel the “tangle” together with a psychologist. published
Author: Elizaveta Zubova
PS And remember, just by changing your consumption, we are changing the world together! © econet
Self-control, self-reinforcement, self-punishment
At almost all stages of choosing behavioral alternatives and implementing behavioral intentions, a person controls the implementation of his own actions and evaluates their results according to the degree of compliance with intentions. Further, doubts and indecision can lead to the fact that a person consciously refuses to perform certain behavioral acts, refrains from implementing intentions, or even chooses alternative behavior.
The complex and multi-stage process of decision-making and self-control of its execution creates opportunities for both numerous behavioral disorders and their treatment. Human behavior, according to Bandura, is far from being completely controlled by the environment; a person also has access to means of self-control.
Example. Vladimir, a manager of a large trading enterprise, turns to a psychotherapist with a complaint about the constant difficulties that he has when choosing from several possible and equally attractive alternatives. Often, as a result, he misses very profitable offers due to the fact that he cannot react to them in time. Vladimir also loses a lot of personal time, because he feels anxious if he himself does not control all stages of work performed by his subordinates. During the course of counseling, principles are developed according to which Vladimir is taught to trust his intuition more and transfer the function of current control to his subordinates (for more information on indecision therapy, see Dawson, 1996).
Self-reinforcement and self-punishment
In the process of monitoring the fulfillment of behavioral intentions, a person constantly compares their results with certain standards related to both the goal of behavior and its individual procedural aspects. When giving a lecture, for example, I control time, students’ attention, voice volume, etc. While you are reading this book, it is quite possible that you are making sure not to lose the thread of reasoning, or trying not to miss the moment when the kettle boils in the kitchen.
If you manage to read the assigned section and answer the test questions correctly, you will be satisfied and say a few words of self-reinforcement to yourself. If the water in the kettle boils and its bottom burns, you will most likely say a few unflattering words to yourself.
All people are capable of self-evaluation of the process and results of their actions. The balance of situational self-reinforcement and self-punishment is very individual, but the enthusiasm with which a person takes on new, more complex behavioral tasks or continues to engage in already mastered activities depends not least on it.
It is the negative balance of self-esteem with a predominance of self-punishment that is often responsible for quite severe behavioral disorders, for example, depressive states.
Habitual self-esteem and the habitual way of assessing the results of one’s own actions create in a person certain expectations regarding the effectiveness of one’s behavior in certain social situations and its consequences. Bandura called these expectations self-efficacy.
If at the end of the lecture I hear only smart questions and receive positive feedback, then my effectiveness in lecturing will be high and will itself begin to influence the characteristics of my lecturing.
Secondary benefits of psychosomatics
In addition, any psychosomatic disorder has secondary benefits.
No person will ever do anything in his life if there is no conscious or unconscious benefit to it
In psychosomatic diseases, this benefit is usually secondary, that is, unconscious. I had a patient, a doctor, at one time she treated a young woman who had cirrhosis of the liver. The woman was married for the second time, one day her husband came with her to a reception and began to cry. “My God, she is terminally ill, maybe she needs to be operated on, have a liver transplant?!” At that moment, my doctor colleague thought: “Wow, how he loves her!” = I probably need cirrhosis of the liver too. And I became addicted to alcohol. Just with amazing determination.
She came to me when her liver was already enlarged by three fingers above the costal arch. It was at that moment that she realized that it was time to do something seriously. That at this rate you can really lead to cirrhosis of the liver. And all for the sake of some illusory dream of being loved just as much.
Although, in fact, it was not love - it was the husband’s fear for the health of his wife. But it seemed to her that it was love. Such a strong connection was formed in our heads that we could not do anything until we found the reason. Thank God everything ended well. That's how powerful the identification effect is.
Self-punishment
“To spite my mom and dad, I’ll freeze my ears off” - from this opera. A person becomes seriously ill in order to take revenge on someone close to him or to punish himself for some mistakes. From an early age we are taught that taking revenge on others is bad, so we prefer to torment ourselves. In addition, we are constantly told about hell and heaven, forming the following attitude in our heads: “I’d rather suffer in this world, maybe there will be some kind of discount on that.”
Severe traumatic experience
Many of my oncologist colleagues tell me that about three years after a severe loss, a person develops some kind of disease. For example, a mother loses her son, or after severe neurotic divorces, painful divorce proceedings, either oncology or benign tumors appear, or some other chronic diseases are discovered. It seems like out of the blue, completely by accident. But in the process of therapy it turns out that those emotional experiences became the catalyst for negative processes in the body.
Motivation for illness
We all want to feel needed, loved, important, significant. And some achieve these goals in constructive ways, while others not so much. One of my friends suffered from scarlet fever as a child. It so happened that the time of illness fell on September 1 (1st or 2nd grade), and he was forced to stay at home, missing this significant event. But on the other hand, an amazingly beautiful nurse, with a long braid and in a white coat, came to his home.
He, like a real man, enjoyed this aesthetically attractive spectacle: she treated him, gave him injections... And a mindset arose in his head: in order to be loved and cared for by a beautiful woman, you have to be sick. Years later, when he got married, he discovered a strange pattern. As soon as his wife left on a business trip, his temperature rose and he began to get sick until his wife returned home. And until he and I worked on this topic, until he saw how strongly it was connected, the attacks continued.
I repeat once again: psychosomatic disorders are always accompanied by secondary benefits. There is always a need to receive some kind of compensation. Love, care, attention. This is not a very constructive way to feel loved.
Speech elements
My colleague two years ago told me a story about herself (but I’ve already seen this): “There was a period when in a conversation I wanted to prove something to someone, and I constantly uttered the phrase “I bet!” Before she could blink an eye, she lost three teeth in a row. They just started getting enough sleep.” That is, there are certain programs that we create for ourselves. The Russian language is very powerful, rich, and we must handle it carefully. Having uttered the phrase “arm to be cut off” for a couple of months, a person then cannot understand for a long time why, after a harmless fall, he was diagnosed with a broken arm.
Today it is very important that somatic doctors want to cooperate with psychologists and psychotherapists, and do not rely on pills alone. Nobody canceled the soul. And there are no pills for thoughts. It is equally important that the patients themselves want it, that there is a request. They must understand that it is not just about physical injuries or harmful environmental factors. A lot depends on our thoughts and our emotions and feelings. As a rule, patients who present with psychosomatic illnesses are brought by one of their close relatives or friends, and strong resistance is felt on their part.
This is because they do not see the connection between emotions and the body. They focus on organic, somatic symptoms. In most cases, they rely on drug treatment: “Give me a magic pill, and I’ll go.” Although when you read the contraindications, it becomes scary! Such patients, as a rule, are embittered: because it hurts, and no one can find the cause. Typically, patients with psychosomatic illnesses are the last to see a psychotherapist. They will bypass everyone: cardiologists, urologists... Only then they come and say: “Yes..., well..., maybe... it’s really from the head...” And we begin to cooperate.
The very concept of “psychosomatics” was introduced by the German physician Johann Christian Heinroth in 1818. Translated from ancient Greek, psycho means soul, somo means body. This is the science of the interaction between our emotional sphere and our body. For two centuries, scientists have been studying this problem, but still have not come to a consensus on what comes first. Like chicken and egg.
Are our emotions and sensations primary, and only after them do the physical symptoms of diseases come? Or do somatic illnesses affect our emotional state? There are more or less viable theories, but each of them has many caveats. Therefore, if we talk about psychosomatics, then it’s probably worth talking about some fundamental things, so as not to get bogged down in details and subtleties.
