History has accumulated many documented cases of various paradoxes of thinking and perception. Observations of such phenomena allow us to get an idea of how bizarre tricks our brain is capable of generating.
It may seem that hallucinations are just an arbitrary set of images or the product of delusional thoughts that appear in certain individuals. However, some brain mechanisms are capable of creating specific images or ideas that cause the same hallucinations in completely different people.
Over the past decades, thanks to developing scientific technologies, researchers have been able to trace the causes of some phenomena, while many oddities of the psyche still continue to remain in the realm of the unknown.
Alice in Wonderland Syndrome
A syndrome characterized by a distorted perception of time and space, similar to the sensations experienced by Lewis Carroll's heroine Alice when she entered the magical world of Wonderland. People suffering from Alice syndrome describe parts of their body and visible objects as suddenly becoming larger or smaller, or changing their usual shape. The passage of time may also be perceived differently.
The reason for this rare phenomenon presumably lies in the presence of brain tumors, epilepsy, migraines or viral infections. Researchers also hypothesize about excessive activity in the visual areas of the brain responsible for processing information about the shape and size of objects.
It is believed that Lewis Carroll himself suffered from a similar disorder, drawing inspiration from his visions to describe Alice's strange dreams.
How to learn to trust
Lack of trust is not a death sentence. Many people who did not receive the necessary dose of love in childhood enter adulthood with a lack of trust in others. But they have the power to change their attitude towards the world. To do this you need to start taking action.
Psychologists consider the following technique to be effective in helping to develop trust.
1. Think about where your mistrust came from. Perhaps it is associated with negative experiences with other people. But if someone deceived you, this does not mean that you need to suspect the entire population of our planet of dishonesty. This is how immature – childish – thinking manifests itself. Global conclusions cannot be drawn based on one or two cases.
Psychologists recommend analyzing the unpleasant situation that happened to you, “replaying” it and “letting go”, at the same time forgiving the offender.
2. Write down on paper what psychological attitudes prevent you from showing trust. Well, for example, such phrases: “We live in a world where lies and deceit reign,” “I am surrounded by crooks who strive to deceive and steal,” “People by nature are greedy and self-interested; move”...
Now try to prove the fallacy of each of these judgments. Surely you will remember cases when a bag of groceries that was forgotten in a supermarket was returned to you, or when a seller on his own initiative offered you a discount on a quality product, or when you were given the bottom bunk in a train compartment... If you think carefully, there are such cases that prove selflessness, honesty and the kindness of others, one can cite a huge number.
3. Try to turn off the strict “censor” in yourself, who tends to see a catch and a bad meaning in everything. Criticism towards people is good in moderation. Set yourself up for a positive perception of a particular person. Tell yourself: he never let me down, never betrayed my trust, that’s why I trust him. Remember the presumption of innocence.
This is what the process of re-education looks like. It is clear that no one is calling for throwing away all caution in relationships with unfamiliar people. But getting rid of excessive distrust, which threatens to develop into pathological, will be a blessing. This may require consultation with a psychologist. But the main thing is the desire to change. And it's worth the effort.
Walking Dead Syndrome
This mental disorder is also known as Cotard's syndrome. A patient suffering from this disorder feels like he is dead, dying, or has lost part of his vital internal organs. One of the first described patients who had this syndrome believed that she had no brain and intestines and, accordingly, she did not need to eat food in this position. As a result of such beliefs, she died of hunger.
The causes of the disorder are multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia and brain injury. In medical practice, cases of relief from Cotard's syndrome with successful treatment of certain somatic diseases have been described.
Charles Bonnet syndrome
People who have lost their sight may discover the ability to clearly and in detail “see” things that do not exist in reality. Complex and vivid hallucinations include images of human faces, cartoons, colorful objects and patterns.
It is believed that such hallucinations arise as a reaction of the brain, disconnected from receiving visual information, which began to produce its own images. The risk of developing Bonnet syndrome exists in 10-40% of older people with significant vision problems.
How to heal the trauma of being rejected. Advice from Liz Burbo
Liz Bourbeau argues that the main reason for the existence of any trauma is the inability to forgive oneself for the wound inflicted on oneself or other people. Forgiving ourselves is very difficult because, as a rule, we do not even know that we are judging ourselves .
The state of complete acceptance of oneself and one’s actions is the state to which one should strive, according to Liz Burbo.
But when we have this trauma, instead of accepting ourselves completely with all our qualities, actions, character traits, we begin to develop a new subpersonality in ourselves - a fugitive mask in order to protect ourselves from pain when we reject ourselves again and again - we doubt in our right to exist, we do not trust ourselves, do not love and do not value ourselves.
Once the mask is on, we are no longer ourselves . We learn behavior that matches the mask we wear. The ideal would be to learn to quickly recognize the mask we are wearing so we can immediately identify the trauma we are trying to hide, without criticizing or judging ourselves.
“When your Forsaken trauma is activated, you put on the Fugitive mask. This mask makes you want to leave the situation or people because of which you think you will be rejected; you are afraid of panic and feelings of powerlessness . This mask can also convince you to become as invisible as possible, to withdraw into yourself and not say or do anything that would encourage others to reject you. This mask makes you believe that you are not an important being enough to occupy the place that you occupy, that you do not have the right to exist in the fullness in which others exist.” Liz Burbo
What should you take? First of all, the fact that everything that you fear from others or for which you reproach them, you yourself inflict on others, and especially on yourself .
A person suffering from Rejected Trauma intensifies this trauma whenever he calls himself insignificant, when he believes that he does not mean anything in the lives of other people, when he avoids a certain situation.
“Your Rejection trauma is close to healing if you gradually take up more and more space, if you begin to assert yourself. And if someone pretends that you are not there, it does not unsettle you. Situations in which you are afraid to panic occur less and less often.” Liz Burbo
Clinical lycanthropy
People suffering from this extremely rare mental disorder feel themselves transformed into various animals, most often wolves. The perception of one's own body with this syndrome makes one feel the growth of fur, sharp fangs and claws inherent in wild animals. In addition to wolves, medicine has recorded “pig-man”, “snake-man”, “dog-man” and “frog-man”, who sincerely believed themselves to be similar werewolves.
The sudden “turning” of a person into a beast, which is realistically felt by him, as a rule, turns out to be a consequence of diseases such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and severe depression.
Brad Capgras
People who are unlucky enough to get Capgras syndrome find themselves in an extremely difficult situation: they begin to feel that some impostor is replacing a person from their close circle. The belief that someone who has an identical appearance to a spouse or relative is masterfully pretending to be his prototype is almost impossible to debunk.
Capgras delirium occurs in people with severe stages of Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia and senile dementia. Brain research leads scientists to believe that such erroneous conclusions may be based on disturbances in the activity of areas of the cerebral cortex responsible for processing information about faces and its connection with emotional reactions.
How to stop believing in omens and superstitions
Most often in our lives we turn to signs on the eve of any significant event. People tend to turn to mysticism or observe certain rituals, fearing that the planned event may be disrupted. The most striking example is a wedding. There are so many superstitions and rituals associated with this celebration that they cannot be covered in this article.
Even young girls know the most common signs, for example:
- the groom should not see his future wife in a wedding dress before the ceremony,
- the bride herself should not look at herself in a full-length mirror while in her wedding attire,
- The bride's shoes should be of a classic style, and in no case open, and so on and so forth.
There are thousands of these, but the meaning and explanation are the same for everything. If you do not follow all these traditions, rituals and superstitions, then family life will turn out poorly, the spouses will live in poverty, the husband will walk away from his wife, etc.
What conclusion can be drawn from all of the above? And the conclusion is simple. Superstitions are just our inner fears. Fear is an almost uncontrollable emotion, but it can be explained to yourself.
There is no need to be afraid that you did not perform any ritual or did not follow a sign; there is always a way out. The simplest and surest way is not to study this topic on the eve of the event. But there is a more complex solution that a famous psychoanalyst offers us.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Sigmund Freud, a famous Austrian psychologist, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, argued that it is subconscious fears that influence human behavioral characteristics. This can also be attributed to superstitions. It is the internal fear that something will go wrong or the event will be disrupted that forces a person to follow superstitions.
Freud suggests turning to your dreams, through which all fears can be explained and, as a result, eliminated. Also, according to Freud, almost all or basic fears are laid down in us from childhood, and it is with them that a person will have to fight throughout his life.
And what do we see in early childhood, sitting in the kitchen with our parents and grandparents. Like a mother or grandmother, in the process of preparing, for example, dinner, she spills salt and performs a simple ritual of throwing the spilled salt over her shoulder three times.
Naturally, the child will ask about the meaning of this ritual and it will be explained to him that this is such a sign, and if this ritual is not performed, then there will be quarrels in the house. All. From this moment the first fear is laid. And, of course, my mother will not be to blame for this, because exactly the same story happened to her in childhood.
A similar and well-known sign is that you need to look in the mirror if you forgot something and came back. However, all these signs can be explained at a simple everyday level, which will significantly reduce the fear inherent in childhood.
Freud proposes to analyze signs and superstitions from the point of view of science and psychoanalysis. And then the sign that it is necessary to look at the mirror will appear before us in a completely different light and will already be a useful action, and not a superstition.
Why look in the mirror? But this is logical. Having examined himself in the mirror, a person will be sure that this time he has not forgotten anything. The same with salt, because it is logical that spilled salt should not be added to food, because salt is a good absorbent and has antibacterial effects, which, of course, was important when living conditions left much to be desired. Sweeping it to the floor is quite logical. And this is how you can explain every superstition and sign. Details are already private in this matter.
So what to do with signs? Nothing. From the point of view of science and psychoanalysis, all these superstitions were embedded in each of us centuries, or even millennia ago. You can't argue with that. All of them are quite harmless, and the rituals are not burdensome.
Small and harmless rituals look quite normal and natural to others, which means that fighting it is useless and pointless.
Signs and superstitions have a place in our lives. And if this or that sign bothers you and causes discomfort, then you need to fight it. And the surest way to fight is science.
Othello Syndrome
Named after a Shakespearean character, Othello syndrome causes a person to feel irrationally jealous and convinced that their partner is unfaithful. Such obsessive thoughts provoke increased irritability, so people suffering from this disease are prone to displays of aggression.
Recently, another typical case of Othello syndrome was presented to the medical community. In the African country of Burkina Faso, a 46-year-old man recovering from a stroke suddenly became insanely jealous of his wife of an unknown figure, accompanying his accusations with aggressive behavior.
Ekbom syndrome
Ekbom syndrome, also known as parasitophobia, creates in the person suffering from it a strong sensation of parasites in his body. Feelings of tingling, itching and even movement under the skin haunt the patient, forcing him to seek help from doctors or try to get rid of uninvited guests on his own. Unfortunately, the latter method most often leads to self-harm and wounds that threaten actual infection.
So far, scientists cannot find the reasons that could cause such a disorder in the perception of one’s body, but they suspect that structural disorders of the brain are involved.
Reasons why people betray or deceive
Whether you can trust a person who once betrayed depends on the motivation, reasons and the situation of betrayal or deception itself, as well as on the person’s personal characteristics and the feelings present. With the exception of rare situations of planned betrayal, the perpetrators themselves do not consider their actions to be something bad, and if you still try to see not only your own injured party, but also the reasons for the one who allegedly betrayed, you can reduce the level of resentment and claims.
Not only different semantic and life concepts provide the basis for actions that are unexpected for another, but also the emotional state of a person. A colleague is not going to intentionally rat you out in front of his superiors, but if they have been shouting at him for twenty minutes and blaming him for all the sins and failure of the corporation, then reporting shortcomings in the work of others is a defensive reaction in a stressful situation, an attempt to somehow save your own psyche from frustration .
In principle, by trusting, we ourselves give a person the opportunity to betray - trust disappears where the other does not live up to our expectations, and we impose them on the other without informing or consulting whether he can fulfill them. When you have not emphasized that you should not discuss your experiences with others, the story can be considered a betrayal. But you didn’t forbid doing this, and the motives could have been to find help to get you out of this situation.
If you have never discussed your future together, the requirements of fidelity and general views on interaction, then the presence of a second passion for him can be considered as a betrayal, but this may turn out to be normal for him. After all, it was only you who came up with fidelity, but for someone else, your relationship may still look like the initial stage, when there is freedom of choice. To avoid this kind of betrayal, you should constantly clarify your requirements and even seemingly self-explanatory points.
The situation is different in situations where all actions seem to be regulated, for example, in war. There it is not customary to abandon others, hide or hand over important information, it is recorded and voiced, every person follows this code. However, there are situations when the personal predominates - under threat to the life or health of loved ones, during prolonged torture, with post-traumatic stress and other other conditions, a person is not able to control his behavior by volitional effort. Yes, this can be considered a betrayal, but if you put yourself in the person’s shoes, it may turn out that you would give up faster.
And of course, we should not forget about such reasons for betrayal as personal gain and advancement. When the explanation does not include either the situation or the emotional state, and the person simply goes towards the intended goal. Perhaps this is true betrayal, carried out consciously.
