Irritability and emotional outbursts in a child

Aggression

Increased aggressiveness in children is one of the most pressing problems not only for doctors, teachers and psychologists, but also for society as a whole. The number of children with this behavior has unfortunately been growing recently. It is especially important to help preschoolers whose aggressiveness is only in its infancy.

No other behavior irritates adults and maladjusts children as much as aggressive behavior. This is one of the few conditions when parents try to bring their child to a specialist as early as possible. Aggression manifests itself in a wide range from harsh statements to physical actions, representing that rare case when an aggressive child, instead of sympathy, causes general irritation and often retaliatory aggression from adults.

Based on numerous studies, it should be accepted that aggression is biologically inherent in humans. This is a mechanism that allowed man in very ancient times to survive among more adapted and stronger animals. Subsequently, having solved these problems, aggression did not disappear, but as man developed and society formed, it came under the control of social norms and functions.

In a structured form, aggression manifests itself in the form of aggressive behavior or aggressive actions. This is one of the forms of response to various unfavorable physical and psychological life situations.

The main causes of child aggression are:

• desire to attract the attention of adults and peers;
• the desire to get the desired result;
• the desire to be in charge;
• protection and revenge;
• the desire to infringe on the dignity of another in order to emphasize one’s superiority.

Among the psychological characteristics that provoke aggressive behavior in children, the following are usually identified:

• insufficient development of intelligence and communication skills;
• reduced level of self-regulation;
• underdevelopment of gaming activities;
• decreased self-esteem;
• disturbances in relationships with adults and peers;
• increased excitability of the nervous system due to various reasons (trauma, illness).

One of the most common mistakes of adults is the desire to suppress all manifestations of children's aggressiveness. Unfortunately, this is not only completely wrong, but even dangerous: suppressed aggression does not disappear, but accumulates in the child’s “Unconscious”. One day it breaks out in the form of a violent explosion, and usually goes to innocent people. At the same time, children's aggression causes counter-aggression in adults and peers and a vicious circle is formed, from which participants often cannot get out without the help of a specialist.

To overcome the existing problem, it is necessary to organize individual psychocorrection work, which is aimed at:

• identifying the causes of a child’s aggressive behavior;
• achieving an emotional response to aggression;
• eliminating response stereotypes, increasing self-esteem, accepting oneself and others;
• practicing communication skills in possible conflict situations (behavior correction);
• consolidation of new behavioral stereotypes in real life.

The most effective method of overcoming aggressive behavior in children is the sand therapy method. Playing with sand always arouses genuine interest in a child of any age. It allows the psychologist to quickly establish contact with the little client. The child erects his own miniature image of the world on the sand, thereby telling about himself without words. By analyzing the sand picture and the child’s story, a psychologist can diagnose the reasons for the child’s aggressive behavior without traumatic questions for him. Achieving an emotional response to aggression occurs in the sand with the help of depicting various battle scenes (playing with soldiers, medieval knights, cowboys, various animals). Also, playing with sand gives the most effective results in practicing and consolidating new communication skills, since for preschoolers play is a leading activity that helps them learn how to relate correctly to other people in real life.

At some stages of working with aggressive children, along with sand, drawing is used, which is valuable because it gives children the opportunity to express themselves non-verbally - after all, their verbal (using words) communication system is not yet sufficiently developed. Drawing allows a child to react to his emotions, to throw out aggression on paper, to give free rein to his imagination: after all, what is drawn is, to some extent, what has come true.

An equally effective way to express anger is to work with clay, whose flexibility and pliability make it suitable for meeting a wide variety of needs. Children who are very angry may vent their frustration in a variety of ways. For example, make a figurine of someone they are very angry with, and then break it. This type of creativity is one of the most visual of all types of art, which allows the psychologist to observe the child’s condition, which is quite important when working with any problem.

Outbursts of emotions in children - Little tips.

Make a complete list on paper of all the responsibilities you have for your teenager. Write whatever comes to your mind. Review this list and determine which items may interfere with the development of his independence. Cut it in half, leaving the most significant points. Destroy the rest, for example, burn it. Return to this list at least once a year, regularly cutting it in half.

Parents often give their children too much, relying on the mistaken belief that their children should not experience any deprivation, which means that parents are not used to denying themselves the purchase of new things. If you choose this style of behavior, don't be surprised if your children copy it. Learn to understand the difference between what you need and what you just want. Parents provide what they need, and the teenager can earn what they want on their own (sometimes with the help of their parents).

Discuss with your daughter the need to be more independent and autonomous from you. Agree with her which expenses you agree to bear and which ones will not be your concern. Let's say you pay her phone bills, all the necessary clothes and allocate a certain amount of pocket money. If you have the means, be truthful. Say, “I don’t want to spend money this way. You can earn it yourself, and then you can decide how to spend it.” This is how your daughter will grow up.

Anxiety

Anxiety is an individual psychological feature that consists of an increased tendency to experience anxiety in a wide variety of life situations, including those that do not encourage this.

It is necessary to distinguish anxiety from anxiety. If anxiety is an episodic manifestation of a child’s restlessness and excitement, then anxiety is a stable state. For example, a child sometimes gets excited before performing at a party - this is anxiety. If anxiety manifests itself constantly, then we can talk about anxiety.

Many psychologists believe that anxiety develops due to the presence of an internal conflict in a child, which can be caused by:

• conflicting demands made by parents, or parents and kindergarten (school);
• inadequate demands (most often excessive);
• negative demands that humiliate the child and put him in a dependent position.

A child’s anxiety largely depends on the level of anxiety of the adults around him. The authoritarian style of parental education in the family also does not contribute to the child’s inner peace.

Anxious children try to keep their problems to themselves. They are characterized by excessive anxiety, and sometimes they are afraid not of the event itself, but of its premonition. They often expect the worst. Children feel helpless and are afraid to play new games and start new activities. They have high demands on themselves and are very self-critical. Their level of self-esteem is low; such children really think that they are worse than others in everything, that they are the ugliest, stupidest, and clumsy.

Working with an anxious child usually takes a long time and is aimed at:

• increased self-esteem;
• teaching the child the ability to manage himself in specific, most worrying situations;
• to relieve muscle tension.

Since anxious children, as a rule, do not openly communicate their problems, it is extremely difficult to identify what is actually bothering the child. In solving this problem, building a sand picture will help, which does not require special skills from the baby, but is simply a game - a natural activity for this age. As a result, the child does not have the feeling that he did something wrong (there is no tension), and the psychologist receives the necessary information about the internal state of the little client. After establishing contact in the sandbox, situations that worry the baby are played out with the help of various figures. In this way, constructive ways of responding are developed, which are then reinforced in real life.

Working with clay allows you to relax, thereby helping to relieve muscle tension. Children who need to improve their self-esteem gain an extraordinary sense of “I” from using this material. This type of creativity is a good way to stimulate verbal expression of feelings in anxious children, who sometimes lack such abilities.

An equally effective way to solve the problem of child anxiety is fairytale therapy. The child, identifying himself with the hero of the fairy tale, as a result of playing his image, learns to resolve the conflict, acquiring new opportunities and abilities for himself.

The child does not sleep well at night, the child grinds his teeth (bruxism): a behavioral feature or a disease?

Getting a full night and daytime sleep every day is a very important condition for the development of mental functions of a preschool child. If your child begins to have trouble falling asleep and wakes up frequently, you should take this as carefully as possible. We are engaged in restoring normal sleep in children. Usually, a child’s sleep problems are resolved fairly quickly. Correction or treatment depends on the causes of sleep difficulties and is determined during a consultation or after a scheduled examination, if necessary.

How long should a child sleep?

Sleeping mode . A child's normal sleep should proceed without interruption, without episodes of agitation associated with screaming or crying during sleep. The normal duration of falling asleep is about half an hour; if it lasts more than 30 minutes, you should pay attention to this and find out the reason. It is normal for a child to wake up early on weekends according to the routine adopted on weekdays. It is desirable that the biorhythm of the child’s life coincides with the biorhythm of the geographical time zone in which he lives. It is provided in nature that when it is dark outside, a person sleeps, and at dawn he wakes up, the same rhythm corresponds to the children's regime. For a preschooler, lights out should be no later than 10 p.m. It is not always possible for schoolchildren to maintain such a regime, because the load received at school increases disproportionately to the physiological capabilities of the children. But still, for the harmonious growth and development of a child, it is necessary to strive to adhere to the regime and have at least 8-9 hours of sleep. For a child under 10 years old, a sleep duration of 9-10 hours is absolutely normal and healthy.

Many children approaching school age refuse to sleep during the day; this is not always a violation of their sleep patterns; for some children, with a full night's sleep, the need for daytime sleep disappears. Provided that the lack of daytime sleep does not entail a change in the child’s well-being for the worse. One more aspect must be taken into account that for children under 4 years of age, daytime sleep is vital, since during this period of life the neural structure of the brain is actively being built and good sleep contributes to the most efficient functioning of the brain in the future.

Sleep consists of several stages (divided into phases). Complete rest, restoration of the nervous system, active metabolism and immunity occur mainly in the third and fourth phases of sleep. These phases are achieved only in night sleep, subject to timely falling asleep, sufficient duration and depth of sleep, and the absence of night awakenings.

A situation where a child does not sleep at night or has difficulty falling asleep for a long time, often gets up, asks for something to drink or eat, or invents different activities for himself just to stay awake, can arise for many reasons. Main reasons :

• increased intracranial pressure (ICP)
• increased level of anxiety
• a stressful situation or excessive nervous tension in response to something
• neurosis
• excessive workload of the child at school
• increased convulsive readiness of the cerebral cortex (registered on EEG)
• pain in the abdomen or other area of ​​the body, itchy skin, worms

Behavioral factor. It arises due to the attention deficit of adults who work all day and come home late, without devoting enough time to their child. As a result, the child falls asleep for a long time, because he wants to make up for the lack of communication with his parents and feel their physical and emotional presence next to him.

High level of anxiety in a child. When a child cannot fall asleep, but having difficulty falling asleep, he often wakes up or sleeps shallowly, as the stress mechanisms of the nervous system continue to work, including defensive reactions and not allowing the child to fall asleep deeply.

The child screams in his sleep, walks, talks in his sleep. Sleepwalking (somnambulism) is a state of incomplete awakening. At the time when the child should enter the deep stage of sleep, the process of brain inhibition occurs, but the process does not affect all areas of the brain, i.e. part of the brain remains awake or wakes up in the middle of the night. As a result, the child can sit up in bed, stand up, walk, scream, express emotions and even talk without waking up. Sleepwalking in children is usually quite treatable.

The child grinds his teeth in his sleep . The main age when bruxism occurs is the period from 3 to 6 years. The peak of manifestation occurs at the age of five, when molars begin to erupt. The cause of teeth grinding can be difficulty breathing due to adenoids, ear or toothache and nasal congestion, abdominal pain and, in general, any physical discomfort. But most often the cause of bruxism is psychological. For example, stress associated with entering school, neuroses, increased levels of anxiety.

Lack of adequate sleep can lead to serious problems for a child’s body. Such as a disorder of the nervous system, weakening of the immune system, disruption of the body’s usual mode of operation of all internal organs. It is necessary to treat your child's sleep as carefully as possible. Restoring normal night sleep in a child is, as a rule, a completely doable task.

First of all, we recommend treating a child who is sleeping poorly :

1. Consultation with a pediatric psychoneurologist. Typically, during the consultation, the cause of the sleep disorder will be clarified and treatment can be selected.
2. If there are suspicions about chronic night pain anywhere, skin itching, nasal breathing problems, we will offer help from a doctor of the appropriate profile.
3. In difficult cases, an EEG of night sleep is advisable. An EEG records brain activity during sleep and helps find the source of the problem.

Fears

One of the most common reasons why parents turn to a psychologist is the presence of constant intense fears in children. Fear is the fear of something specific. At every age, normative fears are observed, which appear gradually, as a result of the development of the intellectual sphere, imagination, etc. Every child (and adults too) has certain fears. A.I. Zakharov identified them as age-related, i.e. those that accompany the child during a certain period of development. During the transition from one period of development to another in a healthy child, some fears disappear, while others appear. If this does not happen, then anxious and suspicious traits may appear in the character of an already adult person, which will hinder his development.

Thus, if the fears are close to what a baby might be afraid of at his age, then there is no reason to worry. If there are a lot of fears, then you should pay special attention to this child. The presence of numerous fears is a sign of insufficient self-confidence and lack of adequate psychological protection, which all together adversely affects the child’s well-being, creating even greater difficulties in communicating with peers. Our task is to “remove” from the child’s psyche those fears that are already causing harm, reflected in behavior by fearfulness. Fear has one weak point: until the fear is named and told, it seems huge and unbearable to a small person, but as soon as you name the fear out loud, put it into words, it loses almost half of its significance. Parents need to understand that fear indicates the existence of a problem, tension in the little person and, most likely, this cannot be dealt with without professional help.

Working with fears is aimed at:

• establishing the cause of the child’s anxiety;
• relieving emotional stress, developing communication skills;
• developing skills to overcome conflict situations.

Sand is an invaluable assistant in the first stage of working with fears. A small child cannot yet explain what is the cause of his internal anxiety. An older preschooler or younger schoolchild is often uncomfortable admitting that he is afraid of something (“I’m already big...”). By building a sand country and telling stories about its inhabitants, a psychologist can easily determine the cause of a child’s anxiety. And then a fairy tale comes to the rescue, which not only activates imagination, develops memory, enriches vocabulary, but is also a wonderful assistant for a child’s self-expression. After all, every hero of a fairy tale - well known and loved from early childhood - can tell his own story, the story of what happened to him, what he experienced. A fairy tale helps a child calm down, relieve emotional stress, and develop skills to overcome a conflict situation.

Another way to overcome fears is to depict it. Under the guidance of a psychologist, specifying fears will help the child get rid of uncertainty and spill out what worries and torments.

Child's emotional development

27.07.2018

How can parents help their child cope with fears?

Perhaps in no other case is the misunderstanding of a child’s experiences more visible than in childhood fears. The father, a confident and decisive man, brought his tall, broad-shouldered ten-year-old son to the reception. Even with his parents, the boy prefers not to be alone in the room, and there is no question of being left alone in the apartment. He sleeps only by the light of a night lamp and with the bedroom door half open. If he wakes up at night, he runs to his parents. The mother puts her son into bed, and he immediately falls asleep. The boy is emotional, impressionable, kind and affectionate. Raised by a mother who is emotional, anxious, and shy. The father is energetic, assertive, takes care of the family, but often on long business trips. He understands and accepts his wife’s impressionability and defenselessness. He strongly condemns weakness and “nursery” in his son. In a conversation with his father, it turns out that when his son was six years old, he took him hunting with him. At night, he left his sleeping son alone in the hunting hut and went with his comrades into the forest. When they returned, the child was sitting under the table, covering his head with a blanket. They laughed and consoled: “Once again you will remain like this and be a man.” From then on, the boy began to have fears. The father never understood what horror the impressionable child experienced, raised by an anxious mother on fairy tales in which trees and huts speak, look, and hear. He woke up in the dark. Nobody here. He is towards the window, and outside the window there is a night winter forest with wolves and bears. The trees and bushes move and approach the window. In the corner of the hut someone is moaning and grumbling. Those few hours that he sat under the table were long and terrible for the child. “It seems that adults do not fully realize how painful the fear of children is. At dusk, in darkness, the child’s imagination turns curtains into moving ghosts, endows objects with supernatural powers, and spiritualizes them. The old wardrobe groans and complains, or even threatens for scratches and scars on its sides, or silently watches the lonely baby. The fear of darkness is ancient, eternal. For a child, darkness is alive, with a mouth and eyes. Oh, those mouth and eyes! In the drawings of children from five to nine years old, monsters and predatory animals always have their mouth and eyes highlighted. The eyes are watching, and the mouth threatens to swallow. George Sand, who believed that fear is the greatest moral suffering of children, cites the words of P. Loti about the impression that the sea for the first time seen at dusk made on him in childhood: “It was dark green, almost black; it seemed restless, treacherous, ready to devour; it boiled and rose at the same time from all sides and looked evil and insidious.” The child is not critical of fear. His mind is still a poor adviser. The resulting fear rapidly grows, and the child becomes numb, passively suffering, or falls into a motor storm and hits a locked door. The boy we were just talking about was plunged into neurosis by his father overnight, although the readiness for such an outcome was nurtured from birth by his mother’s anxiety. Another father decided to “re-educate” his fearful son. Taking advantage of his wife’s departure on a business trip, he left his six-year-old child alone in the evenings, locking him with a key. The boy turned on the TV and waited for his father. If the doorbell rang, he hid under the bed. One day the plugs burned out. The father, as luck would have it, stayed late, and the child waited for him under the bed in complete darkness, afraid to even cry, so as not to give himself away. When the father returned, fixed it and turned on the light, took his son out from under the bed, the boy silently fell asleep in his arms, but in his sleep he tossed about, tried to run, waking up, did not recognize his father. In the morning he could not speak and was silent for three days - his stuttering was so pronounced. I had to deal with speech impediments, with a panicky fear of the dark and loneliness. The child did not let go of his mother even one step. I also had to treat the father, who feared for his son. From now on, he was afraid to interfere in any of his affairs, and for a long time refused any attempts at education. The father of one of my patients was playing hide and seek with his three-year-old son in a forest park. Hiding behind a tree, he did not notice how a dog suddenly jumped out from behind the bushes and knocked the baby down. The father's carelessness led to illness: the child began to scream and cry in his sleep, became afraid of dogs, and stopped staying alone in the room, although his parents were at home. He came to me for treatment when he was five years old. The lack of foresight of parents leads to such consequences. But Avicenna also said that a child should not be allowed to fall into strong anger, great fear or deep sadness. Three points are important in the problem of children's fears:

Firstly, children should never be frightened for the sake of obedience by anything or anyone: not an uncle, not a wolf, not a forest. To frighten with anything means to frighten with death! At the appointed time, you point out to the child real dangers, but never imaginary, invented ones, and do not frighten him for the sake of obedience. Education by fear is cruel education. Its consequences are anxious suspiciousness, excessive caution, passivity and suppression of creativity. A. Vallon in his book “From Action to Thought” cites such a case. A fly landed on the hand of a child just over a year old. The grandfather, of course, who loved his grandson, showed unforgivable imprudence, saying: “Be careful, she will eat you now.” He joked. But when, after some time, a crumb of bread stuck to the baby’s hand, he became so afraid that for some time he had to put gloves on his hands to protect him from flies. A few more of these “jokes” and the child will develop neurosis, nightmares, and anxious and suspicious personality development. Behind all this is the fear of death. Secondly, parents never shame their child for experiencing fear. Mocking a child's fearfulness is also cruelty. Shame and fear are interconnected. Under the influence of ridicule out of a sense of shame, the child begins to hide fear, but it does not disappear, but intensifies. And the child is left alone with fear, despite the fact that he has parents. If an adult does not help the child get rid of fear, fear will enslave the child’s psyche and he will feel lonely and defenseless. In an effort to get rid of fear, deprived of the help of his parents, he will resort to actions that will become entrenched as bad habits: he will begin to suck his tongue, finger, etc. Fearful and not understood by parents, he is passive and prone to depression. The child’s fear grows, which already threatens neurosis. Women endure pain better and often overcome fear more courageously than men, because no one laughs at their fears, at their pain in childhood, their fears are understood, they are forgiven for them, and they try to explain the nature of their fears. Thirdly, the child is never left alone in an unfamiliar environment, in a situation where the unexpected and frightening may appear. A child explores the unknown only next to an adult. Lidell's experiment is indicative. Two baby goats, three-week-old twins, were given sporadic electric shocks. The kid, who was next to his mother, endured the test relatively calmly. The little goat, who had to experience all this alone, hid in a corner in horror. After some time, the kids were released into the herd. Two years later, these animals, now adults, were subjected to the same tests. A goat who, at three weeks of age, experienced electric shocks next to his mother, and when the experiment was repeated, tolerated the procedure quite calmly. The other one became inhibited and frightened as soon as he entered the room where the experiment was being conducted. In ethology - the science of animals - the following types of response to danger are given depending on age. The cubs freeze motionless and scream. All hope for salvation is the mother. Having matured, they try to escape. Having reached the age of a seasoned beast, they move on to the best of defenses - attack. And again, if an animal grew up without a mother, it often, already as an adult, retains the infantile defense reaction - immobility and screaming. It would seem that an animal, defenseless in childhood, should have switched to adult forms of defense earlier. But no! Without the mother they are not produced. This is especially serious for children, since learning and preparing for life is immeasurably more difficult. A child deprived of the help of his parents cannot experience the world without unnecessary fears. They protect from fears with wisdom and foresight. The tendency to fear is overcome with kindness. For example, children often experience fear when falling asleep, because they are faced with darkness and loneliness at the same time. Often, struggling with fears in children and believing that this is how courage is cultivated, they put the child to bed, wish him good night, go out and do not return. On the third night the child stops crying and calling. I do not agree with this method and perceive it as cruelty. The child falls asleep, but falls asleep exhausted by fear. He will not become courageous. On the contrary, a person will grow up, once and for all intimidated in childhood. Such a child is more often at risk of neurosis. The following path seems more acceptable to me: after putting the baby to bed, you leave, but when he calls you immediately return, promising that when you finish your work, you will come and sit with him. You are nearby, you immediately respond to the call. He is calm, he waits for you without fear and falls asleep peacefully.

The origin of fears in children is a rather complex problem. In the emergence of fears, the role of the instinct of self-preservation, which prescribes to beware of the unknown, plays a great role. That is why a child gets scared at a loud, incomprehensible sound, is afraid of unknown objects, strangers and even his own parents when they appear before him in an unknown guise, for example in a new fur coat, a large shaggy hat, and he cannot immediately recognize them. Pain also creates fear. Hence the fear of heights and stairs among children who fell and were seriously injured. The fear of losing a mother, which comes from the instinct of self-preservation, is innate - and hence the fear of loneliness. The child animates nature. And in fairy tales for him, animals, plants and fictional characters live with human passions, love and hate, thank and punish. Hence the fears of the dark, the forest, the wolf, and fairy-tale characters. However, the main causes of fears in children are self-doubt, which gives rise to timidity, anxiety, lack of independence, as well as the costs of mental education, leading to ignorance, to a reduced level of orientation in the world around the child, or even to its complete absence. The mental development of children is directly related to the nature of children's fears. Once again, the key is in the child's questions. He asks before the age of two “what is this?” and who is it?" not only to know what is what and who is who, but also to know whether this someone and something is dangerous or safe. Until two years of age, the main fears are fears of unfamiliar objects, people, and animals. From two to three years old, the child asks questions “where?”, “where to?”, “from where?” and when?". Fears of heights, depth, space (deep, deep, far, far, behind, in a corner, in the forest, on the roof, in the attic, etc.), and the dark (in the evening, late-late, at night) arise. With the question “why?” from three to four years comes the fear of the consequences of actions, and with this the fear of punishment. A child is most afraid of what he knows nothing about. And such fear is natural; it prompts us to ask the question “why?” in order to find out about the still unknown. By the age of five, the child comes to the question “what will happen?” and learns about death. At the same time, the period of stubbornness ends, the baby comprehends his helplessness and the complexity of the world around him, life. The nature of fears changes. Questions arise: “Won’t I die?”, “Won’t you die, mom?” The fear of death is natural. The instinct of self-preservation is the instinct of survival. He is against death. People are born with it. The fear of death acquires greater depth, becoming a conscious experience. This fear is the root of all fears. A child may be afraid of Baba Yaga, a wolf and “someone else’s uncle”, be afraid of thousands of objects, have dozens of different fears, but behind this there is one thing - the fear of death. Therefore, the fight against fears is the fight against the fear of death.

I see a clear connection between children's fears and the development of children's orientation and cognition. Full-fledged mental education, complete answers to the child’s questions, and with this full-fledged orientation - the prevention of children’s fears. The son of the famous pediatrician V. Preyer, at the age of two, saw piglets suckling their mother and was frightened, believing that they had attacked her and were biting her. The fright caused night terrors, which disappeared only after three years. If, having assessed the depth of the child’s fear, they picked up the piglets, played with them, told the child that they were babies, and the pig was their mother, i.e. If they answered more deeply the question “what is this?”, which is natural for a given age, there would be no fear. The more a child knows, especially about things that not only interest him, but also worry him, the less fear he has. A mentally retarded person may not be afraid of anything, but such fearlessness is due to thoughtlessness. A child with full mental potential is keenly interested in his surroundings. Orientation is a vital need for him. Not receiving a satisfactory answer to the gradually deepening orientation-cognitive questions, he answers the questions himself, and these are not the best answers. Fantasy and ignorance in this case give rise to fears. And here they also scare people by reading scary fairy tales, emphasizing with their intonation what is scary in them, rather than the cognitive and orienting meaning. On the other hand, there is a danger of “schizoid intoxication” for a child if he is prematurely burdened with information beyond his strength, if age is ignored in mental education and answers to questions, if they strive to skip over childhood. An eight-year-old girl, my patient, is afraid of the ape-man, the ghosts, which her friend, very artistic and prone to fantasy, told her about, figuratively and vividly. Result: sleeps only with parents, goes to the toilet only with one of the adult family members. Sleep is restless, I have “horrible dreams.” At home, she follows her mother around the apartment. At school she is an excellent student, active, authoritative, but reserved. The girl is erudite beyond her years, knows a lot, and this is the case when you don’t believe your own eyes and ears. I see a child in front of me, but I hear adults talking. Adults and children's fears are mixed: criminals, robberies, violence and ghosts, darkness, loneliness. The combination of a child and an adult led to a peculiar perception, a fear of monsters, but most importantly - the fear of the dark, the night, the fear of falling asleep. And it’s all about information that is not appropriate for the age of an overly impressionable child. Since behind all a child’s fears there is an unconscious or conscious fear of death, then the prevention of fears is the cultivation of optimism, the cultivation of self-confident, independent people who know what they are supposed to know by age about dangers and threats, but who treat it courageously. A child should not see what is beyond his strength: the unfavorable ending of an illness, serious incidents, death and funerals. They don't talk about this in front of the child. Adults - for adults, children - for children. If fear is already tormenting a child, it is overcome by revealing in drawing and play what gave rise to fear. Fears, like everything that worries a child, are reflected in his drawings. In them he achieves what he wants, but also struggles with fears. He intuitively resorts to creativity, trying to overcome fear. The child draws a “scary man”, monsters, a Baba Yaga, a goblin, but he draws them either as funny, or himself next to them, but himself armed, brave and invincible. And the objects of fear lose their threatening essence. The fire in the picture goes out under the pressure of water, which he, a child, wearing a fireman’s helmet, pours on the flames. The forest is inhabited by kind animals and people, there is a path in it, and on the path are mom and dad. And the forest is no longer scary. A fearful child in drawings, much more effectively than in explanations, figuratively comprehends “what is this?”, “where from?”, “why?” and that will be?" In the drawing, he created a fire and extinguished it. What? Fire. Why? Careless handling of fire, lightning strike. What will happen? There is no need to be afraid, you need to extinguish it. In the case of “ghosts”, we played “ghosts” with the girl, she herself played his role, we had a lot of fun and in the end she began to laugh at her fears... Play is the best psychotherapy. While playing, you can run after a wolf (one of the players puts on a wolf mask) with a gun. And now the wolf is already afraid and asks for forgiveness for his tricks. In the game you can be a wolf, Baba Yaga, scare your mother and grandmother, and laugh at their fear. Laughter kills fear. It is obvious that in the game, as in an ancient ritual, fear is eliminated through a symbolic action, when the terrible is defeated, turning it into something non-fearful. The boy, who experienced fear in the forest hut, was taken there again by his father. There they played, explored and explored the forest. Hunting trips with his father became the most interesting form of recreation for the boy and brought father and son closer together. The neurosis has passed. The situation that caused fear in the person left in a dark apartment without adults, and the situation with a dog in a forest park were also played out. In the first case, the child was playing hide and seek in the dark. Naturally, the stuttering did not go away immediately, but the path to overcoming it had begun. In the second case, a child in a dog mask in the same forest park attacked his father and mother from the bushes, knocked them down and growled; then they attacked him. At first it was scary, then it became fun. They got a dog for the child. With the girl, who was afraid of the dark and loneliness, they played hide and seek in a dark room, first together: she and her grandmother. In the end, the girl was able to stay there alone without fear. In the game, a frightening situation is repeated as many times as it takes to comprehend and resolve it. Adults, when playing with a child, if necessary, stop the action and explain, discuss the situation that causes fear, and give irrefutable arguments that allow it to be more fully comprehended. In such a game, they do what should have been done earlier, at the stage of questions, namely, they answer questions fully, seriously, emotionally and responsibly, orienting the child in the unknown that he wants to understand. If fears are eliminated and optimistically processed together with the child, he will be enriched with new experiences and become more oriented, i.e. his mind is enriched. Eliminating fears leads to greater trust in people and life, to greater kindness, to optimism and courage. Naturally, if a child’s fear is alarming because it is excessive, unusual, unreasonable, psychologically incomprehensible, bizarre, absurd, distracts the child from real life, and forms the core of all his experiences, one should immediately contact a child psychiatrist.

Children's grief at the loss of loved ones

Children, like adults, always experience the loss of a loved one. In general, children's grief is characterized by such features as delay, hiddenness, surprise, and unevenness. The child may not show immediate grief, and the acute reaction is sometimes delayed for months. In some cases, real awareness and experience of loss comes very late and under the influence of some significant event, for example, another loss. The child may not show overt signs of grief, such as crying or verbally expressing emotions, but may show signs of hidden bereavement in the form of actions, behavior changes, and neurotic symptoms. The open expression of a child's grief sometimes turns out to be unexpected for those around him: the child was just playing, frolicking, and suddenly “breaks into tears.” It is noteworthy that in children, grief often has a wave-like character, when a surge of emotions and a stream of tears are replaced by relative calm or even animation and moments of fun. Children experience grief very unevenly and tend to express their sadness sporadically over a long period of time.

The reaction of children to the death of a loved one often remains a sealed secret for adults. It happens that a child’s reaction to a loss shocks those around him or, at a minimum, leaves them bewildered. And sometimes adults don’t even know whether the child is experiencing loss, and if so, how exactly he is experiencing it. Moreover, it is not clear how to help him.

Parents of bereaved children typically face questions such as:

• Should I tell my child about the death of a loved one or not?
• should he be included in the family mourning process and funeral arrangements or not?
• Should I take it with me to the funeral or not?
• to remember the deceased with the child or not?

Contacting a child psychologist will allow parents not only to prevent the undesirable consequences of loss for the child, but also to achieve certain positive results.

Causes of nervous excitement

Nervous agitation usually develops if a person is exposed to:

• frequent stress;
• lack of sleep;
• irritation;
• nervousness;
• suffers from mental illness.

All this can be expressed in frequent conflict situations

with the people around you. Sometimes the cause of the development of increased nervous excitability is not emotional and mental factors, but anxious and suspicious character traits.

However, often the first and second reasons are present in combination. A vicious circle develops: lack of sleep – irritation – nervous stress – insomnia.

Nervous excitement can be a symptom of the following diseases:

Bottom line

The excitability of the nervous system plays an important role - it instantly reacts to various stimuli, which make the body ready to perform tough and purposeful actions. People often talk about the negative side of excitability, which manifests itself in fatigue, dissatisfaction with life, and bad emotions. However, excitability does not always perform a negative function. It often performs exclusively a mobilization function in order to eliminate the negative, which leads to a positive outcome.

Each person has their own level of excitability. Much depends on the structural features of the nervous system. This should also include each person’s ideology and character traits. All this together affects how easily he can be pissed off.

Character qualities, behavior and a person’s attitude to the circumstances of the world around him influence how excited he is. If we are not talking about psychological factors, but about physiological ones, then we are talking about arousal - the accumulation of energy in one area in order to solve a problem or eliminate a difficulty.

Increased nervous excitability is considered a fairly common disorder of the nervous system. Increased nervous excitability is often observed in young children and adolescents. Male children and adolescents are more susceptible to this disorder. Symptoms of increased nervous excitability are disturbances in the movements of the eyeballs, asymmetry of the facial muscles, poor orientation in time and space, awkwardness and lack of composure. In addition, headaches and a slight delay in intellectual development are noted. Increased nervous excitability usually develops if a person is exposed to frequent stress, lack of sleep, irritation and nervousness. All this can be expressed in frequent conflict situations with other people. Sometimes the cause of the development of increased nervous excitability is not emotional and mental factors, but anxious and suspicious character traits. However, often the first and second reasons are present in combination. A vicious circle develops: lack of sleep – irritation – nervous stress – insomnia. Insomnia is a hallmark of increased nervous excitability. Insomnia is determined by a person’s condition if he cannot fall asleep for three to four hours, he tosses around in bed, trying to find a comfortable body position. A person may also wake up in the middle of the night and lie there until the morning with his eyes open. In some cases, insomnia is considered as a symptom of some somatic pathology. To prevent increased nervous excitability, it is necessary to adjust your sleep schedule, in particular, stick to the same bedtime. In other words, you should try to go to bed at the same time every day. In addition, it is necessary to maintain sufficient sleep duration - at least seven hours. Older people usually need five hours of sleep. Remedies for increased nervous excitability Calendula officinalis flowers have a calming effect on the nervous system. In addition, they lower blood pressure, eliminate pain in the temples and help you sleep. As a rule, for increased nervous excitability, take a tincture of calendula in alcohol, thirty drops twice a day. A decoction of calendula flowers helps eliminate symptoms of increased nervous excitability. To prepare the decoction, you need to take two tablespoons of calendula, the same amount of oregano, and a tablespoon of tansy. Chop the herbs and mix. Brew a tablespoon of herbal mixture with a glass of boiling water, leave for half an hour and strain. Take half a glass in the morning and evening. The course of therapy is three weeks. A decoction of pure calendula will help calm your nerves and eliminate insomnia due to increased nervous excitability - brew a tablespoon of flowers with boiling water, leave for an hour, then strain thoroughly. Take half a glass of the infusion orally warm before bed. Peppermint helps to calm your nerves. Take two parts of grass, two parts of watch, one part of hop cones and one part of valerian roots. Grind two tablespoons and brew cups of boiling water. Take according to? glasses twice a day. Take two tablespoons of valerian, three tablespoons of chamomile and five tablespoons of cumin. Leave a tablespoon of the mixture in boiling water for an hour, strain and take twice a day. glasses. Take a pharmacy tincture of hawthorn and valerian fruits and mix in equal proportions. Take twenty drops diluted in half a glass of water before going to bed.

Excitability and arousal

It is not always necessary to talk about excitability as an exclusively negative reaction of the body. The body does not have bad qualities, they are just sometimes used incorrectly by a person. Excitability is the property of the nervous system to conduct impulses to specific organs, changing their condition and increasing their performance. In some cases it's about excitement.

We can talk about sexual excitability, which is well developed in men. There are many discussions going on here, one of which concerns the issue of polygamy of the stronger sex. Why can't men be faithful to only women? Many refer to the instinctive desire of the stronger sex to reach the peak of pleasure - ejaculation, which is significantly different from female excitability.

The amount of sex becomes important for men, where they reach the peak of pleasure. Women care about other things – attention, affection, tenderness. That is why the quality of intimacy becomes important to them.

Excitability can be not only sexual. Stimuli can be sent along nerve cells to various organs that need to be activated. This often happens in a state of “full readiness”, when it is necessary to repel an attack of infection, remove foreign bodies from the body, enhance one’s functionality in order to replenish the energy expended by a person, etc.

Increased nervous excitability

The environment of large cities is becoming quite dangerous and favorable for increased nervous excitability. Here, a person is constantly accompanied by stress. Household worries, work problems, interpersonal conflicts that arise at every step - all this leads to stress, which affects the nervous state.

It is not surprising that people in big cities suffer more and more from various nervous disorders. Various factors affect a person every day, which cause increased nervous excitability. It often occurs not only in adults, but also in adolescents and children.

Increased nervous excitability can be determined by the following signs:

• Impaired eye movement.
• Lost in space.
• Lost in time.
• Asymmetry of the muscles on the face.
• Irregular headaches.
• Lack of concentration.
• Clumsiness in movements.
• Slowness of thinking.

Also, increased excitability can be recognized by the fact that previously a person calmly reacted to some stimuli, but now they cause him irritation. The more the nervous stability function is impaired, the faster a person gets irritated and becomes aggressive when petty stimuli appear.

Factors that provoke the development of nervous excitability are psychological reasons:

1. Problems at work.
2. Conflicts with loved ones.
3. Lack of support.
4. Loneliness.
5. Invasion of personal space.
6. Lack of personal space.
7. Large crowd of people.
8. Losses, etc.

A person does not get enough sleep, eats poorly and practically does not rest. He is constantly immersed in his own problems, which he tries to solve without achieving the desired result. All this provokes emotional exhaustion, which is expressed by outbursts with people with whom we previously had good relationships.

In rare cases, causes of increased nervous excitability include:

1. Hereditary predisposition.
2. Metabolic failure.
3. Infections.
4. Hormonal changes.
5. Mental problems: neuroses, schizophrenia, psychopathy.

Sometimes anxious and suspicious thoughts are added to all the reasons described above. A person, based on his irritated state, spends a long time scrolling bad thoughts in his head that prevent him from resting, falling asleep, eating, etc. The lack of proper rest and nutrition leads to even greater irritability, which sets the mechanism in motion in a circle.

Here psychologists direct their efforts to eliminating the cause that provoked excitability. If it is necessary to take sedatives, then they must be prescribed.

Treatment

An increasing number of people are interested in the question of how to get rid of irritability. In the modern world, this issue is very relevant, since the number of external provoking factors has increased and people are much more susceptible to them. In this regard, doctors offer different ways to deal with irritability.

For all patients, clinicians developed general rules of behavior when identifying irritability:

• alternate work;
• engage in physical and mental activity consistently;
• when working at home, you can do cleaning or cooking, and for office employees you can go for a walk outside;
• drink your daily amount of water;
• get enough sleep;
• ventilate the room;
• eat healthy food.

When considering how to deal with irritability, it may seem like there is nothing complicated about it. However, many people whose symptoms are triggered by external stimuli have difficulty in adequately eliminating the symptom. Quite often, people try to relieve stress with nicotine and alcohol, but this is completely wrong. Using these drugs can only aggravate the situation, damaging the brain and other cells and tissues of the body.

Also, doctors do not advise coping with the disease by drinking strong coffee and tea. They lead only to a temporary effect of activity, and then fatigue and aggressiveness returns with new intensity.

Psychologists advise all patients to cope with attacks of irritability in simple ways:

• do not focus only on negative emotions;
• express your troubles to relatives and friends;
• restrain outbursts of anger, do not show them in front of loved ones;
• learn to yield in various situations;
• set realistic goals for yourself;
• do more sports and walk outside;
• engage in auto-training;
• get enough sleep;
• with frequent manifestations of irritability and fatigue, a short vacation is needed.

Medications can be used to treat symptoms. Medicines are prescribed to the patient for severe irritability and the development of mental illnesses.

A person is constantly faced with emotions and various states. Now he is irritated, now cheerful, now calm. He observes similar states in other people. Sometimes your mood can change right before your eyes. This is facilitated by the excitability of the nervous system, which is influenced by environmental factors. The topic of arousal and the influence of excitability on it will be considered.