I was once approached by the parents of a 13-year-old girl who developed compulsive handwashing. Every 15-20 minutes she washed her hands, every day she washed in the shower for almost an hour. If she restrained herself and tried not to wash her hands, she said, she developed internal tension, which disappeared for a while after washing. Gradually she stopped attending school; you can’t always ask for leave from one lesson, then from another, to wash your hands.
Parents were at a loss, feared a psychiatric illness, and eventually turned to a psychotherapist. At the request of the parents, psychotherapy took place at home. Our first meeting with a patient (let's call her Nina) was in her room. Nina sat as far away from me as possible and with all her appearance and behavior showed complete unwillingness to talk.
The first meeting passed, the second ... nothing has changed. Nina spoke extremely reluctantly. It was impossible to learn anything from her about the causes of her symptom - at least some of her assumptions, experiences.
Over the next few meetings, I told Nina a variety of stories, taken from real life or made up. I was hoping that one of these stories would evoke an emotional response in Nina that I could use to speculate about the cause of her symptom. But no matter how hard I tried, nothing worked. Nina listened to my stories with great indifference.
Then, following one wise advice, to get Nina talking, I asked her for help. I told her that I have a 16-year-old niece who doesn't know how to meet young people. My niece asks me to help her solve this problem, and I do not know what to answer her (it was all fiction). Could Nina help me and tell me what methods she uses to get acquainted on the street?
At first, Nina did not believe me and remained suspicious, but I spoke very sincerely and convincingly, and, in the end, Nina started talking. She told me how to attract the attention of young people, then we talked about her life, school, and her symptom.
During the conversation, Nina said: “It seems to me that if dad rented me a separate apartment, then everything would go well for me.” Now I don’t remember all the details - this happened quite a long time ago, but then, in the context of our communication, this phrase caused me a kind of insight: I can’t explain why, but I suddenly realized that the main function of this obsessive handwashing is protection from parents.
Nina's parents were quite strict, and each for their part put some pressure on her. Due to her nature, Nina could not enter into a direct confrontation with them. When she developed this obsessive symptom, the pressure of her parents became much weaker. Moreover, she had a reason not to go to school.
Once the function of the symptom was understood, a treatment plan emerged. In the next session, I began to tell Nina about those patients in my practice whose condition looked especially pathological and unpleasant. I tried to do it in such a way that, on an unconscious level, she would create an association between what was happening to her and what was happening to these patients.
For example, I told her about one man who spent seven years sitting on the couch without getting up from it in the literal sense of the word. On this sofa he ate, slept, went to the toilet. The story caused a violent emotional reaction: apparently, unconsciously, Nina really drew a parallel. At this point, I asked her how much she wants to get well? Nina confirmed her most ardent and resolute desire.
Then I told her that recovery would happen if she completed the task I had given, but a promise to fulfill it must be made in advance, before she knew what the task was. After some hesitation and my assurances that this task would in no way humiliate her human dignity, Nina agreed.
The task was as follows: it was necessary to wash in the shower twice a day for an hour, marking the time on a timer. Her hands had to be washed with the same frequency and in the same manner as she did herself, but in addition, it was necessary to wash them for an additional ten minutes whenever her parents came to the kitchen.
In addition, we agreed that Nina would not require any additional explanations and would not discuss this assignment with anyone.
I explained to Nina's parents that the task she would be doing was not a joke, and that doing it would guarantee a thousand percent cure for the symptom. And therefore, they must take Nina's assignment absolutely seriously, without any sarcasm and with understanding. And the parents were imbued with the seriousness of the task.
At the next meeting, which took place a week later, I learned that Nina began to wash like all ordinary people. What happened? Firstly, to wash according to the scheme that was prescribed to her, this is a difficult test, it is tiring and causes a desire to give up excessive washing, that is, to give up the symptom.
Secondly, the very fact that some psychotherapist told her what to do causes protest, which also motivates her to refuse excessive washing. But the most important thing is a change in the reaction of parents. If earlier, when Nina was intensively washing, her parents' anxiety increased, now, watching Nina complete the task, they relaxed more and more; now the intensive washing prescribed by the doctor meant recovery for them.
And the symptom ceased to be a means of emotional control over the parents, that is, it lost its function.
During the last two sessions, Nina unleashed a stream of aggression on me, which consisted of mocking my appearance, manners, results of psychotherapy, etc. Perhaps it was the aggression that Nina wished she had but could not express to her parents.
Perhaps it was justified anger at the therapist for depriving her of such a good way of self-defense. Thus, at the final stage, I played the role of a lightning rod.
So, on the surface, one might consider this case as an obsessive-compulsive disorder with a fear of pollution. In essence, rather, we are talking about a disorder of a demonstrative type. The fear of pollution, which may have been, is of very little importance, since the main function of the symptom was emotional control over the parents and protection from their pressure.
A year later, Nina's mother told me that Nina was doing well and there were no more "troubles", and that she and her husband divorced six months ago. Probably, this was the very case when the symptom of a child holds the family together.
On the other hand, living without a symptom is much better and healthier than living with a symptom. And if we consider this a success, then, without a doubt, it belongs primarily to Nina herself: if she had chosen life with a symptom, then nothing would have happened.
In the article "The disorder in the room from the point of view of psychology" we will tell you how you can deal with the disorder in the room. One Bulgarian fairy tale tells about an old man who decided to marry his son, but for the girl to be hardworking and neat. Having loaded his cart with fruits, he went to the village and began to shout out the following phrase, which surprised many, he shouted: “I am exchanging fruits for garbage.” Many took advantage of this quirk and carried bags of garbage in exchange for fruit. Only one girl brought a very small bundle and complained that there was no more garbage in the house. So the old man sent matchmakers to her and was not mistaken in his choice, she turned out to be a wonderful hostess, and the young family lived in prosperity and joy.
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Photo gallery: Clutter in the room from the point of view of psychology
But when in our time you go into a different house, you remember the old fairy tale. It is difficult to suppress a grin at the sight of many days of dust, unwashed dishes and scattered things. Probably, this family was created according to other principles of matchmaking. In another house, order reigns, which borders on such sterility that it is simply scary to move something or hurt something. It is difficult not to be glad for the well-being that reigns in the house and not to refrain from complimenting the hostess. And it happens that in a tidy house there is an atmosphere of discontent and tension. And in an uncleaned apartment, people are happy with each other and live in perfect harmony. Why is this happening?
The American psychologist William James believed that in addition to passions, beliefs and interests, the structure of the human personality should include what a person considers his own: things dear to the heart, everyday clothes that copy the shape of the body with folds, favorite books on the home shelf and more. The decoration of the house is an element of the physical self, and you can tell a lot about its inhabitants by looking closely at the dwelling. The first thing that catches your eye is disorder or order. What, from the point of view of psychology, disorder means, is a sign of general looseness, sloppiness and indiscipline. But the ideal order testifies to firm principles and spiritual harmony. But such an explanation is very simple to be true. Since at every step life tells us other ambiguous conclusions.
Parents of almost all teenagers complain about their sloppiness, that it is almost impossible to force them to keep order in the room. And the thing is that the interests of the younger generation are broad, directed to the outside world and little attached to the details of everyday life. Only when a teenager feels all the inconveniences that a mess brings, will he gradually become neat.
When phone numbers, such necessary ones, are written down on some scraps of paper, when you don’t know where you put the necessary thing, when the place that is intended for meeting friends or for classes turns out to be littered with some things, then you inevitably begin to take care of the order. But only becoming a mature person, a person acquires real accuracy.
Does it mean that the mess in the house indicates that the hostess or the owner failed to grow up properly? Can and will be so a person to live and act in everything, like a little child. But the problem here may lie deeper. We all, in the end, understand that throwing things around is not good.
If a person is not able to put things in order in his house, then this only indicates a serious internal conflict. The accumulated garbage, scattered clothes, and so on, speak for their owner that he is not able to put things in their places.
A full sink of unwashed dishes, dirty linen accumulated for weeks, an overflowing trash can, indicate that I do not know how to set and systematically solve problems, I do not know how to distribute my forces. If a person cannot organize his life, then serious tasks are not up to him.
Your affairs are not arguing, everything is not going as you would like, doesn’t it seem to you that serious life situations just got out of your control? Of course, I would like to overcome this unpleasant feeling. Start small, look at your home and find out for yourself where you need to clean up.
When you put your scattered things on the shelves, then you do much more, you learn to streamline your problems, that is, put them on the shelves. Bring clarity to your “physical self” and then the results will not keep you waiting.
There is another extreme. As psychologists have noted, a strong commitment to order and cleanliness is a symptom of self-doubt, a symptom of inner weakness.
Ordering his physical world at home, a person, as it were, seeks to protect himself from the chaos of the big world, which is terrible and too complicated for him. Thus, a vicious circle of tension arises: some thing put by someone from the home in the wrong place brings grief and annoyance. Housework takes a lot of time and effort, leaving no room for other important things. And then, in this scraped shell, a feeling of loneliness arises.
Such a trap can be set up for you by a script that was learned in the parental family, when order became an important life goal and at any cost. One can only feel sorry for such a person, whose main task is a shiny parquet and snow-white towels. After all, order in the house is a necessary condition, and not a goal, for solving real serious life problems. If we understand this simple truth, then we will find the golden mean, which distinguishes true harmony - spiritual and material.
Each room in the house has some kind of symbolic meaning, and has its own influence on your subconscious. Rubbish and clutter in every room causes stagnation and inactivity in certain aspects of life.
Mess in the kitchen
No wonder the kitchen is called the “heart of the home”. Here you eat, stock up on some energy, even if you dine on thawed semi-finished products in the microwave. A dirty and sloppy kitchen creates difficulties in supply and nutrition, on a spiritual and physical level. How you take care of the kitchen, you can tell how you feel about sources of abundance, energy supply, and your own nutrition. A neat and clean kitchen opens up space for the comfort and protection you so desperately need.
Mess in the dining room and living room
These are rooms in which you gather with friends, with family, with people close enough to you. Here you are in contact with the outside world when you are at home, arguing with friends about politics at the dinner table, reading the newspaper, watching TV. Clutter will turn this space into a lair, and you may be so dirty that you do not invite friends over for years. Maybe you are hiding from others in a pile of garbage?
Mess in the bedroom
Bedrooms for adults are a place of intimacy and for sleep, they must perform the function of renewing relationships and people. Clutter in the bedroom will not bring energy, but weakness. If you feel tired in the most intimate space, just clean up, and this will help you move away from stress and relax. And only then you can have a good time with your partner and have a sweet sleep.
Mess in the hallway
The corridor is the artery of your home. And the mess in your hallway is like a "traffic jam" on the road. It interferes with the interaction of different parts of your life and your home. Look at the corridor: is it so difficult not to stumble in it, is it easy to walk along it, is it well lit? If you have difficulty interacting with people and with yourself, between family and work, it’s probably time for you to clean up the corridor.
Mess in the bathroom
Body care and bathing is such a daily ritual. In daily life, you use this space so that you can prepare yourself to communicate with the world. Clutter in the bathroom indicates a lack of attention to yourself, and not only on a physical level, it also indicates low self-esteem. A well-decorated and clean bathroom can be a place to rejuvenate and take care of yourself, a serene and peaceful place. Decorate your bathroom, put things in order, turn it into a place where you can hide from everyone and be with yourself, where you will feel safe during the evening and morning rituals of washing.
Mess in the toilet
When you fill the toilet with rubbish, you suppress your insight and intuition. A dirty toilet indicates problems that make it difficult to develop in relationships and work, make it difficult for you to develop in life, problems that you are not really aware of. When the toilet door is tightly closed, this does not mean that you have gotten away from problems.
Chaos in the garage
Your car is a symbol of independence and mobility. If you have a dump of things in your garage, your car can hardly fit there, then you need to be very careful, and it is very difficult for you to move through life.
Now we know what a mess in a room is from the point of view of psychology. Don't think of cleaning as something terrible. Every shirt you give to a new owner, every book you take to the library. And also, every sheet of paper and magazine that you turn into waste paper will create space in your life for events, joy and new energy.
Her new book and touched on such an interesting topic ...
Why do we intuitively perceive some people as clean and others as dirty?
Here you can, of course, remember, but we talked about something else. About sex.
I have heard and read more than once a version convenient for men that sex is only a physiological act, the exchange of fluids and nothing more. By the way, the same opinion is sometimes shared by women who tend to justify a man or themselves. Everyone has the right to their opinion. But here's what we came up with...
Do you know where all the information about a person is stored? Yes, of course, in the DNA molecule. It also contains an individual genetic code and, there is a version, the whole life of a person is recorded there. Therefore, it is believed that mature parents have children that are smarter and more developed. Besides, just imagine that your whole family lives in this molecule, the memory of all your ancestors. In every cell of your body there is a powerful information structure that determines your uniqueness.
And then a man and a woman meet, attraction flares up between them. Not really understanding what kind of person suddenly appeared next to him, what kind of person stands behind him, what beliefs he lives and what he has achieved, a woman and a man enter into a sexual relationship. After all, this is only chemistry, the exchange of fluids?
Indeed, the exchange of fluids: a man gives a woman his sperm, a woman - her intimate fluids. Even if the sex is protected, the mixing of fluids is inevitable: sweat, lubricants, etc. If the sex is unprotected, then it is still more interesting.
Sperm is the priceless genetic code of a man. Getting into the uterine cavity, it is absorbed by its walls, and even if fertilization did not take place, information about the man was still registered in the woman's body. Or, for example, a woman gives a man a blowjob ... If she swallows sperm, then for her information field it is generally a bomb. If he does not swallow, nevertheless, the secreted fluids still enter the stomach and begin to be absorbed into the blood through the walls of the stomach. Blood carries foreign genetic material throughout the body, to every cell of the female body.
You see, this is not at all as harmless to a person as it seems? In this case, this man remained forever in the information field of a woman. Every cell in her body will remember him. Some left, passing man forever left his mark on her body. The same thing happens with men. The taste of a woman is the memory of her in a man's body until the end of his days.
It happens that you meet a person and you feel: "Gulyon." You don’t know anything about him yet, but you already intuitively read countless, not very legible connections. Now do you understand why this is happening?
Someone's own code is minimally clogged by other people, someone's is very much. Therefore, at the level of sensations, we perceive someone as clean, and someone as dirty.
It's scary, in fact - a person loses his essence, his uniqueness at the DNA level. It is almost impossible to understand in such a state who you are, what you are and what you are for. Multiple foreign voices in your blood will not allow you to do this.
Have sex with those you want to keep with you forever. And this is not even until the end of life, it is much longer ...
This old man is 80 years old, and he has not washed for 60 years, so he does not look like a person at all, but like an orc from the movie "The Lord of the Rings". He could have been in that kind of horror movie without makeup, because. his skin is covered with scales of exfoliating dirt, his eyes are almost invisible, and the stench from him is felt a mile away. This is what a person looks like who hasn't washed in over 60 years!
Here are 12 photos of a man who hasn't washed in 60 years:
1. The main hobby of an unwashed person is smoking manure from a metal water pipe.
2. The hands were covered with scales from dirt and became like elephant skin.
3. A man who has not washed for more than 60 years is called Amu Haji - this is an 80-year-old Iranian tramp.
4. This old unwashed tramp lives on the outskirts of the Iranian village of Dezhga in the province of Fars.
5. The photographer who took pictures of the unwashed tramp treated him to cigarettes, but he immediately lit them with a bunch.
6. An unwashed person has been sleeping in this brick building for many years.
7. Most of the time, Amu Haji travels to different places - sleeping or basking in the sun.
8. This is how a person sleeps who has not washed for 60 years.
9. Amu tries on an old helmet, it will suddenly come in handy.
10. Dirty tramp Amu eats dead animals, which he roasts at the stake.
11. Sometimes, an unwashed and smelly old man is still fed by local residents.
12. Amu looks at himself in the mirror, and he has not revealed his secret why he has not washed for more than 60 years.
Power, billions of dollars in income, and even universal recognition - the five described below did not care about anything. As long as you don't wash.
Below you are waiting for five world-famous men, the smell of which even killed flies. Learn their names, and never follow their example.
Ludwig van Beethoven
One of the most brilliant composers in the history of mankind has never taken a bath. The reason for this was his fear of being poisoned by lead, a metal from which pipes were made in Germany in the 18th-19th centuries. And always added:
"I'm not paranoid."
When Beethoven slept, friends would sneak into his house and secretly wash his clothes. It remains to be hoped that he did not die from poisoning with "lead" water, which, probably, his comrades washed things for the composer.
Source: wikipedia.org
Mao Zedong
Yes, he didn’t wash there, the great Mao never even brushed his teeth. The politician had only one answer:
“Tigers never bathe or brush their teeth.”
True, we have not figured out what involvement Mao had with tigers (he was born in the year of the Snake). But poor Mao did have to endure “washing tortures” in his life: when he was quite elderly and infirm, specially authorized people wiped him with warm, damp towels.
Source: wikipedia.org
Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes is an American entrepreneur, engineer, aviation pioneer, director, and producer. In general, an eccentric billionaire. He had double standards in matters of hygiene, especially in the last years of his life:
- Hughes required that all items served to him be wrapped in several layers of napkins. And that his servants bathe regularly.
- He only washed his hands. I haven't cut my hair and nails for months.
Source: wikipedia.org
