How is it that we find ourselves involved in someone else’s role (place), in someone else’s feelings, in someone else’s scenario? Today I want to talk not about situations from jokes when a man went take out the trash in just shorts, and come back a month later in just a padded jacket and without a trash can. Today we’ll talk about other situations. In my line of work, I often come across the fact that people who are of sober mind and solid memory, suddenly, out of the blue, begin to behave, at least strangely. A workaholic in life begins to “forget about work.” Approximate a family man forgets about his family, indulges in all kinds of bad things, and for a while falls off the list of decent members of society. A law-abiding taxpayer begins to accumulate loans, so much so that then his children have to sell all their assets in order to pay off their debts. A completely sober person goes on a two-week binge in the middle of a quarterly report, without reacting to the screams and threats of superiors. A humble man, like a “peaceful armored train standing on a siding” for many years, suddenly wakes up and begins to show such aggression that neither he nor his roommates have ever dreamed of. In such cases, people say: “A demon has taken possession of a person,” “The demon has beguiled him.” There is no point in slandering the demon. He definitely has nothing to do with it. In fact, the feeling is that a person temporarily loses his usual internal guidelines and slips into some new state. Just like a radio receiver that lost one radio station and independently found another, changed the wave. *** The science of psychology has an answer to the question about the nature of this phenomenon. This switching occurs due to the law of belonging, unconscious solidarity and the mechanism of repression (displacement) of feelings and scenarios. It’s not clear yet! Now I’ll explain everything. *** The law of belonging in its simplest formulation sounds like this: “All those born in a family have the right to belong to the family system, regardless of merit or crime.” If all family members are remembered, respected, valued, loved, then such a family is happy, rich, abundant, healthy, prosperous. If one of the relatives is forgotten for some reason, or disrespected, or despised, or turned away, then Problems begin in such a family. Who is most often forgotten? They forget, they force out of the heart and from the memory such relatives who are unpleasant and painful to remember. It is very painful to remember your aborted children. My heart is simply in pieces. Very painful. But you can’t undo what’s been done. It’s very painful to remember your former partners. After all, there was love, there were hopes and plans, there was a wide variety of experiences of shared experiences and feelings... But it didn’t work out, “it couldn’t.” It is very difficult to admit your own mistakes... It is very painful to remember those family members who have been seriously ill physically or mentally for a long time. In most cases, they become a serious item of family expenses. Fatigue accumulates. But you won’t get support and sympathy from society. It is very painful to remember those dispossessed and repressed. Because if you declare your love for them, you can follow them to distant and inhospitable places. So they renounced publicly. So they repented in advance of what was imperfect. It is very shameful and painful to remember the criminals. After all, they caused damage to society, neighbors, and disgraced the family. It is very shameful and painful to remember those who committed suicide. In this case, it is often accompanied by a huge feeling of guilt. “If I had known that you were feeling so bad, I wouldn’t have left you a single step, I would have saved you, warned you, not let you go from me...” It’s very painful to remember toxic parents. When a childhood nightmare comes up in your memory over and over again, when a drunken father chased you with an ax, you want to erase this episode from your memory... But the whole father is erased...*** Exclusion from memory is a defense mechanism. Out of sight, out of mind. It seems easier this way. And this is actually true. When there is war around, when there is an enemy around, there are no resources for a psychotherapist.2266880