There are people who believe that family and friends poison their lives. There is even an opinion that only a close person can truly offend, they say, it is better to have a good enemy than a bad friend, because at least from an enemy you always know what to expect. One gets the impression that in some pictures of the world, a close person is someone who is a priori dangerous (to the question of where intimate phobia comes from as the fear of entering into close, trusting relationships). Of course, these are just misconceptions. Close ones are precisely those people who give us joy and warmth of communication, those who support us in our aspirations and endeavors... and generally support us. And at the same time, sometimes it happens that, for various reasons of a purely internal nature, we feel offended, deprived, abandoned. As a result of generalizing this and (more importantly) previous experience “on this topic”, including the earliest one, various kinds of restrictions and prejudices arise from the series given above: “you cannot show your spouse your weakness”, “you should not turn your back on a friend” , “family life is a struggle, and the fittest survives,” etc. Some people, when getting married, along with the baggage of their life experience (expressed in ideas about the world, beliefs), bring into this very marriage an initial distrust of their partner, expecting some kind of trick from him. Just imagine a couple of newlyweds. They look at each other with a look full of love, desire, and anticipation of a happy and long life together. And at the same time, each of them has some part that watches the partner through the “embrasure” of mistrust, constantly waiting for a kick and a trip from him. What next? The phenomenon of state modeling is widely known and consists in the fact that a person in a less intense state unconsciously models, picks up, and appropriates the state of someone who is in a more intense psychological state. This is easy to illustrate in terms of extreme psychology. There is a term there called “psychological contagion.” If one person from the group panics (a state of extreme intensity), then this state begins to spread around him, like a blast wave from the epicenter of the explosion. And now not just one person is panicking, but several thousand. You need to have developed strong-willed qualities and deep internal reference in order to avoid psychological infection in an extreme situation and not succumb to a panic attack. This is the phenomenon of “psychological infection”, which outside of extreme psychology is called psychological modeling. Let's now return to the cozy family nest with this information. In this case, it can be called cozy with a big stretch, because, say, a young man is anxiously expecting that something will go wrong with him and his newly-made wife. And his friends had already told him that he needed to keep his ears open, and his mother and grandmother shared dramatic stories from their lives, and his ex-girlfriend “taught him something.” And now, against the background of a positive, bright state, another state unfolds - anxious, irritated expectation. And this state is quite intense. Usually people in such cases say “have mixed feelings.” You probably already guessed where we're going with this. Considering the “effectiveness” of modeling, which is inherent in our psyche as a property, it is easy to understand and imagine that even the most wonderful, beautiful and not up to anything “that” girl will, after some time, begin to hide kitchen knives - just in case - under her pillow. So much for psychological contamination. The psychologists of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, with whom we collaborated while providing assistance to flood victims in Krymsk in the summer of 2012, are specially trained to stop psychological contamination in the event of panic in crowded places. So, a person who has fallen into this state needs to be turned with his back to other people so that they do notsaw his facial reactions. After this, the psychologist’s task is to separate the person with a panic attack from the group, take him away, isolate him from the rest. Otherwise, panic will spread very quickly, and in this case it can lead to consequences that are most unpleasant and enormous in scale - we observed this during the events described in Krymsk. Panic-stricken people can behave aggressively, inflict injuries on each other, and commit actions that in ordinary life they themselves would rate as stupid and senseless. So why is it important that people don't see the panicked person's face? For the simple reason that state modeling occurs through nonverbal signals that one person sends to another. As we know, communication between people consists of verbal (only about 25% of information people transmit in this way) and non-verbal components (this is, accordingly, 75% of the information load). And it is through the non-verbal “channel” that the state is transferred from one person to another. And just imagine that one of the spouses comes home, and a person (of course, a loved one) is sitting at home with him or her in a negative state of such anxious expectation... and is silent. When this person is asked what happened, he doesn’t really answer anything, except that “I’m somehow worried in my soul.” Neither spouse understands why, after some time, both of them feel anxious in their souls. Now the two of them are sitting and silent: pale, gloomy faces and no clarity of the picture. After a quarter of an hour, the mother-in-law or mother-in-law joins them. The children fall silent... and now everyone is sitting and anxiously watching each other, not realizing what is happening. At this moment, the youngest’s nerves can’t stand it, and he touches a vase that was standing on the edge of the table. And then this begins... What in the traditional language of our folklore is called “neither to say in a fairy tale, nor to describe with a pen.” But let's not go into details. In such a situation, some will be quick to say: well, now it’s clear why we all had such an alarming premonition. It was as if we knew in advance that the child would break his mother’s favorite vase and this would be followed by a violent reaction to the event. Such would-be clairvoyants can easily use figures of speech like: “how I felt,” “how I knew,” “well, I told you so.” The phenomenon of psychological contagion operates in both large and small social systems. The family is a small social system. And it should not be surprising that a child in the notorious family broke a vase precisely on that evening when everyone “had a bad feeling,” in an atmosphere of general tension. Rather, it would be surprising if he did not do this, or if something else of the same kind did not happen. Yes, our expectations are never met. But the actions of ideodynamics, as well as state modeling, have not yet been canceled. As we remember, that idea, that image that we hold “in front of us” sets the course that we follow through life. And it is natural that for a person who latently expects a trick from his loved ones, acquaintances, humanity in general and the entire Universe as a whole, such a person has pictures in his mind’s eye, as they say, one more “beautiful” than the other. And it makes sense to think about what kind of ideological dynamics we want for our families? How do we see the future of our family - in thirty, forty years - in six months - tonight? And it is clear that when these images, these paintings are beautiful and fill us with positive emotions, help us ourselves to come to an intense positive state right here and now, they become reality. Our reality - that bright, colorful, harmonious reality that we share with our closest, most beloved people. Alexey and Maria Afanasyev, Krasnodar © Alexey and Maria Afanasyev. This text is part of a commercial publication and is protected by copyright law. Any use of the article or its fragment is possible