While my second-grader and I were coming up with 6 sentences about my profession as a psychologist, it became clear that everyone lacked clarity)) in this. By the way, here’s what we came up with: “My mother’s profession is a psychologist. From Greek psyche is the soul; logos is a teaching, a science, that is, psychology is the science of the soul. This means that a psychologist is a person who helps you find a connection with your soul, get to know your Soul. My mother also helps others learn more about themselves. Teaches you to find, name and live your feelings and emotions. If people have quarrels, then mom helps to sort this out too. It helps you believe in yourself, find your true desires and ways to bring them to life.” I want to somehow decipher all the words so that even a second-grader can understand it. I drew a picture that I almost dreamed about. Look at it in the picture for this post, this is the only way I figured out how to attach it here) But I look at it and understand that this drawing can still be expanded, deepened, colored, painted and supplemented. Just like our lives in general. In general, as a rule, we live in a very familiar field of concepts, life events, cause-and-effect relationships or their absence. In rice it is a purple circle ⭕. Our psyche sees, admits and processes what is already familiar to us, what we, as they say, absorbed with mother’s milk. The rest is not so familiar, does not fit into our picture of the world, into expectations from ourselves and others, may not have any passage in us at all. It may be qualitatively obscured by defenses. Like projections: in others, what infuriates me is what I cannot accept/see in myself ; repression - no, well, I’m not like that... Once in the vastness of some psychological group I saw a picture where defenses were very coolly explained using the example of “I want a friend’s wife”))) there is rationalization, and replacement, and repression and everything this )). Something larger/incongruous/out of the ordinary can penetrate into our picture of the world (the space where I am well oriented), of course, and this happens often. But the defenses confuse this information. They are there to protect us, to take care of us, to maintain homeostasis, let’s say. But there are ways that help expand the boundaries of the purple circle ⭕: - Other people and their pictures of the world, the way they see/view/perceive the world around them. - Unusual events or situations that happen quickly and we have time to realize them and see that, in fact, they expand the boundaries of our picture of the world, not to brush them off, but to kind of notice something that causes surprise (but not very much surprise)). - Development of the skill of self-reflection (self-observation) - A psychologist (can be called a therapist, psychotherapist) depends on the approach in which a person works. Well, in our country you can be called a psychotherapist officially having a medical and psychological education. And a psychologist is someone who has already gone beyond the boundaries of his picture of the world, whose picture of the world is different from yours and he constantly monitors it, examines it, painstakingly observes and studies his defense mechanisms. And he always visits the supervisor so that client cases are visible to him from another perspective. Constantly improves his qualifications. Attends intervention groups. And, of course, there is personal therapy. In general, I would like to make it more clear that we can change, however, this happens either long and painstakingly, or abruptly and situationally, but then it takes a lot of effort, resources and time to fit it all in , digest, let in and continue to live and have time to fit into all this the good and joyful. I will say that, of course, it’s easier to go through a long and painstaking process) If you want to explore your space, where you have been well oriented for a long time, look at your usual protective mechanisms and look where you want, but somehow it’s still prickly) Come for consultations (online works very cool here too), let’s see, we’ll explore quite gently and with care for you!!